IMPORTANT NOTE: After installation, check the HOTFIX PAGE for late-breaking patches.
NOTE: As of June 6
2006 the Windows version IS AVAILABLE
AGAIN.
FAQ Index
Is this FAQ really necessary? (Back
to Top)
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.
Where do I get Dead Souls? (Back
to Top)
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 version, and
it is the only one officially authorized to distribute Dead Souls.
Download the latest version from the following:
Why is there only one version? Where are the UNIX and Windows
versions? (Back to Top)
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.
This merge accomplishes the following:
- Ensures 100% identical lib versions for the different OSes.
- Limits the clutter involved with releasing new versions.
- Lowers the amount of labor and time involved in releasing new
versions.
- Simplifies installation and upgrades for new users.
Should I apply the available patches during an install? (Back to Top)
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.
How do I install Dead Souls in Windows? (Back to Top)
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.
First make sure you are running Windows NT 4, Windows 2000 or above,
Then:
- unzip the distribution file
- 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.
- run c:\ds\runmud.bat
- if you lack a favorite telnet client, open a command line window
by clicking on Start->Run... and entering: cmd
- connect to your Windows computer by telnetting to port 6666. If
you are using the command window, type: telnet
localhost 6666
- 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.
- When you finish entering the admin's info, the mud will
automatically reboot.
- log in as your admin character.
- 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.
- log in again after the mud reboots.
- check the HOTFIX PAGE
for
late-breaking fixes.
- start reading the guide and the handbook and the manual.
Hold up, these Windows instructions aren't working (Back to Top)
There are a few common reasons for this.
- A recent fix may be available. Check the HOTFIX
PAGE for late-breaking fixes.
- 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.
- On at least one occasion, Winzip has somehow corrupted the
archive as it was extracted. Try using another decompression utility,
like winrar.
- 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.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- If the mud starts but you get lots of bizarre errors, there may
be a couple of reasons for this:
- 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.
- 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.
How do I install Dead Souls in a Linux/UNIX box? (Back to Top)
First make sure of a couple of things:
- 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: unzip -d ds ds2.1.zip
- NOTE: If you don't use the "-d" flag to specify the name of the
new directory you want to create, the archive will dump everything
into your current working directory, which may look ugly if that's
not your intention.
- 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.
- cd to the directory where all mud files reside. Called $MUDHOME
in the rest of these UNIX instructions.
- cd to v22.2b14
- type: ./configure
- type: make
- type: make install
- If the previous step fails, just manually copy the "driver" file
into
$MUDHOME/bin/
- 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:
/home/joe/mud/lib
and bin:
/home/joe/mud/bin
- edit $MUDHOME/bin/startmud (provided) and change the $MUDHOME
definition.
- manually run the mud: $MUDHOME/bin/driver
$MUDHOME/bin/mudos.cfg .
If you properly edited the startmud script, you can just type: ./startmud
- telnet to your machine, using the port specified in mudos.cfg.
For
example: telnet localhost 6666
- 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.
- 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.
- check the HOTFIX PAGE
for
late-breaking fixes.
I'm having trouble getting Dead Souls for UNIX to work (Back to Top)
- first, stop using Fedora. Ha ha just kidding.
- 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:
make -j 1
make install
- A recent fix may be available. Check the HOTFIX
PAGE for late-breaking fixes.
- 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.
- 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:
su - root
cd /home/joe
chown -R joe ds2.1
- 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:
cd /home/joe/ds2.1
cp bin/mudos.cfg.orig lib/secure/cfg/mudos.cfg
- Then edit lib/secure/cfg/mudos.cfg to point to the correct bin
and
lib directories.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
- 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'll take a look and see if I
can help.
- If you've tried everything but the compile keeps breaking, try
compiling as root (obviously a last resort, and just for testing).
- If the problem is that it compiles, but when you run the driver
no sefuns load and the driver segfaults, it is possible that you
compiled on a 64-bit x86 box. It seems that MudOS compiled on 64-bit
x86 Linux doesn't work right. A fix is in the works, but until it is
available, you can do one of two things: boot into 32-bit mode and then
compile, or compile it on a 32-bit box and move it to the 64-bit box.
Why does compiling MudOS for Dead Souls throw so many warnings?
(Back to Top)
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 versions of Solaris. It works. Ignore
the compile schmutz.
Why is there a windows-format mudos.cfg in /secure/cfg? I'm running
unix.
(Back to Top)
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.
How do I enable database support?
(Back to Top)
I don't know. I don't understand databases at all, so it's pointless
for me
to try to get that MudOS 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.
How do I upgrade from one version of Dead Souls to another?
(Back to Top)
For your convenience, patches are available to move from one minor
revision of Dead Souls to another. But there isn't a patch for every
possible upgrade.
There is a patch to upgrade from ds2.0r12 to ds2.0r14, for example, but
there is no patch to upgrade from ds2.0r10 to ds2.0r14. As of now,
there are no plans to make patches to upgrade from one version of Dead
Souls to another. For example, do not expect a ds2.0 -> ds2.1 patch.
The upgrade for both Windows and UNIX is the same. Basically a Dead
Souls patch is a pretty unsophisticated upgrade system. In the case of
the UNIX patch, you use the tar command to copy the patch files over
your existing lib directory.
In the case of the Windows patch, it is a folder called lib which
you copy over your mud's c:\ds\lib folder. Sometimes just overwriting
is insufficient to fully bring up a previous release to the current
release. In such cases, a daemon called update.c is included, which
contains instructions for detailed modification of specific files.
These instructions are read by the mud and executed automatically after
reboot.
Obviously, this kind of update patching is intended for muds that do
not do extensive lib system rewrites. For example, if you are running
ds2.0r21, and
your mud creation has been limited to individual home directories and
the domains/ directories, then an upgrade to ds2.0r22 and beyond will
be utterly
painless.
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.
For this reason it is critical always to perform a full backup of
all your mud files before implementing a patch upgrade. Carefully
follow the instructions included in the patch releases to ensure
optimal effect. Because these instructions are not expected to be
static, the details will not be included in this document. Read the /doc/RELEASE_NOTES 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.
The patch doesn't work! I'm getting a million errors!
(Back to Top)
If you're getting lots and lots of errors when you try to run after
patching, it may be that your driver is too old. Some Dead Souls
releases include tweaks to the driver. If enough time has passed since
the install of your driver, it may be that the current lib expects
things of the driver that your old lib didn't, and you now can't run.
To get around this you could just do a fresh install of the lib. Or you
could follow these instructions:
For UNIX:
- Download the full version of the latest Dead Souls distribution.
- Uncompress it to some temporary directory other than your mud dir.
- Compile the driver as if you were going to do a new install.
- Copy the new driver binary over your old one.
- Restart the mud.
For Windows:
- Shut down the mud.
- Download the full version of the latest Dead Souls distribution.
- Uncompress it to some temporary directory other than your mud dir.
- Copy the new driver binary over your old one (
c:\ds\win32\driver.exe ).
- Restart the mud.
Ok, it's running. Now what? (Back
to Top)
Log in and read the following:
Return to Dead Souls
Homepage
Last Updated June 2006