Location: Jitsi
Date and Time: Wednesday, January 8, 2025, 5:30pm-8:00pm
Scribe: You
Roll Call: RussellSenior,ThomasSuckow,JasonBergstrom,TedBrunner,SteveTree

Agenda

• Pick location for next weekly
  • Encountered someone who wants to get involved with Personal Telco, who lives in N Portland, so some place convenient for them is good for an indoctrination session.
• Node notes:

  • NodeEleven -- there was an outage in mid-December, by the time Russell actually arrived to check, the upstream internet gateway had been rebooted and that fixed the outage. They use a Verizon Wireless 5G home gateway thingie.

  • NodeKlickitat -- Russell has noticed that some of the Archer C7-based mesh nodes have a habit of becoming unreachable after several days. Nothing obvious in dmesg, can usually connect locally and reboot, which fixes mesh link failure. Luckily, there isn't a lot of active use of these devices at the present time.

  • NodeEdie -- still needs Russell to configure a device to install, slacker!

• OpenWrt shenanigans:

  • Russell has added a script (/usr/bin/wiki-info.sh) to PTP devices that generates wiki-pastable network configuration data. He updated a bunch of node pages December 16-17, updating outdated information that had been lingering.

  • Over the holidays, Russell managed to hunt down the bug that was causing the Soekris net4826 (SC1100-based) boards to hang during a warm boot, requiring a power cycle to recover. After the recently decommissioned net4826 at NodeFirstUnitarian, there is only one actively used net4826 in our network: the one at MississippiWest. It gives us some trouble when ssh'ing because of deprecated protocols, so it would be nice to update, and now we can.

  • Russell has been working on the reverse engineering the Realtek-based switches PoE control protocol. Currently has a Zyxel GS1900-10HP v2 splay out on a desk with a logic analyzer attached, to try to make heads and/or tails of the protocol. It is different, although similar to a protocol used to control Broadcom PSE (Power Sourcing Equipment) chips on version 1 boards. The version 2 boards use a different PSE, manufactured by Realtek themselves. The same protocol almost certainly applies to the version 2 Engenius EWS2910P. Some preliminary work occurred two years ago, trying to poke up those involved to finish off the support.

  • Russell gave a PLUG talk on January 2 covering the flashing of the Linksys E8450. In the process encountered a bug in an early production version that had trouble warm booting. Eventually discovered in a 6000+ post thread on the OpenWrt forum, that it was a known problem with a relatively simple fix, setting a minimum CPU speed of 600MHz, which apparently keeps the particularly sensitive memory adequately powered during the warm boot. Later production versions don't have the problem.

• P.O. Box -- we were notified that if we renew by January 19, we can get last years rates (circa $200) for our P.O. Box. If we renew after that, we'll pay next year's rates, certainly higher. Discussion.

• Your Item Here

Notes

• New potential member interest in meeting in North Portland, meet at the Nighthawk (Interstate and Rosa Parks) next week.
• Node notes:

  • NodeEleven - was down, came back up. As of this morning down again, Russell will contact.

  • NodeKlickitat - Archer C7 nodes, issue with mesh connectivity to distant nodes (still up from local nodes).

  • NodeEdie - Russell will build.

  • NodeWhet - Ted will visit

• OpenWRT updates:
  • Script to collect technical node information to paste into wiki.

  • One Soekris net4826 in our network: MississippiWest, issue with old ssh, lagging due to inability to build (due to suspend state patch), now can move forward

  • Zyxel GS1900-10HP v2 PoE switch, PSE v2 has different hardware, which is not compatible with v1 serial protocol.
  • Russell gave a talk at the last PLUG meeting on putting OpenWRT on Linksys E8450. Memory speed issue in early version causing an issue with warm booting.

• P.O. Box can be renewed at last year's rate by January 19th. We have used the address on FuTel checks (and a bunch of other areas).

• Business cards - Russell has more volunteer cards (will bring a box to the next meeting), Ted was going to look at who would print more board cards, Russell may contact Chris Chen.
• Question about whether the most recent grant money is considered as taxable.

• FuTel, we need to find the reporting requirements for the recent grant. Karl needs to also give us paperwork on the disbursment of funds.

[CategoryMeetingNotes]