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AweMUD, in all it's various formats, can be found at the AweMUD website, at http://www.awemud.net. In particular, the Download Center.
RPM (Redhat Package Manager) files can be downloaded from the official AweMUD website. To install an AweMUD RPM, you must use the rpm command. Assuming you downloaded the file awemud-0.6.2-1.i386.rpm, you'd issue the following command:
# rpm -Uvh awemud-0.6.2-1.i386.rpm
If there are any dependencies that AweMUD needs, and you do not have them installed, you will recieve errors indicating the missing RPM files. You will need to download the correct versions for your OS, install those packages, then try the AweMUD installation again.
In addition to RPM's, Debian archive files are also maintained for AweMUD. The prefered method of installing Debian archive files is with the APT utility. An APT source, or package repository, is maintained for AweMUD. Add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:
deb http://www.awemud.net/debian ./
You can then run the following commands to install AweMUD:
# apt-get update
# apt-get install awemud
APT will then install the necessary dependencies, and install the AweMUD package.
For many users, neither RPM nor APT are an option. Other users may simply prefer building software from source, rather than using precompiled binary packages.
The soruce code for AweMUD will be in a file with a .tar.gz extension. You will need to unpack this compressed archive file. Assuming you downloaded awemud-0.6.2.tar.gz, the command to issue would be:
$ tar -zxf awemud-0.6.2.tar.gz
This will create a directory named awemud-0.6.2 containing the source code.
Next, you will need to configure the AweMUD source. This will detect the options and commands needed to build AweMUD on your system. Configuring AweMUD is very simple: simply run the configure script included with the AweMUD source.
$ ./configure
Assuming there are no problems with your system (missing important programming tools or files) the configure script will run flawlessly, and output various statistics on the AweMUD source code.
Once configured, you must actually build AweMUD. This can be done my simply running the make command.
$ make
Again, assuming your system has no misconfigurations, AweMUD should build flawlessly. It may happen, however, that the authors of AweMUD, being unfamiliar with your system, did something in a way that is incompatible with your system. If you find any errors with either the configure script or the build process, you should report them to the awemud-help forums, or the awemud-help mailing list, which can be found on the official website.
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By default, AweMUD will not fork a new process when starting. This means that if you log into a machine and run AweMUD, when you log out, AweMUD will be shut down. This is often not the way you want AweMUD to work. Therefor, you must use daemon mode. With daemon mode, AweMUD will fork a new process, and hide itself in the background. When you log out of the system, it will continue to run.
The -d option will start AweMUD in daemon mode.
AweMUD, by default, logs all messages to the standard ouput. (Which is usually the terminal.) However, this often is undesirable, especially if you're running in daemon mode. AweMUD allows you to specify a file where all log messages will be written.
The option --log=file will write the logs to "file". You can replace that with whatever filename you wish.
AweMUD stores, by default, all of its data into a single directory heirarchy. If you are not launching AweMUD from that base directory, you have to tell AweMUD where to find the data. AweMUD will change its working directory to the specified path.
Simply use the --path=dir option.
For security reasons, AweMUD allows you to chroot the server. When the server is chroot'd, it will not be able to access files outside of a specified directory heirarchy. This lets you "lock" AweMUD in to a certain area on your filesystem. This way, if a hacker finds a hole in AweMUD and exploits it to gain a shell, she will not be able to do any serious damage to your system.
To activate chroot mode, simply use the --chroot option.
In addition to chroot'ing the server, it is a good idea to force AweMUD to run as a user and group other than root. If you wish to start AweMUD automatically at boot-up, it will generally be loaded as the root user. To make AweMUD run as another user and group (let's say user "nobody" and group "daemon"), use the --user=username and --group=groupname options.
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In order to administrate AweMUD, you must first log in with the admin account. By default, the admin user has the password "admin". So, to log in as admin, do the following:
Enter thy name: admin
Enter thy password: admin
Once in, you'll be fairly much like any other character in the game. However, you will find that you are invincible - it would certainly be annoying if the administrator died. The admin account also has access to a special admin command.
All adminstration commands work thru the administration console. The administration console is accessible by using the admin as the admin user. In the administration console, your prompt will change to
#
similar to the root prompt on a UNIX system. Once in the administration console, you can issue a number of administration commands. The descriptions of each follow.
With little great surprise, the exit will exit the administration console. Don't use quit! That will disconnect you from AweMUD.
The announce command, will send the given text to all players currently logged onto the system.
The create comes in two varieties: create object and create npc. They will take a single argument, which is the identifier of a template. The command will then load the template from the correct repository (depending on whether you asked for an object or an npc), and add said entity to the current room.