Connecting to other Clusters

Last modified: Mon Dec 14 00:29:00 GMT 1998

At the moment, anybody can connect inwards at any time from outside, either by ax25 or by telnet (assuming you have followed the instructions in installation instructions. However, in order to connect outwards, you will need to create connect scripts.

Connect scripts live in the /spider/connect directory and are simple ascii scripts that are written using a normal editor. There are a couple of examples in the issue directory.

Here are a couple of basic types, first a telnet connection:-

    timeout 15
    # this is a comment
    connect telnet dirkl.tobit.co.uk
    'login' 'gb7djk'
    'word' 'gb7djk'
    client /usr/bin/perl /spider/perl/client.pl gb7djk-1 telnet
	

and an ax25 example:-

    timeout 60
    abort (Busy|Sorry|Fail)
    # don't forget to chmod 4775 netrom_call!
    connect ax25 /usr/sbin/netrom_call bbs gb7djk g1tlh
    'Connect' ''
    'Connect' 'c np7'
    'Connect' 'c gb7dxm'
    'Connect' ''
    client /usr/bin/perl /spider/perl/client.pl gb7dxm ax25
	

A connection is started manually by typing in connect on a sysop enabled client.pl session. For example:-

    G1TLH de GB7DJK 13-Dec-1998 2041Z > connect gb7djk-1
    connection to GB7DJK-1 started
    G1TLH de GB7DJK 13-Dec-1998 2043Z > 
    

You can watch the progress of the connection (if you have the standard debugging enabled) on the cluster.pl screen and you should see something like this:-

    <- D G1TLH connect gb7djk-1
    -> D G1TLH connection to GB7DJK-1 started
    -> D G1TLH G1TLH de GB7DJK 13-Dec-1998 2046Z >
    timeout set to 15
    CONNECT sort: telnet command: dirkl.tobit.co.uk
    CHAT "login" -> "gb7djk"
    received "
    Red Hat Linux release 5.1 (Manhattan)
    Kernel 2.0.35 on an i586
    "
    received "login: "
    sent "gb7djk"
    CHAT "word" -> "gb7djk"
    received "gb7djk
 
    "
    received "Password: "
    sent "gb7djk"
    Connected to GB7DJK-1, starting normal protocol
    <- O GB7DJK-1 telnet
    -> B GB7DJK-1 0
    GB7DJK-1 channel func  state 0 -> init
    <- D GB7DJK-1 
    <- D GB7DJK-1 Last login: Sun Dec 13 17:59:56 from dirk1
    <- D GB7DJK-1 PC38^GB7DJK-1^~
    <- D GB7DJK-1 PC18^ 1 nodes, 0 local / 1 total users  Max users 0  Uptime 0 00:00^5447^~
    etc
    

The connect scripts consist of lines which start with the following keywords or symbols:-

• # All lines starting with a # are ignored, as are wholly blank lines.

• timeout followed by a number is the number of seconds to wait for a command to complete. If there is no timeout specified in the script then the default is 60 seconds.

• abort is a regular expression containing one or more strings to look for to abort a connection. This is a perl regular expression and is executed ignoring case.

• connect followed by ax25 or telnet and some type dependent information. In the case of a telnet connection, there can be up to two parameters, the first is the ip address or hostname of the computer you wish to connect to and the second is the port number you want to use (this can be left out if it is a normal telnet session).

  In the case of an ax25 session then this would normally be a call to ax25_call or netrom_call as in the example above. It is your responsibility to get your node and other ax25 parameters to work before going down this route!

• ' or " are the delimiting characters for a chat type script. They normally come in pairs, either can be empty. Each line reads input from the connection until it sees the string (or perl regular expression) contained in the left hand string. If the left hand string is empty then it doesn't read or wait for anything. The comparison is done ignoring case.

  When the left hand string has found what it is looking (if it is) then the right hand string is sent to the connection.

  This process is repeated for every line of chat script.

• client starts the client program and should be exactly as you would want it with an incoming connection.

$Id$