nph - PH Client and Library
===

nph is a modern client and API library for accessing PH servers.


Installation
------------

To build nph, you should be able to simply run these commands:

   ./configure
   make
   make install


Encap Package Support
---------------------

To build this software as an Encap package, you can pass the
--enable-encap option to configure.  This will be automatically
enabled if the epkg or mkencap programs are detected on the system,
but can be overridden by the --disable-encap option.

When building an Encap package, the configure script will automatically
adjust the installation prefix to use an appropriate Encap package
directory.  It does this using a heuristic algorithm which examines the
values of the ${ENCAP_SOURCE} and ${ENCAP_TARGET} environment variables
and the argument to configure's --prefix option.

If mkencap was detected on the system, it will be automatically run during
"make install".  By default, epkg will also be run, but this can be
inhibited with the --disable-epkg-install configure option.

For information on the Encap package management system, see the WSG
Encap Archive:

   http://www.encap.org/


Readline Support
----------------

The configure script will attempt to find the readline library on
your system.  The readline package is available from:

   ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/readline/

If you do not have readline-4.2 or newer, you will need to specify the
--disable-readline option to configure.


Installing nph Setuid
---------------------

If you wish to use PH's email authentication mechanism, you must install
nph to be setuid-root using the --enable-setuid-nph option to configure.

SECURITY WARNING:
   Installing nph as a setuid-root binary may constitute a serious
   security hole!  While I do not know of any security holes in nph,
   I make no guaruntees about your system security.  I strongly
   recommend against using --enable-setuid-nph unless it is
   absolutely unavoidable.


Default "mailmatch" Fields
--------------------------

For PH servers that don't have a "mailmatches" entry in their siteinfo
list, libphclient will use a built-in default for the list of fields to
check when resolving email addresses.  This default list can be set by
specifying the --with-mailmatches=LIST option to configure.  (Replace
"LIST" with a ':'-delimited list of field names.)

If this option is not specified, the default list is "alias:callsign".


More Information
----------------

After you install nph, you will need to tell it what server to connect to.
This can be set in the global ${sysconfdir}/ph_server file or by setting
the environment variable ${PH_SERVER}.  Alternately, you can invoke nph
with "-s servername" to specify the server name on the commandline.

For documentation on nph or on the libphclient API, see the enclosed
manpages.  For more information on the nph package, see:

   http://www.feep.net/nph/

Both source code and Encap binary distributions of the latest version
of nph are available there.


Supported Platforms
-------------------

I develop and test nph on the following platforms:

   AIX 4.3.3
   AIX 5.1
   HP-UX 11.00
   IRIX 6.5
   RedHat Linux 7.2
   Solaris 8
   Solaris 9

The nph code should build properly on the following platforms, but I
do not actively support them:

   AIX 3.2.5
   AIX 4.2.1
   FreeBSD
   HP-UX 10.20
   Linux/libc5
   RedHat Linux 8.0
   Mac OS X
   OpenBSD
   Solaris 2.5
   Solaris 2.6
   Solaris 7

If you successfully build nph on another platform, please email me a
patch and/or configuration information.


Compatibility Code
------------------

nph depends on some library calls which are not available or not
usable on some platforms.  To accomodate these systems, I've included
a version of these calls in the lib/compat subdirectory.

I've slightly modified these functions for integration into this source
tree, but the functionality has not been modified from the original
source.  Please note that while this code should work for you, I didn't
write it, so please don't send me bug reports on it.


Author
------

Feedback and bug reports are welcome.

Mark D. Roth <[email protected]>