Trying Varanny

varanny
1

Okay, I’m going to take the plunge and try your Varanny tool, Georges. (Thank you!)

I’ve gone through the github README info and such. BTW, thank you also for the example config files for Linux et al. Very helpful.

A couple questions, please:

- What applications (other than RadioMail) support the service discovery process? I’ll probably get started with PAT on my Mac, with Varanny (+ VARA HF + VARA FM + rigctl) running on my Raspberry Pi 5. Does PAT discover the modem services?

- On the Pi5 side, does Varanny launch Direwolf (native linux) properly? I don’t see a rigctl option in Direwolf, so I’m guessing that should not launch for Direwolf, right?

- After a connection is made, a modem launched, and the connection terminates, does Varanny terminate the modem and wait for the next incoming connection?

- Every Wednesday, I operate a Winlink Wednesday alternate NCS. My use case for that is to run a P2P (ARDOP in the morning, VARA HF in the evening) server, so the connections are initiated over RF, not locally on my LAN. What do you suggest re Varanny for Wednesdays, or should I simply keep running a Windows environment with Winlink Express + modem on Wednesdays?

Cheers,

Ken van Wyk
Armata Scientia

2

- What applications (other than RadioMail) support the service discovery process? I’ll probably get started with PAT on my Mac, with Varanny (+ VARA HF + VARA FM + rigctl) running on my Raspberry Pi 5. Does PAT discover the modem services?

Currently RadioMail is the only app that supports the discovery and controls exposed by varanny.

- On the Pi5 side, does Varanny launch Direwolf (native linux) properly? I don’t see a rigctl option in Direwolf, so I’m guessing that should not launch for Direwolf, right?

No. Varanny is VARA’s nanny and she does not like to share. Direwolf has native support for DNS-SD service announcement, which solves the discovery problem. Since Direwolf has command line support and works well as a deamon, and is open source, I don’t see expanding support to that.

- After a connection is made, a modem launched, and the connection terminates, does Varanny terminate the modem and wait for the next incoming connection?

Yes, that is a big part of the functionality that Varanny provides because the VARA / Wine combination under Linux does not allow VARA to rebind its port properly after a connection closes so the modem has to be killed and restarted.

- Every Wednesday, I operate a Winlink Wednesday alternate NCS. My use case for that is to run a P2P (ARDOP in the morning, VARA HF in the evening) server, so the connections are initiated over RF, not locally on my LAN. What do you suggest re Varanny for Wednesdays, or should I simply keep running a Windows environment with Winlink Express + modem on Wednesdays?

The two benefits that Varanny would provide in this scenario is the ability to manage multiple VARA ini configurations to map to different radio / soundcard combo and ensure that rigctld is started with the proper parameter for that configuration. In this scenario, you’d telnet into Varanny and issue START/STOP commands to launch VARA with the proper ini file, since winlink express would not know to do that for you. You can see it in that segment of the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPDTH4L319Q&t=691s

3

Hi Georges,

No. Varanny is VARA’s nanny and she does not like to share.

Got it, thanks. In any case, I have gotten Direwolf running. I re-compiled it with hamlib support and that allowed me to PTT properly.

Yes, that is a big part of the functionality that Varanny provides because the VARA / Wine combination under Linux does not allow VARA to rebind its port properly after a connection closes so the modem has to be killed and restarted.

I got it running on my Pi 5. I was able to launch a VARA HF and a VARA FM session from RadioMail.

The good: I love being able to maintain multiple VARA ini files for different configurations. When I’m at my QTH, I run a 7100. When I’m portable, I run a 7200.

Discovery of the modem was instant and worked flawlessly.

Couple little glitches, though.

1 - When I first connect to either modem, it takes a while to launch the modem in WINE and it seems that Varanny and/or RadioMail times out. I get an error in RadioMail saying the connection to the modem was refused. (See photo below.) But, if I connect AGAIN, I get through. Well, I get an error dialog saying another VARA * is running, but I clock OK and move on, and the connection goes through. Note: Rig control is correctly changing the rig frequency in both cases, FWIW, and it is changing the frequency back when it’s finished. Nice.

2 - The modem process isn’t being terminated upon session completion. And I do not see any orphaned rigctld processes either.

3 - I’m seeing several errors thrown re CAT commands not completing or timing out: 2024/02/22 13:47:40 Warning: awaiting termination of cat control process failed

Configuration: Raspberry Pi 5 with 8 Gb RAM and Pimoroni 1 TB NVMe SSD running Raspberry Pi OS.

I’m using the varanny.linux.json config file with trivial changes - VARA path, modem name, rig number, device name...

It’s fast, but launching any WINE app takes several seconds.

I’ll keep trying. Will do a clean reboot and what not, but that’s what I saw when I tried it out the first time.

Cheers,

Ken van Wyk

(attachments)

IMG_2470.PNG
IMG_2470.PNG591×1280 86.9 KB

4

Just released a new version of varanny. I've added some code to wait for the VARA modem to bind to its port before returning to the client. This should help in preventing RadioMail trying to connect too soon to VARA and fail.

https://github.com/islandmagic/varanny/releases/tag/0.3.2

5

(FWIW, I’ve been compiling from src, but that’s me.)

The update did the trick, thank you! Launch is clean and RadioMail finds the modem just fine now.

Should the VARA modem terminate once the connection is finished? Mine remains running, even after I’ve closed the connection box. Of course, I can simply click my mouse on VARA and it closes, but is that the intended behavior?

Thanks for the quick fix!

I’ll read through your email re Direwolf in detail as well.

Cheers,

Ken

6

Great to hear. Yes, varanny should kill VARA, which is a big part of the functionality it provides. It allows for headless operation, so no clicky-clicky around.

Do you mind heading over to https://github.com/islandmagic/varanny/issues and create an issue there? Please include your varanny.json file as well.

7

Will do, thanks.

I’m curious how many other users are on Pi systems and if I’m the only one seeing issues like this.

Cheers,

Ken