Fast File Search
Current version:
Stable: 1.0.14
Development: 1.1.13

Introduction
Demo (static database)

Installation
Upgrade
ChangeLog

Translation
Contributing
Browse CVS repository

Comments
Frequently Asked Questions

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LiveCD
Information about LiveCD
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FFSearch @ SourceForge
FFSearch @ FreshMeat


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Installation instructions

These packages have to be installed:
  • Samba
  • MySQL
  • web server (for example Apache) + PHP >= 4.0.3

Following Perl modules are needed by Fast File Search, you can let the install.sh script try to install these modules for you (see the paragraph 5 below), or install them before you run the script:
  • DBI
  • Bundle::DBD::mysql
  • Net::FTP (part of libnet)
  • String::CRC32
  • BSD::Resource
  • IO::Poll

Login as root and follow these steps:
  1. Create group ffsearch and user ffsearch.
       groupadd ffsearch
       useradd -m -g ffsearch ffsearch

  2. Add the user that the web server is running on to the group ffsearch (so that the web interface could read configuration file). You can do this by editing /etc/group: find the line beginning with ffsearch and add the user name to the end of the line.

  3. Restart the web server to make the web server process immediately belong to group ffsearch.

  4. Edit ffsearch.conf to configure Fast File Search.

  5. Now run install.sh. This script will
    • check whether the user ffsearch and group ffsearch are created.
    • try to determine your Perl path, and modify the first line of each .pl file accordingly
    • install the required Perl modules via CPAN on request.
      ATTENTION: When installing libnet, Perl's CPAN installer sometimes tries to install Perl 5.6. If this happens, just download and install the libnet module manually and then re-run the install script.
    • install ffsearch.conf to /etc/ffsearch.conf
    • run the database setup (makedb.pl). makedb.pl will create database db_name (specified in ffsearch.conf), user db_login with password db_password (specified also in ffsearch.conf) and set the access permitions for that user.

  6. Copy the directory "bin" to home directory of user ffsearch (the location of home directory depends on your system configuration, usually the home directory is /home/ffsearch).
       cp -r bin /home/ffsearch

  7. If you have been using FemFind, you can import its FTP server list to Fast File Search's database:
       ./bin/import_femfind_ftp_list.pl /path/to/femfind/ftp_list

  8. Do not do the following steps as root but as user ffsearch:
       su -l ffsearch

  9. Run "ffsearch.pl --complete" to check whether you have set everything up properly. If there is a problem at this point, you should check the logfile first. If there is nothing helpful in there, try setting the debuglevel to (at least) 1 and re-run the crawler.

  10. Edit the crontab by running "crontab -e". Depending on how large your network is you have to define how often and at what time to invoke the crawler. Here's an example:
       0 8 * * * /home/ffsearch/bin/ffsearch.pl --complete
       0 12,16,20 * * * /home/ffsearch/bin/ffsearch.pl --incremental
       */10 * * * * /home/ffsearch/bin/online_check.pl
     This executes the complete crawl at 8:00, runs the incremental crawls at 12:00, 16:00, and 20:00 thus giving each crawl 4 hours to complete. The online check is run each 10 minutes.

  11. Exit the ffsearch's shell:
       exit

  12. Now install the web interface: copy the directory "htdocs/ffsearch" to your htdocs (web server document directory). Point your browser to http://your.server/ffsearch/ and enjoy.

  13. Optional: you can add or change the predefined search settings in the beginning of file select.php.