NAME

ModulePropagationMonitor.conf - Configuration file for the SvxLink server PropagationMonitor module

DESCRIPTION

svxlink is a general purpose voice service system for ham radio use. This man-page describe the SvxLink server configuration for the PropagationMonitor module.

The PropagationMonitor module is used to announce propagation alerts received from vhfdx.info or gooddx.net. The process of receiving the emails is outside of this module and have to be arranged separately. This module expect to find new emails under the spool directory. Messages from VHFDX should be put in a vhfdx subdirectory and messages from GoodDX should be put in a dxrobot subdirectory. This module must have write access to the subdirectories under the spool directory since it will move processed messages to an archive directory.

CONFIGURATION VARIABLES

There are a couple of configuration variables that are common to all modules. The documentation for these can be found in the svxlink.conf(5) manual page.

Here is the description of all module specific configuration variables that the SvxLink PropagationMonitor module understands.

ModulePropagationMonitor

SPOOL_DIR: Specify which directory to read incoming emails from. The default is /var/spool/svxlink/propagation_monitor.

RECEIVING THE ALERT EMAILS

The first step in setting up the flow of alert emails is to actually getting them to the computer running SvxLink and, on that computer, to the user SvxLink run as. This can be done in two ways. One way is to forward emails directly via SMTP to the computer, if you have that possibility. A more common case propably is that you want to fetch alert emails using POP from some email account. The latter can be done using the fetchmail(1) utility for example.

The next step is to store incoming emails in files under the propagation monitor spool directory. This is done using the procmail(1) utility. When an incoming email is received, the mail server call procmail which look for a configuration file in the destination users home directory. For SvxLink, the home directory should be set to /etc/svxlink. In that directory a procmail configuration file, .procmailrc, is installed by default. The syntax is a bit cryptic but the file contains some helpful comments to help you understand it. Have a look at the procmailrc (5) and procmailex(5) manual pages for more details.

Finally, of course, you need to register with the vhfdx.info and/or gooddx.net site and set up for what geographic area and which bands you wish to receive alert emails for.

SELINUX

Some Linux distributions have the SELinux security framework enabled. This is true for RedHat based distributions, like Fedora for example. SELinux will by default deny procmail to write the mail files in the propagation monitor spool directory. To fix this, run the following commands:

semanage fcontext -a -t user_home_t \

"/var/spool/svxlink/propagation_monitor(/.*)?"

restorecon -r /var/spool/svxlink/propagation_monitor

FILES

/etc/svxlink/svxlink.conf (or deprecated /etc/svxlink.conf): The system wide configuration file.
~/.svxlink/svxlink.conf: Per user configuration file.
/etc/svxlink/svxlink.d/ModulePropagationMonitor.conf: Global modularized configuration file. Depends on the CFG_DIR configuration variable setting.
~/.svxlink/svxlink.d/ModulePropagationMonitor.conf: Per user modularized configuration file. Depends on the CFG_DIR configuration variable setting.
/var/spool/svxlink/propagation_monitor: Spool directory for alert mails. This is the default path. What path is actually used is determined by the SPOOL_DIR configuration variable.
/etc/svxlink/.procmailrc: The configuration file for procmail. Procmail is used to write incoming alert emails into files in the spool directory.

AUTHOR

Tobias Blomberg (SM0SVX) <sm0svx at users dot sourceforge dot net>