README for the RIPE Whois Server (RIP) on Linux

The RIPE Whois Server 3.0.2 has been tested on Red Hat Linux 7.2, using
the default installation parameters.



Required Software

The following software must installed to build the server, as is not
default on Red Hat 7.2, and required (see the INSTALL file for more
detailed descriptions of each):

o University of Washington IMAP distribution
  Use the imap RPM from Red Hat, on the CD-ROM.

o MySQL
  Use the RPM available on the MySQL.com web site.


Building

The "build.sh" file has a section that works with the default Red Hat
setup, and the software mentioned above installed by RPM.  Uncomment out
the section titled Linux to use this file when installing.


General Notes

The Linux distribution has some known issues:

o The MySQL server seems to become slow for certain types of query,
  especially name queries (e.g. "whois george").  During these queries,
  other queries will be answered slowly.  This will be resolved in a
  future release.

o When serving too many concurrent queries, the server hangs, consuming
  no CPU and performing no I/O.  This will be resolved in a future
  release.

o No core file is produced on error.  This is a problem with
  multithreaded applications on Linux, which may be resolved in future
  kernel releases.

o The application cannot run in a debugger.

o Signal handling is not handled cleanly.  This will be resolved in a
  future release.


Performance Tips

o Use a RAM device for the MySQL temporary space.
  Linux 2.4.x has a file system called "ramfs" which uses memory rather
  than secondary storage.  You can add one by editing /etc/fstab and
  adding a mount like this:

    none            /var/ramfs         ramfs   defaults              0 0

  Create the mount point, and run "mount -a".  To take advantage of
  this, you should chnage the "tmpdir" variable of MySQL to this.  You
  can do this by adding:

    tmpdir = /var/mfs

  To the "/etc/my.cnf" file and restarting MySQL.


$Date: 2001/09/18 14:29:21 $
