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16 <H2><A NAME="s1">1. Installation (Original version by Iain Phillips, G0RDI)</A></H2>
18 <H2><A NAME="ss1.1">1.1 Introduction</A>
21 <P>This section describes the installation of DX Spider v1.35 on a
22 <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com">RedHat</A> Linux Distribution.
23 I do not intend to try and cover the installation of Linux or the setup
24 of the AX25 utilities. If you need help on this then read Iains original
26 <A HREF="http://www.dxcluster.org">DXSpider</A>
29 <P>I am assuming a general knowledge of Linux and its commands. You should
30 know how to use <EM>tar</EM> and how to edit files using your favourite editor.
32 <P>The crucial ingredient for all of this is
33 <A HREF="http://www.perl.org">Perl 5.004</A>. Now I know Perl 5.005
34 is out and this will almost certainly work with it, but
35 <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com">RedHat 5.1</A> comes with 5.004.
36 <EM>Be Warned</EM>, earlier versions of
37 <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com">RedHat</A> <B>do not</B> come
38 with 5.004 as standard, you need to
39 <A HREF="ftp://upgrade.redhat.com">upgrade</A><P>
40 <P>In addition to the standard Red Hat distribution you will require the
42 <A HREF="http://www.cpan.org/CPAN.html">CPAN</A> modules: -
46 <LI> MD5-1.7.tar.gz</LI>
47 <LI> Data-Dumper-2.10.tar.gz</LI>
48 <LI> FreezeThaw-0.3.tar.gz</LI>
49 <LI> MLDBM-2.00.tar.gz</LI>
50 <LI> TimeDate-1.08.tar.gz</LI>
51 <LI> IO-1.20.tar.gz</LI>
52 <LI> Net-Telnet-3.02.tar.gz</LI>
53 <LI> Curses-1.05.tar.gz</LI>
54 <LI> Time-HiRes-01.20.tar.gz
59 <P><EM>Do</EM> get the latest versions of these packages and install them
60 but use the above list as the earliest versions usable.
62 <H2><A NAME="ss1.2">1.2 Preparation</A>
65 <P>I will assume that you have already downloaded the latest tarball of
66 the DXSpider software and are ready to install it. I am assuming version
67 1.35 for this section but of course you would use the latest version.
69 <P>Login as root and create a user to run the cluster under. <B><I>UNDER
70 NO CIRCUMSTANCES USE ROOT AS THIS USER!</I></B>. I am going to use
71 the name <EM>sysop</EM>. You can call it anything you wish. Depending
72 on your security requirements you may wish to use an existing user,
73 however this is your own choice.
82 <P>Now set a password for the user ...
88 # Retype new UNIX password:
89 passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully
93 <H2><A NAME="ss1.3">1.3 Installing the software</A>
96 <P>Now to unpack the DX Spider distribution, set symbolic links and group
97 permissions. Copy the tarball to /home/sysop and do the following.
102 # tar xvfz spider-1.35.tar.gz
103 # ln -s ~sysop/spider /spider
104 # groupadd -g 251 spider (or another number)
107 <P>If you do not have the command <EM>groupadd</EM> available to you simply
108 add a line in /etc/group by hand.
112 # vi /etc/group (or your favorite editor)
115 <P>You also need to add some others to the group, including your own callsign
116 (this will be used as an alias) and root. The finished line in /etc/group
117 should look something like this
118 <P><CODE>spider:x:251:sysop,g0vgs,root</CODE>
120 <P>The next step is to set the permissions on the Spider directory tree and files ....
124 # chown -R sysop.spider spider
125 # find . -type d -exec chmod 2775 {} \;
126 # find . -type f -exec chmod 775 {} \;
130 <P>This last step allows various users of the group <EM>spider</EM> to have
131 write access to all the directories. This is not really needed just yet
132 but will be useful when web interfaces start to appear.
134 <P>Finally, you need to fix the permissions on the ax25_call and netrom_call
135 programs. Check where they are with the <EM>locate</EM> command and alter
136 the permissions with the <EM>chmod</EM> command like this ..
140 # chown root ax25_call netrom_call
141 # chmod 4775 ax25_call netrom_call
145 <H2><A NAME="ss1.4">1.4 Setting callsigns etc</A>
148 <P>Now login to your machine as the user you created earlier. In my case that
149 user is called <EM>sysop</EM>. Once logged in, issue the following commands ....
156 $ cp perl/DXVars.pm.issue local/DXVars.pm
158 $ vi DXVars.pm (or your favourite editor)
162 <P>Using the distributed DXVars.pm as a a template, set your cluster callsign,
163 sysop callsign and other user info to suit your own environment. Note that
164 this a perl file which will be parsed and executed as part of the cluster. If
165 you get it wrong then perl will complain when you start the cluster process.
166 It is important only to alter the text of any section. Some of the lines look
167 a little odd. Take this line for example ....
168 <P><CODE>$myemail = "ianmaude\@btinternet.com";</CODE>
170 <P>There appears to be an extra slash in there. However this has to be there
171 for the file to work so leave it in.
173 <P><B>PLEASE USE CAPITAL LETTERS FOR CALLSIGNS</B>
175 <P>DON'T alter the DXVars.pm (or any other file) in /spider/perl, they are
176 overwritten with every release. Any files or commands you place in /spider/local
177 or /spider/local_cmd will automagically be used in preference to the ones in
178 /spider/perl EVEN while the cluster is running!
180 <P>Save the new file and change directory to ../perl ....
188 <P>Now type the following command which creates the basic user file with you as
197 <H2><A NAME="ss1.5">1.5 Starting up for the first time</A>
200 <P>We can now bring spider up for the first time and see if all is well or not!
201 It should look something like this ...
206 DXSpider DX Cluster Version 1.35
207 Copyright (c) 1998 Dirk Koopman G1TLH
209 loading band data ...
210 loading user file system ...
211 starting listener ...
212 reading existing message headers
214 orft we jolly well go ...
218 <P>If all is well then login on another term or console as <EM>sysop</EM> and
219 cd to /spider/perl. Now issue the following command ...
227 <P>This should log you into the cluster as the sysop under the alias callsign we
228 set earlier. In this case the callsign is G0VGS. The cluster callsign is set
229 in the DXVars.pm file in /spider/local. In this case we will assume that this
230 was set as GB7MBC. You should therefore see this when you login ....
234 G0VGS de GB7MBC 19-Nov-1999 2150Z >
237 <P>If you do, congratulations! If not, look over the instructions again, you
238 have probably missed something out. You can shut spider down again with the
247 <P>and both the cluster and the client should return to Linux prompts.
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