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4 <title>Connecting to other Clusters</title>
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13 <h2>Connecting to other Clusters</h2>
18 <address><a href="mailto:djk@tobit.co.uk">Dirk Koopman G1TLH</a></address>
20 <!-- Created: Sun Dec 13 20:25:14 GMT 1998 -->
22 Last modified: Thu Dec 17 00:06:40 GMT 1998
24 <p>At the moment, anybody can connect inwards at any time from outside, either by ax25 or by
25 telnet (assuming you have followed the instructions in <a href="install.html">installation</a>
26 instructions. However, in order to connect outwards, you will need to create <em>connect</em> scripts.
28 <p><em>Connect</em> scripts live in the <tt>/spider/connect</tt> directory and are simple ascii scripts
29 that are written using a normal editor. There are a couple of examples in the issue directory.
31 <p>Here are a couple of basic types, first a telnet connection:-
35 connect telnet dirkl.tobit.co.uk
38 client gb7djk-1 telnet
40 <p>and an ax25 example:-
43 abort (Busy|Sorry|Fail)
44 # don't forget to chmod 4775 netrom_call!
45 connect ax25 /usr/sbin/netrom_call bbs gb7djk g1tlh
53 <p>A connection is started manually by typing in <tt>connect <scriptname></tt> on a sysop enabled
54 <tt>client.pl</tt> session. For example:-
56 G1TLH de GB7DJK 13-Dec-1998 2041Z > connect gb7djk-1
57 connection to GB7DJK-1 started
58 G1TLH de GB7DJK 13-Dec-1998 2043Z >
61 <p>You can watch the progress of the connection (if you have the standard debugging enabled) on the
62 <tt>cluster.pl</tt> screen and you should see something like this:-
64 <- D G1TLH connect gb7djk-1
65 -> D G1TLH connection to GB7DJK-1 started
66 -> D G1TLH G1TLH de GB7DJK 13-Dec-1998 2046Z >
68 CONNECT sort: telnet command: dirkl.tobit.co.uk
69 CHAT "login" -> "gb7djk"
71 Red Hat Linux release 5.1 (Manhattan)
72 Kernel 2.0.35 on an i586
76 CHAT "word" -> "gb7djk"
82 Connected to GB7DJK-1, starting normal protocol
83 <- O GB7DJK-1 telnet
85 GB7DJK-1 channel func state 0 -> init
87 <- D GB7DJK-1 Last login: Sun Dec 13 17:59:56 from dirk1
88 <- D GB7DJK-1 PC38^GB7DJK-1^~
89 <- D GB7DJK-1 PC18^ 1 nodes, 0 local / 1 total users Max users 0 Uptime 0 00:00^5447^~
93 <p>The connect scripts consist of lines which start with the following keywords or symbols:-
95 <p><li><b>#</b> All lines starting with a <b>#</b> are ignored, as are wholly blank lines.
96 <p><li><b>timeout</b> followed by a number is the number of seconds to wait for a command
97 to complete. If there is no <b>timeout</b> specified in the script then the default is 60 seconds.
98 <P><li><b>abort</b> is a regular expression containing one or more strings to look for to abort a
99 connection. This is a perl regular expression and is executed ignoring case.
100 <p><li><b>connect</b> followed by <b>ax25</b> or <b>telnet</b> and some type dependent information. In
101 the case of a <b>telnet</b> connection, there can be up to two parameters, the first is the ip
102 address or hostname of the computer you wish to connect to and the second is the port number you
103 want to use (this can be left out if it is a normal telnet session).
104 <p>In the case of an <b>ax25</b> session then this would normally be a call to <tt>ax25_call</tt>
105 or <tt>netrom_call</tt> as in the example above. It is your responsibility to get your node
106 and other ax25 parameters to work before going down this route!
107 <p><li><b>'</b> or <b>"</b> are the delimiting characters for a <tt>chat</tt> type script. They normally
108 come in pairs, either can be empty. Each line reads input from the connection until it sees the string
109 (or perl regular expression) contained in the left hand string. If the left hand string is empty then
110 it doesn't read or wait for anything. The comparison is done ignoring case.
111 <p>When the left hand string has found what it is looking (if it is) then the right hand string is
112 sent to the connection.
113 <p>This process is repeated for every line of <tt>chat</tt> script.
114 <p><li><b>client</b> starts the connection, put the arguments you would want here if you were
115 starting the client program manually. You only need this if the script has a different name to
116 the callsign you are trying to connect to (i.e. you have a script called <tt>other</tt> which actually
117 connects to <tt>GB7DJK-1</tt> [instead of a script called <tt>gb7djk-1</tt>]).
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