[Dxspider-support] Baffled

[Dirk Koopman]

On Sat, 2001-11-03 at 14:31, David A Wilson wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> A subtitle to this message could very well be "Someone, PLEASE, Adopt a
> Dummy".

join the club :-)

> 
> Have two nearly identical AMD K6-2's networked (on the same MB).   One at
> 350 mhz, the other at 500.  One with 128meg ram, the other with 256 meg. 
> 30 gig HD, 40 gig HD.  2xCDRom, 50xCDRom.  One with sound, the other
> without.  Both run WinME & have 3-1/2" drives.
> 
> One has Spider version 1.47 build 50.247 running for the past 2-1/2
> months through AGWPE / tnc to local logins - AX25.  Been working great,
> only a couple of lockups or crashes.  This machine is in the garage
> (doubles as shack).  This machine has no modem or phone access.  Programs
> I run: 1> AGWPE, 2> perl cluster.pl, 3> perl winclient.pl..  Node is
> N1HEJ, sysop is N4DW.  I get a response to the command "who":
> 
>   Callsign Type      Started           Name     Ave RTT Link
>       K4KU USER      28-Oct-2001 1547Z sherman a.
>      N1HEJ NODE DXSP 26-Oct-2001 2250Z Dave
>       N4DW USER      28-Oct-2001 0114Z Dave             127.0.0.1
> 

1.47 is known to work quite well. 

> Second has Spider version 1.48 build 56.765 running since last weekend. 
> Have finally gotten this one to where it is acting like a cluster.  This
> machine is in the house and has modem and phone line.  I can connect to
> telnet://wr3d.dxcluster.net:7000 with no difficulty from "START", "RUN".
> (this was automatically set up when I clicked on something while reading
> through the Spider literature on line).  Again, I run: 1> AGWPE, 2> perl
> cluster.pl, 3> perl winclient.pl..  Node is N4DW, sysop is N4DW-1.  (Hmm,
> see probable conflict).  This morning is the first I've been able to get
> a response to "who": (please don't ask what I did to finally get that to
> happen)
> 
>   Callsign Type      Started           Name     Ave RTT Link
>       N4DW NODE DXSP  3-Nov-2001 1307Z Dave
>     N4DW-1 USER       3-Nov-2001 1312Z Dave             127.0.0.1
> N4DW-1 de N4DW  3-Nov-2001 1322Z >
> 
> I note the two IP addresses are the same and know this cannot be, but
> don't know where to make the change(s?) in one to something like
> 127.0.0.2.

Ah, IP networking lesson 9a:-

127.0.0.1 is 'localhost' or possibly 'localhost.localdomain' for the
really pedantic.

It is a requirement that all machines running IP shall have this address
available for use. It is guaranteed that this address is accessible by
all processes on a particular machine and is NOT ROUTED outside that
machine. 

In otherwords: localhost means 'this' machine ONLY. Every machine has a
localhost and it is always 127.0.0.1. This means that it is absolutely
normal that you would see the results above. [for the pedants amongst
you I know that there is more to this - but all that is irrelevant
here].

> 
> I have been unable to get console.pl to run on either machine.  Saw a
> thread about downloading curses 1.06, did so, but don't have a clue where
> it needs to be, although I put from the download into /spider/local based
> on seeing what I believe to be a path definition somewhere, possibly
> console.pl.  Also note that console.pl is looking for curses 1.05, tried
> changing that to no avail.
> 
> Will console.pl run under windows?

No - and it says so in the instructions. It is likely that winclient.pl
is going to go away as well as it only works on win9x derivatives of M$
and not NT derived ones.

The 'approved' way of connecting as 'sysop' is to connect to 'localhost'
port whatever and login as your sysop callsign ($DXVars::myalias). This
will work across all platforms linux or M$.

> I used to think I was so durned ignorant I couldn't be confused, now it
> seems like I'm on the cutting edge of confused.

This is never hard in my experience, so I wouldn't worry about it, we
have all been there.

> Understanding the theory of operation a little better is my first goal,
> then I can get on to things like:
> 1>Logging into N1HEJ from the pc inside
> 2>Using the modem inside, allow N1HEJ to connect to a telnet node like
> wr3d.
> 3>If that is not possible, then have N4DW connect to the telnet node and
> have N4DW & N1HEJ on the network talking together.
> 
> When I execute cluster.pl on the inside machine (N4DW) I get:  (note the
> one "bad command or file name" msg)
> (I also recall being told to ignore the first two errors)
> 
> C:\spider\perl>perl cluster.pl
> "EINPROGRESS" is not exported by the Errno module at /spider/perl/Msg.pm
> line 53
> 
> "EWOULDBLOCK" is not exported by the Errno module at /spider/perl/Msg.pm
> line 53
> 

THESE ARE NORMAL ON ALL M$ MACHINES (for the record)

Now for a few recommendations:-

Firstly: copy c:\spider\perl\Listeners.pm to c:\spider\local and
uncomment the line containing ['0.0.0.0', 7300].

Secondly: get http://www.dxcluster.org/download/CVSlatest.tgz and unzip
it over the top of c:\spider. That build of 1.48 is not very good.

Thirdly: you should change the callsigns of your nodes so that they are
unique and NOT one that you are going to login as a user on.  

I would recommend say N4DW-2 for one node and N4DW-3 for the other. You
can use N4DW for $myalias for both machines but I recommend that you
don't - have N4DW for your favorite and N4DW-1 for the other. 

When you have changed the callsigns in c:\spider\local\DXVars.pm then
run perl C:\spider\perl\update_sysop.pl on BOTH machines (having stopped
the nodes first). THIS IS VITAL!!!!!

Fourthly: Start up a sysop console and declare the 'other' node as a
spider node ie on N4DW-2 do: set/spider N4DW-3 and on N4DW-3 do:
set/spider N4DW-2. 

Whichever is going to be the node that connects to WR3D do: set/spider
WR3D.

Then tell me which of these nodes you want to connect to WR3D. I will
then set up WR3D to accept incoming calls from you. You will need to
create a file in c:\spider\connect\wr3d containing:

timeout 30
connect telnet wr3d.dxcluster.net 7000
'login:' 'N4DW-2'

and to reconnect automatically put this line:-

* * * * * start_connect('wr3d') unless connected('wr3d')

in c:\spider\local_cmd\crontab (causing a attempt to made once a minute
if wr3d is not connected)

Finally, install linux on one of your two machines. I recommend SuSE 7.3
for Ham radio use (although I use RedHat myself because that is what I
am used to). I cannot really see the point of have two M$ boxes running
my stuff and you will have a much better experience running linux. 

Dirk G1TLH