<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="content-type"> <title>Dead Souls FAQ</title> <link rel="icon" href="./favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="./favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> </head> <body> <pre style="font-family: courier new,courier,monospace;"><big><big><span style="font-weight: bold;">Discworld Bundle FAQ</span></big><br><br>Written by Cratylus @ Dead Souls, October 2006<br><br></big><big style="font-family: courier new,courier,monospace;"><a href="#1">What is the first thing I should know?<br></a><br></big><big style="font-family: courier new,courier,monospace;"><a href="#2">What is the second thing I should know?</a><br><a href="#3"><br></a></big><big style="font-family: courier new,courier,monospace;"><a href="#3">Who is this for?</a><br><br></big><big style="font-family: courier new,courier,monospace;"><a href="#4">What is Discworld?</a><br><br></big><big style="font-family: courier new,courier,monospace;"><a href="#5">Aren't you the Dead Souls maintainer? What's your angle here?</a><br><br></big><big style="font-family: courier new,courier,monospace;"><a href="#6">Why were you working on Discworld?</a><br><br></big><big style="font-family: courier new,courier,monospace;"><a href="#7">Well, you wasted your time. It doesn't work.</a><br><a href="#8"><br></a></big><big style="font-family: courier new,courier,monospace;"><a href="#8">It works, but the thing keeps rebooting every 20 minutes.</a><br><br></big><a href="#9"><big style="font-family: courier new,courier,monospace;">Where can I get support for Discworld lib, then?</big></a><br><br><a href="#10"><big style="font-family: courier new,courier,monospace;">I work with DW lib all the time. It's not that hard to set up.</big></a><br><a href="#10"><big style="font-family: courier new,courier,monospace;"></big></a><br><a href="#11"><big style="font-family: courier new,courier,monospace;">Where can I get it?</big></a><br><big style="font-family: courier new,courier,monospace;"><br></big></pre> <big style="font-family: courier new,courier,monospace;"><a name="1"></a><span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">What is the first thing I should know?</span><br> <br> The Discworld Bundle is NOT DEAD SOULS. It is the Discworld mudlib,<br> which is a completely different set of files than those distributed<br> with Dead Souls. I, Cratylus, am not the author of Discworld, and<br> you can consider this an official disclaim of any credit for its<br> brilliance or blame for its pitfalls.<br> <br> <a name="2"></a><span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">What is the second thing I should know?</span><br> <br> The authors and maintainers of the official Discworld mudlib<br> do not take responsibility for this bundle. This is a strictly<br> "third party" deal which they will not support in any way. You<br> are free to download and use it, but you are not entitled to<br> receive support from anyone. Note that I can't give you<br> authorization to distribute it either, since I am not the<br> copyright holder. If you want to mirror it, you'd be wise<br> to ask the Discworld/FluffOS guys first, like I did.<br> <br> <a name="3"></a><span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Who is this for?</span><br> <br> The Discworld bundle is absolutely not for newbie admins. This<br> is not intended to be a "get started on your own mud the<br> easy way!" sort of deal. I am making it available as a <br> courtesy and favor to mudlib hobbyists who have an interest<br> in tinkering with this lib. But if what you're looking for<br> is a quick-start kit for your own mud, I strongly recommend<br> you stop reading now and look elsewhere, because even though<br> the Discworld Bundle makes installation easi<span style="font-weight: bold;">ER</span>, it does not<br> necessarily make it ea<span style="font-weight: bold;">SY</span>.<br> <br> <a name="4"></a><span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">What is Discworld?</span><br> <br> You're best off reading the official definition on the<br> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld_mud">Wikipedia entry for the mud itself</a>.<br> <br> And this is the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld_Mudlib">entry for the mudlib</a>.<br> <br> <br> <a name="5"></a><span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Aren't you the Dead Souls maintainer? What's your angle here?</span><br> <br> I am indeed the maintainer of a different mudlib<br> called Dead Souls (which I am not ashamed to plug<br> here by pointing you to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Souls_MUDlib">its Wikipedia entry</a>). However, I<br> have a general affection for the LP mud codebase family.<br> During some experimentation I found that I had a<br> relatively easier way of installing Discworld that people<br> could take advantage of, and it seemed like a nice thing<br> to do, making it available generally.<br> <br> I'm not afraid that people will use Discworld instead of<br> Dead Souls. For one thing, I think that "more LPmuds",<br> regardless of the codebase, is a net plus for DS. And<br> anyway, what kind of lib author would I be, if I was<br> afraid to let people compare my work side by side with that<br> of others? Let the chips fall where they may.<br> <br> <a name="6"></a><span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Why were you working on Discworld?</span><br> <br> During Dead Souls development I decided to take a serious look<br> at database integration. I discovered that the work done<br> on Dead Souls before I became the maintainer lacked the <br> core lib systems that were needed to have the lib and<br> driver communicate with a database.<br> <br> So I started messing around with other libs, to see how they<br> did it, to get some inspiration.<br> <br> <a name="7"></a><span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Well, you wasted your time. It doesn't work.</span><br> <br> There is such a vast and bewildering array of operating<br> system and development software and system hardware architecture<br> combinations out there that there is simply no way for<br> me to guarantee that the bundle will work for everyone...<br> or indeed for most.<br> <br> I can assure you that the bundle puts you much much closer<br> to a successful DW start than you'd be without it. If it<br> still doesn't work out of the box, there are a few pointers<br> I might suggest:<br> <br> * I haven't tested this on Cygwin or any other Windows emulation<br> or native windows compilation suite. For all I know it is not<br> possible to get it to work on Windows.<br> <br> * DW/FluffOS expects your system to have file compression libraries.<br> If you don't have zlib, or it's in an exotic location, or<br> your library search path is munged, you will probably experience<br> some level of sadness. If sadness what you feel, try ensuring<br> that none of those three conditions apply to you.<br> <br> * Because dw seems to make frequent use of compression both<br> for data storage and connections, some events appear to take<br> an inordinately long period of time. This will be especially<br> noticeable on slower computers. Just be patient.<br> <br> * Do NOT under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES attempt to contact Discworld<br> mud personnel or Discworld mudlib maintainers to complain that<br> this bundle is lame or to ask for help with it. It'll be like<br> asking Bill Joy to come over and help you install Solaris. His<br> involvement with the development of UNIX doesn't entitle you to<br> help from him, and the Discworld people don't deserve to be <br> exposed to noob brainwaves from people who think they are owed assistance.<br> <br> * Perhaps the most important thing you can read is this:<br> <a href="http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/faqs/smart-questions.html">http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/faqs/smart-questions.html</a><br> Note that the people on that page also are not to be contacted for support.<br> <br> <br> <a name="8"></a><span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">It works, but the thing keeps rebooting every 20 minutes.</span><br> <br> You got me there. I never claimed to be a Discworld expert. I<br> can set it up so it's not impossible to install, but after that,<br> getting it to work *well* is on you.<br> <br> <a name="9"></a><span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Where can I get support for Discworld lib, then?</span><br> <br> Once it is installed, it might not be unreasonable to<br> ask for advice on the discworld-chat line. Certainly it's<br> a good idea to review all the docs at the Discworld site:<br> <a href="http://discworld.atuin.net/lpc/about/mudlib.html">http://discworld.atuin.net/lpc/about/mudlib.html</a><br> <br> You're also welcome to visit the <a href="http://lpmuds.net/forum/">LPMuds.net</a> discussion forum<br> and chat there, but don't expect quick turnaround on your<br> questions. Discworld lib experts are fewer and far between<br> than they once were, so you may have to wait a little<br> for a helpful response.<br> <br> <br style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;"> <span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;"><a name="10"></a>I work with DW lib all the time. It's not that hard to set up.</span><br> <br> Now that I've done it, I have a better chance of being able to<br> do it again starting from 0 again, in say, under 3 hours.<br> <br> Old DW'ers need to keep in mind that the driver available out<br> there is FluffOS 1.22, which is sufficiently old to present<br> inconveniences on newer compilers. The lib itself needs some<br> refitting to work, such as the mappingp()/mappp() define<br> conflict, and the max-number-of-inheritables problem in<br> simul_efun.c. If you don't happen to be handy at truss/strace,<br> or gdb, or coredump analysis, some of this stuff is super<br> super hard to troubleshoot.<br> <br> The idea of this bundle is that people with advanced lib<br> skills but limited compiling/syscall tracing experience<br> can indulge in examining the lib, without having to<br> invest days investigating problems that they can't tell<br> whether they are lib issues, driver issues, bugs in<br> either, or misconfigs.<br> <br> So, yes, definitely, there are lots of people out there for<br> whom slapping dw together and checking it out is fairly<br> ho-hum stuff, but the casual mud hobbyist has, from<br> everything I've heard, found it too frustrating.<br> <br> Many people will still run into problems, I'm sure, but<br> even for those, this should get them closer to the ballpark.<br> <br> <br> <span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;"><a name="11"></a>Where can I get it?</span><br> <br> <a href="http://lpmuds.net/files/discworld/">http://lpmuds.net/files/discworld/</a><br> <br> <br> <a href="http://lpmuds.net/"><small>LPMuds.net</small></a><br> </big> <br> </body> </html>
