Last modified: 13 January 2001 by Ian Maude, G0VGS
This section describes the installation of DX Spider v1.35 on a RedHat Linux Distribution. 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 HOWTO on the DXSpider website.
I am assuming a general knowledge of Linux and its commands. You should know how to use tar and how to edit files using your favourite editor.
The crucial ingredient for all of this is Perl 5.004. Now I know Perl 5.005 is out and this will almost certainly work with it, but RedHat 5.1 comes with 5.004. Be Warned, earlier versions of RedHat do not come with 5.004 as standard, you need to upgrade
In addition to the standard Red Hat distribution you will require the following CPAN modules: -
Do get the latest versions of these packages and install them but use the above list as the earliest versions usable.
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 1.35 for this section but of course you would use the latest version.
Login as root and create a user to run the cluster under. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES USE ROOT AS THIS USER!. I am going to use the name sysop. 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.
# adduser -m sysop
Now set a password for the user ...
# passwd sysop
# New UNIX password:
# Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully
Now to unpack the DX Spider distribution, set symbolic links and group permissions. Copy the tarball to /home/sysop and do the following.
# cd ~sysop
# tar xvfz spider-1.35.tar.gz
# ln -s ~sysop/spider /spider
# groupadd -g 251 spider (or another number)
If you do not have the command groupadd available to you simply add a line in /etc/group by hand.
# vi /etc/group (or your favorite editor)
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
spider:x:251:sysop,g0vgs,root
The next step is to set the permissions on the Spider directory tree and files ....
# chown -R sysop.spider spider
# find . -type d -exec chmod 2775 {} \;
# find . -type f -exec chmod 775 {} \;
This last step allows various users of the group spider 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.
Finally, you need to fix the permissions on the ax25_call and netrom_call programs. Check where they are with the locate command and alter the permissions with the chmod command like this ..
# chown root ax25_call netrom_call
# chmod 4775 ax25_call netrom_call
Now login to your machine as the user you created earlier. In my case that user is called sysop. Once logged in, issue the following commands ....
$ cd /spider
$ mkdir local
$ mkdir local_cmd
$ cp perl/DXVars.pm.issue local/DXVars.pm
$ cd local
$ vi DXVars.pm (or your favourite editor)
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 ....
$myemail = "ianmaude\@btinternet.com";
There appears to be an extra slash in there. However this has to be there for the file to work so leave it in.
PLEASE USE CAPITAL LETTERS FOR CALLSIGNS
DON'T alter the DXVars.pm (or any other 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!
Save the new file and change directory to ../perl ....
$ cd ../perl
Now type the following command which creates the basic user file with you as the sysop.
$ create_sysop.pl
We can now bring spider up for the first time and see if all is well or not! It should look something like this ...
$ cluster.pl
DXSpider DX Cluster Version 1.35
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 ...
If all is well then login on another term or console as sysop and cd to /spider/perl. Now issue the following command ...
$ client.pl
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 ....
G0VGS de GB7MBC 19-Nov-1999 2150Z >
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 ....
shutdown
and both the cluster and the client should return to Linux prompts.