2. Administration

2.1 How can I get Spider to restart automatically if it crashes?

Put this line into /etc/inittab ..

DX:3:respawn:/bin/su -c "/usr/bin/perl -w /spider/perl/cluster.pl" sysop > /dev/tty7

Run telinit q as root. Spider will restart so be aware. However, any time you reboot, cluster.pl will start in tty7 and if it crashes, it should restart ok.

2.2 How can I monitor traffic to and from a node or user?

There are 2 ways to achieve this. You can use the tail command like this ..

tail -f /spider/data/debug/167.dat |grep G0VGS

or in later versions of Spider, there is a command called watchdbg in which case you simply type ..

watchdbg G0VGS

2.3 My neighbouring node cannot use the RCMD command to me, he just keeps getting the "tut tut" message.

Assuming that the permissions are set correctly (perm level 5 required), it could be that the home_node is set incorrectly. You can reset the home_node using the spoof command like this ..

spoof gb7adx set/home gb7adx

Assuming that the node_call you are changing is gb7adx.

2.4 I do not seem to be sending any bulletin mail to my link partners, what is wrong?

There is a file in /spider/msg called forward.pl.issue. Rename this to forward.pl and edit it to meet your requirements. You will need to issue the command load/forward or restart Spider for the changes to take effect.

2.5 How can I automatically limit the amount of debug logfiles that are stored?

Use the tmpwatch command. Create a file in /etc/cron.daily/ containing the line ...

/usr/sbin/tmpwatch -f 240 /spider/data/debug

Remember to make it executable!

This will limit your debug data down to the last 10 days

2.6 I updated my Linux distribution and now Spider cannot read the users file or the dupefile, what is the problem?

Almost certainly this is a change in the db format of perl. Follow these few steps to correct the problem.

• stop the cluster (disable any autostart in inittab)
• cd /spider/data
• issue the command perl user_asc
• restart the cluster

That should solve the problem.