Updated ASL Cloud Node to Debian 12

Provisioned a Debian 12 server, installed ASL, and moved node 57945 to it

When I saw that Allan Nathanson WA3WCO had put together an AllStarLink install for a Debian 12 server, I decided to give it a try.

Screenshot of new portal page for node 57945

Step 1: Provision a new server with Debian 12

First, I cranked up a new server on Vultr.com, identical to the one I’ve been running. The existing server has been running Debian 10 from the AllStarLink.org ASL image. For this install, I started by downloading Debian 12 “Bookworm” from Debian.org.

Next came the standard steps for installing Debian on a Vultr server. It turns out I did not need to download Debian because Vultr has “deploy now” instances of several versions of Debian, including Debian 12. I chose the easy path of using the deploy now button.

Screenshot showing the Deploy Debian Now button at Vultr.com

After setting up my root login password, I rebooted the server and logged in. Then I ran apt update and apt upgrade to bring the system up to current software packages.

Step 2: Install AllStarLink

Allan’s installation uses Git, so that has to be installed. It’s easy from the command line with just three short lines of commands:

# install git

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade -y

sudo apt install -y git

Then the magic moment to see if AllStarLink will install:

# download this repository

git clone https://github.com/Allan-N/ASL-Install.git

# build and install AllStarLink

cd ASL-Install

./asl-install.sh

I expected to find a user named “repeater” as was the cast in the Debian 10 ISO from AllStarLink.org. I suppose I could have created that user but I didn’t. Instead, since I was logged in as root, I proceeded to install ASL as root.

I also had some trouble finding the asl-menu helper script for configuring ASL. I reached out to Allan and he responded quickly with advice on modifying the path so that the helper scripts could be easily accessed. You do this by editing the default path specified in the “~/.profile” file. I did it this way:

cd ~

nano .profile

Once in the .profile file, just below the two “fi fi” statements, I entered this path:

PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin"

Once I had saved the file, I found I could get to the asl-menu screen from the command prompt simply by typing asl-menu and hitting Enter.

Step 3: Configure ASL

Once in the asl-menu screens, configuring the node was like any other node. Let me know if you’d like more details on this. I selected duplex =1, entered one of my NNX node numbers, and completed the settings. After finishing this process, I restarted Asterisk (astres.sh) and then I rebooted the server.

My NNX node was not registering with AllStarLink! It turns out that my node password was different in my records than it was at AllStarLink. Once I replaced the password with the correct string, the node registered successfully with AllStarLink.

Step 4: Install AllScan

Gotcha number two was finding that AllScan was not installed on the new server. I confess that this powerful bit of code developed by David Gleason NR9V has become the go-to for me in managing my nodes. Fortunately, David’s installation routine is easy and worked perfectly in getting AllScan installed.

Step 5: Re-configure to become node 57945

To complete the process of replacing the Debian 10 instance of node 57945 with a new Debian 12 instance, I went into the asl-menu scripts and set up the node again with the 57945 configuration values.

Gotcha number three was discovering that AllScan still thought the node was the NNX number. I paused and thought back to a few early configuration struggles I had had, and remembered that the allmon.ini file in the /var/www/html/supermon directory had configuration values that AllScan reads. Once I updated those settings, AllScan worked perfectly.

I shared the new instance with Scott Sipe N7LOL who immediately connected to the new 57945 node and also tried connecting via Echolink. So far, so good.

AllScan and AllStarLink running on Debian 12 server

Step 6: Install a free SSL certificate

Finally, I installed an SSL certificate on the Debian 12 server. The directions by Joshua James at LinuxCapable.com worked perfectly to get a free Let’s Encrypt certificate installed and working perfectly.

I put together a simple HTML page for the new server using a template called Miniport by HTML5 UP! That was uploaded to the /var/www/html/ folder on the server where the new index.html file replaced the stock file in that location. I did have to fiddle with the CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) slightly but that only took a few minutes

I’ve shut off the old 57945 server and redirected the tomhub.us domain to the new domain of kj7t.net. Find the new Debian 12 version of node 57945 at https://kj7t.net. If you try it, let me know if you experience any odd behavior with node 57945.