The DXSpider FAQ Ian Maude, G0VGS, (g0vgs@gb7mbc.net) December 2001 Revision: 1.8 A reference for SysOps of the DXSpider DXCluster program. ______________________________________________________________________ Table of Contents 1. Installation 1.1 Where do I get DXSpider? 1.2 How do I use the patches? 1.3 If I use a tarball to overwrite my installation, what happens to my configuration? 1.4 I am running RedHat 5.2 and I am getting strange errors, what is wrong? 2. Administration 2.1 How can I get Spider to restart automatically if it crashes? 2.2 How can I monitor traffic to and from a node or user? 2.3 My neighbouring node cannot use the RCMD command to me, he just keeps getting the "tut tut" message. 2.4 I do not seem to be sending any bulletin mail to my link partners, what is wrong? 2.5 How can I automatically limit the amount of debug logfiles that are stored? 2.6 I updated my Linux distribution and now Spider cannot read the users file or the dupefile, what is the problem? 2.7 Since I last updated I seem to be getting duplicate spots appearing. 2.8 I have deleted a message but it is still there, why? ______________________________________________________________________ Please mail any FAQs to the maintainer at the address above. 11.. IInnssttaallllaattiioonn 11..11.. WWhheerree ddoo II ggeett DDXXSSppiiddeerr?? All things Spider can be found at www.dxcluster.org and the actual program and patches can be found in the download area. 11..22.. HHooww ddoo II uussee tthhee ppaattcchheess?? Patching is done in the standard linux way ... zcat /tmp/patch-1.40 | patch -p0 assuming the patch version you are using is 1.40 and resides in /tmp! Be aware that each patch assumes the previous patch has been applied. That is to say if you are patching from version 1.38 to 1.40 you would first need to apply patch-1.39 and then patch-1.40. 11..33.. IIff II uussee aa ttaarrbbaallll ttoo oovveerrwwrriittee mmyy iinnssttaallllaattiioonn,, wwhhaatt hhaappppeennss ttoo mmyy ccoonnffiigguurraattiioonn?? The tarballs are designed to not overwrite your existing configuration and can be used at any time to update your Spider software. All the key files have the suffix .issue (eg. DXVars.pm.issue) at default. 11..44.. II aamm rruunnnniinngg RReeddHHaatt 55..22 aanndd II aamm ggeettttiinngg ssttrraannggee eerrrroorrss,, wwhhaatt iiss wwrroonngg?? The version of Perl that comes with 5.2 seems to be some kind of pre- release and is broken. You can get a new version of perl from www.dxcluster.org or ftp://updates.redhat.com. Don't forget to patch it with the CPAN modules. 22.. AAddmmiinniissttrraattiioonn 22..11.. HHooww ccaann II ggeett SSppiiddeerr ttoo rreessttaarrtt aauuttoommaattiiccaallllyy iiff iitt ccrraasshheess?? Put this line into /etc/inittab .. DX:3:respawn:/bin/su -c "/usr/bin/perl -w /spider/perl/cluster.pl" sysop > /dev/tty7 Run _t_e_l_i_n_i_t _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. 22..22.. HHooww ccaann II mmoonniittoorr ttrraaffffiicc ttoo aanndd ffrroomm aa nnooddee oorr uusseerr?? There are 2 ways to achieve this. You can use the _t_a_i_l command like this .. tail -f /spider/data/debug/167.dat |grep G0VGS or in later versions of Spider, there is a command called _w_a_t_c_h_d_b_g in which case you simply type .. watchdbg G0VGS 22..33.. MMyy nneeiigghhbboouurriinngg nnooddee ccaannnnoott uussee tthhee RRCCMMDD ccoommmmaanndd ttoo mmee,, hhee jjuusstt kkeeeeppss ggeettttiinngg tthhee ""ttuutt ttuutt"" mmeessssaaggee.. 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 _s_p_o_o_f command like this .. spoof gb7adx set/home gb7adx Assuming that the node_call you are changing is gb7adx. 22..44.. II ddoo nnoott sseeeemm ttoo bbee sseennddiinngg aannyy bbuulllleettiinn mmaaiill ttoo mmyy lliinnkk ppaarrtt-- nneerrss,, wwhhaatt iiss wwrroonngg?? 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 _l_o_a_d_/_f_o_r_w_a_r_d or restart Spider for the changes to take effect. 22..55.. HHooww ccaann II aauuttoommaattiiccaallllyy lliimmiitt tthhee aammoouunntt ooff ddeebbuugg llooggffiilleess tthhaatt aarree ssttoorreedd?? 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 22..66.. II uuppddaatteedd mmyy LLiinnuuxx ddiissttrriibbuuttiioonn aanndd nnooww SSppiiddeerr ccaannnnoott rreeaadd tthhee uusseerrss ffiillee oorr tthhee dduuppeeffiillee,, wwhhaatt iiss tthhee pprroobblleemm?? Almost certainly this is a change in the db format of perl. Follow these few steps to correct the problem. +o stop the cluster (disable any autostart in inittab) +o cd /spider/data +o issue the command perl user_asc +o restart the cluster That should solve the problem. 22..77.. SSiinnccee II llaasstt uuppddaatteedd II sseeeemm ttoo bbee ggeettttiinngg dduupplliiccaattee ssppoottss aappppeeaarriinngg.. What has probably happened is that the dupefile has got corrupted in some way. Simply delete the /spider/data/dupefile and restart the cluster. It may take a little time to become fully functional but should solve your problem. 22..88.. II hhaavvee ddeelleetteedd aa mmeessssaaggee bbuutt iitt iiss ssttiillll tthheerree,, wwhhyy?? This is now the way messages are handled for deletion in Spider. If you look closely you will see a 'D' following the message number. This message is marked for deletion and will be deleted in 2 days if nothing further is done. Optionally you can use the command _d_e_l_e_t_e_/_e_x_p_u_n_g_e to delete it immediately.