I'm running Debian Etch and I'm trying to get ax25 to work with a Kantronics KPC3+ tnc for ham radio. I've read several of the HOW-TO's for ax25 and I'm still having problems. I'm not sure if the serial ports are working or not.

I have an entry in axports set with this:

1 KD8CCR-1 9600 2 145.760 MHz (9600)

I have changed the 9600 to everything from 300 to 115200 (in Windows the speed is 9600 and the tnc works fine).

I create the device:

kissattach /dev/ttyS0 1 192.168.0.255

I get confirmation that the device was created (ax0).

When I start up xcall (a ham radio packet program) the port is available but when I try to connect to it the program times out. If I run ifconfig it shows the device shows tx packets but no receive.

Is there a way to check to make sure the serial ports are active and working, or a way to tell if the tnc is actually being seen?

You can preform a loopback test to determine if data is actually getting to your ports.

First you would short the RX/TX lines as explained here, and then you would send data to the port and see if you get it back.

You could do that with a terminal emulator, or by simply doing (on two different virtual terminals):

and

If you see "Test" echoed back from the "cat /dev/ttyS0" terminal, then you know the data is making it out of the port and then back into the system.