Yate -s stops at initialization

[goodboytower]

Hello! I just got a BladeRF for a class project for use with my Raspberry Pi. I want to ethically broadcast as a BTS to make a call from my phone to my partner's phone (and nobody else, nor use it as an IMSI catcher). I'm in America and going to use Band 8 900MHZ so I don't trip over actual American phone frequencies. But I keep getting stuck on one problem that I can't get past while following the EvilSocket guide.

When I run yate -s as root, it hangs up on the "Yate engine is initialized and starting up on raspberrypi". It doesn't freeze or crash, it just stops until I Ctrl+C out of it. I'm assuming RTNETLINK has something to do with it since that's what comes next on all the documentation I've read. Any ideas on what's going wrong with it?

My BladeRF-cli version =1.6.1, libbladeRF=2.0.2, FW=1.6.1, and FPGA=0.1.2 and I'm using the evilbts.

Can anybody give some suggestions on even the simplest/dumbest things I might have missed? What files have to be in a specific place? Simple diagnostic things I should make sure of? The only thing I've deviated from in the EvilSocket guide is running everything as root instead of making a group with permissions for running.

[Ioana Stanciu]

What command do you use for starting up YATE?
If you used "yate -s", that is normal output as you didn't pass any arguments about logging/debugging level. You just specified that you want to start YATE in supervisor mode.

Check out 'yate --help' for other arguments that can be passed at startup.  You can also check https://wiki.yatebts.com/index.php/Running#Run_YateBTS
If you still have issues, please post configuration files and a log.

[goodboytower]

When you say config files and a log, do you mean the ybts.conf and a verbose output of running yate?

[Ioana Stanciu]

Yes. Or check out the '-l' option of yate.

[goodboytower]

Here is my ybts.conf, in /usr/local/etc/yate.

[goodboytower]

And here is the output after running yate -s as root in /usr/local/etc/yate after running bladeRF-cli -i in another PuTTY session.

[goodboytower]

All I'd like to be able to do is make a call from one handset to another (both owned by me with sysmo USIMs configured by nibweb). Any tips or pointers? Even the simplest things I could be missing, like having yate point to the wrong location of files or something silly like that.

After running yate --version I'm seeing Yate 5.5.1 devel1 r. Here is my BladeRF info:   
bladeRF-cli version:        1.6.1-git-c9a2230c
libbladeRF version:         2.0.2-git-c9a2230c
Firmware version:           1.6.1-git-053fb13-buildomatic
FPGA version:               0.1.2

[Ioana Stanciu]

It looks to me that you just started YATE and you didn't install and/or configured the YateBTS plugins.
Keep in mind that YateBTS are plugins that come on top of YATE.

Please check out: https://wiki.yatebts.com/index.php/Main_Page Prerequisites, Installing and running pages especially.
If you did all this, please post the out of './configure' for YATE and YateBTS and other steps you have done (installed where, configuration files are found where). As I see no modules related to YateBTS that are being loaded when starting Yate, I suspect that you either don't have the modules installed/compiled or not configured to be loaded.

Also, there is an option to attach files to forum posts. Please don't copy-paste large pieces of text such as logs into posts.

[goodboytower]

Sorry about the large chunk of text, I've edited my posts to have a txt file instead.

What is the correct placement of all the conf files? I've seen different sources saying different locations, either usr/local or etc/share and I'm not well versed enough on Linux to know the correct placement. I was suspicious that the conf files weren't being pulled from the right location. I followed the EvilSocket guide and installed and configured both Yate and YateBTS in usr/local by running ./configure --prefix=/usr/local. What conf files exist that need to point to the correct places?

[Ioana Stanciu]

1. You can check the path that YATE uses for configuration through telnet. In the telnet window of YATE issue command 'status engine' and look at the configpath value. That is the path from which YATE will load config files. Access to telnet window of YATE is usually 'telnet 127.0.0.1 5038' on the machine you run it. See https://docs.yate.ro/wiki/Debug_Output or other articles from the docs that reference it.
2. Also, in telnet check if ybts and ybladerf modules are loaded. You can check that through issuing 'status' command and checking what modules are listed. In those are not listed it could mean that:
    * for ybladerf: it wasn't compiled because no libusb-devel support was detected. Check the output of configure for YATE as that tells if it was detected or not.
    * for ybts: not compiled/installed (check the source directories where you compiled them to see if they are present, check the install path for presence: /usr/local/lib/yate/radio/ or /usr/local/lib64/yate/radio)
3. Try using debug options when starting YATE (see yate --help) for a more detailed look at what is happening (-vvvvv for verbose output, -Do for colorized output).
4. Have you tried following the stepts from here: https://wiki.yatebts.com/index.php/Main_Page Prerequisites, Installing and running?

Post your finding here together with output of configure for yate and yateBTS.

[goodboytower]

I attached screenshots of each directory the engine points to, does everything look alright?

Code: [Select]

%%+status:engine
name=engine,type=system,version=5.5.1,revision=,nodename=raspberrypi;plugins=67,inuse=1,handlers=490,hooks=3,messages=0,supervised=true,runattempt=1,lastsignal=0,threads=27,workers=1,mutexes=232,semaphores=0,acceptcalls=accept,congestion=0;sharedpath=/usr/local/share/yate,configpath=/usr/local/etc/yate,usercfgpath=/root/.yate,modulepath=/usr/local/lib/yate,workpath=/home/pi
%%-status

Notice that I don't have anything located at /root/.yate, but I'm not sure how to remedy this.

I ran "which -a yate-config" and got version 5.5.1 located in /usr/local/bin, is it a problem that I have it installed from sources instead of packages? I'm not seeing anything that refers to the ybladeRF module at all in the ./configure output or the modules folder, is there a way to verify or manually load it to the right location? Also, I checked the Prerequisites and I didn't have libgsm1-dev, subversion or doxygen, so those have been installed but I'm still getting the same errors. I also uploaded an attachment of some of the output when running "make install" for yatebts, which seems to be failing.

What all seems to be going wrong? I may just reinstall my Raspberry Pi OS and start over again without any of the EvilSocket guide. He listed a specific firmware and FPGA for the BladeRF, what is the latest "correct" versions of Yate/YateBTS/BladeRF compatibility?

[Ioana Stanciu]

I see that compilation of YateBTS is failing. This is a known issue with newer compilers. Please apply patches listed here https://forum.yate.ro/index.php?topic=1998.msg6365#msg6365 and install YateBTS and then try to run it again.

[goodboytower]

That seems to have corrected it! However, now when I run yate -s, I get repeated BladeRF warnings of timestamp jumps.

Code: [Select]

Release 5.0.1 formal build date Nov 16 2016 rev
Starting MBTS...
Yate Engine is initialized and starting up on raspberrypi
RTNETLINK answers: File exists
MBTS ready
2018-11-21_21:11:54.487401 <bladerf/1:WARN> RX: timestamp jumped by 3774 to 21464984 in buffer 6/8 [0x753009f8]
2018-11-21_21:11:54.493851 <bladerf/1:WARN> RX: timestamp jumped by 2209 to 21480854 in buffer 6/8 [0x753009f8]

// This timestamp jump excessively occurs multiple times a second until I Ctrl+C out of Yate
I'm also seeing in the BladeRF CLI that after writing the "print" command, valid values are given when Yate is not running, but when I print while Yate is running, every value reads as "File or device I/O failure". Can you shed some light on what's going on now?

I appreciate your help so much in getting me this far!

[Ioana Stanciu]

Please attach a full log with debug level 10 ( -vvvvvv at comand line).

[goodboytower]

Here is the log. Am I using the compatible versions of BladeRFx40? My firmware is 1.6.1 but I read that Yate works best with 1.8.0. I'm using the evilbts from EvilSocket which uses Yate 5.5.1, would I be better off using different versions that play nicer with each other?