* Fixed a few more references to the deprecated uncnsrd.mt-kisco.ny.us name

[citadel.git] / citadel / docs / install.txt

                      Citadel/UX Installation Procedure
                 See copyright.txt for copyright information
 
 
 OVERVIEW
 
   Citadel/UX is an advanced, multiuser, client/server, room-based BBS
program.  It is designed to handle the needs of both small dialup systems and
large-scale Internet-connected systems.  It was originally developed on an
Altos system running Xenix, and has been installed and tested on various
Unix and Unix-like platforms.  The author's current development environment
(and BBS) is a Linux/GNU system.  The current distribution includes:
  
    - The Citadel/UX server (this is the back end that does all processing)
    - A text-based client program designed with the traditional Citadel "look
      and feel" (room prompts, dot commands, and the like)
    - A networker that can share rooms and email between multiple systems.
      Replication can be performed via TCP/IP or any external transport.
    - Setup programs
    - A rich set of utilities for system administration and maintenance
    - Documentation
 
 Some knowledge of the Unix system is necessary to install and manage the
system. It is mandatory that the sysop have "root" access to the operating
system. The following are required to install Citadel/UX:

    - A Unix operating system (Linux, BSD, Solaris, DEC Unix, etc.)
    - C compiler (such as gcc or egcs) and "make"
    - POSIX threads (the "pthreads" library)
    - TCP/IP
    - The "gdbm" library
    - Enough disk space to hold all of the programs and data
 
 If you are running Citadel/UX on a Linux system, it is STRONGLY recommended
that you use a version based on glibc v2 (also called libc6).  libc5 contains
a number of thread safety problems.  Furthermore, most modern Linux
distributions have libc6, pthreads, gdbm, and the compiler already installed
and integrated for you.
  
    
 NOW AVAILABLE:
 
    - "WebCit", a gateway program to allow full access to Citadel/UX BBS's
      via the World Wide Web.  Interactive access through any Web browser.
  
 COMING SOON: 
  
    - Newer and better GUI based clients.
   
 
  
 EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE...

   Hopefully you've unpacked the distribution archive into its own directory.
This is the directory in which all Citadel files are located and in which all
BBS activity will take place. Several subdirectories have already been created
during the unpacking process, and others may be created by the software if
needed.
 
   Make sure you have the "gdbm" record manager installed on your system, and
that you have installed the libraries and headers required to compile gdbm
programs.  Likewise, if your operating system uses a separate library to
support POSIX threads, make sure that library is installed as well.
   
  
 THE BBS LOGIN
  
   There will be one account in /etc/passwd which all BBS users will use to
login to the system. This account is typically called "bbs" or "citadel" or
something to that effect. You will tell Citadel what the user-id of that
account is, and when someone logs in under that account, Citadel will prompt
for a user name.

The BBS login should have a unique uid. The home directory should be the
one your BBS resides in (in this example we will use /usr/citadel) and the
shell should be either "citadel" in that directory, or a script that will start
up citadel (you may wish to set up an external text editor; see below).
Example:
 
 bbs::100:1:BBS Login:/usr/citadel:/usr/citadel/citadel
  
 When you run setup later, you will be required to tell it what the BBS
login's numeric user ID is, so it knows what user to run as.  If you create
an account called bbs, guest, or citadel, the setup program will automatically
pick up the user ID by default.

  For all other users in /etc/passwd, Citadel will automatically set up an
account using the "full name" field. No password is required, since it
assumes that if a user is logged in, he/she has already entered a password.
Note that this does have to be enabled at compile time (see ENABLE_AUTOLOGIN
in the Makefile).  If such an account needs to be accessed remotely (such as
from client software), these users can use *either* their Citadel login name
or their login name on the host computer, and their password on the host
computer.
   
  
 COMPILING THE PROGRAMS
   
 
   You can easily compile Citadel with the following commands:
 
   ./configure
   make
   make install
 
   The 'configure' script will generate a Makefile from the Makefile.in, and
it will also write the file "sysdep.h" to your Citadel directory.  Please do
not edit sysdep.h or Makefile.in yourself.  The configure script will figure
out your system dependencies and set everything correctly.
 
   By default, the Citadel system will install in /usr/local/citadel.  If you
wish to place it in a different directory, you can instead do:
 
   ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/citadel      (or whatever)
   
  
   File permissions are always a bother to work with. You don't want the
board to crash because someone couldn't access a file, but you also don't
want shell users peeking into the binaries to do things like reading others'
mail, finding private rooms, etc.   The Citadel server needs to be started
as root in order to bind to a privileged port, but as soon as its
initialization is finished, it changes its user ID to your BBS user ID in
order to avoid security holes.
 
 
 UPGRADING
 
  Upgrading to a new version uses the same build procedure as compiling the
program for a fresh install, except that you want to do "make install-exec"
instead of "make install".  This will overwrite the programs but not your
data.  Be sure to shut down citserver during this process!
   
     
 THE CITADEL.RC FILE
 
 This is a change from the way things were done before.  All client-side setup
is in a "citadel.rc" file.  The standard client looks for this file in:
 1. $HOME/.citadelrc
 2. /usr/local/lib/citadel.rc
 3. <compiled BBSDIR>/citadel.rc
 
 The next couple of sections deal with client-side configuration.
 
 USING AN EXTERNAL EDITOR FOR MESSAGES
 
 Citadel/UX has a built-in message editor.  However, you can also use your
favorite text editor to write messages.  To do this you simply put a line in
your citadel.rc file like:

editor=/usr/bin/vi
 
 ...would make Citadel call the vi editor when using the .<E>nter <E>ditor
command.  You can also make it the default editor for the <E>nter command by
editing the citadel.rc file.  (WARNING: external editors on public systems
can create a security hole.  Make sure there is absolutely no way for users
to drop into the shell from the editor, or save files other than the temp file
they are editing!)

 Using this mechanism, shell users can pick their favorite editor for Citadel.
BBS users can use external editors too; just have the bbs login call a script
that sets the variables and then calls citadel.  I used to recommend using
an external editor as the default, but the built-in editor is now a bit more
robust, so the use of an external editor is definitely optional.  By the
way, be VERY careful what editor you choose and how you set up its options.
Giving the general public to an editor like vi or emacs can open up lots of
security holes.


 PRINTING MESSAGES
 
 Citadel/UX can send messages to a printer, or just about anywhere else in
your system.  The variable PRINTCMD in citadel.rc specifies what command you
use to print.  Text is sent to the standard input (stdin) of the print command.
 
 So if you did this:
 
printcmd="nl|pr|lpr -dlocal"
 
 ...that would add line numbers, then paginate, then print on the printer
named "local".  There's tons of stuff you can do with this feature.  For
example, you could use a command like "cat >>$HOME/archive" to save copies
of important messages in a textfile.


 URL VIEWING

urlcmd=netscape -remote "openURL(%s)"

...that would mean that typing 'u' in a room prompt after seeing a url in
one of the room's messages netscape will open up for you and run that url.

 SETUP AND LOGIN
  
   Before logging in for the first time, you must run the setup program.  Type
"./setup" to begin this procedure.
 
   The setup program will ask you what directory to place your data files in.
You can use this functionality to keep your programs and data in different
directories, or to run more than one BBS on the same computer.  If you don't
use the default directory (the one specified in the Makefile), remember to
specify the directory name again when you start up the server later on.
   
   If you've used older versions of Citadel/UX before, you'll notice that the
setup program does much less than it did before.  It won't create any empty
data files; that's now done automatically by the server the first time it
starts.  It also asks only a few questions; that's because the rest of the
global configuration is now done from within Citadel.
  
      
 PREPARING TO START THE SERVER
  
   The files /etc/services and /etc/inittab must be modified in order to run
the Citadel server.  The setup program will perform the correct modifications
for you if you allow it to.  If you'd prefer to do it manually, or if you're
interested in what these modifications are, then read on...
 
   Before you can use Citadel, you must define the "citadel" service to your 
system.  This is accomplished by adding a line to your /etc/services file that
looks something like this:
 
 citadel                504/tcp                 # Citadel/UX Server
   
 504 is the port number officially designated by the IANA for use by Citadel. 
There should not be any need to use a different port number, unless you are 
running multiple BBS's on the same computer and therefore need a different
port for each one.
 
  The next step is to arrange for the server to start.  The "citserver"
program is the main Citadel server.  Before we cover the recommended method of
starting the server, let's examine its usage options:
 
 citserver [-hHomeDir] [-xDebugLevel] [-tTraceFile] [-d] [-f]
 
 The options are as follows:
 
 -hHomeDir     - the directory your BBS data files live in.  This should, of
course, be a directory that you've run the "setup" program against to set up
some data files.  If a directory is not specified, the directory name which
was specified in the Makefile will be used.
 
 -xDebugLevel  - Set the verbosity of trace messages printed.  The available 
debugging levels are:
    1 - Internal errors (failed thread creation, malloc problems, etc.)
    2 - Network errors (broken sockets, failed socket creation)
    3 - Begin and end of sessions, startup/shutdown of server
    5 - Server commands being sent from clients
    7 - Entry and exit of various functions 
    8 - Entry and exit of critical sections
    9 - Various debugging checkpoints (insanely verbose)
  
 -tTraceFile   - Tell the server where to send its debug/trace output.  
Normally it is sent to stdout.
 
 -d            - Run as a daemon.  This switch would be necessary if you were 
starting the Citadel server, for example, from an rc.local script (which is 
not recommended, because this won't allow the server to automatically restart
when it is shut down).
 
 -f            - Defragment all the databases upon startup.  This isn't
normally necessary due to the nature of the data stored in Citadel, but the
option is provided in case you need it.
 
 
   The preferred method of starting the Citadel server is to place an entry in
your /etc/inittab file.  This will conveniently bring the server up when your 
system is up, and terminate it gracefully when your system is shutting down.  
The exact syntax for your system may vary, but here's the entry that I use on 
my Linux system:
  
 cit:2345:respawn:/appl/citadel/citserver -h/appl/citadel -t/dev/tty6 -x3
 
 What I've done here is to set debugging level 3, and have the trace stuff
output to one of my virtual consoles.  It's important to remember to turn off
any getty that is set up on that virtual console, if you do this.  After
making this change, the command "init q" works on most systems to tell init
to re-read the file.  If in doubt, just reboot your computer.
   
   
 LOGGING IN FOR THE FIRST TIME
   
   At this point, your system is ready to run. Run the citadel program from
the shell and it will automatically create your account.  NOTE: the first
user account to be created will automatically be set to access level 6
(Aide).  This overcomes some obvious logistical problems - normally, Aide
access is given by another Aide, but since there aren't any on your system
yet, this isn't possible.
    
   
 SPACE FOR ADDING YOUR OWN FEATURES (doors)
 
   *** PLEASE TAKE NOTE!! ***   This function really represents the "old"
way of doing things, and it doesn't fit in well with the client/server
paradigm.  Please consider it "deprecated" because it may be removed someday.
 
   The "doorway" feature is just a generic way to add features to the system.
I called it "Doorway" to make it resemble the doors on non-Unix boards, but as
we all know, us Unix types don't have to write special code to access the
modem. :-)  Anyway, when a user hits the <*> (doorway) command, Citadel does...
 
   USERNAME=<username>; export USERNAME
   ./subsystem <user number> <screen width> <access level>
 
   ...so you can put whatever you want in there.  I suggest putting in a menu
program to allow the users to pick one of a number of programs, etc.
 
   Do be aware that chat and door programs will only be available when two
conditions are met:
 
    1. The client and server programs are running on the same computer
    2. The user is running the text-based Unix client.
 
   Because of these restrictions, Door programs are being utilized less and
less every day.
 

  
 
 THE PEANUT GALLERY
  
   That's just about all the information you need to install the system.
For more information, visit the Citadel/UX web site at UNCENSORED! BBS,
http://uncensored.citadel.org
 
   Please note: if you intend to report a problem getting the Citadel server
to run, please first check the following:
 
 1. Did you do ./configure && make && make install  ??
 2. Did you run setup?
 3. Did you start the server?
 
   To report a problem, you can log on to UNCENSORED! or any other BBS on the
Citadel network which carries the Citadel/UX> room.  Please remember to mention
all of the following information:
 
 1. The exact nature of your difficulty
 2. A transcript of the error message(s) if possible
 3. The version of Citadel you are running
 4. The version of GDBM present on your system
 5. Which operating system you are running, and what version
 6. If you are running a Linux system, we need to know which distribution, and
the version of the kernel, libc, and pthreads you are using (it would help to
post the output of a "ldd ./citserver" command).