NAME

bin/wppd.pl - LUT WHOIS++ server

SYNOPSIS

  bin/wppd.pl [-cCdDiLR] [-a admin-maxhits] [-e expansions]
    [-f maxfull] [-g wgipath] [-h serverhandle]
    [-l logfile] [-m maxhits] [-p portnumber]
    [-r restrictionsfile] [-s sourcedir]
    [-S stoplistfile] [-T thesaurus_prog] [-t indexdir]
 

DESCRIPTION

This is a WHOIS++ server (see RFC 1835) which can be used to make the contents of the ROADS server's database available for searching over the Internet using the WHOIS++ protocol.

OPTIONS

-a admin-maxhits

Administratively assigned upper limit on the number of hits which may be returned in response to a search.

-c

Make searches case sensitive - by default they are case insensitive, i.e. the case of the letters in search terms is ignored.

-C

Whether or not to return a hit count with the WHOIS++ response.

-d

Return debugging information in the WHOIS++ protocol stream.

-D

Do DNS lookups to find out the client's hostname - off by default, since it results in lots of unnecessary traffic. You can always do this in a batch job later on using the server logs.

-e expansions

File containing list of expansions to use in stemming search, e.g.

  colour color

indicates that all instances of the search term colour should automatically be expanded to consider the search term color too.

-f maxfull

Sets the default upper limit on the number of records which may be returned in full. The server administrator can set an upper limit on this value, and the client can indicate in their request how many records they would like to be returned in full - though there is no guarantee the server will honour this request.

-g wgipath

Path to WHOIS++ Gateway Interface (WGI) executable which should be run on receiving a request. Off by default.

-h serverhandle

Server handle, unique ID for your server. This should be set by the ROADS installation program, but you can override it here.

-i

Don't keep an in-memory cache of the database index. We do this by default because it speeds up searching. If your machine only has a small amount of RAM you might prefer to read the index off disk rather than cache it in memory.

-L

Whether to log search terms and hit counts. The default is to keep logs of these things.

-l logfile

The name of the file where log entries should be placed.

-m maxhits

The default maximum number of hits to return. The client can request an alternative upper limit, but there is no guarantee that the server will honour this request. In particular, the server administrator may have set an adminstratively defined upper limit which is lower than the value requested by the client.

-p portnumber

The TCP port number to listen on. You will need to run the server as root if you want it to listen on ports less than 1023. This is discouraged.

-r restrictionsfile

File to look in for search restrictions. This is a list of the templates, and attributes within those templates, which the ordinary user will be allowed to search on. Anything which does not appear in this file will be ignored.

-R

Use access control lists.

-s sourcedir

This is the directory where the ROADS database may be found, if different from the default.

-S stoplistfile

This is the file in which the stoplist used when building the database index may be found. Words which appear in here are silently discarded when they're searched for. For example, if the word "the" was in the stoplistfile, a search for "the AND big AND breakfast" would be trimmed to "big AND breakfast."

-T thesaurus_prog

This is the location of WHOIS++ Gateway Interface (WGI) conformant thesaurus program.

-t index

This is the location of the ROADS database index.

FILES

config/admin-restrict - search restrictions for admin users.

config/adminpasswd - password(s) for admin users in /etc/passwd format.

config/expansions - list of simple query expansions, e.g. 'color' to 'colour'.

config/hostsallow - TCP wrapper format list of client domain names and IP addresses, and allowed operations.

config/outlines - template outline definitions (schemas).

config/search-restrict - search restrictions for end users.

guts/alltemps - list of template handle to filename mappings.

guts/index* - database index used in searching.

guts/wppd.pid - WHOIS++ server process ID.

source - the actual templates themselves.

SEE ALSO

"wppdc.pl" in bin, "wppdc.pl" in admin-cgi, "snarf.pl" in bin, "search.pl" in cgi-bin, "admin.pl" in admin-cgi, ...

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 1988, Martin Hamilton <martinh@gnu.org> and Jon Knight <jon@net.lut.ac.uk>. All rights reserved.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

It was developed by the Department of Computer Studies at Loughborough University of Technology, as part of the ROADS project. ROADS is funded under the UK Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib), the European Commission Telematics for Research Programme, and the TERENA development programme.

AUTHORS

Martin Hamilton <martinh@gnu.org>, Jon Knight <jon@net.lut.ac.uk>, with apologies to Tom Christiansen, and Larry Wall :-)