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LysKOM has a lot in common with netnews, but LysKOM is intended for
local discussions (instead of worldwide). LysKOM consists of a server
process and several client programs. The server process maintains a
data base of persons, conferences and articles. The clients connect
to the server and let the users browse the database for unread
LysKOM is much faster than netnews - almost as fast as irc or ICQ! -
but like in netnews the articles are saved so that you don't have to
be logged in to receive the news.
As mentioned above, you need a client to be able to do something
useful with LysKOM. At this time there are several clients available.
The most popular client is written in elisp and requires Gnu Emacs or
XEmacs to run. There are also web clients and a MS Windows client. See
<URL:http://www.lysator.liu.se/lyskom/> for availability of clients.
A LysKOM server has been running at Lysator since July 25th 1990. You
can connect to it and test it out if you like to get a feel for what
LysKOM is. The hostname of the server is kom.lysator.liu.se. Of
course, you need a client to test it. On that particular server most
of the discussions are done in Swedish.
See the file NEWS for information about changes, or the various
ChangeLogs for more detailed information.
The lyskom-server distribution, of which this README file is a part,
only contains the server. You must obtain the clients separately.
doc/lyskomd.texi Instructions for maintaining a LysKOM server.
Also contains a chapter for hackers that want
to extend or modify the server.
doc/Protocol-A.texi Documentation of the protocol used between the
clients and the LysKOM server.
NEWS What is new in this release?
README This file.
INSTALL Generic install instructions (see below for
lyskomd-specific instructions).
HACKING Information that may be useful if you want to
change lyskomd.
COPYING The license for lyskomd (GNU GPL).
AUTHORS List of authors.
1. Select a location where you want the LysKOM database and server
binaries to reside. We recommend something like /usr/lyskom
(the default), /usr/local/lyskom or /opt/lyskom.
WARNING: Do not use /usr/local as the prefix! lyskomd was
written with the assumption that it should have a prefix of its
own, and it creates files such as etc/pid under the prefix you
use. (Fixing this is on the TODO list.)
WARNING: Do not place the database on an NFS-mounted directory
that is mounted with "intr"! If you do, the system calls that
writes the database may return a failure and set errno to
EINTR. lyskomd does not yet handle that appropriately. See bug
847 for more details and the current status of this problem.
<URL:http://bugzilla.lysator.liu.se/show_bug.cgi?id=847>.
2. From the top directory of the server sources, run configure:
$ ./configure -C --prefix=/usr/local/lyskom
The prefix defaults to /usr/lyskom. There are many other
options that you can give to the configure script. Most of them
are documented in the generic INSTALL file. There are a few
LysKOM-specific options, but except for --with-language they are
only useful if you want to debug lyskomd. See the HACKING file
for more information about them.
You can use --with-language=sv to select that a Swedish database
should be installed (if no previous database exists). By
default, an English database will be installed.
The "-C" option tells configure to cache configuration values in
config.cache. Since the lyskomd distribution uses more than one
configure scripts, this will speed up the configure process.
There should be no unexpected errors. It is normal that some
unsupported tests and expected errors are reported. You need
DejaGnu 1.4.2 and Python to run the test suite. DejaGnu in turn
needs TCL and expect. They can be downloaded the software from:
ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/dejagnu/dejagnu-1.4.2.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.scriptics.com/pub/tcl/tcl8_3/tcl8.3.4.tar.gz
http://expect.nist.gov/src/expect-5.38.0.tar.gz
http://www.python.org/download/
5. Create a user that should own the database files. This file
assumes that the user is named "lyskom".
6. As "lyskom", install it:
This will install the server and documentation. It will also
install an empty database, unless it finds an old database. The
empty database will contain four standard conferences and one
privileged user, "Administrator (for) LysKOM", with password
"gazonk". See "Database versions" below if you have an old
database -- you may have to convert it.
A sample config file will be installed in etc/config, unless
it already exists. If you are upgrading to a new version of
lyskomd you may have to edit the config file. The current
sample config file is in run-support/config.
The configuration for aux-items will be installed in
etc/aux-items.conf. It will be overwritten even if it has been
edited locally.
7. Make sure updateLysKOM is run regularly by user lyskom. The
recommended way is to add a line such as this to the cron file
of the lyskom user:
0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * /usr/lyskom/bin/updateLysKOM
If your cron does not support per-user cron files you will have
to arrange this in some other way.
The updateLysKOM will occasionally output a message to stderr
and exit with a non-zero exit status. It expects the cron to
send a mail to a LysKOM administrator with the output from the
program. Most sane cron systems does so. You may want to
create a .forward file for user "lyskom".
8. Wait for updateLysKOM to start the server, or run updateLysKOM
manually (as user "lyskom"). You are ready.
9. Read the documentation in doc/lyskomd.info, especially the
Administration chapter. It tells you how to shut down and
restart lyskomd. LysKOM needs your attention once in a while.
Here at Lysator we expunge old texts (with "dbck -g")
10. We would like to know about where LysKOM servers are running.
If you start a server, please mail "kom@lysator.liu.se", and
tell us that you are running a server. (You are very welcome to
tell more about you, but that's not necessary).
4. Database Versions -- you may have to convert the database
============================================================
The database format has not changed in the 2.0.1 through 2.0.6
releases. However, there was a bug in the 2.0.0 release that may have
caused the database to contain errors. Most of them can be fixed by
dbck, but some cannot yet be fixed; a release with an improved dbck
might be created in the future. Please run this command if you are
upgrading from the 2.0.0 release:
lyskomd version 2.0.0 uses a new file format for the database. If you
have been running earlier versions of lyskomd you must convert the
database by issuing the following command:
You must, of course, use version 2.0.0 or later of dbck to do the
conversion. You can convert back the database to the old format with
dbck -o 1 -F (for lyskomd version 1.9.0)
dbck -o 0 -F (for ancient lyskomd versions)
5. Contact information
======================
If you find a bug, please take a moment to check the bug database at
http://bugzilla.lysator.liu.se/ to make sure that it isn't an old
bug. If you find your bug there, and feel that you have more
information about it, please make an "additional comment". If you
cannot find the bug, please enter a bug report there.
If you are unable to use Bugzilla, you can send your bug reports to
the email address bug-lyskom@lysator.liu.se.
The latest release of the server can always be found from
This file and almost the entire lyskomd server is
Copyright (C) 1991-2002 Lysator Academic Computer Association