----------------------------------------
Gophernicus on FreeBSD12 quick/dirty HOWTO
January 21st, 2019
----------------------------------------

Here's a very quick and dirty HOWTO get started with gophernicus on
FreeBSD 12... I used the VirtualBox image straight off of their site,
bridged networking, and accessed the gopher server via LAN (ipv4).

I did all commands as root, but the actual gophernicus will be run as
non-privledged.


The very first thing you will want to do is install the most basic
dependencies:
#pkg install xinetd gcc
(if you did a fresh install of FreeBSD like I did, you might want
to install a text editor other than vi or ed {nano? joe?}, something
to download the gophernicus source {curl, git, wget, lynx, links,
w3m} also)

Now download gophernicus source from git or the zip file from github:
#wget https://github.com/kimholviala/gophernicus/archive/master.zip

Now unzip and change directory:
#unzip master.zip
#cd gophernicus-master

The gophernicus makefile requires a ChangeLog, and some versions don't
have one in the source, you can run the following command to make sure
that make will run with no issue:
#echo >> ChangeLog

Now lets compile and install gophernicus:
#make && make install

Please watch the output of the install script, it will provide generic
instructions for adding gophernicus to xinetd, go do that now with
your favourite text editor by editing /etc/inetd.conf
Give that file at least a cursory glance before adding gophernicus
to it, the line you will want to add will look something like this:
gopher  stream  tcp  nowait  nobody  /usr/sbin/in.gophernicus
  in.gophernicus -h freebsd

(note: all one line, yes, it is split above)
The -h flag above will have the full hostname of your box, you should
change it from "freebsd" in the example above to your actual FQDN.

Now we have to enable xinetd... So open /etc/rc.conf with your text
editor and add the following line to the end of it:
inetd_enable="YES"
(this will enable xinetd and gophernicus to start on system startup)

Finally, lets start xinetd and gophernicus without rebooting:
#service inetd start && service inetd status

If it started correctly, the PID of xinetd will print to your screen

Finally, lets test the gopher server itself, using your preferred gopher
client, browse to the FQDN that you set above...Note that the gopher URI
specification says FQDNs must be used in gopher:// URLs, but
many clients, such as lynx and Firefox 3.6 will allow you to use IP
addresses for testing purposes.
If the server has been setup successfully, your client will load
gophernicus' default gophermap, which starts with "Welcome to
Gophernicus!" :) :) :)


Now that things are setup, you can go add content to your gopher
server... By default (I have tried to use defaults only in this quick
and dirty tutorial) the content resides in /var/gopher
The default gophermap is /var/gopher/gophermap

Have fun!
----------------------------------------

=> Back to phlog index | gopher.zcrayfish.soy gopher root

This phlog entry has been read 3223 times.
Future direct comment submission has been disabled for this phlog entry.
Comments are still accepted by email, please send to:
zacharygopher@gopher.zcrayfish.soy
Be sure to include the post title in the subject line! Thanks!
Nobody has commented on this post.