Before starting ax25-tools you must first edit /etc/ax25/axports to reflect your particular TNC.

The file consists of a single line containing six fields. The fields are described in man axports. The file may also contain comment lines identified by a # character at the beginning of the line.

ax25-tools are started with the kissattach command. The arguments required are 1) the port to which your TNC is attached, 2) the name to be given to the port that ax25-tools will attach, and 3) the IP address to be assigned to the interface. The interface names will begin with ax0 and increase as additional TNCs are connected.

In the example above, the TNC is attached to /dev/ttyAMA0, the port will be the 145.09 port as described in axports above, and the interface will be assigned the IP address of 44.102.200.17.

As shown above, you will also want to establish one or more routes. As a minimum, you will want to route the 44/8 network (the amateur radio packet network) to your newly created interface. Typically, some node will be designated as a router for your local radio network and you will want to designate that node as your router for 44/8 traffic. Your routes may be different depending on your local resources and your own RF footprint. If there is no router in your area, you may wish to simply route all 44/8 traffic to your ax0 interface.

ax25-tools creates a network interface which may be viewed with ifconfig like any other interface.

Since the interface has an IP address, it may be used with any application expecting to use an Internet port, assuming, of course, that an appropriate server exists within radio range. Thus, if an IP BBS is nearby, tools such as telnet, ftp, or a web browser may be used.

Note that the packet connection tends to be quite a bit slower than wired Internet, so the connections will take much longer than you might expect.

ax25-tools only provides the interface. The package ax25-apps (Section 6.2, “ax25-apps”) provides a number of simple AX.25-only applications that may be used in the event that IP packet is not available in your area.

ax25-tools is stopped by merely killing the kissattach process. Do this by identifying the PID for the process and killing that process: