NAME¶
hearse - exchange Nethack bones files with other players
SYNOPSIS¶
hearse [
-b |
--bones-dir dir] [
--bones-mode
mode] [
-c |
--config-file file] [
--cron]
[
--debug] [
--delete-uploaded] [
--help] [
--lock-file file] [
-q |
--quiet] [
--run-as-me] [
--run-as-user user] [
--run-as-group group] [
--server-url url] [
--stamp-file file] [
--user-email address] [
--user-token token] [
--user-token-file file] [
--version]
DESCRIPTION¶
Nethack sometimes saves the level on which you die (including your stuff, what
killed you, and your ghost) in a "bones file". These files get
loaded into later Nethack games. If you're the only Nethack player on your
system you'll only get bones files you created yourself.
hearse lets you automatically exchange Nethack bones file with other
players. When run it uploads any new bones files it finds on your system, then
downloads any bones files the server feels like giving it. See
<
http://www.argon.org/~roderick/hearse/> for more information.
An important thing to note is that by default using
hearse will cause you
to end up with more bones than you otherwise would have. This changes the
game's balance and is considered by many players to be a mild form of
cheating. You can address this by turning on the
--delete-uploaded
option, but the down side is you'll never encounter your own bones files.
In order to use the Hearse server, you've got to supply your email address. Do
this by using the
--user-email switch the first time you use the
program, or by putting "user-email
address" in the config
file. Your email address will only be used to contact you about Hearse, and
will never be given to any third party. If you enter an invalid address, the
server won't be able to support you if you download a bad bones file, and will
be forced to ban you if any of your uploaded files are bad.
Hearse was set up as a service to the Nethack community. Please respect that;
abuse of the service can only lead to it being removed.
QUICK START¶
The defaults are set up for a Linux system using a nethack binary which is
either set-uid or set-gid games. If this is what you've got, as root run
# hearse --user-email your@address.com
one time by hand, then put
0 3 * * * root perl -we 'sleep rand 3600'; hearse --quiet
in
/etc/crontab.
CONFIGURATION¶
hearse comes with default values for its various configuration settings
which match the way many Linux systems are set up. If any of them don't match
your system, you can either change them in a configuration file, or you can
specify the right values via command line switches. This last isn't as onerous
as it sounds, because most people run it from cron. You can put the switches
in the crontab file and leave it at that. If you'd rather use a configuration
file, you can use the default location (
/etc/nethack/hearse.conf), or
use the
-c (aka
--config-file) switch to specify the file you'd
like to use.
The configuration file can specify all of the options for which it makes sense,
using the long version of the option name followed by the value. Blank and
commented lines are ignored in the usual fashion. A string value can be given
as "-" to mean the empty string. Booleans can use
on/off/true/false/yes/no/1/0. A sample
hearse.conf is included with the
distribution. Eg,
bones-dir /local/games/nethackdir
bones-mode 600
quiet on
run-as-user daemon
run-as-group -
user-token-file /local/games/nethackdir/hearse.user-token
PRIVILEGES¶
hearse needs to run with permissions like those used by Nethack itself,
so that it can read and write the bones files. It should not be made set-uid
or set-gid, though; it hasn't been audited for that.
The default configuration will try to set both the user and group ids to
"games". Nethack itself will generally only be set-id to either one
or the other, but using both hurts nothing and allows
hearse to run
as-is on more systems. This will only work if you run
hearse as root.
If you want to disable
hearse's id setting and take care of it externally
you can use the
--run-as-me switch to turn it off, or the
--run-as-user and
--run-as-group switches for finer grained
control. Specify '' or "-" for either of the latter to disable just
that thing.
RUNNING FROM CRON¶
If you're using the pre-packaged
.deb or
.rpm version of
hearse, the program is already set up to run automatically (both daily
and when you connect to the Internet). You don't have to do anything unless
you want to change this behavior. If you're installing
hearse by hand,
read on.
The normal way to use the program is to run it from cron, either daily or on
whatever schedule you like. (There's no harm in running it often, if it
doesn't find any new bones files it doesn't even contact the server.) If
letting it manage its own permissions, you'd just run it as root. Eg, to run
it some time in the 3:00 hour, put something like
0 3 * * * root perl -we 'sleep rand 3600'; hearse --quiet
in
/etc/crontab. The randomization is to prevent the server from getting
hammered at the top of each time zone's 3:00 hour.
If you'd like to see what the server's doing, you can use
--cron rather
than
--quiet. This will cause it to output its status message, but only
when it actually transfers a bones file.
RUNNING FOR MULTIPLE NETHACK VARIANTS¶
If you use multiple Nethack variants which are supported by the Hearse server,
you can run
hearse for all of them. The normal way to do this is to run
hearse once for each variant, specifying the bones directory on the
command line
# hearse -b /var/games/slashem
leaving the rest of the configuration settings to be read from the configuration
file. The last upload time is by default stored in the bones directory, so
everything just works.
The Hearse protocol requires that you have only a single concurrent connection
for each user account (it decides what kind of bones file to send you based on
the kind you most recently uploaded), so
hearse does locking on the
user token file in order to ensure this. See the
--lock-file switch for
more info.
OPTIONS¶
- -b, --bones-dir dir
- Specify the bones directory. By default the program uses the first of
/var/games/nethack, /usr/games/lib/nethackdir, and the
current directory which contains a file called record.
- --bones-mode mode
- Specify the mode for the bones files hearse creates. The default is
660.
- -c, --config-file file
- Specify an alternative configuration file. The default is
/etc/nethack/hearse.conf.
- --cron
- Suppress the "no bones to upload" message. This makes it so that
there's no output at all when there's nothing to do, but you still see
what's going on when bones files are transfered. This is a nice way to run
it from cron if you want to keep an eye on it.
- --debug
- Turn debugging on.
- --delete-uploaded
- Delete locally generated bones files after uploading them. Some people
might want to do this in order to avoid changing the game's balance. Since
the server normally gives you 1 bones file for each one you upload, if you
delete your local bones after uploading them you'll end up with the same
number of bones you otherwise would have had, but they'll be somebody
else's rather than your own.
- --help
- Show the usage message and die.
- --lock-file file
- The Hearse protocol requires that hearse do locking to be sure that
only a single connection per user can happen at a time. It does this by
locking the --user-token-file. You should not generally change
this, but if you have special requirements (that that file be read only,
eg), you can override it with this switch. Use '' to disable locking
(which I do not recommend).
- -q, --quiet
- Don't output information messages.
- --run-as-me
- Turn off both --run-as-user and --run-as-group.
- --run-as-user user
- Use user as the real and effecitve user id, default
"games". You've generally got to be root for this to work.
- --run-as-group group
- Use group as the real and effecitve group id, default
"games". You've generally got to be root for this to work.
- --server-url url
- Specify the URL for the server program. See the source or the
--help message for the default.
- --stamp-file file
- hearse only tries to upload bones files which were created since
the last time it sucessfully talked to the server. The modification time
of the --stamp-file (.hearse.timestamp by default) tells it
when that was. This path is taken relative to the --bones-dir
(unless it's absolute).
- --user-email address
- Specify your email address. You only have to do this the first time you
run hearse.
- --user-token token
- Specify your user token directly. You won't normally need to do this, as
hearse requests the token from the server and stores it in the
--user-token-file for later retrieval.
- --user-token-file file
- Specify the file used to store the user token, by default
/etc/nethack/hearse.user-token.
- --version
- Show the version number and exit.
AVAILABILITY¶
The code is licensed under the GNU GPL. Check
<
http://www.argon.org/~roderick/hearse/> for updated versions.
AUTHOR¶
This Unix client was written by Roderick Schertler <roderick@argon.org>.
The Hearse protocol, server, and Windows client were written by Alexis Manning
<alexismanning@hotpop.com>.