Implementing Automatic Node Update on an Allstar Node
Manually keeping the a node list up to date is a chore which can and should be avoided. App_rpt now supports a second list of nodes which can be updated regularly in an automated way.
There is a script file available which periodically grabs the latest list of nodes from one of several sites located around the globe. The script file can be run in the background at the completion of the boot process.
The script file rc.updatenodelist can be downloaded from here. It should be placed in a directory your distribution uses for script files. (On our systems, we place the rc.updatenodelist file in /etc/init.d, and the command to execute the script in rc.local).
The script file should be executed in the background in a system startup script such as rc.local using a command similar to:
/etc/init.d/rc.updatenodelist&
The & at the end of the command tells the system to execute the command in the background as a standalone process and return immediately.
The script will download the latest node list every 10 minutes, and place it in /var/lib/asterisk. When a user requests a connection, or a connection request is received over the Internet, app_rpt will check for the existence of rpt_extnodes in /var/lib/asterisk, and will search this file before the other nodes defined in rpt.conf.
You must have a valid node number and a working Fully Qualified Domain Name registered at allstarlink.org in order to use this feature. The Allstar Link node assignment authority will reject any requests for node lists from Fully Qualified Domain Names it does not have on file.