Install DxSpider on CentOS 7 / RHEL 7

Revision: 1.00 – 07/05/2018

Here you find my installation guide how to install DxSpider on CentOS 7 / RHEL 7.  Also you can find more information here wiki.dxcluster.org. If you need help please contact with me.

Furthermore if you don’t want make manual installation you can used my script for the installation and configuration Dxspider (The firewall and services must be configure manual).

1. First login as  root.

SeLinux is by default enabled and there is no need to disable it for running a telnet DxSpider node.

yum is the package manager

to update the system use

as the root user install the additional package repository EPEL

2. Add the extra packages needed by DXSpider

3. Create user sysop and setup password

4. Now download and  unpack the DX Spider distribution, set symbolic links and group permissions.

before adding the spider group it is advisable to check that group # 251 is not already in use

Which should produce no output, if 251 is already assigned to a group choose a different group Number here, On Redhat based distributions Group numbers below 500 are assigned to system services so choose a free group number below 500

Use the following commands to add the users to the spider group

5. Now login to your machine as the user you created earlier. In my case that user is called ‘sysop’. Once logged in, issue the following commands

6. Use git to get latest DXspider build

7. Fix up permissions ( AS THE SYSOP USER )

Very bad things happen if you run these as root and in the wrong place, so I wish to make it abundantly clear that these are to be run as the sysop user in the sysop’s home directory /home/sysop

8. We are installed, now to configure the cluster

Using the distributed DXVars.pm as a a template, set your cluster callsign, sysop callsign and other user info to suit your own environment.

This is the call sign of your cluster. Here in the UK we have separate callsigns for our cluster nodes. If you can’t use a different callsign I suggest you use an SSID of ‘-2’ for the node callsign ‘$mycall’.

This is the sysop user callsign, normally your own.

PLEASE USE CAPITAL LETTERS FOR CALLSIGNS

Note that this a perl file which will be parsed and executed as part of the cluster. If you get it wrong then perl will complain when you start the cluster process. It is important only to alter the text of any section. Some of the lines look a little odd. Take this line for example ….

There appears to be an extra slash in there. However this has to be there for the file to work so leave it in.

DON’T alter any file in /spider/perl, they are overwritten with every release. Any files or commands you place in /spider/local or /spider/local_cmd will automagically be used in preference to the ones in /spider/perl EVEN while the cluster is running!

Save the new file and change directory to ../perl ….

9. Edit Listeners.pm to remove “#” from the line for the port, and add additional ports as needed:

edit /spider/local/Listeners.pm

It comes out of the box looking something like:-

Change it so that it looks like this:-

10. Now type the following command which creates the basic user file with you as the sysop.

11. Firewall Configuration

Login as root

The firewall, centos7 has moved to using firewalld to manage the firewall settings, I am not sure how I feel about this! The old way can be installed

Then you have the traditional iptables way of doing things

However if one wishes to use the ‘new way’ with firewalld

first create

with the contents (change port number to suit your own needs)

then issue the following commands as root

12. Service Configuration (systemd)

Login as and a basic service file for systemd

create a file

With the following contents

[Unit] Description= Dxspider DXCluster service After=network.target [Service] Type=simple User=sysop Group=sysop ExecStart= /usr/bin/perl -w /spider/perl/cluster.pl # Comment out line below for logging everything to /var/log/messages StandardOutput=null Restart=always [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target

Usage:

13. On a separate ssh or system console, log into the system as sysop

14. Creates the connect script file and enters the editor. Your connect script should look similar to this script.

Create connect script

Connect script must like this

After check permission file

15. To configure your node you must set the adjacent node by node type:

i. For connection to a DXSpider node use the set/spider command from the console

 Enter your link partner as after set/spider

ii. For a connection to an ARCluster node

16. To initiate a connection to the your new adjacent node partner

17. At least you need a cron and a connect script to connect to the nodes automatically for examble – your node parter is: k1ttt

the cron like this:

Next change the permissions for the file crontab

Good luck with DxSpider installation 🙂

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