Basic installation instructions:

Set up a new Unix user on the system, call him "finger". Make sure this user

IS NOT PERMITTED TO LOG IN (set his shell to /bin/false or something).

Edit IcculusFinger_daemon.pl. There are lots of variables that you can tweak

to match you're system and customize to your taste at the top. This is very

well documented, so have no fear.

Copy IcculusFinger_daemon.pl to /usr/local/bin/ ...

If you are planning on making everyone keep their planfiles in a unified

public directory (a "fingerspace"), then edit/copy IcculusFinger_planmove.pl

to /usr/local/bin, too. Run this program once now, and once every time you

add a new user to your system. It spits out a lot of text explaining exactly

what it's doing.

Make sure there's a line like this in /etc/services:

finger 79/tcp

If you want to manage IcculusFinger via inetd, then add this line to

/etc/inetd.conf:

finger stream tcp nowait finger /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/local/bin/IcculusFinger_daemon.pl

If you like qmail's tcp-env better than tcpd (like I do), then use a line

like this instead:

finger stream tcp nowait finger /var/qmail/bin/tcp-env tcp-env -R /usr/local/bin/IcculusFinger_daemon.pl

The "ipaddr" fake user works with tcp-env, and not tcpd at this moment. Not a

big deal or anything, but just FYI. "ipaddr" also works if you use the

--daemonize flag instead of inetd, too.

Make sure no other lines in /etc/inetd.conf are handling finger requests.

Run "killall -HUP inetd". You should now be answering finger requests from the

outside world.

If you want to run IcculusFinger as a standalone daemon (instead of managing

it through inetd), put it in your startup scripts. This is different for every

system, but on my (Slackware) system, putting this in /etc/rc.d/rc.local works

well:

echo "Starting IcculusFinger daemon..."

/usr/local/bin/IcculusFinger_daemon.pl --daemonize

Next time you reboot, you should be answering finger requests by default. You

can also run that command line without rebooting, and it should work, too.

If you want the web interface to finger accounts:

Edit IcculusFinger_webinterface.pl. There are some variables that you can

tweak to match you're system and customize to your taste at the top. This is

very well documented, so have no fear.

Copy IcculusFinger_webinterface.pl to somewhere your webserver can see it and

treat it as a cgi-bin program. You may want to symlink it or rename it to a

smaller filename (such as finger.pl).

Once your server is treating it as a cgi-bin program, run it as such (this is

just an example, it'll be different depending on how you set things up):

http://myserver.dom/cgi-bin/IcculusFinger_webinterface.pl?user=username

If using a MySQL database for planfile archiving:

Get MySQL installed on your system.

Edit IcculusFinger_archiveplans.pl. There are some variables that you can

tweak to match you're system and customize to your taste at the top. This is

very well documented, so have no fear.

Copy IcculusFinger_archiveplans.pl to /usr/local/bin/ ...

(This part is cut-and-pasted-and-then-modified from Horde's install docs.

http://www.horde.org/)

First of all, it is very important that you change the MySQL password for

the user 'root'. If you haven't done so already, type:

mysqladmin [ -h <host> ] -u root -p password <new-password>

Login to MySQL by typing:

mysql [ -h <host> ] -u root -p

Enter the password for root.

Now, create a database named "IcculusFinger" and switch to it:

mysql> create database IcculusFinger;

mysql> use IcculusFinger;

Then set up the table called "finger_archive". You can actually name it

anything you like as long as you use the same name when you alter the

IcculusFinger source files (maybe that goes without saying...but there's a

config variable at the top of a few of them that specifies this).

Type:

mysql> create table finger_archive (

id int not null auto_increment,

username varchar(32) not null,

postdate datetime not null,

text mediumtext character set utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci not null,

summary varchar(128) character set utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci not null default '',

primary key (id)

);

Next, create the MySQL user for the IcculusFinger database. You can call this

user any name and give this user any password you want, just make sure that

you use the same name and password when you alter the source files. For

this example, I will call the user "fingermgr" and make the password

"fingerpass". Type:

mysql> use mysql;

mysql> replace into user ( host, user, password )

values ('localhost', 'fingermgr', password('fingerpass'));

mysql> replace into db ( host, db, user, select_priv, insert_priv,

update_priv, delete_priv, create_priv, drop_priv )

values ('localhost', 'IcculusFinger', 'fingermgr', 'Y', 'Y',

'Y', 'Y', 'Y', 'Y');

mysql> flush privileges;

Exit MySQL by typing:

mysql> quit

By default, the database password is read from /etc/IcculusFinger_dbpass.txt,

so you should:

echo "fingerpass" > /etc/IcculusFinger_dbpass.txt

(obviously "fingerpass" should be the actual password.)

MAKE SURE that /etc/IcculusFinger_dbpass.txt is owned by unix user "finger"

and may only be read by him. THIS IS IMPORTANT.

chown finger.root /etc/IcculusFinger_dbpass.txt

chmod 0400 /etc/IcculusFinger_dbpass.txt

Set up a cronjob to archive the plans. Here's a crontab entry for most Unixes

that archives plans every half-hour:

# This makes sure the .planfile archive is up to date...

0,30 * * * * /usr/local/bin/IcculusFinger_archiveplans.pl

Planfiles are only archived if they have been updated since the last time they

were archived (so as not to fill the database), and a certain amount of time

has elasped since the update took place (so as not to archive plans in the

middle of being edited, and limit the archiving of chatty users that feel the

need to continually update their plans). There is also a metatag users can put

in their planfiles to prevent archiving if only certain sections are changed.

For example, I keep various info in my .plan that doesn't change often, and

is significant when it does, but there's also a continually updated TODO

section, which isn't important when it changes. the [noarchive] tag covers the

TODO, so archiving won't happen if the only changes are in that section.

Questions and comments to icculus@clutteredmind.org. Good luck.

# end of INSTALL ...