Starting the Caucus daemon

Caucus runs as a single master "daemon" program called swebd, which accepts requests for new Caucus sessions.  It spawns off a "sub-server child" called swebs, one for each user's session.  (See the Caucus architecture description in the Technical Library for more information.)

Swebd is normally started from root, so that it may start as many children as needed.  Each swebs child runs as effective userid "caucus", and real userid "nobody". 

Note: if you do not have a "nobody" userid, or if the user number of "nobody" is negative, you should create a user with no rights (say, "noone") and a postive user number.  Then edit /home/caucus/SWEB/swebd.conf, and change the "Real_ID" line to use the "noone" userid.

To start the Caucus daemon, login as root, and type the commands below:

rm -f /home/caucus/SOCKET/sweb
rm -f /home/caucus/SOCKET/sweb0*
/home/caucus/SWEB/swebd /home/caucus/SWEB/swebd.conf

where /home/caucus is the home directory of the "caucus" userid.

You must also add these same commands to your system start-up file so that the Caucus daemon will automatically start when your system reboots:

• For most Linux installations, you can simply add these commands to the file /etc/rc.d/rc.local.

• For Solaris installations, the proper way to start Caucus is to create a run-level 3 startup file.  As root, create the file /etc/rc3.d/S90caucus.  It must be "hard-linked" (via 'ln', no -S option) to the file /etc/init.d/caucus, and contain the following script:

        #!/sbin/sh
        
        case "$1" in
        start)
                rm -f /home/caucus/SOCKET/sweb /home/caucus/SOCKET/sweb0*
                /home/caucus/SWEB/swebd  /home/caucus/SWEB/swebd.conf
                ;;
        restart)
                ;;
        stop)
                ;;
        *)
                ;;
        esac
        exit 0
  

• For MacOS X, see: www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2002/10/22/macforunix.html and www.opensource.apple.com/projects/documentation/howto/html/SystemStarter_HOWTO.htm

Note: if you are just testing Caucus, or if your system policies discourage running outside software as root, you may instead start Caucus logged in as the "caucus" userid.  On most Unix systems, however, this will limit the number of simultaneous Caucus sessions.

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