Project Overview
Downloads
The Concept of diald-top
Installation
Running diald-top client
Running diald-top server
Troubleshooting Strange Behaviour

Project Overview

Also, please note that the main author of this package has not used diald for several years now, and thus has no test platform for the code.  More developers are badly needed.  If you are willing to help out, please register yourself on sourceforge, and let the project administrator(s) know you wish to develop, and you will be added to the developer access list.  It would also be preferred if all developers joined the diald-top-devel mailing list.

Once you have been added to the developer access list, please keep track of open tasks (found in the task manager in the project page), and assign yourself a task that you want to work on, and start working on it. :)  If you think of a task that should be added, please add it to the task manager.  If you are working on something that is not on the list, please add it to the list.
 

Downloads

The Concept of diald-top

I used ncurses for the interface to make my life simpler.  This also has the additional effect of making this possible to run on nearly any type of terminal.  I have a VC4404 hooked up and this works great on it.  As ncurses uses the terminfo database, it SHOULD work fine on any terminal with correct terminfo entries.

As of Version 0.0.1.1, I have added a limited command structure to diald-top. It is now possible to send diald commands to force/unforce, block/unblock and to bring the link up/down, and also to quit diald (immediately or when the link comes down) all from within diald-top.  This makes the program a lot more useful.

The program also now reports the status of the link (UP, DOWN, CONNECT, START_LINK, STOP_LINK, DISCONNECT, CLOSE, etc).  This can still use some work but it is there now...

As of v2.0, diald-top now has the capability to run remotely, communicating to a custom server (also included in the package) that farms the contents of the monitor FIFO out to the remotely running clients.  The communication is done using TCP/IP on port 1313 on the server.  The identity of the user that is remotely running diald-top is verified using identd, and is then looked up in a configuration file (by userid, IP address, netmask).

So far, diald-top has been tested in the following configurations:
        Server:
        Linux 2.0.30

        Client:
        Linux 2.0.30            remote client, local client
        BSDi 3.0                remote client

If you get the client up and running on other platforms, please let me know the particulars and if you had to hack on the sources to get it to compile.  For the platforms above, the only changes were in the Makefile.def as outlined in the INSTALL file.
 

Installation

Required to make/install/use diald-top

1. GCC (or possibly another ANSI compliant C compiler) 
2. NCurses library (ver 1.9.9e tested)
3. diald v0.14, v0.15 or v0.16 (may work with other versions)
4. GNU make, install, and other such system utilities needed for compiling 
5. SLIP support in your kernel (and PPP if you want to use it too) -- may be modular if you wish (this is actually a diald requirement)

Optional

1. if you have glibc installed and want to use the objstack feature, uncomment the -DUSE_OBJSTACKS in the CFLAGS line in the Makefile.def.
2. BIND libraries (libresolv.so.4 has been tested).  If you do not have this library on your system, be sure to remove the value of LIBRESOLV in Makefile.def.  This is only a necessity to include if you are NOT running named on your system, but want resolving of IPs to work.
3. Flex & Bison to regenerate the parser engine.  Pre-generated code is included, so you don't HAVE to generate it again unless you are changing the parser.

Intallation instructions for diald-top

1. compile, and configure diald v0.16.  Once you have diald working to your satisfaction, diald-top will become more useful.  Of course you may want to use diald-top to help you set up diald.  At least have diald installed
2. be sure to run diald with the "fifo" option 
3. create the control FIFO (the one to use in the "fifo" option of diald with:
• mknod /var/run/diald.ctl p  (substitute in your chosen fifo filename at will).
4. Edit the Makefile.def file to set the compiler options and other such things.  The following 5 steps here will help with some of the specific configuration items you may want assistance with.  The following are settings you will need to customize to match your system if you want to have any chance of getting the compile to work :)
• HEADCURSES = ncurses.h
• INCCURSES  = -I/usr/include/ncurses 
• LIBCURSES  = -lncurses 
• LIBLEX     = -lfl 
• LIBRESOLV  = -lresolv
5. For the following Makefile.def entries follow the directions in this step:
• OWNER = root
• GROUP = diald
• CLIENTMODE = 2550
• SERVERMODE = 2550
1. If you wish to have only root controlling diald (not a bad idea)
1. Change the owner/mode of the FIFO file (from step 3) to:
• owner:  root
• group:  root
• mode:   rw------- (600)
2. Change the Makefile.def settings to:
• OWNER = root
• GROUP = root
• CLIENTMODE = 500
• SERVERMODE = 500
2. If you wish to provide access to diald control to a limited group of users (rather than just root):
1. Add a new entry to /etc/group    diald::200:root,<user1>,<user2>    where the users in the group are separated by commas (choose your own group number at will)
2. Change the owner/mode of the FIFO file (from step 3) to:
• owner:  root
• group:  diald
• mode:   rw-rw--- (660)
3. Change the Makefile.def settings to:
• OWNER = root
• GROUP = diald
• CLIENTMODE = 2555 
• SERVERMODE = 2555 
6. The CLIENT_INSTALL_DIR and SERVER_INSTALL_DIR should be set to where you want the finished binaries to be.  This should be on the path of the intended users.  Also check that the MAN_DIR is set to where you want the man page to be placed.
7. If you named your control FIFO (from step 3) anything other than the default I listed above you will have to change the CONTROL_FIFO variable to match your FIFO's full path.  This filename will be used as the default at run-time.  It is still possible to override this when running the client, but that is an annoyance to have to do all the time.
8. If you want to use glibc2.0 Object stacks, change the DEFOBSTACKS line (As the author doesn't have glibc2.0, consider this experimental for now)
• DEFOBSTACKS = -DUSE_OBSTACKS
9. Change the CONF_FILE line to give the full pathname of the server config file.  Note that a sample config file is included in the server subdirectory (actually the config file for my machine).
10. Make and install the server & client binaries (and man page):  You will have to do the make install as root most likely
1. Full Install..
• make; make install
2. NOTE:   If you are debugging the program (like if you are getting segfaults and want to send me a backtrace of the coredump), you will need to do:
• make DEBUG=1; make DEBUG=1 install
3. If you only want to compile the client (for a remote client for example)
• make client; make install-client
4. Also to make only the server:
• make server; make install-server

Running diald-top client

• If you want to use the default control FIFO defined at compile time, just type:
diald-top
• To use a different control FIFO, use -c filename
• Make sure the FIFO file exists and has the correct permissions.
• To suppress resolving of IP addresses in the diald-top display use the -n option.  Note:  this is toggle-able during run-time.
• An option of -h will give help on the command line options and show the default (compiled-in) FIFO filename.
• To use diald-top as a remote client:  (Where server-ip is in *NUMERIC* format.)
diald-top -r server-ip

Running diald-top server

• To start the diald-top server:
diald-top-server

To force the server to reread its configuration without quitting, and to reauthenticate all connected clients with the new configuration, kill it with SIGHUP  (as in kill -HUP serverpid)

To get the server to shut down, kill it with SIGINT or SIGTERM.  This will of course disconnect all connected clients.  (BTW, SIGTERM is the default signal sent by kill, so "kill serverpid" will send it SIGTERM).

You can also use telnet to port 1313 to connect to the server (as this is basically what the client does).  This can be useful to remotely send the diald a "force" command (from properly authenticated users only of course). To disconnect from the server when using telnet, use "close" and *NOT* "quit" as the quit command is sent to diald, causing diald to immediately
bring down the link.

I will be fleshing out the server more as time goes on, but I wanted to release this as it is now.

Troubleshooting Strange Behaviours

1. If diald-top seems to hang before displaying anything on the screen or even clearing the screen, check to make sure diald is running, and that you specified the correct filename for the control FIFO, and finally that the control FIFO has the correct permissions.
2. Sometimes diald seems to die unexpectedly when quitting diald-top, and sometimes even while diald-top is still running.  I don't know what's with that.
3. If diald-top segfaults on you, please recompile it with make DEBUG=1, install it with make DEBUG=1 install, enable core dumps and submit a bug report in the bug tracker on the project page including a backtrace of the coredump.
1. To enable coredumps:
• in BASH:   ulimit -c 1000000
• in (T)CSH: limit core 1000000
2. To get a backtrace of the coredump:
• gdb -c core -s diald-top -r diald-top
• in gdb:
bt
quit
3. Please submit the entire output of the gdb as this will help us find and kill the bug immensely.  If the backtrace shows something like:
(gdb) bt
#0  0x8049a5b in free ()
#1  0x8ca586cd in ?? ()
#2  0x804c69d in free ()
#3  0x804be50 in free ()
#4  0x8049899 in free ()
#5  0x8049271 in free ()
#6  0x804919b in free ()
then you have likely stripped the symbols out of the binary.  Remake it with DEBUG=1 and redo the coredump, etc.