[Dxspider-support] Newbee problems...

[Dirk Koopman]

On Fri, 2001-12-28 at 21:13, Stewart wrote:
> Back at it again. This error...
> >> The name specified is not recognised as an
> >> internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
> ...isn't associated with badwords.pm (although I have copied the files as
> you instruct). That goes fine, and so do the next few lines of code in
> cluster.pl. I did some de-bugging. It occurs during:
> # initial the spot stuff
> Spot->init()

Now, I don't want to appear to be annoying here, but I am wondering both
whether the instructions are clear enough and also whether you have
followed them..

The first thing to be said is that the only real difference between the
unix instructions and the Microsoft (M$) instructions are at the edges.

The basic instructions for installing both systems, in terms of DXSpider
itself are very nearly identical. 

The 'unix' instructions ARE the instructions. 

There are slightly different procedures for installing perl and very
different ones for ax25 related things. These are the operating system
dependant parts. The DXSpider parts are, in principle, identical for
both systems.

The major differences are to do with filenaming conventions:-

/spider = c:\spider
/spider/perl = c:\spider\perl

etc.

winclient.pl doesn't work in non-Win9x systems. I don't know why. This
is actually a perl problem (maybe made worse by the way I am using it,
but still a perl problem). Apparently you cannot use Curses in a windows
environment (but opinions appear to differ about that too) so the
console.pl is not available in M$. This a source of sadness but there is
currently nothing I personally (with my lack of M$ programming
knowledge) can do about it.

In anycase until someone writes a 'proper' M$ client the way forward is
to use a decent telnet client (I recommend 'putty' (go to Google and
type 'putty' in the search box, the first answer is the website and the
second, the download area)) and login as the 'sysop' callsign,
connecting to localhost on the port you are listening to (7300 by
default). 

Another good possibility may well be to use a copy of DXTelnet (or near
equiv) connected to localhost:7300 (or whatever), logging in as the
'sysop' callsign. This should do quite a reasonable job as well.

When I say the 'sysop' callsign, I mean the callsign you assigned to
$myalias in DXVars.pm.

There seems to be a lot of extra validation I have to do to make the
installation more bombproof. I shall be doing this over the next while.
In the meantime, please accept my apologies for the fact that this is an
experimental, live, constantly (hopefully improving) unix program that
mostly runs under Microsoft operating systems as well.

Although I absolutely want to help EVERYBODY who runs the program, on
whatever operating system it is being used on, I have comparitively
little experience in M$ systems. I make decisions which may prove
problematic for M$ users. This is NOT deliberate and I WILL fix it (if I
can).

Badwords.pm has nothing to do with the particular areas that you are
having trouble with as such. 

When you install this software it is important that you follow the
instructions. The bits that don't apply you can ignore (things to do
with permissions and setting up users [although I can see a case for the
the equivalent under NT based systems]). 

Having said that you MUST create the directories it says you should. You
MUST copy the files to c:\spider\local as it says you should and you
MUST run the programs (c:\spider\perl\create_sysop.pl) that it says you
should. It will not work without.

I would strongly recommend that you start again, and check that all the
directories are created correctly, that you are allowed to write into
them (if that is an issue under NT), run create_sysop.pl again and then
come back and report.

HNY

Dirk G1TLH