Operating Xastir

For the impatient

We have a Quick Start page that describes how to get Xastir running for the first time, with a basic map and just an internet connection.

Menus and the tool bar

The top bar of the Xastir window contains a set of menus, some check boxes that change what operations are available with the mouse, and some buttons for zooming and panning the map.

Individual menus are documented in their own links, below:

The zoom and pan buttons are self-explanatory.

The default mouse operations are that the left mouse button can be used to drag a box in the window and cause Xastir to zoom in to that box, and the right button calls up a context menu. The check boxes in the toolbar change this mode of interaction.

TrackMe: Selecting this button will cause Xastir to draw a set of colored circles around your station and recenter your map display on your own station if you move off the map, which can come in handy during mobile use. You can still pan and zoom the map when in this mode, but the map will promptly recenter when your station moves.
Measure: Changes the meaning of a left-button drag to measure the box you've dragged --- it will pop up a dialog showing the distance between the top left and bottom right corners of the box you dragged, the X and Y extents of that box, the total area of the box, and the bearing from the top left corner to the bottom right.
Move: Changes the interaction mode so that a left drag starting near an object or item will move that object or item to a new point.
Draw: enters Draw CAD Objects drawing mode.

The cursor will change style when you switch modes so you can tell what mode you're in. See Keyboard And Mouse operations.

About Menu Tear-offs

Note that all of the menus have a dashed line near the top. If you click on that dashed line it acts like a cut-line for the menu and detaches that menu from the main menu into a persistent window. You can then move that menu window off to another area of your screen. If you're spending a lot of time using one particular menu, this can come in handy.

Setting up interfaces

Interfaces are added, removed, configured, started, and stopped from the Interface Control dialog. That page of the wiki links to all the sub-dialogs for each interface type.

We have an example of how to set up a simple Xastir station on the Interface Setup page.

Working in the map window

If you right click in the map window, you will get a Map Pointer Menu that allows you to manipulate the map zoom level, query station information, and other operations.

You can change what maps are displayed in the Map Chooser, manipulate how multiple map layers are drawn in the Map Properties dialog, and can zoom and pan the map using buttons on the screen or key presses. See also Keyboard and Mouse operations.

Xastir supports several different map formats, and external tools can produce map formats we can use from map data that is in formats we can't use. Xastir supports both online maps pulled from the internet on demand and offline maps stored on your computer so you can work when the internet isn't available or when you need specialized map layers for your activity.

See Xastir Mapping Overview, Mapping Links, Advanced Map Topics, and Map Converters for many more details.

Enabling Weather Alerts

See Weather Alerts for more detail.

Miscellaneous notes

This is a random collection of operating notes copied from the INSTALL.md file of Xastir. They might need to be moved elsewhere, but here is better than in installation notes.

Enabling FCC/RAC Callsign Lookup

Run the /usr/local/share/xastir/scripts/get-fcc-rac.pl script as root, which will download and install the proper databases into the /usr/local/share/xastir/fcc/ directory. At that point the callsign lookup features in the Station Info dialog and in the "Station->Find Station" menu option should be functional.

Enabling Audio Alarms

Download and install sample audio files from Xastir's GitHub download site:

git clone http://github.com/Xastir/xastir-sounds

Copy the files to your Xastir sounds directory, for instance /usr/local/share/xastir/sounds/

Install a command-line audio player. Call out the path/name of that player in the File->Configure->Audio Alarms dialog. Common ones are vplay and auplay, but there are many others. Enable the types of alarms you desire in that same dialog.

You should be able to test it manually from a shell by typing the command in something like this: vplay filename

Once you find a command that works, type it into Xastir's Audio Alarms dialog exactly the same except omit the filename.

Enabling Synthesized Speech

This is currently available only on Linux/FreeBSD.

Install the Festival Speech Synthesizer. Configure/compile support for it into Xastir. Start up the Festival server before starting Xastir using festival --server &. Xastir should start up and connect to the server. Use the options in File->Configure->Speech to decide which things you'd like Xastir to speak to you about.

You can test out that the festival connection is working from the File->Configure->Speech dialog, which has a "Test" button that will cause it to say "Greetings from Xastir".

Note that the Proximity Alert option in the File->Configure->Speech dialog uses the distances set in the File->Configure->Audio Alarms dialog.

Enabling GPS Waypoint/Track/Route Download Support

Install GPSMan and gpsmanshp. Configure/compile support for it in Xastir. Start up GPSMan separately and configure it for your GPS and serial port. You'll see download options for each type on the Interface menu.

Note that Xastir requires a version of gpsman at least as recent as 6.1. Older versions of gpsman may not work.

Transmit Enable/Disable Options

Each interface has a separate transmit enable. The Interface menu also has a few global transmit enables. Both the per-interface and global transmit options must be enabled for a particular interface to transmit. Also, for Internet servers, you typically need to authenticate with the server using your callsign/pass-code before you're allowed to inject packets into the Internet stream which may get gated out to RF. If you just want to talk to other Internet users, you don't need a pass-code to authenticate to the servers.

Igating Options

There are igating options on each local TNC interface. There are other global igating options on the File->Configure->Defaults dialog. The global option sets restrictions on all igating.

Where per-user data is kept

Per-user configurations are kept in each user's ~/.xastir directory, by default. In particular the ~/.xastir/config/xastir.cnf file is where most of the configs are kept. This directory can be optionally specified using the -c /path/dir command line option. Make sure you specify a directory, not a file! Xastir will create the directory and several subdirectories if they do not exist when you start up.

A few executables are installed in /usr/local/bin/.

Scripts are installed in /usr/local/share/xastir/scripts.

Maps are installed in /usr/local/share/xastir/maps/. Lots of other directories are also created under /usr/local/share/xastir/ for other installation artifacts and data that Xastir needs to operate.

Most Linux pre-packaged versions of Xastir install to /usr/ instead of /usr/local, with obvious changes in the paths listed above.