I’ve been playing with a test XLX Multiprotocol Gateway Reflector and it is using a reflector number that is already in use because I don’t want to make it live to the public yet and don’t quite understand the process of getting/selecting a number. I also have a hotspot running pi-star that I want to test the reflector with. The thing that wasn’t clear to me was how to have pi-star use the test reflector.

What you do is add the test reflector information to a file on pi-star that overrides the one pi-star normally uses. Once that is done, you select the reflector through the normal process. I could have done this by directly connecting to the pi-star via SSH, but decided to show it by using pi-star only. Here are the steps to add the test reflector to pi-star:

1. Get the reflector number and IP address.
2. Open two views to pi-star by logging onto pi-star via its web interface and duplicating the tab.
3. On the first tab, click on the Configuration link on the menu bar.
4. Click on the Expert link on the menu bar.
5. Click on the SSH Access link to open an SSH shell.
6. Log into the ssh using your pi-star credentials.
7. My pi-star is in read-only mode by default and I assume that others are as well. To edit stuff, it needs to be in read-write mode. Set it to read-write by running the command rpi-rw. The prompt should turn from pi-star@pi-star(ro) to pi-star@pi-star(rw) where ro and rw indicate the different modes.
8. Edit the file /root/DExtra_Hosts.txt with your favorite editor as a sudo user. I used vi, but if you don’t know how to use vi, then nano works.
   1. Run sudo nano /root/DExtra_Hosts.txt
   2. Use the arrow keys to move the cursor below the comment section and add the reflector number and press the tab key followed by the reflector’s IP address and press the tab key and enter the letter L. The L tells the pi-star to use this IP address for the reflector instead of the one that it downloads. It should look something like:
      XRF000 1.2.3.4 L
      Note: The three items reflector number, IP address, and letter L need to be separated by a tab, not spaces. Use the tab key to separate the three items.
   3. Press Ctrl-O to save the file and Ctrl-X to exit nano.
9. On the second pi-star tab, click the Update button. This should look for updates from the Internet and read the newly updated DExtra_Hosts.txt file and put the pi-star back into read-only mode. You can verify that it was set to read-only mode by going to the first tab with SSH open and press the Enter key a couple times. It should show a prompt something like pi-star@pi-star(ro). If it doesn’t go into read-only mode, try rebooting the pi-star by clicking the Power link and the Reboot button.