From: peterson@choctaw.NoSubdomain.NoDomain (Bob Peterson)
Subject: Re: Conversion Confusion!
Reply-To: peterson@csc.ti.com
Organization: Texas Instruments
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 20:45:59 GMT

In article <1992Jul21.145454.24143@csus.edu>, heidis@sfsuvax1.sfsu.edu (Heidi Schmidt) writes:
|> We have experienced some difficulty in converting from Gopher 0.9 and
|> the Wais gateway to Gopher 1.01.  Any assistance would be appreciated!
|> 
|> Our Gopher data directory is: /usr/mail1/gopher
|> Our Wais directory is: /usr/support/wais/wais-sources
|> 
|> We tried creating a link to "test.src" using the example in server.c:
|> 
|> 	...
|>
|> Then we tried creating a link using the example in the gopherd man
|> pages:
|>
|> 	...
|>
|> We've tried a bunch of different things, but we just don't seem to get
|> it . . . Thanks in advance for your help.
|> 
|> Heidi Schmidt
|> San Francisco State University

  I just ran into a similar problem.  

  I've been using WAIS for some time, and had my indexes in
/conestoga/u3/peterson/WAISIndexes.  My WAIS data lives in various
places, e.g., /conestoga/u2/peterson/Friends. 

  When waisindex builds an index the pathname of the data (apparently)
is entered into the index.  When gopherd running with -c attempts to
read the data pointed to by the index, code in Waisindex.c looks for
the Gopher data path in the path returned from the query and, if not
found, returns "Error in Hostdata!".  

  If you make this check conditional on the dochroot variable you then
discover a statement in fixfile in openers.c that forces all pathnames
to be relative.

  I ended up using symbolic links from inside the Gopher tree _and_ I
rebuilt the WAIS indexes, specifying the files to be indexed using the
path beginning with the Gopher tree root.  

  For example, my gopherd runs against /hacks/release/etc/gopher-data.
We automatically archive a large number of FAQ articles in
/epoch/misc/ftproot/pub/FAQ.  I built an index of the FAQ articles in
/conestoga/u3/peterson/WAISIndexes/FAQ.*.  To get the FAQ index into
Gopher I created a FAQ directory in /hacks/release/etc/gopher-data then
did the following.
	cd /hacks/release/etc/gopher-data/FAQ
	# link to the directory containing the indexes
	ln -s /conestoga/u3/peterson/WAISIndexes FAQIndex
	# link from the index directory to the actual data
	ln -s /epoch/misc/ftproot/pub/FAQ \
		FAQIndex/FAQData
	# Describe FAQs and the FAQ Index
	vi aboutFAQindex
	# Set the titles and the entry types for the textual
	# description and the WAIS index
	mkdir .cap
	vi .cap/aboutFAQindex .cap/FAQindex
	# Rebuild the WAIS index, using the Gopher path to get to 
	# the data files.  This means the index's pathnames begin
	# with the Gopher root path.
	cd ~
	waisindex -r -t netnews \
		-d /hacks/release/etc/gopher-data/FAQ/FAQIndex/index \
		/hacks/release/etc/gopher-data/FAQ/FAQIndex/FAQData/*

  Clear as mud?

  The bottom line: the Gopher -c hack seems incomplete, at least as far
as WAIS indexes.  In a number of places Gopher code still assumes paths
cannot be absolute, and must begin with the Gopher root path.  However,
with the above links and running with -c (our Gopher lives behind a very
restrictive gateway) WAIS indexes do work.

    Bob

--
Bob Peterson             Work: peterson@csc.ti.com              Expressway Site
Texas Instruments        Home: peterson@zgnews.lonestar.org     North Building
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Newsgroups: alt.gopher