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 Phillips, G0RDI)</TITLE>
6 <LINK HREF="adminmanual-2.html" REL=next>
8 <LINK HREF="adminmanual.html#toc1" REL=contents>
11 <A HREF="adminmanual-2.html">Next</A>
13 <A HREF="adminmanual.html#toc1">Contents</A>
15 <H2><A NAME="s1">1. Installation (Original version by Iain Phillips, G0RDI)</A></H2>
17 <P>Last modified: 10 December 2000 by Ian Maude, G0VGS
19 <H2><A NAME="ss1.1">1.1 Introduction</A>
22 <P>This section describes the installation of DX Spider v1.35 on a
23 <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com">RedHat</A>
24 Linux Distribution. I do not intend to try and cover the installation of Linux or the setup of the AX25 utilities.
25 If you need help on this then read Iains original HOWTO on the
26 <A HREF="http://www.dxcluster.org">DXSpider</A>
29 <P>I am assuming a general knowledge of Linux and its commands. You should know how to use <EM>tar</EM> and how to edit
30 files using your favourite editor.
32 <P>The crucial ingredient for all of this is
33 <A HREF="http://www.perl.org">Perl 5.004</A>.Now I know Perl 5.005
34 is out and this will almost certainly work with it, but
35 <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com">RedHat 5.1</A> comes
36 with 5.004. <EM>Be Warned</EM>, earlier versions of
37 <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com">RedHat</A> <B>do not</B>
38 come with 5.004 as standard, you need to
39 <A HREF="ftp://upgrade.redhat.com">upgrade</A><P>
40 <P>In addition to the standard Red Hat distribution you will require the following
41 <A HREF="http://www.cpan.org/CPAN.html">CPAN</A> modules: -
45 <LI> MD5-1.7.tar.gz</LI>
46 <LI> Data-Dumper-2.10.tar.gz</LI>
47 <LI> FreezeThaw-0.3.tar.gz</LI>
48 <LI> MLDBM-2.00.tar.gz</LI>
49 <LI> TimeDate-1.08.tar.gz</LI>
50 <LI> IO-1.20.tar.gz</LI>
51 <LI> Net-Telnet-3.02.tar.gz</LI>
52 <LI> Curses-1.05.tar.gz</LI>
53 <LI> Time-HiRes-01.20.tar.gz
58 <P><EM>Do</EM> get the latest versions of these packages and install them but use the above list as the earliest
61 <H2><A NAME="ss1.2">1.2 Preparation</A>
64 <P>I will assume that you have already downloaded the latest tarball of the DXSpider software and are ready to
65 install it. I am assuming version 1.35 for this section but of course you would use the latest version.
67 <P>Login as root and create a user to run the cluster under. <B><I>UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES USE ROOT AS THIS USER!</I></B>.
68 I am going to use the name <EM>sysop</EM>. You can call it anything you wish. Depending on your security
69 requirements you may wish to use an existing user, however this is your own choice.
78 <P>Now set a password for the user ...
84 # Retype new UNIX password:
85 passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully
89 <H2><A NAME="ss1.3">1.3 Installing the software</A>
92 <P>Now to unpack the DX Spider distribution, set symbolic links and group permissions. Copy the tarball to /home/sysop
98 # tar xvfz spider-1.35.tar.gz
99 # ln -s ~sysop/spider /spider
100 # groupadd -g 251 spider (or another number)
103 <P>If you do not have the command <EM>groupadd</EM> available to you simply add a line in /etc/group by hand.
107 # vi /etc/group (or your favorite editor)
110 <P>You also need to add some others to the group, including your own callsign (this will be used as an alias) and root.
111 The finished line in /etc/group 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 write access to all the directories. This
125 is not really needed just yet but will be useful when web interfaces start to appear.
127 <P>Finally, you need to fix the permissions on the ax25_call and netrom_call programs. Check where they are with the
128 <EM>locate</EM> command and alter the permissions with the <EM>chmod</EM> command like this ..
132 # chown root ax25_call netrom_call
133 # chmod 4775 ax25_call netrom_call
137 <H2><A NAME="ss1.4">1.4 Setting callsigns etc</A>
140 <P>Now login to your machine as the user you created earlier. In my case that user is called <EM>sysop</EM>. Once
141 logged in, issue the following commands ....
148 $ cp perl/DXVars.pm.issue local/DXVars.pm
150 $ vi DXVars.pm (or your favourite editor)
154 <P>Using the distributed DXVars.pm as a a template, set your cluster callsign, sysop callsign and other user info to
155 suit your own environment. Note that this a perl file which will be parsed and executed as part of the cluster. If
156 you get it wrong then perl will complain when you start the cluster process. It is important only to alter the text
157 of any section. Some of the lines look a little odd. Take this line for example ....
158 <P><CODE>$myemail = "ianmaude\@btinternet.com";</CODE>
160 <P>There appears to be an extra slash in there. However this has to be there for the file to work so leave it in.
162 <P><B>PLEASE USE CAPITAL LETTERS FOR CALLSIGNS</B>
164 <P>DON'T alter the DXVars.pm (or any other file) in /spider/perl, they are overwritten with every release. Any files or
165 commands you place in /spider/local or /spider/local_cmd will automagically be used in preference to the ones in
166 /spider/perl EVEN while the cluster is running!
168 <P>Save the new file and change directory to ../perl ....
176 <P>Now type the following command which creates the basic user file with you as the sysop.
184 <H2><A NAME="ss1.5">1.5 Starting up for the first time</A>
187 <P>We can now bring spider up for the first time and see if all is well or not! It should look something like this ...
192 DXSpider DX Cluster Version 1.35
193 Copyright (c) 1998 Dirk Koopman G1TLH
195 loading band data ...
196 loading user file system ...
197 starting listener ...
198 reading existing message headers
200 orft we jolly well go ...
204 <P>If all is well then login on another term or console as <EM>sysop</EM> and cd to /spider/perl. Now issue the
205 following command ...
213 <P>This should log you into the cluster as the sysop under the alias callsign we set earlier. In this case the callsign
214 is G0VGS. The cluster callsign is set in the DXVars.pm file in /spider/local. In this case we will assume that this
215 was set as GB7MBC. You should therefore see this when you login ....
219 G0VGS de GB7MBC 19-Nov-1999 2150Z >
222 <P>If you do, congratulations! If not, look over the instructions again, you have probably missed something out. You
223 can shut spider down again with the command ....
231 <P>and both the cluster and the client should return to Linux prompts.
234 <A HREF="adminmanual-2.html">Next</A>
236 <A HREF="adminmanual.html#toc1">Contents</A>