hearse - exchange Nethack bones files with other players
hearse [-b | --bones-dir dir] [--bones-mode mode] [-c | --config-file file] [--cron] [--debug] [--delete-uploaded] [--help] [--lock-file file] [-q | --quiet] [--run-as-me] [--run-as-user user] [--run-as-group group] [--server-url url] [--stamp-file file] [--user-email address] [--user-token token] [--user-token-file file] [--version]
Nethack sometimes saves the level on which you die (including your stuff, what killed you, and your ghost) in a ``bones file''. These files get loaded into later Nethack games. If you're the only Nethack player on your system you'll only get bones files you created yourself.
hearse lets you automatically exchange Nethack bones file with other players. When run it uploads any new bones files it finds on your system, then downloads any bones files the server feels like giving it. See http://www.argon.org/~roderick/hearse/ for more information.
An important thing to note is that by default using hearse will cause you to end up with more bones than you otherwise would have. This changes the game's balance and is considered by many players to be a mild form of cheating. You can address this by turning on the --delete-uploaded option, but the down side is you'll never encounter your own bones files.
In order to use the Hearse server, you've got to supply your email
address. Do this by using the --user-email switch the first time
you use the program, or by putting user-email address in the
config file. Your email address will only be used to contact you
about Hearse, and will never be given to any third party. If you
enter an invalid address, the server won't be able to support you if
you download a bad bones file, and will be forced to ban you if any of
your uploaded files are bad.
Hearse was set up as a service to the Nethack community. Please respect that; abuse of the service can only lead to it being removed.
The defaults are set up for a Linux system using a nethack binary which is either set-uid or set-gid games. If this is what you've got, as root run
# hearse --user-email your@address.com
one time by hand, then put
0 3 * * * root perl -we 'sleep rand 3600'; hearse --quiet
in /etc/crontab.
hearse comes with default values for its various configuration settings which match the way many Linux systems are set up. If any of them don't match your system, you can either change them in a configuration file, or you can specify the right values via command line switches. This last isn't as onerous as it sounds, because most people run it from cron. You can put the switches in the crontab file and leave it at that. If you'd rather use a configuration file, you can use the default location (/etc/nethack/hearse.conf), or use the -c (aka --config-file) switch to specify the file you'd like to use.
The configuration file can specify all of the options for which it makes
sense, using the long version of the option name followed by the value.
Blank and commented lines are ignored in the usual fashion. A string
value can be given as - to mean the empty string. Booleans can use
on/off/true/false/yes/no/1/0. A sample hearse.conf is included with
the distribution. Eg,
bones-dir /local/games/nethackdir
bones-mode 600
quiet on
run-as-user daemon
run-as-group -
user-token-file /local/games/nethackdir/hearse.user-token
hearse needs to run with permissions like those used by Nethack itself, so that it can read and write the bones files. It should not be made set-uid or set-gid, though; it hasn't been audited for that.
The default configuration will try to set both the user and group ids to
games. Nethack itself will generally only be set-id to either one or
the other, but using both hurts nothing and allows hearse to run
as-is on more systems. This will only work if you run hearse as
root.
If you want to disable hearse's id setting and take care of it
externally you can use the --run-as-me switch to turn it off, or
the --run-as-user and --run-as-group switches for finer grained
control. Specify '' or - for either of the latter to disable
just that thing.
If you're using the pre-packaged .deb or .rpm version of hearse, the program is already set up to run automatically (both daily and when you connect to the Internet). You don't have to do anything unless you want to change this behavior. If you're installing hearse by hand, read on.
The normal way to use the program is to run it from cron, either daily or on whatever schedule you like. (There's no harm in running it often, if it doesn't find any new bones files it doesn't even contact the server.) If letting it manage its own permissions, you'd just run it as root. Eg, to run it some time in the 3:00 hour, put something like
0 3 * * * root perl -we 'sleep rand 3600'; hearse --quiet
in /etc/crontab. The randomization is to prevent the server from getting hammered at the top of each time zone's 3:00 hour.
If you'd like to see what the server's doing, you can use --cron rather than --quiet. This will cause it to output its status message, but only when it actually transfers a bones file.
If you use multiple Nethack variants which are supported by the Hearse server, you can run hearse for all of them. The normal way to do this is to run hearse once for each variant, specifying the bones directory on the command line
# hearse -b /var/games/slashem
leaving the rest of the configuration settings to be read from the configuration file. The last upload time is by default stored in the bones directory, so everything just works.
The Hearse protocol requires that you have only a single concurrent connection for each user account (it decides what kind of bones file to send you based on the kind you most recently uploaded), so hearse does locking on the user token file in order to ensure this. See the --lock-file switch for more info.
'' to disable locking
(which I do not recommend).
games. You've
generally got to be root for this to work.
games.
You've generally got to be root for this to work.
The code is licensed under the GNU GPL. Check http://www.argon.org/~roderick/hearse/ for updated versions.
This Unix client was written by Roderick Schertler <roderick@argon.org>. The Hearse protocol, server, and Windows client were written by Alexis Manning <alexismanning@hotpop.com>.