Linux Unleashed, Third Edition:Setting up a Gopher Service





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Note that these ignore statements only work with file extensions. To be more broad, you can use wildcards and the keyword ignore_patt (for ignore pattern). For example, the line:


ignore_patt: ^usr$


ignores any file with the letters usr at the beginning of the name.
The gopherdlocal.conf File
In the file gopherdlocal.conf, you have to make two small changes to identify the system administrator, otherwise your system generates many annoying notes. The lines in the gopherdlocal.conf file look like this by default:


Admin: blank
AdminEmail: blank


If you do not change these entries to actual values, Gopher can generate all kinds of weird error messages. The Admin field usually has the administrator’s name and sometimes a telephone number. For example, the file could be filled out as follows:


Admin: Yvonne Chow, 555-1212
AdminEmail: [e-mail]


Another setting you should provide in the gopherdlocal.conf file is the Abstract, a short description of what your particular Gopher service provides. If you don’t change the default setting, users get a message prompting them to request the Abstract, so you may as well do it right away. Multiple lines in an abstract value are followed by a backslash to show the continuation. A sample Abstract setting looks like this:


Abstract: This server provides sound and graphics files \
collected by the administrator on a recent trip to Outer \
Mongolia.


General information about your site is provided with a number of general settings for the site name, the organization that runs the site, your machine’s geographic location, the latitude and longitude of your site, and a time zone setting. You can leave these blank if you want, but providing the information leads to a more complete Gopher site. The settings in a sample gopherdlocal.conf file look like this:


Site: Explore_Mongolia
Org: Mongolia Tourist Bureau
Loc: North Bay, Ontario, Canada
Geog: blank
TZ: EDT


The setting of blank for Geog leaves the setting with no value. Obviously, the system administrator didn’t know the latitude and longitude settings.
You can set a language option used by Gopher clients to show what language most of the documents available on your site are written in. This is done like this:


Language: En_US


which refers to American English.

The setting BummerMsg is used to display a brief text string to a user who exceeds your maximum number of concurrent users or causes an error when accessing the system. The default value is this:


BummerMsg: Sorry, we have exceeded the number of permissible users


You can change this to whatever message you want. Be careful how you phrase it, though, because you never know who will get this message.

The last step in modifying the gopherdlocal.conf file is to set access procedures for users who log in to your Gopher server. Limiting the users who can get to your server is done through entries with the keyword access. The general format of the access line is:


access: hostname permissions num_users


where hostname is either the name or IP address of the host that is connecting to your server, permissions is the permission set for those users, and num_users is the maximum number of users that can be connected to the service concurrently.
The permissions are set by using any combination of the following four words, either as they are or preceded by an exclamation mark to mean “not allowed.” The permission keywords are as follows:

•  browse—Can examine directory contents. If this is forbidden, users can access entries, but they can’t get directory contents.
•  ftp—Allows server to act as gateway to FTP services.
•  read—Can access a file. If forbidden, the user gets the BummerMsg when he asks for the file.
•  search—Can access indexes (enter 7 items). If forbidden, access to the indexes is not allowed. This is used primarily with Gopher+.

For example, to set access permissions to allow up to 10 users from the network chatton.com to access your Gopher server with full rights, add a line like this:


access: chatton.com browse ftp read search 10


There is at least one space between each entry, even between permissions. This access entry:



access: bignet.org !browse !ftp read search 3


allows three concurrent users from bignet.org to access the Gopher server and read and search, but not use FTP gateways or browse the directory listings.
If you are using IP addresses, you can use a subset of the IP address to indicate the entire network. For example, if bignet.com’s network address is 147.12, you can indicate the entire network with a line like this:


access: 147.12. !browse !ftp read search 3


You must follow the last quad of numbers specified in the IP address with a period, otherwise 147.120 through 147.129 will also have the same permissions (because they match the digits specified).

If you want to enable access from a particular machine, you can do that, too. For example, to allow your friend’s darkstar machine to access your Gopher server with full permissions, add a line like this:


access: darkstar.domain.name browse ftp read search 1


Most general Gopher servers tend to allow anyone to connect, so they use a default entry to refer to anyone not explicitly defined by another access entry. The default setting is usually like this:



access: default !browse !ftp read search 15


which allows anyone to read and search Gopher directories, but not move through them or use your machine as an FTP gateway.




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