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<META name="author" lang="en" content="Michiel Broek">
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<TITLE>Nodelist and Nidediff processing.</TITLE>
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<h5>Last update 22-Jan-2002</h5>
<P>&nbsp;<P>
<H1>Nodelist and Nodediff processing</H1>
<P>
<H3>Introduction</H3>
<P>
A received a lot of questions about nodelist and nodediff processing, so
I will describe here the setup of the development system for the Fidonet
nodelist. First of all, it is <strong>very important</strong> that you
use three separate directories to do the nodelist processing. This is to
make sure that all stages are independent of each other, and if something
goes wrong, you still have a working system. The three directories are:<br>
<ol>
<li><strong>/opt/mbse/ftp/pub/fido/nodelist</strong>, this is the public
download area, the received diff's are stored here as well as the final
compressed nodelists for download.
<li><strong>/opt/mbse/tmp/nlwork</strong>, this is the working directory
to apply diffs to the previous nodelist. This directory should allways
contain the latest <strong>uncompressed</strong> nodelist.
<li><strong>/opt/mbse/var/nodelist</strong>, this is the systems nodelist
directory defined in mbsetup, menu 1.4.4
</ol>
In short the steps to process the nodediff's is as follows:
<ol>
<li>Receive the nodediff and store it for download.
<li>Apply the diff to the latest nodelist.
<li>Hatch the new compressed nodelist.
<li>Store the new nodelist for download.
<li>Unpack the new nodelist in the nodelist compiler directory.
<li>Set the compile semafore.
<li>Compile the nodelists.
</ol>
Next I will describe these steps in detail.
<P>&nbsp;</P>
<H3>The download area</H3>
<P>
First define the download area for the bbs. In my case, this is area 20. From
here users can download the nodelists and nodediffs, files to the downlinks
are send from here. Below is the example of my system.
<P>
<IMG SRC="images/nodelist.png" Border="0" Alt="BBS download area 20">
<P>&nbsp;</P>
<H3>The NODEDIFF tic area</H3>
<P>
From your uplinks you usually receive NODEDIFF or NODEDIZZ files. Create a tic area for
that purpose. I have keep# set to 5, this means the last 5 diff's are stored
in the download directory, older ones are removed. Now you can receive
nodediff files, store them for download, and send them to other nodes.
<P>
<IMG SRC="images/nodelist1.png" Border="0" Alt="NODEDIZZ tic area">
<P>&nbsp;</P>
<H3>Apply the diff</H3>
<P>
We do this with the tic <strong>magic</strong> processor. In this example
I have NODELIST.007 in the <strong>/opt/mbse/tmp/nlwork</strong> directory.
Note that this filename is uppercase, they are usually stored and distributed
as uppercase names. As I receive the diff files as zip, the filemask on
my system is <strong>nodediff.z##</strong>.
This means that the file with the name nodediff.z14 in the area NODEDIZZ
is a match. The command that is executed expands to
<strong>mbdiff /opt/mbse/tmp/nlwork/NODELIST /var/spool/mbse/ftp/pub/fido/nodelist/nodediff.z14 -quiet</strong>
if the received nodediff is
<strong>nodediff.z14</strong>.<br>The mbdiff program applies
<strong>nodediff.z14</strong> against <strong>NODELIST.007</strong> in the
<strong>/opt/mbse/tmp/nlwork</strong> directory. If this is successfull, a
new <strong>NODELIST.014</strong> is created there, a compressed <strong>
nodelist.z14</strong> is created there and <strong>NODELIST.007</strong> is
removed.<br> If this operation fails, only <b>NODELIST.007</b> will stay
in that directory.
Because the ARC program for GNU/Linux isn't good for files, I
left the Arc files command empty in the archiver setup. As a fallback the
mbdiff program uses <strong>zip</strong> to create the compressed archive.<br>
If creating the new nodelist fails for some reason, a missed diff or so,
the whole processing stops here. The previous nodelist is still here and
you can manually correct the situation. So, if you missed a diff, see that
you get it and manually give the <strong>mbdiff</strong> commands as user
<strong>mbse</strong> until you are up to date. Or, place the latest
uncompressed nodelist in the directory <strong>/opt/mbse/tmp/nlwork</strong>.
<P>
<IMG SRC="images/nodelist2.png" Border="0" Alt="Magic to apply the nodelist diff file">
<P>&nbsp;</P>
<H3>Processing the new nodelist</H3>
<P>
Now that we have created the new compressed nodelist, it has to go somewhere.
The file <strong>nodelist.z14</strong> is in the directory
<strong>/opt/mbse/tmp/nlwork</strong>. The example for the hatch manager
is shown below. The hatch manager runs automatic with the comand
<strong>mbfido tic</strong>. This setup will hatch the new nodelist in the
tic area <strong>NODELIST</strong> The two screens below show the hatch and
tic setup for this area.
<P>
<IMG SRC="images/nodelist3.png" Border="0" Alt="Hatch new nodelist">
<IMG SRC="images/nodelist4.png" Border="0" Alt="TIC area for new nodelist">
<P>
Now that we have hatched the new nodelist and processed it the new nodelist
is stored in in the download area, and maybe send some copies to downlinks.
We now have to feed it to the nodelist compiler for our own system.
We use a tic <strong>magic</strong> command to do
that. In this case we unpack the nodelist in <strong>/opt/mbse/var/nodelist</strong>
and set the <strong>compile</strong> semafore so that the <strong>mbindex
</strong> will compile the new nodelist. Don't be afraid that the unpacked
nodelists will acumulate in the nodelist directory, <strong>mbindex</strong>
will handle that, only the latest two nodelists are kept there. The
<strong>mbindex</strong> program is started by the taskmanager <strong>
mbtask</strong>.
<P>
<IMG SRC="images/nodelist5.png" Border="0" Alt="Magic copy nodelist and trigger compiler">
<P>&nbsp;</P>
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