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<article>

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<title>The DXSpider Installation Manual v1.47</title> 
<author>Iain Philipps, G0RDI (g0rdi@77hz.com) and
Ian Maude, G0VGS, (ianmaude@btinternet.com)</author>
<date>Version 1.47, April 2001 revision 1.0</date>

<abstract>
A reference for SysOps of the DXSpider DXCluster program.
</abstract>

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<toc>

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<sect>Linux Installation 

<sect1>Introduction

<P>
This section describes the installation of DX Spider v1.47 on a 
<htmlurl url="http://www.redhat.com" name="RedHat"> Linux Distribution.
Wherever possible I will try to include differences for other distributions.  
I do not intend to try and cover the installation of Linux or the setup 
of the AX25 utilities.  If you need help on this then read Iains original 
installation guide that comes with the Spider distribution.

<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 files using your favourite editor.

<P>
The crucial ingredient for all of this is 
<htmlurl url="http://www.perl.org" name="Perl">.  Earlier versions of
Spider required perl 5.004, however it is now <it>STRONGLY</it> recommended
that you use at least version 5.005_03 as this is the version being used
in the development of Spider.

<P>In addition to the standard Red Hat distribution you will require the 
following modules from <htmlurl url="http://www.cpan.org/CPAN.html" name="http://www.cpan.org/CPAN.html"> ...

<P>
<itemize>
<item>          Data-Dumper-2.101.tar.gz
<item>          TimeDate-1.10.tar.gz
<item>          IO-1.20.tar.gz (for perl 5.00403 and lower)
<item>          Net-Telnet-3.02.tar.gz
<item>          Curses-1.05.tar.gz
<item>          Time-HiRes-01.20.tar.gz
</itemize>

<P>
<em>Do</em> get the latest versions of these packages and install them 
but use the above list as the earliest versions usable.

<sect1>Preparation

<P>
I will assume that you have already downloaded the latest tarball of 
the DXSpider software and are ready to install it. I am assuming version 
1.47 for this section but of course you would use the latest version.

<P>
Login as root and create a user to run the cluster under.  <bf><it>UNDER 
NO CIRCUMSTANCES USE ROOT AS THIS USER!</it></bf>.  I am going to use 
the name <em>sysop</em>.  You can call it anything you wish.  Depending 
on your security requirements you may wish to use an existing user, 
however this is your own choice.

<P>
<tscreen><verb>
# adduser -m sysop
</verb></tscreen>

<P>
Now set a password for the user ...

<tscreen><verb>
# passwd sysop
# New UNIX password:
# Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully
</verb></tscreen>

<sect1>Installing the software

<P>
Now to unpack the DX Spider distribution, set symbolic links and group 
permissions.  Copy the tarball to /home/sysop and do the following.

<tscreen><verb>
# cd ~sysop
# tar xvfz spider-1.47.tar.gz
# ln -s ~sysop/spider /spider
# groupadd -g 251 spider       (or another number)
</verb></tscreen>

If you do not have the command <em>groupadd</em> available to you simply 
add a line in /etc/group by hand.

<tscreen><verb>
# vi /etc/group                (or your favorite editor)
</verb></tscreen>

You also need to add some others to the group, including your own callsign 
(this will be used as an alias) and root.  The finished line in /etc/group 
should look something like this

<tt>
spider:x:251:sysop,g0vgs,root
</tt>

<P>
The next step is to set the permissions on the Spider directory tree and files ....

<tscreen><verb>
# chown -R sysop.spider spider
# find . -type d -exec chmod 2775 {} \;
# find . -type f -exec chmod 775 {} \;
</verb></tscreen>

<P>
This last step allows various users of the group <em>spider</em> to have 
write access to all the directories.  This is not really needed just yet 
but will be useful when web interfaces start to appear.

<P>
Finally, you need to fix the permissions on the ax25_call and netrom_call 
programs.  Check where they are with the <em>locate</em> command and alter 
the permissions with the <em>chmod</em> command like this ..

<tscreen><verb>
# chown root ax25_call netrom_call
# chmod 4775 ax25_call netrom_call
</verb></tscreen>

<sect1>Setting callsigns etc

<P>
Now login to your machine as the user you created earlier.  In my case that 
user is called <em>sysop</em>.  Once logged in, issue the following commands ....

<tscreen><verb>
$ cd /spider
$ mkdir local
$ mkdir local_cmd
$ cp perl/DXVars.pm.issue local/DXVars.pm
$ cd local
$ vi DXVars.pm (or your favourite editor)
</verb></tscreen>

<P>
Using the distributed DXVars.pm as a a template, set your cluster callsign, 
sysop callsign and other user info to suit your own environment. Note that 
this a perl file which will be parsed and executed as part of the cluster. If 
you get it wrong then perl will complain when you start the cluster process.  
It is important only to alter the text of any section.  Some of the lines look 
a little odd.  Take this line for example ....

<tt>
$myemail = "ianmaude\@btinternet.com";
</tt>

<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.
                
<P><bf>PLEASE USE CAPITAL LETTERS FOR CALLSIGNS</bf>
                
<P>
DON'T alter any file in /spider/perl, they are overwritten with every
release. Any files or commands you place in /spider/local or /spider/local_cmd 
will automagically be used in preference to the ones in /spider/perl EVEN 
while the cluster is running!

<P>
Save the new file and change directory to ../perl ....

<tscreen><verb>
$ cd ../perl
</verb></tscreen>

<P>
Now type the following command which creates the basic user file with you as 
the sysop.

<tscreen><verb>
$ ./create_sysop.pl
</verb></tscreen>

<sect1>Starting up for the first time

<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 ...

<tscreen><verb>
$ ./cluster.pl
DXSpider DX Cluster Version 1.47
Copyright (c) 1998 Dirk Koopman G1TLH
loading prefixes ...
loading band data ...
loading user file system ...
starting listener ...
reading existing message headers
reading cron jobs
orft we jolly well go ...
</verb></tscreen>

<P>
If all is well then login on another term or console as <em>sysop</em> and 
cd to /spider/src.  Now issue the following command ...

<tscreen><verb>
$ ./client
</verb></tscreen>

<P>
This should log you into the cluster as the sysop under the alias callsign we 
set earlier.  In this case the callsign is G0VGS.  The cluster callsign is set 
in the DXVars.pm file in /spider/local.  In this case we will assume that this 
was set as GB7MBC.  You should therefore see this when you login ....

<tscreen><verb>
G0VGS de GB7MBC 19-Nov-1999 2150Z >
</verb></tscreen>

If you do, congratulations!  If not, look over the instructions again, you 
have probably missed something out.  You can shut spider down again with the 
command ....

<tscreen><verb>
shutdown
</verb></tscreen>

<P>
and both the cluster and the client should return to Linux prompts.

<sect1>The Client program

<P>
In earlier versions of Spider, all the processes were Perl scripts.  This 
was fine but with a lot of users your computer memory would soon be used up.  
To combat this a new client was written in "C".  This client only works for
<em>incoming</em> connects at the moment.  Before you can use it though it 
has to be "made".  CD to /spider/src and type <em>make</em>.  You 
should see the output on your screen and hopefully now have a small C program 
called <em>client</em>.  Leave it in this directory.


<sect>Linux quick installation guide

<P>
This section is designed for experienced Spider sysops who want to install
Spider from scratch.  It is simply a check list of things that need to be
done without any explanations.  The name in brackets at the end of each line
is the user that should be doing that process.

<itemize>
<item>Login as root
<item>Get the additional CPAN modules and install them (root)
<item>Create the "sysop" user and set a password (root)
<item>Put the Spider tarball in ~sysop and untar it (root)
<item>ln -s ~sysop/spider /spider (root)
<item>groupadd -g 251 spider (root)
<item>Add any more users you need to the group entry in /etc/group (root)
<item>Set the permissions on the spider tree (root)
<item>Fix permissions on ax25_call and netrom_call (root)
<item>Login as the sysop user
<item>cd to /spider (sysop)
<item>mkdir local (sysop)
<item>mkdir local_cmd (sysop)
<item>cp perl/DXVars.pm.issue local/DXVars.pm (sysop)
<item>cd to /spider/local and edit DXVars to set your details (sysop)
<item>cd ../perl (sysop)
<item>./create_sysop.pl (sysop)
<item>./cluster.pl (sysop)
</itemize>

Spider should now be running and you should be able to login using the
client program.

<itemize>
<item>Login as root
<item>Enter the correct line in ax25d.conf (root)
<item>Enter the correct line in /etc/services (root)
<item>Enter the correct line in /etc/inetd.conf (root)
<item>killall -HUP inetd (root)
</itemize>

Spider should now be able to accept logins via telnet, netrom and ax25.

<itemize>
<item>Login as sysop
<item>Start the cluster (sysop)
<item>set/node and type for links (sysop)
<item>Write any connect scripts (sysop)
<item>Edit /spider/crontab as required (sysop)
<item>Edit any other files as necessary (sysop)
<item>Set filters, hops and forwarding files (sysop)
<item>Login as root
<item>Enter the correct line in /etc/inittab (root)
</itemize>

<sect>Configuration

<sect1>Allowing ax25 connects from users

<P>
As stated previously, the aim of this document is not to tell you how to 
configure Linux or the ax25 utilities.  However, you do need to add a line 
in your ax25d.conf to allow connections to DXSpider for your users.  For
each interface that you wish to allow connections on, use the following format ...

<tscreen><verb>
default  * * * * * *  - sysop /spider/src/client client %u ax25
</verb></tscreen>

or, if you wish your users to be able to use SSID's on their callsigns ..

<tscreen><verb>
default  * * * * * *  - sysop /spider/src/client client %s ax25
</verb></tscreen>

For most purposes this is not desirable. The only time you probably will 
need this is when you need to allow other cluster nodes that are using SSID's
in. In this case it would probably be better to use the first example and 
then add a specific line for that node like this:

<tscreen><verb>
GB7DJK-2  * * * * * *  - sysop /spider/src/client client gb7djk-2 ax25
default  * * * * * *  - sysop /spider/src/client client %u ax25
</verb></tscreen>
 
<sect1>Allowing telnet connects from users 

<P> 
From version 1.47 there is a new (more efficient) way of doing this
(see next section) but, if you prefer, the method of doing it described 
here will continue to work just fine.
 
<P>
Allowing telnet connections is quite simple.  Firstly you need to add a line 
in /etc/services to allow connections to a port number, like this ....

<tscreen><verb>
spdlogin   8000/tcp     # spider anonymous login port
</verb></tscreen>

Then add a line in /etc/inetd.conf like this ....

<tscreen><verb>
spdlogin stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd /spider/src/client login telnet
</verb></tscreen>

<P>
Once this is done, you need to restart inetd like this ....

<tscreen><verb>
killall -HUP inetd
</verb></tscreen>


<P>Now login as <em>sysop</em> and cd spider/src. You can test that spider 
is accepting telnet logins by issuing the following command ....

<tscreen><verb>
./client login telnet
</verb></tscreen>

You should get a login prompt and on issuing a callsign, you will be given 
access to the cluster.  Note, you will not get a password login.  There seems 
no good reason for a password prompt to be given so it is not asked for.

<P>
Assuming all is well, then try a telnet from your linux console ....

<tscreen><verb>
telnet localhost 8000
</verb></tscreen>

<P>
You should now get the login prompt and be able to login as before.

<sect1>Setting up telnet connects (from 1.47 onwards)

<P>
From version 1.47 you can choose to allow the perl cluster.pl program to 
allow connections directly (i.e. not via the <tt>/spider/src/client</tt>
interface program). If you are using Windows then this is the only method
available of allowing incoming telnet connections.

<P>
To do this you need first to remove any line that you may previously have set
up in /etc/inetd.conf. Remember to:-

<tscreen><verb>
killall -HUP inetd
</verb></tscreen>

<P>
to make the change happen...

<P>
Having done that, you need to copy the file 
<em>/spider/perl/Listeners.pm</em> to <em>/spider/local</em> and 
then edit it. You will need to uncomment the line containing &dquot;0.0.0.0&dquot; 
and select the correct port to listen on. So that it looks like this:-

<tscreen><verb>
@listen = (
    ["0.0.0.0", 8000],
);
</verb></tscreen>

<P>
As standard, the listener will listen on all interfaces simultaneously. 
If you require more control than this, you can specify each interface 
individually:-

<tscreen><verb>
@listen = (
    ["gb7baa.dxcluster.net", 8000],
    ["44.131.16.2", 6300],
);
</verb></tscreen>

<P>
This will only be successful if the IP addresses on each interface are static. 
If you are using some kind of dynamic IP addressing then the 'default' method 
is the only one that will work.

<P>
Restart the cluster.pl program to enable the listener.

<P>
One important difference with the internal listener is that no echoing 
is done by the cluster program. Users will need to set 'local-echo' on in 
their telnet clients if it isn't set automatically (as per the standards). 
Needless to say this will probably only apply to Windows users. 

<sect1>Setting up for AGW Engine (1.47 onwards)

<P>
AGW Engine is a Windows based ax25 stack. You can connect to an AGW engine 
from Linux as well as Windows based machines.

<P>
In order to enable access to an AGW Engine you need to copy 
<em>/spider/perl/AGWConnect.pm</em> to <em>/spider/local</em> and edit it. 
Specifically you must:-

<itemize>
<item> set <tt>$enable</tt> to 1.
<item> set <tt>$login</tt> and <tt>$passwd</tt> to the values set up in your AGW installation. 
If you haven't set any there, then you should not touch these values.
<item> You can connect to a remote AGW engine (ie on some other machine) by changing <tt>$addr</tt>
and <tt>$port</tt> appropriately.
<item> Restart the cluster.pl program
</itemize>   


<sect1>Setting up node connects

<P>
In order to allow cluster node connections, spider needs to know that the 
connecting callsign is a cluster node.  This is the case whether the connect 
is incoming or outgoing.  In spider this is a simple task and can be done in 
runtime.

<P>
Later versions of Spider can distinguish different software and treat them
differently.  For example, the WCY beacon cannot be handles by AK1A type
nodes as AK1A does not know what to do with PC73.  There are 4 different
types of node at present and although they may not have any major
differences at the moment, it allows for compatibility.  The 4 types are ...

<tscreen><verb>
set/node        (AK1A type)
set/spider
set/dxnet
set/clx
</verb></tscreen>

<P>
For now, we will assume that the cluster we are going to connect to is an
AK1A type node.

<P>
Start up the cluster as you did before and login as the sysop with client.
The cluster node I am wanting to make a connection to is GB7BAA but you would
obviously use whatever callsign you required.  At the prompt type ...

<tscreen><verb>
set/node gb7baa
</verb></tscreen>

<P>
The case does not matter as long as you have a version of DXSpider later than 
1.33.  Earlier versions required the callsign to be in upper case.

<P>
That is now set, it is as simple as that.  To prove it, login on yet another 
console as sysop, cd to spider/src and issue the command ...

<tscreen><verb>
./client gb7baa (using the callsign you set as a node)
</verb></tscreen>

<P>
You should get an initialisation string from DXSpider like this ...

<tscreen><verb>
./client gb7baa
PC38^GB7MBC^~
</verb></tscreen>

If the callsign you just set up as a cluster node is for an incoming connect, 
this is all that needs to be done.  If the connection is to be outgoing then 
a connection script needs to be written.

<P>
Sometimes you make a mistake... Honest, it does happen.  If you want to make a node
back to being a normal user, regardless
of what type it is, do:

<tscreen><verb>
unset/node gb7baa
</verb></tscreen>

<sect1>Connection scripts

<P>
Because DXSpider operates under Linux, connections can be made using just about 
any protocol;  AX25, NETRom, tcp/ip, ROSE etc are all possible examples.  
Connect scripts live in the /spider/connect directory and are simple ascii files.  
Writing a script for connections is therefore relatively simple.  

<P>
The connect scripts consist of lines which start with the following keywords 
or symbols:-

<descrip>
        
<tag/#/All lines starting with a <tt>#</tt> are ignored, as are completely 
                blank lines.

<tag/timeout/<tt>timeout</tt> followed by a number is the number of seconds to wait for a 
                command to complete. If there is no timeout specified in the script 
                then the default is 60 seconds.

<tag/abort/     <tt>abort</tt> is a regular expression containing one or more strings to look 
                for to abort a connection. This is a perl regular expression and is 
                executed ignoring case.

<tag/connect/<tt>connect</tt> followed by ax25, agw (for Windows users) or telnet and some type dependent 
                information. In the case of a telnet connection, there can be up to 
                two parameters.
                The first is the ip address or hostname of the computer you wish to 
                connect to and the second is the port number you want to use (this 
                can be left out if it is a normal telnet session).
                In the case of an ax25 session then this would normally be a call to
                ax25_call or netrom_call as in the example above. It is your
                responsibility to get your node and other ax25 parameters to work 
                before going down this route!

<tag/'/<tt>'</tt> is the delimiting character for a word or phrase of an expect/send 
                line in a chat type script. The words/phrases normally come in pairs,
                either can be empty. Each line reads input from the connection until 
                it sees the string (or perl regular expression) contained in the
                left hand string. If the left hand string is empty then it doesn't 
                read or wait for anything. The comparison is done ignoring case.
                When the left hand string has found what it is looking for (if it is)
                then the right hand string is sent to the connection.
                This process is repeated for every line of chat script. 

<tag/client/<tt>client</tt> starts the connection, put the arguments you would want here 
                if you were starting the client program manually. You only need this 
                if the script has a different name to the callsign you are trying to 
                connect to (i.e. you have a script called other which actually 
                connects to GB7DJK-1 [instead of a script called gb7djk-1]).
</descrip>


There are many possible ways to configure the script but here are three examples, 
one for a NETRom/AX25 connect, one for AGW engines and one for tcp/ip.  

<tscreen><verb>
timeout 60
abort (Busy|Sorry|Fail)
# don't forget to chmod 4775 netrom_call!
connect ax25 /usr/sbin/netrom_call bbs gb7djk g1tlh
'Connect' '' 
'Connect' 'c np7'
'Connect' 'c gb7dxm'
# you can leave this out if you call the script 'gb7dxm'
client gb7dxm ax25
</verb></tscreen>

<P>

<tscreen><verb>
timeout 60
abort (Busy|Sorry|Fail)
# this does exactly the same as the previous example
# the '1' is the AGW port number to connect thru for g1tlh
connect agw 1 g1tlh
'Connect' '' 
'Connect' 'c np7'
'Connect' 'c gb7dxm'
# you can leave this out if you call the script 'gb7dxm'
client gb7dxm ax25
</verb></tscreen>

<P>

<tscreen><verb>
timeout 15
connect telnet dirkl.tobit.co.uk
'login' 'gb7djk'
'word' 'gb7djk'
# tell GB7DJK-1 that it is connected to GB7DJK
# you can leave this out if you call this script 'gb7djk'
client gb7djk telnet
</verb></tscreen>

<P>
Both these examples assume that everything is set up properly at the other end.  
You will find other examples in the /spider/examples directory.

<sect1>Starting the connection

<P>
You start the connection, from within a sysop enabled cluster login, by typing 
in the word <em>connect</em> followed by a script name like this ....

<tscreen><verb>
G0VGS de GB7MBC 13-Dec-1998 2041Z >connect gb7djk-1
connection to GB7DJK-1 started
G0VGS de GB7MBC 13-Dec-1998 2043Z >
</verb></tscreen>

This will start a connection using the script called <em>gb7djk-1</em>.  You can
follow the connection by watching the term or console from where you started
<em>cluster.pl</em>.  From version 1.47 onwards, you will need to <tt>set/debug connect</tt> first.
You should see something like this ...

<tscreen><verb>
<- D G1TLH connect gb7djk-1
-> D G1TLH connection to GB7DJK-1 started
-> D G1TLH G1TLH de GB7DJK 13-Dec-1998 2046Z >
timeout set to 15
CONNECT sort: telnet command: dirkl.tobit.co.uk
CHAT "login" -> "gb7djk"
received "
Red Hat Linux release 5.1 (Manhattan)
Kernel 2.0.35 on an i586
"
received "login: "
sent "gb7djk"
CHAT "word" -> "gb7djk"
received "gb7djk"
received "Password: "
sent "gb7djk"
Connected to GB7DJK-1, starting normal protocol
<- O GB7DJK-1 telnet
-> B GB7DJK-1 0
GB7DJK-1 channel func  state 0 -> init
<- D GB7DJK-1 
<- D GB7DJK-1 Last login: Sun Dec 13 17:59:56 from dirk1
<- D GB7DJK-1 PC38^GB7DJK-1^~
<- D GB7DJK-1 PC18^ 1 nodes, 0 local / 1 total users  Max users 0  Uptime 
0 00:00^5447^~
    etc

</verb></tscreen>

<P>
With later versions of Spider there is a set/login command for users.  This 
tells them when a user or node logs in or out.  If you do not add a line to 
your scripts after the final line (or before the client line which should always 
be last if needed) then the login/logout information will be sent to users
<it>before</it> the login actually completes.  This means if a node is 
unreachable, it will continue sending logins and logouts to users even though it 
is not actually connecting.  To avoid this use the following line ...

<tscreen><verb>
'connect' ''
</verb></tscreen>

<P>
In a script, this might look like ...

<tscreen><verb>
timeout 35 
abort (Busy|Sorry|Fail)
connect telnet mary 3000
'ogin:' 'gb7mbc'
'>' 'telnet 44.131.93.96 7305'
'connect' ''
</verb></tscreen>

<sect1>Telnet echo

<P>
Cluster links in particular suffer greatly from the presence of telnet echo.  
This is caused by the telnet negotiation itself and can create at worst severe 
loops.  At best it creates unnecessary bandwidth and large logfiles!  There are
things that can be done to limit this problem but will not always work dependent 
on the route taken to connect.

<P>
Telnet echo itself should only be a problem if the connection is being made to 
the telnet port (23).  This port uses special rules that include echo negotiation.
If the connection is to a different port, such as 7300, this negotiation does 
not happen and therefore no echo should be present.

<P>
Sometimes it is not possible to make a direct connection to another node and this 
can cause problems.  There is a way of trying to suppress the telnet echo but 
this will not always work, unfortunately it is difficult to be more specific.  
Here is an example of what I mean ...

<tscreen><verb>
timeout 35
abort (Busy|Sorry|Fail)
connect telnet mary.lancs.ac.uk
'ogin:' 'gb7mbc'
'word:' 'mypasswd'
'\$' 'stty -echo raw'
'\$' 'telnet 44.131.93.96'
'connect' ''
</verb></tscreen>

So, the first connection is made by Spider.  This is fine as Spider uses the
Net_Telnet script from within perl.  This actually uses TCP rather than TELNET 
so no negotiation will be done on the first connection.  Once connected to
mary.lancs.ac.uk, the command is sent to suppress echo.  Now a telnet is made 
to a cluster node that is accepting connections on port 23.  The problem with 
this link is that the negotiation is made by the remote machine, therefore you 
have no control over it.  The chances are that this link will create echo and 
there will be no way you can stop it.


<sect1>Autostarting the cluster

<P>
Ok, you should now have DXSpider running nicely and allowing connects by cluster
nodes or users.  However, it has to be shutdown and restarted manually.  It
would be much easier to have it start automatically. 

<P>
This is not only a way to start the cluster automatically, it also works as a
watchdog, checking the sanity of DXSpider and respawning it should it crash for 
any reason.  Before doing the following, shutdown the cluster as you did earlier.

<P>
Login as root and bring up the /etc/inittab file in your favourite editor.  Add 
the following lines to the file near the end ...

<tscreen><verb>
##Start DXSpider on bootup and respawn it should it crash
DX:3:respawn:/bin/su -c "/usr/bin/perl -w /spider/perl/cluster.pl" sysop >/dev/tty7
</verb></tscreen>

<P>
This line works fine for RedHat distributions. It is also fine for SuSE up to
7.0.  From Suse 7.1 you need to add runlevels 2 and 5 like this ...

<tscreen><verb>
DX:235:respawn:/bin/su -c "/usr/bin/perl -w /spider/perl/cluster.pl" sysop >/dev/tty7
</verb></tscreen>


The line required for Slackware distributions is slightly different.  My thanks to 
Aurelio, PA3EZL for this information.

<tscreen><verb>
DX:23:respawn:/bin/su - sysop -c "/usr/bin/perl -w /spider/perl/cluster.pl" >/dev/tty7
</verb></tscreen>

<P>
This will automatically start DXSpider on tty7 (ALT-F7) on bootup and restart 
it should it crash for any reason.

<P>
As root type the command <em>telinit q</em>.  DXSpider should start up 
immediately.  You will see the output on tty7 and if you login as <em>sysop</em> 
you should find everything running nicely.

<sect>Microsoft Windows Installation

<sect1>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 &trade; 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 &lt;ENTER&gt; (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">

or if you want the lastest CVS version (which is produced every night)

<htmlurl url="http://www.dxcluster.org/download/CVSlatest.tgz" name="http://www.dxcluster.org/download/CVSlatest.tgz">

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>
["0.0.0.0", 7300],
</verb></tscreen>

On my machine, I've simply uncommented the "0.0.0.0" entry by
removing the '#' from the front of the line. 

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.

<sect>General Information

<P>
The following relates to all versions of DXSpider and is not platform related.

<sect1>The crontab file

<P>
Login as <em>sysop</em> and create a file in /spider/local_cmd called crontab.  
Edit it with your favourite editor and add a line like this (I have included 
a comment)

<tscreen><verb>
# check every 10 minutes to see if gb7xxx is connected and if not
# start a connect job going

0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * start_connect('gb7xxx') if unless connected('gb7xxx')
</verb></tscreen>

<P>
The callsign involved will be the callsign of the cluster node you are 
going to connect to.  This will now check every 10 minutes to see if 
gb7xxx is connected, if it is then nothing will be done.  If it is not, 
then a connect attempt will be started.

<P>
There are probably lots of other things you could use this crontab file for.  
If you want to know more about it, look at the
<htmlurl url="http://www.dxcluster.org/cron.html" name="DXSpider"> website 
at the cron page where it is explained more fully.

</article>