chirpstack-tutorial/doc/2-packet-forwarder.md

Packet Forwarder

SSH to the Raspberry Pi.

Clone the packet forwarder repository: git clone https://github.com/Lora-net/sx1302_hal.git.

Go into the repo and run make.

Make pf user + give permissions

• sudo useradd -m -s /usr/sbin/nologin pf
  • -m: create home
  • -s /usr/sbin/nologin: don't allow logging in; the user's only purpose is to own the packet forwarder process
  • pf: the username
• sudo usermod -aG gpio pf (the spi group is not sufficient, and it is also not needed when part of the gpio group)

From the packet forwarder repo, copy files to pf user's home and set permissions:

sudo cp packet_forwarder/{global_conf.json.sx1250.US915,lora_pkt_fwd} /home/pf
sudo cp tools/reset_lgw.sh /home/pf
sudo chown pf:pf /home/pf/{global_conf.json.sx1250.US915,lora_pkt_fwd,reset_lgw.sh}
sudo chmod +x /home/pf/{lora_pkt_fwd,reset_lgw.sh}

Modify the packet forward config at /home/pf/global_conf.json.sx1250.US915. Change gateway_ID to something nice (????). 8 bytes (16 uppercase hex characters)

Create SystemD unit file at /etc/systemd/system/packet-forwarder.service:

[Unit]
Description=SX1302 Packet Forwarder
After=network.target
StartLimitIntervalSec=0

[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=always
RestartSec=1
User=pf
WorkingDirectory=/home/pf
ExecStart=/home/pf/lora_pkt_fwd -c global_conf.json.sx1250.US915

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Start and enable sudo systemctl enable --now packet-forwarder.service.

Check that it is running with sudo systemctl status packet-forwarder.service.