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16 <H2><A NAME="s4">4.</A> <A HREF="installation_en.html#toc4">Configuration</A></H2>
18 <H2><A NAME="ss4.1">4.1</A> <A HREF="installation_en.html#toc4.1">Allowing ax25 connects from users</A>
21 <P>This is dealt with in the previous section</P>
23 <H2><A NAME="ss4.2">4.2</A> <A HREF="installation_en.html#toc4.2">Setting up telnet connects (from 1.47 onwards)</A>
26 <P>>From version 1.47 you can choose to allow the perl cluster.pl program to
27 allow connections directly (i.e. not via the <CODE>/spider/src/client</CODE>
28 interface program). If you are using Windows then this is the only method
29 available of allowing incoming telnet connections.</P>
31 <P>to make the change happen...</P>
33 <P>Having done that, you need to copy the file
34 <EM>/spider/perl/Listeners.pm</EM> to <EM>/spider/local</EM> and
35 then edit it. You will need to uncomment the line containing "0.0.0.0"
36 and select the correct port to listen on.</P>
37 <P>It comes out of the box looking something like:-</P>
47 <P>Change it so that it looks like this:-</P>
58 <P>Later versions have more comments in the Listeners.pm file that
59 are designed to help you remove the correct '#' character.</P>
61 <P>As standard, the listener will listen on all interfaces simultaneously.
62 If you require more control than this, you can specify each interface
68 ["gb7baa.dxcluster.net", 7300],
69 ["44.131.16.2", 6300],
75 <P>This will only be successful if the IP addresses on each interface are static.
76 If you are using some kind of dynamic IP addressing then the 'default' method
77 is the only one that will work.</P>
79 <P>Restart the cluster.pl program to enable the listener.</P>
81 <P>One important difference with the internal listener is that no echoing
82 is done by the cluster program. Users will need to set 'local-echo' on in
83 their telnet clients if it isn't set automatically (as per the standards).
84 Needless to say this will probably only apply to Windows users. </P>
86 <H2><A NAME="ss4.3">4.3</A> <A HREF="installation_en.html#toc4.3">Allowing telnet connects from users (before version 1.47 or for special purposes)</A>
90 >From version 1.47 there is a new (more efficient) way of doing this
91 (see previous section) but, if you prefer, the method of doing it described
92 here will continue to work just fine.</P>
94 <P>Allowing telnet connections is quite simple. Firstly you need to add a line
95 in /etc/services to allow connections to a port number, like this ....</P>
99 spdlogin 8000/tcp # spider anonymous login port
104 <P>Then add a line in /etc/inetd.conf like this ....</P>
108 spdlogin stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd /spider/src/client login telnet
113 <P>Once this is done, you need to restart inetd like this ....</P>
122 <P>Now login as <EM>sysop</EM> and cd spider/src. You can test that spider
123 is accepting telnet logins by issuing the following command ....</P>
127 ./client login telnet
132 <P>You should get a login prompt and on issuing a callsign, you will be given
133 access to the cluster. Note, you will not get a password login. There seems
134 no good reason for a password prompt to be given so it is not asked for.</P>
136 <P>Assuming all is well, then try a telnet from your linux console ....</P>
140 telnet localhost 8000
145 <P>You should now get the login prompt and be able to login as before.</P>
148 <H2><A NAME="ss4.4">4.4</A> <A HREF="installation_en.html#toc4.4">Setting up for AGW Engine (1.47 onwards)</A>
151 <P>AGW Engine is a Windows based ax25 stack. You can connect to an AGW engine
152 from Linux as well as Windows based machines.</P>
154 <P>In order to enable access to an AGW Engine you need to copy
155 <EM>/spider/perl/AGWConnect.pm</EM> to <EM>/spider/local</EM> and edit it.
156 Specifically you must:-</P>
159 <LI> set <CODE>$enable</CODE> to 1.</LI>
160 <LI> set <CODE>$login</CODE> and <CODE>$passwd</CODE> to the values set up in your AGW installation.
161 If you haven't set any there, then you should not touch these values.</LI>
162 <LI> You can connect to a remote AGW engine (ie on some other machine) by changing <CODE>$addr</CODE>
163 and <CODE>$port</CODE> appropriately.</LI>
164 <LI> Restart the cluster.pl program</LI>
169 <H2><A NAME="ss4.5">4.5</A> <A HREF="installation_en.html#toc4.5">Setting up node connects</A>
172 <P>In order to allow cluster node connections, spider needs to know that the
173 connecting callsign is a cluster node. This is the case whether the connect
174 is incoming or outgoing. In spider this is a simple task and can be done in
177 <P>Later versions of Spider can distinguish different software and treat them
178 differently. For example, the WCY beacon cannot be handles by AK1A type
179 nodes as AK1A does not know what to do with PC73. There are 4 different
180 types of node at present and although they may not have any major
181 differences at the moment, it allows for compatibility. The 4 types are ...</P>
193 <P>For now, we will assume that the cluster we are going to connect to is an
196 <P>Start up the cluster as you did before and login as the sysop with client.
197 The cluster node I am wanting to make a connection to is GB7BAA but you would
198 obviously use whatever callsign you required. At the prompt type ...</P>
207 <P>The case does not matter as long as you have a version of DXSpider later than
208 1.33. Earlier versions required the callsign to be in upper case.</P>
210 <P>That is now set, it is as simple as that. To prove it, login on yet another
211 console as sysop, cd to spider/src and issue the command ...</P>
215 ./client gb7baa (using the callsign you set as a node)
220 <P>You should get an initialisation string from DXSpider like this ...</P>
229 <P>If the callsign you just set up as a cluster node is for an incoming connect,
230 this is all that needs to be done. If the connection is to be outgoing then
231 a connection script needs to be written.</P>
233 <P>Sometimes you make a mistake... Honest, it does happen. If you want to make a node
234 back to being a normal user, regardless
235 of what type it is, do:</P>
244 <H2><A NAME="ss4.6">4.6</A> <A HREF="installation_en.html#toc4.6">Connection scripts</A>
247 <P>Because DXSpider operates under Linux, connections can be made using just about
248 any protocol; AX25, NETRom, tcp/ip, ROSE etc are all possible examples.
249 Connect scripts live in the /spider/connect directory and are simple ascii files.
250 Writing a script for connections is therefore relatively simple. </P>
252 <P>The connect scripts consist of lines which start with the following keywords
257 <DT><B>#</B><DD><P>All lines starting with a <CODE>#</CODE> are ignored, as are completely
260 <DT><B>timeout</B><DD><P><CODE>timeout</CODE> followed by a number is the number of seconds to wait for a
261 command to complete. If there is no timeout specified in the script
262 then the default is 60 seconds.</P>
264 <DT><B>abort</B><DD><P><CODE>abort</CODE> is a regular expression containing one or more strings to look
265 for to abort a connection. This is a perl regular expression and is
266 executed ignoring case.</P>
268 <DT><B>connect</B><DD><P><CODE>connect</CODE> followed by ax25, agw (for Windows users) or telnet and some type dependent
269 information. In the case of a telnet connection, there can be up to
271 The first is the ip address or hostname of the computer you wish to
272 connect to and the second is the port number you want to use (this
273 can be left out if it is a normal telnet session).
274 In the case of an ax25 session then this would normally be a call to
275 ax25_call or netrom_call as in the example above. It is your
276 responsibility to get your node and other ax25 parameters to work
277 before going down this route!</P>
279 <DT><B>'</B><DD><P><CODE>'</CODE> is the delimiting character for a word or phrase of an expect/send
280 line in a chat type script. The words/phrases normally come in pairs,
281 either can be empty. Each line reads input from the connection until
282 it sees the string (or perl regular expression) contained in the
283 left hand string. If the left hand string is empty then it doesn't
284 read or wait for anything. The comparison is done ignoring case.
285 When the left hand string has found what it is looking for (if it is)
286 then the right hand string is sent to the connection.
287 This process is repeated for every line of chat script. </P>
289 <DT><B>client</B><DD><P><CODE>client</CODE> starts the connection, put the arguments you would want here
290 if you were starting the client program manually. You only need this
291 if the script has a different name to the callsign you are trying to
292 connect to (i.e. you have a script called other which actually
293 connects to GB7DJK-1 [instead of a script called gb7djk-1]).</P>
297 <P>There are many possible ways to configure the script but here are three examples,
298 one for a NETRom/AX25 connect, one for AGW engines and one for tcp/ip. </P>
303 abort (Busy|Sorry|Fail)
304 # don't forget to chmod 4775 netrom_call!
305 connect ax25 /usr/sbin/netrom_call bbs gb7djk g1tlh
309 # you can leave this out if you call the script 'gb7dxm'
320 abort (Busy|Sorry|Fail)
321 # this does exactly the same as the previous example
322 # the '1' is the AGW port number to connect thru for g1tlh
327 # you can leave this out if you call the script 'gb7dxm'
338 connect telnet dirkl.tobit.co.uk
341 # tell GB7DJK-1 that it is connected to GB7DJK
342 # you can leave this out if you call this script 'gb7djk'
348 <P>Both these examples assume that everything is set up properly at the other end.
349 You will find other examples in the /spider/examples directory.</P>
351 <H2><A NAME="ss4.7">4.7</A> <A HREF="installation_en.html#toc4.7">Starting the connection</A>
354 <P>You start the connection, from within a sysop enabled cluster login, by typing
355 in the word <EM>connect</EM> followed by a script name like this ....</P>
359 G0VGS de GB7MBC 13-Dec-1998 2041Z >connect gb7djk-1
360 connection to GB7DJK-1 started
361 G0VGS de GB7MBC 13-Dec-1998 2043Z >
366 <P>This will start a connection using the script called <EM>gb7djk-1</EM>. You can
367 follow the connection by watching the term or console from where you started
368 <EM>cluster.pl</EM>. From version 1.47 onwards, you will need to <CODE>set/debug connect</CODE> first.
369 You should see something like this ...</P>
373 <- D G1TLH connect gb7djk-1
374 -> D G1TLH connection to GB7DJK-1 started
375 -> D G1TLH G1TLH de GB7DJK 13-Dec-1998 2046Z >
377 CONNECT sort: telnet command: dirkl.tobit.co.uk
378 CHAT "login" -> "gb7djk"
380 Red Hat Linux release 5.1 (Manhattan)
381 Kernel 2.0.35 on an i586
385 CHAT "word" -> "gb7djk"
387 received "Password: "
389 Connected to GB7DJK-1, starting normal protocol
390 <- O GB7DJK-1 telnet
392 GB7DJK-1 channel func state 0 -> init
394 <- D GB7DJK-1 Last login: Sun Dec 13 17:59:56 from dirk1
395 <- D GB7DJK-1 PC38^GB7DJK-1^~
396 <- D GB7DJK-1 PC18^ 1 nodes, 0 local / 1 total users Max users 0 Uptime
403 <P>With later versions of Spider there is a set/login command for users. This
404 tells them when a user or node logs in or out. If you do not add a line to
405 your scripts after the final line (or before the client line which should always
406 be last if needed) then the login/logout information will be sent to users
407 <I>before</I> the login actually completes. This means if a node is
408 unreachable, it will continue sending logins and logouts to users even though it
409 is not actually connecting. To avoid this use the following line ...</P>
418 <P>In a script, this might look like ...</P>
423 abort (Busy|Sorry|Fail)
424 connect telnet mary 3000
426 '>' 'telnet 44.131.93.96 7305'
432 <H2><A NAME="ss4.8">4.8</A> <A HREF="installation_en.html#toc4.8">Telnet echo</A>
435 <P>Cluster links in particular suffer greatly from the presence of telnet echo.
436 This is caused by the telnet negotiation itself and can create at worst severe
437 loops. At best it creates unnecessary bandwidth and large logfiles! There are
438 things that can be done to limit this problem but will not always work dependent
439 on the route taken to connect.</P>
441 <P>Telnet echo itself should only be a problem if the connection is being made to
442 the telnet port (23). This port uses special rules that include echo negotiation.
443 If the connection is to a different port, such as 7300, this negotiation does
444 not happen and therefore no echo should be present.</P>
446 <P>Sometimes it is not possible to make a direct connection to another node and this
447 can cause problems. There is a way of trying to suppress the telnet echo but
448 this will not always work, unfortunately it is difficult to be more specific.
449 Here is an example of what I mean ...</P>
454 abort (Busy|Sorry|Fail)
455 connect telnet mary.lancs.ac.uk
458 '\$' 'stty -echo raw'
459 '\$' 'telnet 44.131.93.96'
465 <P>So, the first connection is made by Spider. This is fine as Spider uses the
466 Net_Telnet script from within perl. This actually uses TCP rather than TELNET
467 so no negotiation will be done on the first connection. Once connected to
468 mary.lancs.ac.uk, the command is sent to suppress echo. Now a telnet is made
469 to a cluster node that is accepting connections on port 23. The problem with
470 this link is that the negotiation is made by the remote machine, therefore you
471 have no control over it. The chances are that this link will create echo and
472 there will be no way you can stop it.</P>
475 <H2><A NAME="ss4.9">4.9</A> <A HREF="installation_en.html#toc4.9">Autostarting the cluster</A>
478 <P>Ok, you should now have DXSpider running nicely and allowing connects by cluster
479 nodes or users. However, it has to be shutdown and restarted manually. It
480 would be much easier to have it start automatically. </P>
482 <P>This is not only a way to start the cluster automatically, it also works as a
483 watchdog, checking the sanity of DXSpider and respawning it should it crash for
484 any reason. Before doing the following, shutdown the cluster as you did earlier.</P>
486 <P>Login as root and bring up the /etc/inittab file in your favourite editor. Add
487 the following lines to the file near the end ...</P>
491 ##Start DXSpider on bootup and respawn it should it crash
492 DX:3:respawn:/bin/su -c "/usr/bin/perl -w /spider/perl/cluster.pl" sysop >/dev/tty7
497 <P>This line works fine for RedHat distributions. It is also fine for SuSE up to
498 7.0. From SuSE 7.1 you need to add runlevels 2 and 5 like this ...</P>
502 DX:235:respawn:/bin/su -c "/usr/bin/perl -w /spider/perl/cluster.pl" sysop >/dev/tty7
507 <P>The line required for Slackware distributions is slightly different. My thanks to
508 Aurelio, PA3EZL for this information.</P>
512 DX:23:respawn:/bin/su - sysop -c "/usr/bin/perl -w /spider/perl/cluster.pl" >/dev/tty7
517 <P>This will automatically start DXSpider on tty7 (ALT-F7) on bootup and restart
518 it should it crash for any reason.</P>
520 <P>NB: It should be noted that /dev/tty7 is only an example. Some SuSE systems will
521 only accept upto tty6. It really does not matter which tty you run it on.</P>
523 <P>As root type the command <EM>telinit q</EM>. DXSpider should start up
524 immediately. You will see the output on tty7 and if you login as <EM>sysop</EM>
525 you should find everything running nicely.</P>
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