$Id: README,v 1.22 2002/07/22 02:18:30 weasel Exp $

Echolot is a Pinger for anonymous remailers.

A Pinger in the context of anonymous remailers is a program that
regularily sends messages through remailers to check their reliability.
It then calculates reliability statistics which are used by remailer
clients to choose the chain of remailers to use.

Additionally it collects configuration parameters and keys of all
remailers and offers them in a format readable by remailer clients.


This is echolot2. Besides the name, author and purpose this has nothing
to do with echolot1. It's written from scratch.

LICENSE
-------
Please see the file named "LICENSE".


REQUIREMENTS
------------
	in general:
		Data::Dumper (should be part of perl-base)
		Digest::MD5
		HTML::Template
		a local Mail Transfer Agent
	for type1 pings
		GnuPG (1.0.7)
		GnuPG::Interface (0.33)
	for type2 pings
		a Mixmaster installation

Indirect requirements:
	Class:MethodMaker (by GnuPG::Interface)
	File::Spec (by HTML::Template, should be in more recent perl-base)

SETUP
-----

o Create a new unix user named »pinger« (You can actually use any name
  you wish but I will refer to the user as pinger in this document).

o Make sure you have the perl libraries mentioned above and GnuPG
  installed properly.

o Copy all echolot files and directories to ~pinger/echolot

o Copy/Rename the pingd.conf.sample file to pingd.conf.

o Check the homedir setting and set sitename in pingd.conf.

o If the Mixmaster executable »mix« is not in your PATH, set
  the »mixmaster« config option in pingd.conf.

  Echolot can use any available mixmaster binary (e.g. your remailer's mix).
  It will not share pool or keyrings with the existing installation (it sets
  the MIXPATH environment variable).
  
  If you prefer you can build one for Echolot and place it in ~/Mix. Don't
  bother putting configuration or keyrings there though - they won't get used.

o If the GnuPG executable »gpg« is not in your PATH, set
  the »gnupg« config option in pingd.conf.

o Set my_localpart and my_domain in pingd.conf to the appropriate values
  for your pinger. Mail to my_localpart@my_domain needs to reach
  echolot.

o Make sure your MTA supports user defined mailboxes. so that
  my_localpart+anything@my_domain also reaches echolot.
              ^^^^^^^^^
  If you use another character instead of + to indicate a user defined
  extension set recipient_delimiter accordingly in pingd.conf.

  postfix: add »recipient_delimiter = +« to main.cf.

o Mail should be delivered to /home/pinger/echolot/mail which must be a Maildir
  mailbox, i.e there are 3 directories: /home/pinger/echolot/mail/tmp,
  /home/pinger/echolot/mail/cur and /home/pinger/echolot/mail/new. Qmail,
  postfix and procmail can do this.

  Example snipped for procmail:

    :0
    $HOME/echolot/mail/
  
  (the trailing slash is important!)


  Example for qmail:

    echo "./echolot/mail/" > .qmail;
    touch .qmail-default

  
  To use procmail with postfix set »mailbox_command = /usr/bin/procmail«
  in main.cf.

o Run »./pingd --verbose start«.

o Run »./pingd add <address> <address> <address>..« in another terminal
  look at the first terminal where you started pingd. It should print
  something about adding addresses.

o Run »./pingd getkeyconf« to request new remailer-key and
  remailer-conf immediatly.

o pingd can be stopped with »./pingd stop« or with Ctrl+C on the
  terminal where it runs.

When everything works you may start pingd with

o »./pingd --detach --verbose start«

o You can tail the output file to get the debugging output:
  »tail -f output«



CONFIGURATION
-------------

Consult the pingd.conf.5 manpage for documentation on configuration
options.

To get all available configuration options and their current value run 
»./pingd dumpconf«.

After changing pingd.conf you need to restart pingd.

CAVEATS
-------

- echolot will keep open all ping and metadata files. This means it needs quite
  a few file descriptors (about 2 * total keys or 6 to 8 * remailers + some for
  perl).  If you have a very strict ulimit for open files you need to increase it.
  Something like 512 should be plenty.
  If you get obscure errors this might probably be it.


Please report bugs and feature requests at
http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=echolot