1 <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">
4 <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="SGML-Tools 1.0.9">
5 <TITLE>The DXSpider Installation and Administration Manual: Installation (Original version by Iain Philipps, G0RDI)</TITLE>
6 <LINK HREF="adminmanual-2.html" REL=next>
8 <LINK HREF="adminmanual.html#toc1" REL=contents>
9 <link rel=stylesheet href="style.css" type="text/css" title="default stylesheet">
12 <A HREF="adminmanual-2.html">Next</A>
14 <A HREF="adminmanual.html#toc1">Contents</A>
16 <H2><A NAME="s1">1. Installation (Original version by Iain Philipps, G0RDI)</A></H2>
18 <H2><A NAME="ss1.1">1.1 Introduction</A>
21 <P>This section describes the installation of DX Spider v1.46 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.
24 I do not intend to try and cover the installation of Linux or the setup
25 of the AX25 utilities. If you need help on this then read Iains original
26 installation guide that comes with the Spider distribution.
28 <P>I am assuming a general knowledge of Linux and its commands. You should
29 know how to use <EM>tar</EM> and how to edit files using your favourite editor.
31 <P>The crucial ingredient for all of this is
32 <A HREF="http://www.perl.org">Perl</A>. Earlier versions of
33 Spider required perl 5.004, however it is now <I>STRONGLY</I> recommended
34 that you use at least version 5.005_03 as this is the version being used
35 in the development of Spider.
37 <P>In addition to the standard Red Hat distribution you will require the
38 following modules from
39 <A HREF="http://www.cpan.org/CPAN.html">http://www.cpan.org/CPAN.html</A> ...
43 <LI> Data-Dumper-2.101.tar.gz</LI>
44 <LI> TimeDate-1.10.tar.gz</LI>
45 <LI> IO-1.20.tar.gz (for perl 5.00403 and lower)</LI>
46 <LI> Net-Telnet-3.02.tar.gz</LI>
47 <LI> Curses-1.05.tar.gz</LI>
48 <LI> Time-HiRes-01.20.tar.gz
53 <P><EM>Do</EM> get the latest versions of these packages and install them
54 but use the above list as the earliest versions usable.
56 <H2><A NAME="ss1.2">1.2 Preparation</A>
59 <P>I will assume that you have already downloaded the latest tarball of
60 the DXSpider software and are ready to install it. I am assuming version
61 1.46 for this section but of course you would use the latest version.
63 <P>Login as root and create a user to run the cluster under. <B><I>UNDER
64 NO CIRCUMSTANCES USE ROOT AS THIS USER!</I></B>. I am going to use
65 the name <EM>sysop</EM>. You can call it anything you wish. Depending
66 on your security requirements you may wish to use an existing user,
67 however this is your own choice.
76 <P>Now set a password for the user ...
82 # Retype new UNIX password:
83 passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully
87 <H2><A NAME="ss1.3">1.3 Installing the software</A>
90 <P>Now to unpack the DX Spider distribution, set symbolic links and group
91 permissions. Copy the tarball to /home/sysop and do the following.
96 # tar xvfz spider-1.46.tar.gz
97 # ln -s ~sysop/spider /spider
98 # groupadd -g 251 spider (or another number)
101 <P>If you do not have the command <EM>groupadd</EM> available to you simply
102 add a line in /etc/group by hand.
106 # vi /etc/group (or your favorite editor)
109 <P>You also need to add some others to the group, including your own callsign
110 (this will be used as an alias) and root. The finished line in /etc/group
111 should look something like this
112 <P><CODE>spider:x:251:sysop,g0vgs,root</CODE>
114 <P>The next step is to set the permissions on the Spider directory tree and files ....
118 # chown -R sysop.spider spider
119 # find . -type d -exec chmod 2775 {} \;
120 # find . -type f -exec chmod 775 {} \;
124 <P>This last step allows various users of the group <EM>spider</EM> to have
125 write access to all the directories. This is not really needed just yet
126 but will be useful when web interfaces start to appear.
128 <P>Finally, you need to fix the permissions on the ax25_call and netrom_call
129 programs. Check where they are with the <EM>locate</EM> command and alter
130 the permissions with the <EM>chmod</EM> command like this ..
134 # chown root ax25_call netrom_call
135 # chmod 4775 ax25_call netrom_call
139 <H2><A NAME="ss1.4">1.4 Setting callsigns etc</A>
142 <P>Now login to your machine as the user you created earlier. In my case that
143 user is called <EM>sysop</EM>. Once logged in, issue the following commands ....
150 $ cp perl/DXVars.pm.issue local/DXVars.pm
152 $ vi DXVars.pm (or your favourite editor)
156 <P>Using the distributed DXVars.pm as a a template, set your cluster callsign,
157 sysop callsign and other user info to suit your own environment. Note that
158 this a perl file which will be parsed and executed as part of the cluster. If
159 you get it wrong then perl will complain when you start the cluster process.
160 It is important only to alter the text of any section. Some of the lines look
161 a little odd. Take this line for example ....
162 <P><CODE>$myemail = "ianmaude\@btinternet.com";</CODE>
164 <P>There appears to be an extra slash in there. However this has to be there
165 for the file to work so leave it in.
167 <P><B>PLEASE USE CAPITAL LETTERS FOR CALLSIGNS</B>
169 <P>DON'T alter any file in /spider/perl, they are overwritten with every
170 release. Any files or commands you place in /spider/local or /spider/local_cmd
171 will automagically be used in preference to the ones in /spider/perl EVEN
172 while the cluster is running!
174 <P>Save the new file and change directory to ../perl ....
182 <P>Now type the following command which creates the basic user file with you as
191 <H2><A NAME="ss1.5">1.5 Starting up for the first time</A>
194 <P>We can now bring spider up for the first time and see if all is well or not!
195 It should look something like this ...
200 DXSpider DX Cluster Version 1.46
201 Copyright (c) 1998 Dirk Koopman G1TLH
203 loading band data ...
204 loading user file system ...
205 starting listener ...
206 reading existing message headers
208 orft we jolly well go ...
212 <P>If all is well then login on another term or console as <EM>sysop</EM> and
213 cd to /spider/src. Now issue the following command ...
221 <P>This should log you into the cluster as the sysop under the alias callsign we
222 set earlier. In this case the callsign is G0VGS. The cluster callsign is set
223 in the DXVars.pm file in /spider/local. In this case we will assume that this
224 was set as GB7MBC. You should therefore see this when you login ....
228 G0VGS de GB7MBC 19-Nov-1999 2150Z >
231 <P>If you do, congratulations! If not, look over the instructions again, you
232 have probably missed something out. You can shut spider down again with the
241 <P>and both the cluster and the client should return to Linux prompts.
243 <H2><A NAME="ss1.6">1.6 The Client program</A>
246 <P>In earlier versions of Spider, all the processes were Perl scripts. This
247 was fine but with a lot of users your computer memory would soon be used up.
248 To combat this a new client was written in "C". This client only works for
249 <EM>incoming</EM> connects at the moment. Before you can use it though it
250 has to be "made". CD to /spider/src and type <EM>make</EM>. You
251 should see the output on your screen and hopefully now have a small C program
252 called <EM>client</EM>. Leave it in this directory.
256 <A HREF="adminmanual-2.html">Next</A>
258 <A HREF="adminmanual.html#toc1">Contents</A>