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1. What is LysKOM? ================== 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 articles. 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. 2. Documentation ================ 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. 3. Installing or upgrading a LysKOM installation ================================================ 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 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. This only affects the names of a few conferences and the administrator. You can rename them manually once the server is running. 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. 3. Compile it: $ make 4. If you like, you can run the test suite: $ make check 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 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/ Please note that expect-5.43.0 has a bug that prevents it from running the testsuite. A patch that fixes the problem is available here: <ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/lyskom/server/ expect-5.43.0-zero-len-write.patch> Expect version 5.44.1.1 introduced another bug that was fixed in 5.45, so the 5.44 series cannot be used unless the fix is backported. (Debian backported the fix in their 5.44.1.15-3 version.) 5. Create a user that should own the database files. This file assumes that the user is named "lyskom". 6. If you are upgrading, you must stop the running lyskomd, using the installed "komrunning" program: $ su lyskom $ /usr/lyskom/sbin/komrunning stop (If you are upgrading from a version older than 2.1.0, the komrunning program will be residing in /usr/lyskom/bin.) 7. If you are upgrading from 2.0.7 or older to 2.1.0 or newer, run these commands to adjust to the new filesystem layout (see NEWS for a complete list of everything that changed; this only moves the database, config file and log files from the old to the new layout): $ su lyskom $ cd /usr/lyskom $ mv etc/config etc/lyskomd.conf $ mkdir -p var/lyskomd/db $ mv db/* var/lyskomd/db/ $ rmdir db $ mv etc/server-log var/lyskomd.log $ mv etc/lyskomd-log var/lyskomd.stats $ mv etc/memory-usage var/lyskomd.memory $ cp etc/status var/lyskomd/db/status It might be a good idea to remove the old files in bin, or at least move them to a location where you won't run them by mistake. 8. As "lyskom", install it: $ su lyskom $ make install 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/lyskomd.conf, 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. 9. If you are upgrading from 2.0.7 or older to 2.1.0 or newer you need to update the cron entries, so that they run the binaries from sbin instead of bin. Once that is done, you can remove the old etc/status file. 10. 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/sbin/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". 11. If you are upgrading, you must run komrunning again to remove the lock it created: $ su lyskom $ /usr/lyskom/sbin/komrunning start (Despite its name, this does not actually start lyskomd. See the next step.) 12. Wait for updateLysKOM to start the server, or run updateLysKOM manually (as user "lyskom"). You are ready. If you are upgrading from 2.1.0 or 2.1.1 you might see entries similar to this in the log: fparse_read_range_0: discarded out-of-order local number 8 probably introduced by bug 1121 This means that the server has detected an error in the database introduced by 2.1.0 or 2.1.1. The error will be fixed automatically once the affected person logs on. This message is harmless. 13. 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") approximately twice a year. 14. 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: dbck -i 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: dbck -o 2 -F 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 the bug is important for you, please tell us so by voting for it. If you cannot find the bug, please enter a bug report there. If you are unable to use Bugzilla, or if you don't want the information you have to be public knowledge, you can send your bug report to the email address bug-lyskom@lysator.liu.se. The latest release of the server can always be found from ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/lyskom/server/ This file and almost the entire lyskomd server is Copyright (C) 1991-2003 Lysator Academic Computer Association See also the AUTHORS file.