gophernicus/INSTALL.md

# Compiling and installing Gophernicus

Gophernicus requires a C compiler but no extra libraries aside
from standard LIBC ones. Care has been taken to use only
standard POSIX syscalls so that it should work pretty much on
any \*nix system.

Please make sure that you checkout to the correct version you want.
Currently, you most likely want version 3.1.1.

To compile and install run:

```
$ git clone -b 3.1.1 https://github.com/gophernicus/gophernicus.git
$ cd gophernicus
$ ./configure --listener=somelistener
$ make
$ sudo make install
```

Important configure arguments include:

- `--listener`. This is the only required argument. You must
  choose a listener that passes network requests to
  gophernicus, as gophernicus doesn't do this by itself. The
  options are:
  - systemd, a common init system on many Linux distributions
    that can do this without an external program.
  - inetd, an older, well-known implementation that is very
    simple.
  - xinetd, a modern reimplementation of inetd using specific
    config files.
  - mac, to be used on Mac OSX machines.
  - haiku, to be used on Haiku machines.
  - autodetect, which looks at what you have available
    (unrecommended, please manually specify where possible).
- `--hostname`. This is by default attempted to be autodetected
  by the configure script, using the command `hostname`. It is
  expected to be the publicly-accessible address of the server.
  However, this might be completely wrong, especially on your
  personal machine at home or on some cheap VPS. If you know you
  have a fixed numerical IP, you can also directly use that.
  For testing, just keep the default value of `localhost` which will
  result in selectors working only when you're connecting locally.
- `--gopherroot`. The location in which your gopher server will
  serve from. By default is `/var/gopher`. Also can be changed
  later using the `-r <root>` parameter in configuration files.

That's it - Gophernicus should now be installed, preconfigured
and running under gopher://<HOSTNAME>/. And more often than not,
It Just Works(tm).

## Compiling with TCP wrappers

Gophernicus uses no extra libraries... well... except libwrap
(TCP wrappers) if it is installed with headers in default Unix
directories at the time of compiling. If you have the headers
installed and don't want wrapper support, too bad (for now, see
issue #89).

For configuring IP access lists with TCP wrappers, take a look
at the files `/etc/hosts.allow` and `/etc/hosts.deny` (because the
manual pages suck). Use the daemon name "gophernicus" to
make your access lists.

## Distributions

### Debian (and -based) (including Ubuntu) distributions

We used to distribute a `debian/` directory for people to `make
deb` and then install a deb. However, thanks to the work of
Ryan Kavanagh, gophernicus will be distributed in the official
debian repositories in the next stable release! In the interim,
either keep using the old version or install without deb.

## Cross-compiling

Cross-compiling to a different target architecture can be done
by defining HOSTCC and CC to be different compilers. HOSTCC
must point to a local arch compiler, and CC to the target
arch one.

```
$ export HOSTCC=gcc CC=target-arch-gcc
$ ./configure ....
$ make
```

## Shared memory issues

Gophernicus uses SYSV shared memory for session tracking and
statistics. It creates the shared memory block using mode 600
and a predefined key which means that a shared memory block
created with one user cannot be used by another user. Simply
said, running gophernicus under various different user
accounts may create a situation where the memory block is locked
to the wrong user.

If that happens you can simply delete the memory block and
let Gophernicus recreate it - no harm done:

```
$ sudo make clean-shm
```

## Porting to different platforms

If you need to port Gophernicus to a new platform, please take a look at
gophernicus.h which has a bunch of `#define HAVE_...` Fiddling with those
usually makes it possible to compile a working server.
If you succeed in compiling Gophernicus to a new platform please send
the patches to <gophernicus at gophernicus dot org> so we can include
them into the next release -- or even better, commit them to your fork
on Github and make a pull request!

## For packagers

Are you looking to package gophernicus for a Linux
distribution? Thanks! Please see issue #50 to help. Some tips:

- Hostnames will need to be configured by users at runtime, the
  installed gophernicus.env will need to be a config file.
- You probably want to support as many listeners as possible.
  We allow this through the use of a comma seperated list to
  `--listener`.
- The default gopher root is `/var/gopher`; many distributions
  prefer `/srv`.