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16 <H2><A NAME="s1">1. Linux Installation </A></H2>
18 <H2><A NAME="ss1.1">1.1 Introduction</A>
21 <P>This section describes the installation of DX Spider v1.50 on a
22 <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com">RedHat</A> Linux Distribution.
23 Wherever possible I will try to include differences for other distributions.
25 <P>I am assuming a general knowledge of Linux and its commands. You should
26 know how to use <EM>tar</EM> and how to edit files using your favourite editor.
28 <P>The crucial ingredient for all of this is
29 <A HREF="http://www.perl.org">Perl</A>. Earlier versions of
30 Spider required perl 5.004, however it is now <I>STRONGLY</I> recommended
31 that you use at least version 5.005_03 as this is the version being used
32 in the development of Spider.
34 <P>In addition to the standard Red Hat distribution you will require the
35 following modules from
36 <A HREF="http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/">http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/</A> , please note however that with later versions of perl, some of these
37 modules may be included with the distribution. Get the modules anyway and try
38 to install as below. If they complain, they are probably already a part of your
44 <A HREF="http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Data/Data-Dumper-2.10.tar.gz">Data-Dumper-2.10.tar.gz</A></LI>
46 <A HREF="http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Date/TimeDate-1.10.tar.gz">TimeDate-1.10.tar.gz</A></LI>
48 <A HREF="http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/IO/IO-1.20.tar.gz">IO-1.20.tar.gz (for perl 5.00403 and lower)</A></LI>
50 <A HREF="http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Net/Net-Telnet-3.02.tar.gz">Net-Telnet-3.02.tar.gz</A></LI>
52 <A HREF="http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Curses/Curses-1.06.tar.gz">Curses-1.06.tar.gz</A></LI>
54 <A HREF="http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Time/Time-HiRes-01.20.tar.gz">Time-HiRes-01.20.tar.gz</A></LI>
56 <A HREF="http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Digest/Digest-SHA1-2.01.tar.gz">Digest-SHA1-2.01.tar.gz</A></LI>
59 <P>Copy the CPAN modules listed above to a convenient place on your computer. One good
60 place would be /usr/local/packages, and the instructions which follow will assume that
61 that's where you have put them.
63 <P>Log in as 'root', and make sure you're at '/root' before you continue. Here are exactly the commands you must issue next: -
66 # tar xvfz /usr/local/packages/Data-Dumper-2.10.tar.gz
73 # tar xvfz /usr/local/packages/TimeDate-1.10.tar.gz
80 # tar xvfz /usr/local/packages/IO-1.20.tar.gz
84 # make install UNINST=1
87 # tar xvfz /usr/local/packages/Net-Telnet-3.02.tar.gz
94 # tar xvfz /usr/local/packages/Curses-1.06.tar.gz
101 # tar xvfz /usr/local/packages/Time-HiRes-01.20.tar.gz
102 # cd Time-HiRes-01.20
108 # tar xvfz /usr/local/packages/Digest-SHA1-2.01.tar.gz
109 # cd Digest-SHA1-2.01
116 <P>Do not fall into the trap of thinking they're all the same, just because they
117 nearly are! Pay particular attention to the instructions of <EM>IO</EM>, above.
120 <H2><A NAME="ss1.2">1.2 Preparation</A>
123 <P>I will assume that you have already downloaded the latest tarball of
124 the DXSpider software and are ready to install it. I am assuming version
125 1.50 for this section but of course you would use the latest version.
127 <P>Login as root and create a user to run the cluster under. <B><I>UNDER
128 NO CIRCUMSTANCES USE ROOT AS THIS USER!</I></B>. I am going to use
129 the name <EM>sysop</EM>. You can call it anything you wish. Depending
130 on your security requirements you may wish to use an existing user,
131 however this is your own choice.
139 <P>For SuSE distributions, the command would be ..
147 <P>Now set a password for the user ...
153 # Retype new UNIX password:
154 passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully
158 <H2><A NAME="ss1.3">1.3 Installing the software</A>
161 <P>Now to unpack the DX Spider distribution, set symbolic links and group
162 permissions. Copy the tarball to /home/sysop and do the following.
167 # tar xvfz spider-1.50.tar.gz
168 # ln -s ~sysop/spider /spider
169 # groupadd -g 251 spider (or another number)
173 <P>If you do not have the command <EM>groupadd</EM> available to you simply
174 add a line in /etc/group by hand.
178 # vi /etc/group (or your favorite editor)
182 <P>You also need to add some others to the group, including your own callsign
183 (this will be used as an alias) and root. The finished line in /etc/group
184 should look something like this
185 <P><CODE>spider:x:251:sysop,g0vgs,root</CODE>
187 <P>The next step is to set the permissions on the Spider directory tree and files ....
191 # chown -R sysop.spider spider
192 # find . -type d -exec chmod 2775 {} \;
193 # find . -type f -exec chmod 775 {} \;
197 <P>This last step allows various users of the group <EM>spider</EM> to have
198 write access to all the directories. This is not really needed just yet
199 but will be useful when web interfaces start to appear.
201 <P>Finally, you need to fix the permissions on the ax25_call and netrom_call
202 programs. Check where they are with the <EM>locate</EM> command and alter
203 the permissions with the <EM>chmod</EM> command like this ..
207 # chown root ax25_call netrom_call
208 # chmod 4775 ax25_call netrom_call
212 <H2><A NAME="ss1.4">1.4 Setting callsigns etc</A>
215 <P>Now login to your machine as the user you created earlier. In my case that
216 user is called <EM>sysop</EM>. Once logged in, issue the following commands ....
223 $ cp perl/DXVars.pm.issue local/DXVars.pm
225 $ vi DXVars.pm (or your favourite editor)
229 <P>Using the distributed DXVars.pm as a a template, set your cluster callsign,
230 sysop callsign and other user info to suit your own environment.
238 <P>This is the call sign of your cluster. If you use an SSID then include it here
247 <P>This is the sysop user callsign, normally your own.
249 <P><B>PLEASE USE CAPITAL LETTERS FOR CALLSIGNS</B>
251 <P>Note that this a perl file which will be parsed and executed as part of the
252 cluster. If you get it wrong then perl will complain when you start the cluster
253 process. It is important only to alter the text of any section. Some of the
254 lines look a little odd. Take this line for example ....
255 <P><CODE>$myemail = "ianmaude\@btinternet.com";</CODE>
257 <P>There appears to be an extra slash in there. However this has to be there
258 for the file to work so leave it in.
260 <P>DON'T alter any file in /spider/perl, they are overwritten with every
261 release. Any files or commands you place in /spider/local or /spider/local_cmd
262 will automagically be used in preference to the ones in /spider/perl EVEN
263 while the cluster is running!
265 <P>Save the new file and change directory to ../perl ....
273 <P>Now type the following command which creates the basic user file with you as
282 <H2><A NAME="ss1.5">1.5 The client program</A>
285 <P>In earlier versions of Spider, all the processes were Perl scripts. This
286 was fine but with a lot of users your computer memory would soon be used up.
287 To combat this a new client was written in "C". This client only works for
288 <EM>incoming</EM> connects at the moment. Before you can use it though it
289 has to be "made". CD to /spider/src and type <EM>make</EM>. You
290 should see the output on your screen and hopefully now have a small C program
291 called <EM>client</EM>. Leave it in this directory.
294 <H2><A NAME="ss1.6">1.6 Starting up for the first time</A>
297 <P>We can now bring spider up for the first time and see if all is well or not!
298 It should look something like this ...
303 DXSpider DX Cluster Version 1.50
304 Copyright (c) 1998 Dirk Koopman G1TLH
306 loading band data ...
307 loading user file system ...
308 starting listener ...
309 reading existing message headers
311 orft we jolly well go ...
315 <P>If all is well then login on another term or console as <EM>sysop</EM> and
316 cd to /spider/src. Now issue the following command ...
324 <P>This should log you into the cluster as the sysop under the alias callsign we
325 set earlier. In this case the callsign is G0VGS. The cluster callsign is set
326 in the DXVars.pm file in /spider/local. In this case we will assume that this
327 was set as GB7MBC. You should therefore see this when you login ....
331 G0VGS de GB7MBC 19-Nov-1999 2150Z >
335 <P>If you do, congratulations! If not, look over the instructions again, you
336 have probably missed something out. You can shut spider down again with the
345 <P>and both the cluster and the client should return to Linux prompts.
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