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15 <H2><A NAME="s1">1. Installation (Original version by Iain Phillips, G0RDI)</A></H2>
17 <P>Last modified: 28 December 2000 by Ian Maude, G0VGS
19 <H2><A NAME="ss1.1">1.1 Introduction</A>
22 <P>This section describes the installation of DX Spider v1.35 on a
23 <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com">RedHat</A> Linux Distribution.
24 I do not intend to try and cover the installation of Linux or the setup
25 of the AX25 utilities. If you need help on this then read Iains original
27 <A HREF="http://www.dxcluster.org">DXSpider</A>
30 <P>I am assuming a general knowledge of Linux and its commands. You should
31 know how to use <EM>tar</EM> and how to edit files using your favourite editor.
33 <P>The crucial ingredient for all of this is
34 <A HREF="http://www.perl.org">Perl 5.004</A>. Now I know Perl 5.005
35 is out and this will almost certainly work with it, but
36 <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com">RedHat 5.1</A> comes with 5.004.
37 <EM>Be Warned</EM>, earlier versions of
38 <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com">RedHat</A> <B>do not</B> come
39 with 5.004 as standard, you need to
40 <A HREF="ftp://upgrade.redhat.com">upgrade</A><P>
41 <P>In addition to the standard Red Hat distribution you will require the
43 <A HREF="http://www.cpan.org/CPAN.html">CPAN</A> modules: -
47 <LI> MD5-1.7.tar.gz</LI>
48 <LI> Data-Dumper-2.10.tar.gz</LI>
49 <LI> FreezeThaw-0.3.tar.gz</LI>
50 <LI> MLDBM-2.00.tar.gz</LI>
51 <LI> TimeDate-1.08.tar.gz</LI>
52 <LI> IO-1.20.tar.gz</LI>
53 <LI> Net-Telnet-3.02.tar.gz</LI>
54 <LI> Curses-1.05.tar.gz</LI>
55 <LI> Time-HiRes-01.20.tar.gz
60 <P><EM>Do</EM> get the latest versions of these packages and install them
61 but use the above list as the earliest versions usable.
63 <H2><A NAME="ss1.2">1.2 Preparation</A>
66 <P>I will assume that you have already downloaded the latest tarball of
67 the DXSpider software and are ready to install it. I am assuming version
68 1.35 for this section but of course you would use the latest version.
70 <P>Login as root and create a user to run the cluster under. <B><I>UNDER
71 NO CIRCUMSTANCES USE ROOT AS THIS USER!</I></B>. I am going to use
72 the name <EM>sysop</EM>. You can call it anything you wish. Depending
73 on your security requirements you may wish to use an existing user,
74 however this is your own choice.
83 <P>Now set a password for the user ...
89 # Retype new UNIX password:
90 passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully
94 <H2><A NAME="ss1.3">1.3 Installing the software</A>
97 <P>Now to unpack the DX Spider distribution, set symbolic links and group
98 permissions. Copy the tarball to /home/sysop and do the following.
103 # tar xvfz spider-1.35.tar.gz
104 # ln -s ~sysop/spider /spider
105 # groupadd -g 251 spider (or another number)
108 <P>If you do not have the command <EM>groupadd</EM> available to you simply
109 add a line in /etc/group by hand.
113 # vi /etc/group (or your favorite editor)
116 <P>You also need to add some others to the group, including your own callsign
117 (this will be used as an alias) and root. The finished line in /etc/group
118 should look something like this
119 <P><CODE>spider:x:251:sysop,g0vgs,root</CODE>
121 <P>The next step is to set the permissions on the Spider directory tree and files ....
125 # chown -R sysop.spider spider
126 # find . -type d -exec chmod 2775 {} \;
127 # find . -type f -exec chmod 775 {} \;
131 <P>This last step allows various users of the group <EM>spider</EM> to have
132 write access to all the directories. This is not really needed just yet
133 but will be useful when web interfaces start to appear.
135 <P>Finally, you need to fix the permissions on the ax25_call and netrom_call
136 programs. Check where they are with the <EM>locate</EM> command and alter
137 the permissions with the <EM>chmod</EM> command like this ..
141 # chown root ax25_call netrom_call
142 # chmod 4775 ax25_call netrom_call
146 <H2><A NAME="ss1.4">1.4 Setting callsigns etc</A>
149 <P>Now login to your machine as the user you created earlier. In my case that
150 user is called <EM>sysop</EM>. Once logged in, issue the following commands ....
157 $ cp perl/DXVars.pm.issue local/DXVars.pm
159 $ vi DXVars.pm (or your favourite editor)
163 <P>Using the distributed DXVars.pm as a a template, set your cluster callsign,
164 sysop callsign and other user info to suit your own environment. Note that
165 this a perl file which will be parsed and executed as part of the cluster. If
166 you get it wrong then perl will complain when you start the cluster process.
167 It is important only to alter the text of any section. Some of the lines look
168 a little odd. Take this line for example ....
169 <P><CODE>$myemail = "ianmaude\@btinternet.com";</CODE>
171 <P>There appears to be an extra slash in there. However this has to be there
172 for the file to work so leave it in.
174 <P><B>PLEASE USE CAPITAL LETTERS FOR CALLSIGNS</B>
176 <P>DON'T alter the DXVars.pm (or any other file) in /spider/perl, they are
177 overwritten with every release. Any files or commands you place in /spider/local
178 or /spider/local_cmd will automagically be used in preference to the ones in
179 /spider/perl EVEN while the cluster is running!
181 <P>Save the new file and change directory to ../perl ....
189 <P>Now type the following command which creates the basic user file with you as
198 <H2><A NAME="ss1.5">1.5 Starting up for the first time</A>
201 <P>We can now bring spider up for the first time and see if all is well or not!
202 It should look something like this ...
207 DXSpider DX Cluster Version 1.35
208 Copyright (c) 1998 Dirk Koopman G1TLH
210 loading band data ...
211 loading user file system ...
212 starting listener ...
213 reading existing message headers
215 orft we jolly well go ...
219 <P>If all is well then login on another term or console as <EM>sysop</EM> and
220 cd to /spider/perl. Now issue the following command ...
228 <P>This should log you into the cluster as the sysop under the alias callsign we
229 set earlier. In this case the callsign is G0VGS. The cluster callsign is set
230 in the DXVars.pm file in /spider/local. In this case we will assume that this
231 was set as GB7MBC. You should therefore see this when you login ....
235 G0VGS de GB7MBC 19-Nov-1999 2150Z >
238 <P>If you do, congratulations! If not, look over the instructions again, you
239 have probably missed something out. You can shut spider down again with the
248 <P>and both the cluster and the client should return to Linux prompts.
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