$Id: README,v 1.13 2004/02/06 02:49:09 hipnod Exp $

Compilation & Installation
--------------------------

You must install giFT before installing this plugin.

The configure script uses pkg-config to search for giFT. If you have
installed giFT somewhere besides the default pkg-config lookup path, you
need to change the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable so configure can
find libgift.pc.

After installing, you should run the gift-setup script. If you want, you can
setup the plugin manually by adding "Gnutella" to the /main/plugins line in
~/.giFT/giftd.conf, like so:

	[main]
	plugins = OpenFT:Gnutella

You may also use a fully qualified path to the plugin filename:

	[main]
	plugins = OpenFT:/usr/local/lib/giFT/libGnutella.la

You can also specify the plugin on the command line:

	$ giftd -d -p Gnutella -p OpenFT


Bootstrapping
-------------

On initial startup, the plugin has to find some Gnutella nodes to connect to.
No default nodes are hardcoded.  Instead, there is a list of websites called
"GWebCaches", and a GWebCache is randomly selected and contacted to retrieve a
list of currently active nodes.  If these nodes are busy, they can still
bootstrap the plugin by informing it of more nodes to connect to, so this
process continues until the plugin finds some available nodes.

This process tends to be somewhat fragile, because a GWebCache is usually only
contacted once for this purpose, so the GWebCache handling code in the plugin
runs infrequently and tends to have bugs.  If you experience problems
connecting, it would help to view the log file when reporting problems.

If you're interested in running a GWebCache, see "More GWebCache Info" below
for more information.


Configuration
-------------

The configuration file is in $HOME/.giFT/Gnutella/Gnutella.conf, and is created
if it doesn't exist.  The syntax of the config file is the same as other giFT
files.

gift-setup will set the default port to something random. You can change it by
editing the plugin's config file.  If this port isn't reachable, you will
receive less search results because you cannot download from firewalled users.
You may have to do some other configuration (forward the port on your firewall,
etc) to make the port reachable.



More GWebCache info
-------------------

If you're interested in running a GWebCache, more information can be found at
http://www.gnucleus.com/gwebcache/.  Note that while running one doesn't
require a lot of bandwidth for each request, there are quite a lot of nodes
making many requests to a dwindling number of GWebCaches (there used to be
200+, not there are only about 60 left due to abusive nodes hammering them).

It helps to put the cache on a separate domain (for example, gwc.foo.com) so
that the name can be removed from the DNS if the load on it becomes too high.
Note that this name probably shouldn't contain the word "cache" in it, because
that may be treated specially by HTTP proxies.


Contact
-------

Email:  hipnod@bellsouth.net  [Original author]

IRC:    #giFT-gnutella on irc.freenode.net

