[arm-allstar] Newbie with an off-the -wall problem

[John Cannon]

A couple of years ago an AllStarLink node was configured to link a VHF 
repeater on a rural farm in northern Canada to serve a large geographic 
area, but small set of users (including me). Unbeknownst to me, it was 
Internet connected via WiFi. The RPi setup and radio kit was provided by 
generous private donor who donated it to a local radio club, and then 
left the country. It has been operating flawlessly even through the 
power outages we regularly encounter. The host farmer is radio savvy, 
but a computer near-illiterate.

Two weeks ago I volunteered to help the farmer install a new WiFi 
device, only to find that this older memory-challenged gentleman did not 
have passwords to the router or to the WiFi connection. When I reset the 
router and solved his personal WiFi issues, I also changed the SSID and 
WiFi password too, inadvertently disconnecting the link to the RPi, and 
knocking out the link.

Since then I have been totally stonewalled in trying to restore the 
link, as now no one claims to know the original settings, nor the 
passwords to the RPi, nor what to do next, and yet all are complaining 
that I broke it.

As it happens, I have my own RPi3B+ to experiment with my own home 
process control. I downloaded and did a WiFi configuration of my own 
Asterisk Allstar setup on a spare SD card. I then found that I had no 
problem accessing and reading the wpa_supplicant_custom-wlan0.conf file, 
when reading the repeater's RPi SD card in a USB SD reader on my own RPi 
. In this way I think I should be able to find the original settings, 
and reset the farmer's WiFi router accordingly.

Questions though: shutting down the power to the RPi (to remove the SD 
card) should be no different than a power outage, so I presume that that 
won't cause any issues. Correct? Also the repeater's RPi system seems to 
reset itself after a regular power outage, so presumably it will do the 
same after a simulated power outage, correct? I couldn't find definite 
answers to these questions, so I thought I'd check before I caused even 
more problems.

Any help is appreciated,

73,  John  VE3JZC