+<!doctype linuxdoc system>
+
+<article>
+
+<!-- Title information -->
+
+<title>The Installation Guide for DXSpider under Microsoft Windows
+<author>Iain Philipps, G0RDI (g0rdi@77hz.com)
+<date>Version 1.1 28 March 2001
+<abstract>
+DX Spider under Microsoft Windows ™
+</abstract>
+
+<!-- Table of contents -->
+<toc>
+
+<!-- Begin the document -->
+
+<sect>Introduction
+
+<P>
+<bf>IMPORTANT:</bf>
+
+What you'll be left with once you've followed these instructions
+is (hopefully) a working DX Spider v1.47 system that is capable
+of accepting or originating "internet" connections, plus inbound
+AX.25 and TCP/IP radio connections. If the absence of outbound
+radio connections is a serious limitation for you, it would be
+better for you to wait a couple more weeks until this support has
+been added.
+
+On the other hand, you may have an enquiring mind, or better yet,
+may be looking for a useful way of connecting your current
+(perhaps) AK1A cluster "to the internet" via some networking
+mechanism (BPQEther, etc) or other. I won't be producing
+instructions for the latter case, because I don't have an AK1A to
+play with. But someone might ...
+
+Whatever, this document is intended to get you started with DX
+Spider in a Microsoft Windows ™ environment. It's not
+intended to teach you anything other than how to perform a
+minimum configuration of a DX Spider installation and have it
+able to connect across "the internet" to other DX Clusters, while
+accepting inbound TELNET and radio connections.
+
+<sect1>The requirements
+
+<P>
+The very first things you're going to need are (in order of
+importance):-
+
+<itemize>
+<item>A cup of good, strong tea
+<item>A supported Windows platform with an internet connection so you can
+download the necessary software bits and bobs directly to it. There are other ways, but this is preferable.
+<item>Another cup of good, strong tea
+<item>If all goes according to plan, about an hour to spare
+<item>Plenty of good, strong tea
+</itemize>
+
+<sect1>The system
+
+<P>
+The platform I used to generate these instructions was a
+"vanilla" Microsoft Windows Me 4.90.3000 system, with a 700MHz
+AMD Athlon processor and 96 Mb memory. I've also personally
+verified that it runs on my laptop (Pentium 266MHz, 32 Mb memory,
+Windows 98 SE v4.10.2222 A) and a computer that I assembled from
+a random pile of junk (AMD K6-2 333MHz, 64 Mb memory, Windows 98
+v4.10.1998). As a result, I have reason to believe that what I'm
+about to describe will perform equally on any 32-bit MS Windows
+environment with 32 Mb of memory.
+
+Because of the changes that have recently been made to the core
+"cluster.pl" module and the introduction of a very lightweight
+"winclient.pl", I have a sneaking suspicion that this will now
+run on any platform that has reasonably complete support for
+Perl. Is there someone out there with both an enquiring mind and
+(say) a Macintosh, for instance?
+
+Please bear in mind, though, that my instructions relate solely
+to how to get this going under a Microsoft Windows environment,
+and I have zero intention of trying to make them say otherwise.
+
+<sect1>Perl
+
+<P>
+Install your chosen Perl environment. Unless you have a very good
+reason for not doing so, I strongly suggest that you use
+ActivePerl v5.6. For my testing & development, I used build 623.
+You can get this from:- <htmlurl
+url="http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePerl/Download.html"
+name="http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePerl/Download.html">
+
+You will need to choose either the MSI or the AS package. My
+recommendation is that you choose the MSI package and deal with
+the consequences if your system isn't equipped with support for
+the latest MS Installer; you'll be better off in the long run.
+The build 623 download is 7,460 KB, so now is a really good time
+to have some tea if you're on a slow dial-up connection.
+
+During installation, please ensure that you do choose the options
+to "Add Perl to the PATH environment variable" and "Create Perl
+file extension association"; it will make your life so much
+easier. Once the installation is finished, be sure to reboot your
+PC. You probably won't be told anywhere else that this needs to
+be done now, but it does. Really.
+
+Once you've rebooted, open a "DOS box" (Start > Run > command
+might do it, if you can't find it elsewhere) and from wherever it
+lands, type PERL -v <ENTER> (it's better if that's a lower-case
+'v', because an upper-case 'V' means something else. You should
+be rewarded with some interesting information about your Perl
+installation. If you're not, you must go back to the beginning
+and discover what went wrong and fix it. It's pointless to
+proceed unless this simple check is passed. Assuming it did work,
+you may now move on.
+
+<sect1>Additional packages
+
+<P>
+Some extensions ("packages") need to be added to the base Perl
+distribution, and we'll do this next. If you're using the Perl I
+recommended, and don't know any better for yourself, then just
+blindly following these instructions will work just fine. If that
+didn't describe you, then you're on your own.
+
+Visit the following URL:
+
+<htmlurl url="http://www.activestate.com/PPMPackages/zips/6xx-builds-only/"
+name="http://www.activestate.com/PPMPackages/zips/6xx-builds-only/">
+
+and download the following files:-
+
+<tscreen><verb>
+Data-Dumper.zip
+Net-Telnet.zip
+TimeDate.zip
+Time-HiRes.zip
+DB_File.zip
+</verb></tscreen>
+
+Make yourself a convenient directory to unpack all of these zip
+files into (I put mine in "D:\ppm>") and do the following (the
+bits you type in are blue ). Note that where these files land
+will be directly related to where you chose to install your
+ActivePerl (mine, as you can probably guess from what follows,
+went into "D:\Perl"):-
+
+<tscreen><verb>
+D:\ppm>ppm install Data-Dumper.ppd
+Installing package 'Data-Dumper.ppd'
+Installing D:\Perl\site\lib\auto\Data\Dumper\Dumper.bs
+Installing D:\Perl\site\lib\auto\Data\Dumper\Dumper.dll
+Installing D:\Perl\site\lib\auto\Data\Dumper\Dumper.exp
+Installing D:\Perl\site\lib\auto\Data\Dumper\Dumper.lib
+Installing D:\Perl\html\site\lib\auto\Data\Dumper\Dumper.html
+Installing D:\Perl\site\lib\Data\Dumper\Dumper.pm
+Writing D:\Perl\site\lib\auto\Data\Dumper\Dumper.packlist
+D:\ppm>
+</verb></tscreen>
+
+I'm not going to bother you with exhaustive details of the rest
+of them, but suffice it to say you need to:
+
+<tscreen><verb>
+ppm install DB_File.ppd
+ppm install Net-Telnet.ppd
+ppm install TimeDate.ppd
+ppm install Time-HiRes.ppd
+</verb></tscreen>
+
+If all that seemed to work OK, time to move along. Before anyone
+who is familiar with PPM tells me that we didn't need to download
+and keep those files locally, I knew that. I also knew that PPM
+is sometimes awkward to configure via firewalls, and that
+sometimes the repositories don't always work the way we'd hope. I
+do it that way because it suits me.
+
+<sect1>Getting Spider
+
+<P>
+Get the current version of the DX Spider distribution. This needs
+to be v1.47 or later. You've got two ways (currently) of getting
+this; either get a CVS update from sourceforge (if you don't know
+what this is, then it isn't for you) or get my package from:-
+
+<htmlurl url="http://www.dcc.rsgb.org/WinSpider.zip" name="http://www.dcc.rsgb.org/WinSpider.zip">
+
+If you went down the CVS route, then everything will be nicely
+set out on your local disk. If you got the ZIP file, unpack it to
+somewhere convenient. The following examples assume that you put
+it on drive "C:\", for convenience.
+
+<bf>NOTE:</bf> This distribution method will go away as soon as the first
+v1.47 tarball is released. You can use WinZip to unpack that, and
+my life will be made easier by not needing to keep this .ZIP file
+updated.
+
+<sect>Installing the software
+
+<P>
+Ensure that your CVS session or your unZIPped file have left you
+with a directory "C:\spider\local"; if not, go to "C:\spider\"
+and create one. If "C:\spider" is missing, go back and figure out
+why, because it shouldn't be.
+
+Now create your own local copy of the DXVars.pm file by:-
+
+<tscreen><verb>
+copy c:\spider\perl\DXVars.pm.issue
+c:\spider\local\DXVars.pm
+</verb></tscreen>
+
+Now you'll need to edit this file using a text editor. If nothing
+else, you can simply
+
+<tscreen><verb>
+cd \spider\local
+</verb></tscreen>
+
+and then
+
+<tscreen><verb>
+notepad DXVars.pm
+</verb></tscreen>
+
+to bring up an editor window containing the file. As an absolute
+minimum you must adjust the following items in DXVars.pm:-
+
+<itemize>
+<item> $mycall - Should hold the callsign of your DX Cluster
+<item> $myname - The SysOp's first name
+<item> $myalias - the SysOp's callsign. Cannot be the same as $mycall!
+</itemize>
+
+You really also ought to update the $mylatitude, $mylongitude,
+$myqth and $myemail variables. And unless you are absolutely
+certain you know what you're doing, you should change nothing
+else in this file.
+
+<sect1>The AGW packet engine
+
+<P>
+On the assumption that you'll be using the SV2AGW Packet Engine
+to interface your radios to the cluster, you should now create
+your own local copy of AGWConnect.pm by:-
+
+<tscreen><verb>
+copy c:\spider\perl\AGWConnect.pm
+c:\spider\local\AGWConnect.pm
+</verb></tscreen>
+
+and then
+
+<tscreen><verb>
+notepad AGWConnect.pm
+</verb></tscreen>
+
+to bring up an editor window containing the file. You must
+consider adjusting the following items in AGWConnect.pm:-
+
+<itemize>
+<item>$enable - set to '1' to enable AGWPE interface
+<item>$login - the login ID you chose when you set up the SV2AGW security :-)
+<item>$passwd - password that matches $login
+</itemize>
+
+<sect1>Setting up the initial user files
+
+<P>
+Next you need to create the initial user files, etc. A tool is
+supplied which will do this for you. To run the tool:-
+
+<tscreen><verb>
+cd \spider\perl
+perl create_sysop.pl
+</verb></tscreen>
+
+If all goes according to plan, you will see no output from this
+program, and after a brief wait, your DOS prompt will be
+returned.
+
+Depending on how brave you are, you might now care to try the
+following:-
+
+<tscreen><verb>
+perl cluster.pl
+</verb></tscreen>
+
+If you did everything you were told, your DOS window will now
+hold a display which looks something like:-
+
+<tscreen><verb>
+DXSpider DX Cluster Version 1.47
+Copyright (c) 1998-2001 Dirk Koopman G1TLH
+loading prefixes ...
+loading band data ...
+loading user file system ...
+starting listeners ...
+Internal port: localhost 27754
+load badwords: Ok
+reading in duplicate spot and WWV info ...
+reading existing message headers ...
+load badmsg: Ok
+load forward: Ok
+load swop: Ok
+@msg = 0 before delete
+@msg = 0 after delete
+reading cron jobs ...v cron: reading /spider/cmd/crontab
+cron: adding 1 0 * * 0
+DXUser::export("$main::data/user_asc")
+reading database descriptors ...
+doing local initialisation ...
+orft we jolly well go ...
+queue msg (0)
+</verb></tscreen>
+
+Now, if that's what you've got, you are very nearly home and dry
+(in as far as these particular experiments are concerned, anyhow)
+
+To access your new cluster (from the local machine) find yourself another
+"DOS box" and do the following:-
+
+<tscreen><verb>
+cd \spider\perl
+perl winclient.pl
+</verb></tscreen>
+
+If you are rewarded with a display which looks something like:-
+
+<tscreen><verb>
+Hello Iain, this is GB7SJP in Amersham, Bucks running DXSpider V1.47
+Cluster: 1 nodes, 1 local / 1 total users Max users 2 Uptime 0 00:00
+M0ADI de GB7SJP 4-Mar-2001 1511Z >
+</verb></tscreen>
+
+You've arrived. Try some commands, and see how they feel. (In
+case you were wondering, "Iain", "M0ADI" and "GB7SJP" all came
+from the version of DXVars.pm that was on the machine when I
+started the winclient.pl)
+
+<sect1>Incoming telnets
+
+<P>
+If you want to enable inbound "TELNET" connections, you've got a
+little more work to do. From a handy "DOS box" that's not doing
+anything else, do the following:-
+
+<tscreen><verb>
+copy \spider\perl\listeners.pm \spider\local
+cd \spider\local
+notepad listeners.pm
+</verb></tscreen>
+
+The following lines need attention:-
+
+<tscreen><verb>
+["localhost", 7300],
+["foo.dxcluster.net", 7300],
+</verb></tscreen>
+
+On my machine, I've simply uncommented the "localhost" entry by
+removing the '#' from the front of the line. I've also
+uncommented the second line, and changed the hostname to point at
+"spud.ath.cx".
+
+If you don't have a static hostname for your machine, and you
+intend to allow folk to connect to your machine across the
+internet, then I'd suggest you pay a visit to www.dyndns.org and
+create one for yourself. While it's free, it will take a modest
+an amount of effort on your part to read, understand and
+implement what needs to be done to set this up.
+
+<sect1>Connecting to other clusters
+
+<P>
+If you want to connect this to another cluster, then you'll want
+to negotiate a link with someone. For experimental purposes, I'm
+happy to allow folk to connect to GB7DXA (spud.ath.cx), on the
+understanding that the system may or may not be there and may or
+may not be connected to anything particularly useful at any given
+moment. Contact me by Email if you want me to set up a connection
+for you.
+
+<it>Last updated: 05-Mar-01</it>
+
+</article>