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<p id="headertext">Dead Souls - Installation FAQ</p>
<p id="subheadertext">By Cratylus @ Frontiers, February 2006. Updated
November 2008.<br>
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<h1>FAQ Index</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#1">Is this FAQ really necessary?</a> </li>
<li><a href="#2">Where do I get Dead Souls?</a></li>
<li><a href="#2.1">Where are the separate UNIX
and Windows versions?</a></li>
<li><a href="#3">Where do I get patches?</a></li>
<li><a href="#4">Should I apply the available patches during an
install?</a></li>
<li><a href="#6">How do I install the Windows version of Dead Souls?</a></li>
<li><a href="#6a">Migrating from Windows to UNIX fails horribly.</a><br>
</li>
<li><a href="#7">Hold up, these Windows instructions aren't working</a></li>
<li><a href="#8">How do I install the UNIX version of Dead Souls?</a></li>
<li><a href="#9">I'm having trouble getting Dead Souls for UNIX to
work</a></li>
<li><a href="#10">Why does compiling the driver for Dead Souls throw
so
many warnings?</a></li>
<li><a href="#11">Why is there a windows-format mudos.cfg in
/secure/cfg? I'm running unix.</a></li>
<li><a href="#12">How do I enable database support?</a></li>
<li><a href="#13">How do I upgrade from one version of Dead Souls to
another?<big><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></big></a></li>
<li><small><a href="#13b"><big>How do I compile a 64 bit driver?</big></a></small></li>
<li><a href="#14">When I log out after starting the mud, problems
happen.</a></li>
<li><a href="#15">I put the mud in a Linux startup script, but it
won't start when I reboot!</a></li>
<li><a href="#16">Ok, it's running. Now what?</a></li>
</ul>
<a name="1"></a>
<h1>Is this FAQ really necessary? <a class="backtotop" href="#top">(Back
to Top)</a></h1>
<p>Normally, no. If you just follow the instructions included in the
Dead Souls packages, you'll be fine 90% of the time. However, a
non-trivial number of folks have run into difficult circumstances. For
those folks, this document is meant to illuminate how the install
process works, why some things are as they are, and suggest some
solutions to the more common obstacles.</p>
<a name="2"></a>
<h1>Where do I get Dead Souls? <a class="backtotop" href="#top">(Back
to Top)</a></h1>
<p>You should only ever download from the site listed below. Some other
sites tend to mirror these or copy data, then fail to update their data
regularly. The following will always have the most recent versions.</p>
<p>Download the stable version from the following:
</p>
<ul>
<big> </big>
<li><a href="http://dead-souls.net/code/dead_souls.zip"><big>http://dead-souls.net/code/dead_souls.zip</big></a></li>
</ul>
<br>
Download the latest alpha version here:<br>
<br>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://dead-souls.net/code/alpha/"><big><span
style="text-decoration: underline;"></span></big><big><span
style="text-decoration: underline;">http://dead-souls.net/code/alpha/</span></big></a></li>
</ul>
<br>
The alpha version often has lots of neat new stuff. Some of the new
stuff is
still not 100% production quality. If new features that are still under
development are upsetting to you, you may be better off using the
"stable" version instead.<br>
<br>
<br>
<a name="2.1"></a>
<h1>Where are the separate UNIX and Windows
versions? <a class="backtotop" href="#top">(Back to Top)</a></h1>
<p>Starting in Dead Souls 2.0r22 the two separate versions have been
merged into one distribution download file. Now it doesn't matter
whether you want to use Dead Souls on Windows or UNIX, there's just one
file to download, and it contains everything you need for both
operating systems.</p>
<p>This merge accomplishes the following:
</p>
<ul>
<li>Ensures 100% identical lib versions for the different OSes.</li>
<li>Limits the clutter involved with releasing new versions.</li>
<li>Lowers the amount of labor and time involved in releasing new
versions.</li>
<li>Simplifies installation and upgrades for new users.</li>
</ul>
<a name="3"></a>
<h1>Where do I get patches? <a class="backtotop" href="#top">(Back to
Top)</a></h1>
<p>
</p>
Patches are deprecated in favor of <span style="font-weight: bold;">liveupgrade</span>.
For exceptional situations, however, or for very old muds that still
need
them, they are here:<br>
<br>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://dead-souls.net/code/patches/"><big><span
style="text-decoration: underline;">http://dead-souls.net/code/patches/</span></big></a></li>
</ul>
<a name="4"></a>
<h1>Should I apply the available patches during an install? <a
class="backtotop" href="#top">(Back to Top)</a></h1>
<p>No. Patches are for already-installed Dead Souls muds. A new Dead
Souls install does not need and must not use patches. If you're
upgrading from one Dead Souls version to another, please read the
upgrade section further down in this document.</p>
<a name="6"></a>
<h1>How do I install Dead Souls in Windows? <a class="backtotop"
href="#top">(Back to Top)</a></h1>
<p>NOTE: If you are using Windows, USE THESE INSTRUCTIONS. There is no
benefit in trying to download Cygwin and modify the UNIX source code
and trying to get it to compile in Windows, unless you know exactly
what you're doing. Yes, people have tried to do this and complained.</p>
<p>First make sure you are running Windows NT 4, Windows 2000 or above,
Then:
</p>
<ol>
<li>unzip the distribution file</li>
<li>move and rename it so that it is c:\ds, and that the folders
c:\ds\win32
and c:\ds\lib are where the binary and library files are, respectively.</li>
<li>run c:\ds\runmud.bat</li>
<li>if you lack a favorite telnet client, open a command line window
by clicking on Start->Run... and entering: cmd</li>
<li>connect to your Windows computer by telnetting to port 6666. If
you are using the command window, type: <span class="command">telnet
localhost 6666</span> </li>
<li>Enter the name you want your admin to have, and answer the
questions provided. Make sure you are the first person to log in,
because that
first person is automatically made admin.</li>
<li>When you finish entering the admin's info, the mud will
automatically reboot.</li>
<li>log in as your admin character.</li>
<li>change your mud's name with the admintool command. Navigate to
the "driver"
menu (as of this writing, it's option 4, and then the "change the MUD's
name" option (as of this writing, it's option r). Enter the name
desired, allow the mud to shut down.</li>
<li>log in again after the mud reboots.</li>
<li>check the <a href="http://dead-souls.net/hotfix.html">HOTFIX PAGE</a>
for
late-breaking fixes.</li>
<li>See if any upgrades are available by typing: <span
style="font-weight: bold;">liveupgrade all</span></li>
<li>If files are downloaded, apply the upgrades by typing: <span
style="font-weight: bold;">liveupgrade apply</span></li>
<li>If you get nothing but a repeating message, cancel the upgrade by
typing: <span style="font-weight: bold;">liveupgrade cancel</span><br>
</li>
<li>Start reading the guide and the handbook and the manual.</li>
</ol>
<h1><br>
</h1>
<h1><a name="6a"></a>Migrating from Windows to UNIX fails horribly <a
class="backtotop" href="http://dead-souls.net/ds-inst-faq.html#top">(Back
to Top)</a></h1>
<p>The main problem you're likely running into is that Windows and UNIX
handle text files differently. In particular, object persistence files
(.o files) saved under Windows may have additional characters that the
UNIX driver won't tolerate. The UNIX command "dos2unix"
might help...or it might not. You might need to use the .o files from
the default distribution (sadly losing whatever was in your old ones). <br>
</p>
<p>It may also be that your Windows driver is much older than the
driver for the UNIX version you're migrating to. It might be a good
idea to hunt down the source code for the specific lib release you're
using (for example, 2.1.1) and compile that for your driver.<br>
</p>
<p>The short and sad answer is that such a migration can go wrong in so
many ways that it's beyond the scope of help this document, or I as
maintainer, can provide.<br>
</p>
<br>
<a name="7"></a>
<h1>Hold up, these Windows instructions aren't working <a
class="backtotop" href="#top">(Back to Top)</a></h1>
<p>There are a few common reasons for this.
</p>
<ul>
<li>If your friends can't connect, read this: <a
href="http://dead-souls.net/ds-admin-faq.html#129">http://dead-souls.net/ds-admin-faq.html#129</a><br>
</li>
<li>If your mud seems superslow when you start it, just be patient.
It is building up a list of the files in your mud, and this can make it
seem like you are hung or crashed.<br>
</li>
<li>A recent fix may be available. Check the <a
href="http://dead-souls.net/hotfix.html">HOTFIX
PAGE</a> for late-breaking fixes.</li>
<li>Download only from the sites mentioned above. Those are the only
ones sure to have the latest version. Other sites can be out of date.</li>
<li>On at least one occasion, Winzip has somehow corrupted the
archive as it was extracted. Try using another decompression utility,
like winrar.</li>
<li> Most Windows PC's these days have firewall software installed.
If you
try to connect but aren't able to, there's a good chance your
connection is being blocked by your firewall. Disable your firewall
temporarily and try to reconnect. If the problem goes away, you know
now that you have to somehow configure your firewall to allow incoming
TCP connections on port 6666. <br>
Note: You may also have to permit outbound TCP connections to
port 23 on IP address 149.152.218.102 if you want your mud to join the
Intermud3
network.</li>
<li>You might not be using c:\ds as your base directory. Make sure
you are. Putting the mud files on another drive or another folder will
cause the mud not to run.</li>
<li>Trying to use Windows 98, 95, Me, or 3.x will simply not work.
Sorry. Those are not server class operating systems and they use
technology incompatible with the mud's requirements.</li>
<li>If you connect to the mud for the first time, but then it hangs
for more than a few minutes,
look in c:\ds\lib\log\runtime and c:\ds\lib\log\catch. Those are error
log files. If you see stuff about files or directories not existing,
then the problem is probably that your decompression program didn't
unpack the files right. Start over. Download winrar and use that to
uncompress.</li>
<li>If you're seeing errors about stuff like economy.o, and your
computer uses a non-English version of Windows, you may be running into
a character-set problem. On the UNIX version of DS, this is pretty easy
to fix with a runtime variable. On Windows, I am not sure it is
possible. What is happening is that the mud expects numbers in the
form: 3.15 rather than 3,15 and is unable to handle your computer's way
of notating the decimal. I do not know the fix for this: if you find
it, <span style="font-weight: bold;">please</span> <a
href="http://lpmuds.net/forum/">share it with us</a>.<br>
</li>
<li>If the mud starts but you get lots of bizarre errors, there may
be a couple of reasons for this:
<ul>
<li>If the c:\ filesystem is NTFS, and the user you logged in as
does not
own the ds:\ folder, things will fail in odd ways. What is happening is
that the
mud is trying to write files in a folder it doesn't have permission to,
and
things get all hosed up. Make sure you have read/write privileges to
the c:\ds
folder.</li>
<li>Zip problems. Some unzipping utilities are known to
incorrectly decompress
zip files. Specifically, sometimes an archive that contains empty
folders will
not write those empty folders to your disk. This could cause problems
for the
mud. If you get lots of errors and things don't work right, and you are
sure
that you have read/write access to c:\ds, then try reinstalling but
with a different unzip utility.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<a name="8"></a>
<h1>How do I install Dead Souls in a Linux/UNIX box? <a
class="backtotop" href="#top">(Back to Top)</a></h1>
<ul>
<li>Login to your shell. Follow the instructions provided by your
hosting service or your unix documentation to know how to do this.</li>
<li>If you are using Ubuntu, you may need to install compiler tools
and bison: <br>
<span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">apt-get
install libc6-dev</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span><br>
<span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">apt-get
install bison</span></li>
<li>Download the distribution package. For example: <span
style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">wget
http://dead-souls.net/code/dead_souls_alpha.zip</span></li>
<li>DO NOT use fileroller (a GUI based app) to decompress the
package. If
you ignore this warning you are very likely to end up with really
confusing errors and problems. Instead use the normal unix command
line. For example: <span class="command">unzip -d ds
dead_souls_alpha.zip</span></li>
<li>NOTE: If you don't use the "-d" flag to specify the name of the
new directory you want to create, the archive <span
style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">may</span> dump
everything
into your current working directory, which may look ugly if that's
not your intention.</li>
<li> Don't use an existing driver binary, even if it's from a
previous
(or even the same) Dead Souls distribution. If you're doing a fresh
install, always, always, always do the complete and exact installation
procedure, including the driver compile. If what you're looking to do
is an
upgrade, read the upgrade section further down in this document. Once
we're set on those requirements and you've uncompressed the tarball, we
can continue with the installation procedure.</li>
<li>cd to the directory where all mud files reside. Called $MUDHOME
in the rest of these UNIX instructions. You can determine your current
directory by typing <span
style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">pwd</span><span
style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"> </span>at the shell prompt.<br>
</li>
<li>cd to the driver source. This may be "v22.2b14" or it may be
"fluffos-2.*"<br>
</li>
<li>type: <span class="command">./configure</span></li>
<li>type: <span class="command">make</span></li>
<li>type: <span class="command">make install</span></li>
<li>If the previous step fails, just manually copy the "driver" file
into
$MUDHOME/bin/</li>
<li>edit $MUDHOME/bin/mudos.cfg (provided). The two lines to change
are mudlib directory and binary directory. For example, if your
$MUDHOME is /home/joe/mud, then the mudlib directory line will look
like this: <br>
/home/joe/mud/lib <br>
<br>
and bin: <br>
/home/joe/mud/bin </li>
<li>edit $MUDHOME/bin/startmud (provided) and change the $MUDHOME
definition.</li>
<li>manually run the mud: <span class="command">$MUDHOME/bin/driver
$MUDHOME/bin/mudos.cfg <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">.</span></span>
If you properly edited the startmud script, you can just type: <span
class="command">./startmud</span></li>
<li>telnet to your machine, using the port specified in mudos.cfg.
For
example: <span class="command">telnet localhost 6666</span></li>
<li>Create a new user. Just answer the questions. Make sure you are
the first person to log in, because that person is automatically given
admin privileges.</li>
<li>You'll get booted out. Reboot the MUD, telnet back in, and you're
now running Your Very Own MUD. If startmud is running, the MUD should
restart automatically.</li>
<li>Start reading the guide and the handbook and the manual.<br>
</li>
</ul>
<a name="9"></a>
<h1>I'm having trouble getting Dead Souls for UNIX to work <a
class="backtotop" href="#top">(Back to Top)</a></h1>
<ul>
<li>If the configure script complains about not finding a C compiler,
but you know you have one, try: <span style="font-weight: bold;">apt-get
install libc6-dev</span></li>
<li>If the configure script complains about not finding bison or yacc
and you are the server admin: <span style="font-weight: bold;">apt-get
install bison</span><br>
</li>
<li>If your mud seems superslow when you start it, just be patient.
It is
building up a list of the files in your mud, and this can make it seem
like you are hung or crashed.</li>
<li>If you get this: "make: *** No rule to make target
`obj/malloc.o', needed by `driver'. Stop.", just type "<span
style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">make</span>" again,
or "<span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">make -j 1</span>"<br>
</li>
<li>If you are using a 64 bit Linux SMP kernel, and when you try
to log in the login freezes, try this: <a
href="http://lpmuds.net/forum/index.php?topic=490.msg2274#msg2274">
http://lpmuds.net/forum/index.php?topic=490.msg2274#msg2274</a> </li>
<li>Some hosting providers give you a robust environment that
requires UNIX expertise to handle. For example, I know of folks that
use Genesis Muds to host, and run into all sorts of file permission
conflicts, umask issues, etc. While I'm happy to provide guidance to
some degree, you do have to take it upon yourself to become familiar
with the OS you're using. As much as I want to be helpful to you on
this, getting you up to speed on being a UNIX server admin is way
beyond the scope of this little document. Whomever it is that you pay
money to, ask them for documentation. Sorry if it sounds
rude....there's only so much I can take responsibility for.<br>
</li>
<li>Your compiler may be trying to run a distributed "make" by
default. That's a no-go for MudOS. Try disabling that at compile time
by using this instead of the normal make command line: <br>
<span class="command">make -j 1<br>
make install<br>
</span> </li>
<li>A recent fix may be available. Check the <a
href="http://dead-souls.net/hotfix.html">HOTFIX
PAGE</a> for late-breaking fixes.</li>
<li>Download only from the sites mentioned above. Those are the only
ones sure to have the latest version. Other sites can be out of date.</li>
<li>Most of the problems with unix installs involve permissions
conflicts. If
you uncompress the package as root user, for example, then try to run
it as an unprivileged user, the process won't be able to read and write
to the directories it uses, and errors will result. If you uncompressed
as root and want to run it as another user (in this example, username:
joe), then you'll want to cd to the directory that contains the mud
directory and issue a chown
command, like this: <br>
<span class="command">su - root<br>
cd /home/joe<br>
chown -R joe ds2.10</span></li>
<li>If you don't follow the instructions, and instead use a
previously compiled driver, you may skip a step which copies a
unix-compatible mudos.cfg file over the default Windows-compatible
mudos.cfg. To correct this, copy the template config into the proper
directory: <br>
<span class="command">cd /home/joe/ds2.10<br>
cp bin/mudos.cfg.orig lib/secure/cfg/mudos.cfg</span></li>
</ul>
Then edit
lib/secure/cfg/mudos.cfg to point to the correct bin
and
lib directories.
<ul>
<li>Another problem that can occur if you use an older driver is that
the lib may expect options or features that the older driver doesn't
support. If this is what's happening, you need to start over, but this
time actually follow the instructions exactly, step by step.</li>
<li>If you get a bunch of errors about a missing log directory, you
probably used fileroller to uncompress the tarball. Fileroller is
apparently the default uncompression utility for Fedora. Other Linux
distros may also use it. Start your installation over and this time use
the command line as directed in the installation instructions.</li>
<li>If the driver compile fails complaining about extra_ref in
parser.c, then you probably followed older instructions, and not the
instructions included in the latest package. You should no longer use
./build.MudOS (unless you know exactly the ramifications of what you're
doing). Instead use the ./configure script as per the current
instructions, which you should follow closely.</li>
<li>If the driver craps out complaining about a hosed up swap file,
you're
probably running Fedora, and you probably haven't changed your hostname
from the original "localhost.localdomain" or whatever nonsense they
use. What mudos expects is that when it asks your machine for its
hostname, that it receive something like "alpha", and not something
like "alpha.bravo". If your machine is under the impression that its
name is localhost.localdomain, it will supply that name to mudos, which
will eventually choke on it. <br>
If you're good at C, you can edit lines 66 and 76 of
v22.2b14/swap.c and correct this behavior. But the common sense fix is
to stop being a noob and give your computer a proper hostname already.</li>
<li>Some hosting services may provide you unix shells so tightly
restricted that you cannot successfully compile the mudos driver. You
may need to submit a problem ticket with your hosting service to
resolve the issue. Let them know that the source compiles fine on
various versions of SuSE and Fedora, as well as Solaris 8, 9, and 10,
various BSD's, and even IRIX (!). If you can get them to give me a free
temporary account for testing purposes, I might take a look and see if
I
can help.</li>
<li>If you've tried everything but the compile keeps breaking, try
compiling as root (obviously a last resort, and just for testing).</li>
<li>On Ubuntu, you will probably need to change your apt-get source
(System->Administration->Software Sources) then <span
style="font-weight: bold;">apt-get install bison</span> and <span
style="font-weight: bold;">apt-get install libc6-dev</span></li>
<li><span class="sb_messagebody">If you get errors complaining about
not finding bison or yacc, what this means is that compiling the driver
requires these tools, and the configure script can't find them. They
are either in a non-standard location, or your host simply does not
have them installed. If you run the host box, either install bison (or
yacc), or add their path to your PATH environment variable. If you are
not the host computer admin, politely explain to the admins that you
can't compile without bison (or yacc) and could they please install it
for you. <br>
</span></li>
<br>
</ul>
<a name="10"></a>
<h1>Why does compiling the driver for Dead Souls throw so many
warnings?
<a class="backtotop" href="#top">(Back to Top)</a></h1>
<p> Beats me. This is one of those complaints I don't really know how
to respond to. At the end of the compile, you'll have a driver that
works. It's been tested on GCC 2, 3, and 4. It's worked for Fedora
Linux, SuSE Linux, and various other versions of UNIX and UNIX-clone
environments. It works. Ignore
the compile schmutz.</p>
<a name="11"></a>
<h1>Why is there a windows-format mudos.cfg in /secure/cfg? I'm running
unix.
<a class="backtotop" href="#top">(Back to Top)</a></h1>
<p>This is a symptom of my obsession to have the Windows lib and the
unix lib be absolutely identical. During a fresh install, this file is
overwritten with a unix version, if you follow the install instructions.</p>
<a name="12"></a>
<h1>How do I enable database support?
<a class="backtotop" href="#top">(Back to Top)</a></h1>
<p>I don't know. I don't understand databases at all, so it's pointless
for me
to try to get that driver functionality working. If you develop a
procedure for it, please share it with me and I will document it so
others can
benefit from your leetness. I might suggest that it's probably easier
to do this using LPC sockets in the lib, rather than trying to do it
using driver-level support. If you don't know what that means, you'll
need to play around with Dead Souls for a while, get the hang of it,
and then revisit the question.<br>
</p>
<a name="13"></a>
<h1>How do I upgrade from one version of Dead Souls to another?
<a class="backtotop" href="#top">(Back to Top)</a></h1>
<p>Patches used to be provided, but this was a cumbersome and tedious
process. There is now a liveupgrade command for painless upgrading.<br>
</p>
<p>The upgrade for both Windows and UNIX is the same. Basically a Dead
Souls liveupgrade is a pretty unsophisticated system. It just copies
over new files over old files.<br>
</p>
<p>Obviously, this kind of updating is intended for muds that do
not do extensive lib system rewrites. For example, if your mud creation
has been limited to individual home directories and
the domains/ directories, then an upgrade should
be mostly
painless.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if you've done extensive customizing of the
player object,
simulated efun subsystem, daemons, and so forth, then you may run into
problems after an update. The typical update patch does include some
changes to the player object, for example, so the indiscriminate
overwriting of the previous information with the updated files means
that your work basically disappears.</p>
<p>For this reason it is critical always to perform a <span
style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">full backup</span>
of
all your mud files before implementing a patch upgrade. Carefully
follow the instructions included in the liveupgrade command to ensure
optimal effect. Because these instructions are not expected to be
static, the details will not be included in this document. Read the <a
href="http://dead-souls.net/RELEASE_NOTES">/doc/RELEASE_NOTES</a> file
to know what has changed between releases and to determine whether an
upgrade is worth the risk. Please note that RELEASE_NOTES contains an
overview of major changes. It does not document every difference
between versions. <br>
</p>
<br>
<p><big><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="13b"></a>How do I
compile a 64 bit driver?</span></big><br>
</p>
<p>Assuming you are using a 64-bit AMD processor and running a 64-bit
OS on it, you can enable the compilation of a 64-bit driver by editing
fluffos*/build.FluffOS and changing:<br>
</p>
<p>ENABLE_M64=0<br>
<br>
to<br>
</p>
<p>ENABLE_M64=1<br>
</p>
<p>Then re-do the compile with:<br>
</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: bold;">make distclean</span><br
style="font-weight: bold;">
<span style="font-weight: bold;">./configure</span><br
style="font-weight: bold;">
<span style="font-weight: bold;">make install</span><br>
</p>
<p>If this fails, you are probably either not running a 64-bit AMD
processor, or not running a 64-bit OS on it.<span
style="font-weight: bold;"><br>
</span><br>
</p>
<h1><a name="14"></a>When I log out after starting the mud, problems
happen.
<a class="backtotop" href="#top">(Back to Top)</a></h1>
<p>If you're running a modern UNIX, you have two main options for
running the mud in a "backgrounded" way that survives your logout. <br>
</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">nohup</span><br>
</p>
<p>The first is the nohup command. This is a sort of legacy command
from modem days, but it does the job of keeping processes running even
if there's no terminal attached. To use nohup in this way, your
commands might be something like this:<br>
</p>
<p><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">cd
/usr/games/ds/bin</span><br
style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">
<span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">nohup ./driver
./mudos.cfg 1>/dev/null 2>/dev/null & </span><br>
</p>
<p>The /dev/null redirects output to a null device. If you don't do
this, nohup will save all stdout/stderr output to a file, and this may
fill up diskspace more quickly than you expect, so make sure to use the
/dev/null redirecton to avoid this problem.<br>
</p>
<p>If your startmud script has been correctly edited (it's important
that it have the correct MUDHOME directory specified, in this case,
"/usr/games/ds"), then the command lines might be:<br>
</p>
<p><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">cd
/usr/games/bin</span><br
style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">
<span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">nohup
./startmud 1>/dev/null 2>/dev/null &</span><br>
</p>
<p>The advantage to using the startmud script is that if you shutdown
the mud from inside the game, it will automatically restart. The
disadvantage is that you need to log into the shell and kill the script
if you want to actually shut down the mud and keep it down. A potential
risk when using startmud is that if you have not edited it correctly,
or if there is a problem with the mud, you may have the script fire off
a continuous loop of trying to restart the mud. Not only is this ugly
to look at and inconvenient until fixed, it may also anger the person
who runs the computer you're doing this on, as it may chew up
resources. So, if you use the startmud script, *make sure it works*
before running it in background mode with nohup.<br>
</p>
<p>In at least one case, using nohup this was did not work for someone.
I never received a clear explanation of why this was, but for them, the
following technique worked.<br>
</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">screen</span><br>
</p>
<p>This command ought to be default in any UNIX anywhere, but alas, it
sometimes is not. If it's not available on your system, you can try to
download the source from here: <a href="ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/screen/">ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/screen/</a><br>
</p>
<p>What this program does is let you run console applications in a
virtual terminal, so that you can detach from the terminal, work on
something else, then reattach to resume the program already in
progress. Rather than pausing it, screen just runs whatever it is in a
sort of backgrounded way. Way cool. In the following example, I refer
to the "Ctrl" key like this: <Ctrl> . When you need to press That
key and another key in combination, the notation I use looks like this:
<Ctrl>-a, which means "hold down the 'Ctrl' key, and then press
the 'A' key".<br>
</p>
<p>To run Dead Souls in a screen session, it might look like this:<br>
</p>
<p><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">cd
/usr/games/ds</span><br
style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">
<span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">screen -S
deadsouls</span><br style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">
<span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">./startmud</span><br
style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">
<span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;"><Ctrl>-a</span><br
style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">
<span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">d</span><br>
</p>
<p>You may wonder what that 'd' is doing all by itself there. What
<Ctrl>-a does is tell your screen session to pay attention to the
next key you press, because that is a screen action it needs to take.
In this case, the key is 'd', which means "detach". When in a screen
session, if you type <Ctrl>-a then d, you drop out of the screen
session and resume whatever terminal you were in before you invoked
screen. Your application will be happily chugging along in the virtual
console you left behind. To reconnect to the screen session you
detached from, the command would look like this:<br>
</p>
<p><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">screen -r
deadsouls</span><br>
</p>
<p>The full grooviness of the screen command is beyond the scope of
this FAQ. For more info on it, at the UNIX shell type: <span
style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">man screen</span><br>
</p>
<span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Microsoft
Windows</span><br>
<br>
If you're running Windows, then you'll need to figure out how to make
Dead Souls run as a service. One way is to download and use <a
href="http://lpmuds.net/files/windows/runds2.zip">these scripts</a>
contributed by Saquivor @ Eternal Souls.<br>
Another is to mess around with your windows services and do it
manually. Unfortunately, I am not a Windows server person, so you'll
need to <a
href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=how+do+i+run+a+program+as+a+service%3F&btnG=Google+Search">search
Google</a> for the appropriate docs.<br>
<br>
<br>
<a name="15"></a>I<span style="font-weight: bold;"> put the mud in a
Linux startup script, but it won't start when I reboot!</span><br>
<br>
An apparent peculiarity of Fedora is that if the command line specified
in your start script<br>
doesn't redirect stderr and stdout to /dev/null, the program fails to
run. Also, if you don't<br>
properly background it, you may end up hanging the computer and
preventing anything<br>
else from running.<br>
<br>
<br>
Therefore, in your start script, your command line should have
redirection and backgrounding.<br>
It might look something like this:<br>
<br>
/mud/ds/bin/startmud > /dev/null 2>&1 &<br>
<br>
Other recent Linux distributions may have the same quirk.<br>
<br>
<br>
<h1><a name="16"></a>Ok, it's running. Now what? <a class="backtotop"
href="#top">(Back
to Top)</a></h1>
<p>Log in and read the following: </p>
<ul>
<li>The in-game Player's Handbook</li>
<li>Read the <a href="http://dead-souls.net/ds-admin-faq.html">Dead
Souls Admin FAQ</a>.</li>
<li>Read the <a href="http://dead-souls.net/ds-creator-faq.html">Dead
Souls Creator's FAQ</a>.</li>
<li>Read the <a href="http://dead-souls.net/example.html">Quick
Creation System Example Page</a>.</li>
<li>Read the <a href="http://dead-souls.net/debugging.html">Debugging
Guide</a>.</li>
<li>Read the <a href="http://dead-souls.net/editor.html">Editor
Tutorial</a>.</li>
<li>The in-game Creator's Manual.</li>
<li>The in-game Administrator's Guidebook.<br>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>The End <a class="backtotop" href="#top">(Back to Top)</a></h1>
<p><a href="http://dead-souls.net/index.html">Return to Dead Souls
Homepage</a></p>
<hr>
<p style="text-align: center;">Last Updated December 2007</p>
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