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16 <H2><A NAME="s4">4. Configuration</A></H2>
18 <H2><A NAME="ss4.1">4.1 Allowing ax25 connects from users</A>
21 <P>This is dealt with in the previous section
23 <H2><A NAME="ss4.2">4.2 Allowing telnet connects from users </A>
27 >From version 1.47 there is a new (more efficient) way of doing this
28 (see next section) but, if you prefer, the method of doing it described
29 here will continue to work just fine.
31 <P>Allowing telnet connections is quite simple. Firstly you need to add a line
32 in /etc/services to allow connections to a port number, like this ....
36 spdlogin 8000/tcp # spider anonymous login port
40 <P>Then add a line in /etc/inetd.conf like this ....
44 spdlogin stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd /spider/src/client login telnet
48 <P>Once this is done, you need to restart inetd like this ....
56 <P>Now login as <EM>sysop</EM> and cd spider/src. You can test that spider
57 is accepting telnet logins by issuing the following command ....
65 <P>You should get a login prompt and on issuing a callsign, you will be given
66 access to the cluster. Note, you will not get a password login. There seems
67 no good reason for a password prompt to be given so it is not asked for.
69 <P>Assuming all is well, then try a telnet from your linux console ....
77 <P>You should now get the login prompt and be able to login as before.
79 <H2><A NAME="ss4.3">4.3 Setting up telnet connects (from 1.47 onwards)</A>
82 <P>>From version 1.47 you can choose to allow the perl cluster.pl program to
83 allow connections directly (i.e. not via the <CODE>/spider/src/client</CODE>
84 interface program). If you are using Windows then this is the only method
85 available of allowing incoming telnet connections.
87 <P>To do this you need first to remove any line that you may previously have set
88 up in /etc/inetd.conf. Remember to:-
96 <P>to make the change happen...
98 <P>Having done that, you need to copy the file
99 <EM>/spider/perl/Listeners.pm</EM> to <EM>/spider/local</EM> and
100 then edit it. You will need to uncomment the line containing "0.0.0.0"
101 and select the correct port to listen on. So that it looks like this:-
111 <P>As standard, the listener will listen on all interfaces simultaneously.
112 If you require more control than this, you can specify each interface
118 ["gb7baa.dxcluster.net", 8000],
119 ["44.131.16.2", 6300],
124 <P>This will only be successful if the IP addresses on each interface are static.
125 If you are using some kind of dynamic IP addressing then the 'default' method
126 is the only one that will work.
128 <P>Restart the cluster.pl program to enable the listener.
130 <P>One important difference with the internal listener is that no echoing
131 is done by the cluster program. Users will need to set 'local-echo' on in
132 their telnet clients if it isn't set automatically (as per the standards).
133 Needless to say this will probably only apply to Windows users.
135 <H2><A NAME="ss4.4">4.4 Setting up for AGW Engine (1.47 onwards)</A>
138 <P>AGW Engine is a Windows based ax25 stack. You can connect to an AGW engine
139 from Linux as well as Windows based machines.
141 <P>In order to enable access to an AGW Engine you need to copy
142 <EM>/spider/perl/AGWConnect.pm</EM> to <EM>/spider/local</EM> and edit it.
143 Specifically you must:-
146 <LI> set <CODE>$enable</CODE> to 1.</LI>
147 <LI> set <CODE>$login</CODE> and <CODE>$passwd</CODE> to the values set up in your AGW installation.
148 If you haven't set any there, then you should not touch these values.</LI>
149 <LI> You can connect to a remote AGW engine (ie on some other machine) by changing <CODE>$addr</CODE>
150 and <CODE>$port</CODE> appropriately.</LI>
151 <LI> Restart the cluster.pl program</LI>
156 <H2><A NAME="ss4.5">4.5 Setting up node connects</A>
159 <P>In order to allow cluster node connections, spider needs to know that the
160 connecting callsign is a cluster node. This is the case whether the connect
161 is incoming or outgoing. In spider this is a simple task and can be done in
164 <P>Later versions of Spider can distinguish different software and treat them
165 differently. For example, the WCY beacon cannot be handles by AK1A type
166 nodes as AK1A does not know what to do with PC73. There are 4 different
167 types of node at present and although they may not have any major
168 differences at the moment, it allows for compatibility. The 4 types are ...
179 <P>For now, we will assume that the cluster we are going to connect to is an
182 <P>Start up the cluster as you did before and login as the sysop with client.
183 The cluster node I am wanting to make a connection to is GB7BAA but you would
184 obviously use whatever callsign you required. At the prompt type ...
192 <P>The case does not matter as long as you have a version of DXSpider later than
193 1.33. Earlier versions required the callsign to be in upper case.
195 <P>That is now set, it is as simple as that. To prove it, login on yet another
196 console as sysop, cd to spider/src and issue the command ...
200 ./client gb7baa (using the callsign you set as a node)
204 <P>You should get an initialisation string from DXSpider like this ...
212 <P>If the callsign you just set up as a cluster node is for an incoming connect,
213 this is all that needs to be done. If the connection is to be outgoing then
214 a connection script needs to be written.
216 <P>Sometimes you make a mistake... Honest, it does happen. If you want to make a node
217 back to being a normal user, regardless
218 of what type it is, do:
226 <H2><A NAME="ss4.6">4.6 Connection scripts</A>
229 <P>Because DXSpider operates under Linux, connections can be made using just about
230 any protocol; AX25, NETRom, tcp/ip, ROSE etc are all possible examples.
231 Connect scripts live in the /spider/connect directory and are simple ascii files.
232 Writing a script for connections is therefore relatively simple.
234 <P>The connect scripts consist of lines which start with the following keywords
239 <DT><B>#</B><DD><P>All lines starting with a <CODE>#</CODE> are ignored, as are completely
242 <DT><B>timeout</B><DD><P><CODE>timeout</CODE> followed by a number is the number of seconds to wait for a
243 command to complete. If there is no timeout specified in the script
244 then the default is 60 seconds.
246 <DT><B>abort</B><DD><P><CODE>abort</CODE> is a regular expression containing one or more strings to look
247 for to abort a connection. This is a perl regular expression and is
248 executed ignoring case.
250 <DT><B>connect</B><DD><P><CODE>connect</CODE> followed by ax25, agw (for Windows users) or telnet and some type dependent
251 information. In the case of a telnet connection, there can be up to
253 The first is the ip address or hostname of the computer you wish to
254 connect to and the second is the port number you want to use (this
255 can be left out if it is a normal telnet session).
256 In the case of an ax25 session then this would normally be a call to
257 ax25_call or netrom_call as in the example above. It is your
258 responsibility to get your node and other ax25 parameters to work
259 before going down this route!
261 <DT><B>'</B><DD><P><CODE>'</CODE> is the delimiting character for a word or phrase of an expect/send
262 line in a chat type script. The words/phrases normally come in pairs,
263 either can be empty. Each line reads input from the connection until
264 it sees the string (or perl regular expression) contained in the
265 left hand string. If the left hand string is empty then it doesn't
266 read or wait for anything. The comparison is done ignoring case.
267 When the left hand string has found what it is looking for (if it is)
268 then the right hand string is sent to the connection.
269 This process is repeated for every line of chat script.
271 <DT><B>client</B><DD><P><CODE>client</CODE> starts the connection, put the arguments you would want here
272 if you were starting the client program manually. You only need this
273 if the script has a different name to the callsign you are trying to
274 connect to (i.e. you have a script called other which actually
275 connects to GB7DJK-1 [instead of a script called gb7djk-1]).
278 <P>There are many possible ways to configure the script but here are three examples,
279 one for a NETRom/AX25 connect, one for AGW engines and one for tcp/ip.
284 abort (Busy|Sorry|Fail)
285 # don't forget to chmod 4775 netrom_call!
286 connect ax25 /usr/sbin/netrom_call bbs gb7djk g1tlh
290 # you can leave this out if you call the script 'gb7dxm'
300 abort (Busy|Sorry|Fail)
301 # this does exactly the same as the previous example
302 # the '1' is the AGW port number to connect thru for g1tlh
307 # you can leave this out if you call the script 'gb7dxm'
317 connect telnet dirkl.tobit.co.uk
320 # tell GB7DJK-1 that it is connected to GB7DJK
321 # you can leave this out if you call this script 'gb7djk'
326 <P>Both these examples assume that everything is set up properly at the other end.
327 You will find other examples in the /spider/examples directory.
329 <H2><A NAME="ss4.7">4.7 Starting the connection</A>
332 <P>You start the connection, from within a sysop enabled cluster login, by typing
333 in the word <EM>connect</EM> followed by a script name like this ....
337 G0VGS de GB7MBC 13-Dec-1998 2041Z >connect gb7djk-1
338 connection to GB7DJK-1 started
339 G0VGS de GB7MBC 13-Dec-1998 2043Z >
343 <P>This will start a connection using the script called <EM>gb7djk-1</EM>. You can
344 follow the connection by watching the term or console from where you started
345 <EM>cluster.pl</EM>. From version 1.47 onwards, you will need to <CODE>set/debug connect</CODE> first.
346 You should see something like this ...
350 <- D G1TLH connect gb7djk-1
351 -> D G1TLH connection to GB7DJK-1 started
352 -> D G1TLH G1TLH de GB7DJK 13-Dec-1998 2046Z >
354 CONNECT sort: telnet command: dirkl.tobit.co.uk
355 CHAT "login" -> "gb7djk"
357 Red Hat Linux release 5.1 (Manhattan)
358 Kernel 2.0.35 on an i586
362 CHAT "word" -> "gb7djk"
364 received "Password: "
366 Connected to GB7DJK-1, starting normal protocol
367 <- O GB7DJK-1 telnet
369 GB7DJK-1 channel func state 0 -> init
371 <- D GB7DJK-1 Last login: Sun Dec 13 17:59:56 from dirk1
372 <- D GB7DJK-1 PC38^GB7DJK-1^~
373 <- D GB7DJK-1 PC18^ 1 nodes, 0 local / 1 total users Max users 0 Uptime
379 <P>With later versions of Spider there is a set/login command for users. This
380 tells them when a user or node logs in or out. If you do not add a line to
381 your scripts after the final line (or before the client line which should always
382 be last if needed) then the login/logout information will be sent to users
383 <I>before</I> the login actually completes. This means if a node is
384 unreachable, it will continue sending logins and logouts to users even though it
385 is not actually connecting. To avoid this use the following line ...
393 <P>In a script, this might look like ...
398 abort (Busy|Sorry|Fail)
399 connect telnet mary 3000
401 '>' 'telnet 44.131.93.96 7305'
406 <H2><A NAME="ss4.8">4.8 Telnet echo</A>
409 <P>Cluster links in particular suffer greatly from the presence of telnet echo.
410 This is caused by the telnet negotiation itself and can create at worst severe
411 loops. At best it creates unnecessary bandwidth and large logfiles! There are
412 things that can be done to limit this problem but will not always work dependent
413 on the route taken to connect.
415 <P>Telnet echo itself should only be a problem if the connection is being made to
416 the telnet port (23). This port uses special rules that include echo negotiation.
417 If the connection is to a different port, such as 7300, this negotiation does
418 not happen and therefore no echo should be present.
420 <P>Sometimes it is not possible to make a direct connection to another node and this
421 can cause problems. There is a way of trying to suppress the telnet echo but
422 this will not always work, unfortunately it is difficult to be more specific.
423 Here is an example of what I mean ...
428 abort (Busy|Sorry|Fail)
429 connect telnet mary.lancs.ac.uk
432 '\$' 'stty -echo raw'
433 '\$' 'telnet 44.131.93.96'
438 <P>So, the first connection is made by Spider. This is fine as Spider uses the
439 Net_Telnet script from within perl. This actually uses TCP rather than TELNET
440 so no negotiation will be done on the first connection. Once connected to
441 mary.lancs.ac.uk, the command is sent to suppress echo. Now a telnet is made
442 to a cluster node that is accepting connections on port 23. The problem with
443 this link is that the negotiation is made by the remote machine, therefore you
444 have no control over it. The chances are that this link will create echo and
445 there will be no way you can stop it.
448 <H2><A NAME="ss4.9">4.9 Autostarting the cluster</A>
451 <P>Ok, you should now have DXSpider running nicely and allowing connects by cluster
452 nodes or users. However, it has to be shutdown and restarted manually. It
453 would be much easier to have it start automatically.
455 <P>This is not only a way to start the cluster automatically, it also works as a
456 watchdog, checking the sanity of DXSpider and respawning it should it crash for
457 any reason. Before doing the following, shutdown the cluster as you did earlier.
459 <P>Login as root and bring up the /etc/inittab file in your favourite editor. Add
460 the following lines to the file near the end ...
464 ##Start DXSpider on bootup and respawn it should it crash
465 DX:3:respawn:/bin/su -c "/usr/bin/perl -w /spider/perl/cluster.pl" sysop >/dev/tty7
469 <P>This line works fine for RedHat distributions. It is also fine for SuSE up to
470 7.0. From SuSE 7.1 you need to add runlevels 2 and 5 like this ...
474 DX:235:respawn:/bin/su -c "/usr/bin/perl -w /spider/perl/cluster.pl" sysop >/dev/tty7
478 <P>The line required for Slackware distributions is slightly different. My thanks to
479 Aurelio, PA3EZL for this information.
483 DX:23:respawn:/bin/su - sysop -c "/usr/bin/perl -w /spider/perl/cluster.pl" >/dev/tty7
487 <P>This will automatically start DXSpider on tty7 (ALT-F7) on bootup and restart
488 it should it crash for any reason.
490 <P>NB: It should be noted that /dev/tty7 is only an example. Some SuSE systems will
491 only accept upto tty6. It really does not matter which tty you run it on.
493 <P>As root type the command <EM>telinit q</EM>. DXSpider should start up
494 immediately. You will see the output on tty7 and if you login as <EM>sysop</EM>
495 you should find everything running nicely.
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