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

[David McGough]

John,

Your strategy should work fine. Just power the RPi down and remove the SD
card to update it. You can "man-handle" the HamVoIP (or ANY Linux) distro
easily, if you can directly access the root filesystem. You're directly
accessing the root filesystem when reading the SD card.

Also, I'll mention that you can easily reset the root (or other)  
passwords by simply replacing the /etc/shadow file with a version that has
known passwords. The same goes for the wpa-supplicant file, etc.


73, David KB4FXC


On Thu, 7 Nov 2019, "John Cannon via ARM-allstar" wrote:

> 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
> 
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