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14 <h2>Connecting to other Clusters</h2>
19 <address><a href="mailto:djk@tobit.co.uk">Dirk Koopman G1TLH</a></address>
21 <!-- Created: Sun Dec 13 20:25:14 GMT 1998 -->
23 Last modified: Tue Apr 10 00:21:34 BST 2001
25 <p>At the moment, anybody can connect inwards at any time from outside, either by ax25 or by
26 telnet (assuming you have followed the instructions in <a href="install.html">installation</a>
27 instructions. However, in order to connect outwards, you will need to create <em>connect</em> scripts.
29 <p><em>Connect</em> scripts live in the <tt>/spider/connect</tt> directory and are simple ascii scripts
30 that are written using a normal editor. There are a couple of examples in the issue directory.
32 <p>Here are a few of basic types, first a telnet connection where the
33 client is set up in the passwd file thus:-
35 gb7djk:x:1372:1291::/home/gb7djk:/usr/bin/perl /spider/perl/client.pl gb7djk telnet
37 and the connect script would be:-
41 connect telnet dirkl.tobit.co.uk
46 <p>For a connect that requires a login and execution of the programs
47 from a normal shell, do:-
51 connect telnet dirkl.tobit.co.uk
54 '\$' 'cd /spider/perl'
55 # set the line to prevent echoing, leaving this out will
56 # confuse whole networks for hours!
58 # tell GB7DJK that you are GB7DJK-1
59 '\$' '/spider/src/client gb7djk-1 telnet'
60 # tell GB7DJK-1 that it is connected to GB7DJK
61 # you can leave this out if you call this script 'gb7djk'
68 abort (Busy|Sorry|Fail)
69 # don't forget to chmod 4775 netrom_call!
70 connect ax25 /usr/sbin/netrom_call bbs gb7djk-0 g1tlh-0
77 The <tt>-0</tt> ssid is important if you want it to work reliably. Obviously if you are
78 using a different ssid then you would use that.
80 <p>A AGW Engine example would be very similar and look like this:-
83 abort (Busy|Sorry|Fail)
91 <p>A connection is started manually by typing in <tt>connect <scriptname></tt> on a sysop enabled
92 <tt>client.pl</tt> session. For example:-
94 G1TLH de GB7DJK 13-Dec-1998 2041Z > connect gb7djk-1
95 connection to GB7DJK-1 started
96 G1TLH de GB7DJK 13-Dec-1998 2043Z >
99 <p>You can watch the progress of the connection (if you have <tt>connect</tt>
100 debugging enabled [<tt>set/debug connect</tt>]) on the
101 <tt>cluster.pl</tt> screen and you should see something like this:-
103 <- D G1TLH connect gb7djk-1
104 -> D G1TLH connection to GB7DJK-1 started
105 -> D G1TLH G1TLH de GB7DJK 13-Dec-1998 2046Z >
107 CONNECT sort: telnet command: dirkl.tobit.co.uk
108 CHAT "login" -> "gb7djk"
110 Red Hat Linux release 5.1 (Manhattan)
111 Kernel 2.0.35 on an i586
115 CHAT "word" -> "gb7djk"
119 received "Password: "
121 Connected to GB7DJK-1, starting normal protocol
122 <- O GB7DJK-1 telnet
124 GB7DJK-1 channel func state 0 -> init
126 <- D GB7DJK-1 Last login: Sun Dec 13 17:59:56 from dirk1
127 <- D GB7DJK-1 PC38^GB7DJK-1^~
128 <- D GB7DJK-1 PC18^ 1 nodes, 0 local / 1 total users Max users 0 Uptime 0 00:00^5447^~
132 <p>The connect scripts consist of lines which start with the
133 following keywords or symbols:-
137 <li><b>#</b> All lines starting with a <b>#</b> are
138 ignored, as are wholly blank lines.
141 <li><b>timeout</b> followed by a number is the number of
142 seconds to wait for a command to complete. If there is no
143 <b>timeout</b> specified in the script then the default is 60
147 <li><b>abort</b> is a regular expression containing one or
148 more strings to look for to abort a connection. This is a perl
149 regular expression and is executed ignoring case.
152 <li><b>connect</b> followed by <b>ax25</b>, <b>telnet</b> or <b>agw</b>
153 and some type dependent information.
156 <b>telnet</b> connection, there can be up to two parameters,
157 the first is the ip address or hostname of the computer you
158 wish to connect to and the second is the port number you want
159 to use (this can be left out if it is a normal telnet
162 <p>In the case of an <b>ax25</b> session then this would
163 normally be a call to <tt>/usr/sbin/ax25_call</tt> or
164 <tt>/usr/sbin/netrom_call</tt> as in the example above. It is your
165 responsibility to get your node and other ax25 parameters to
166 work before going down this route!
168 <p>For <b>agw</b> connections you will need a port number (starting
169 from 1) and the callsign of the first "hop" along the way.
172 <li><b>'</b> is the delimiting character for a word or
173 phrase of an expect/send line in a <tt>chat</tt> type
174 script. The words/phrases normally come in pairs, either can
175 be empty. Each line reads input from the connection until it
176 sees the string (or perl regular expression) contained in the
177 left hand string. If the left hand string is empty then it
178 doesn't read or wait for anything. The comparison is done
181 <p>When the left hand string has found what it is looking (if
182 it is) then the right hand string is sent to the connection.
184 <p>This process is repeated for every line of <tt>chat</tt> script.
187 <li><b>client</b> starts the connection, put the arguments
188 you would want here if you were starting the client program
189 manually. You only need this if the script has a different
190 name to the callsign you are trying to connect to (i.e. you
191 have a script called <tt>other</tt> which actually connects to
192 <tt>GB7DJK-1</tt> [instead of a script called
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