When you install the gnats utilities, the user tools
send-pr, query-pr and edit-pr are installed on the
server machine. If your machine is part of a network, however, you may
wish to install the user tools on each machine in the network so that
responsible parties on those machines can submit new Problem Reports,
query the database, and edit existing PRs. In the following discussion,
machines with the gnats user tools installed are referred to as
client machines. In general, there are three distinct types of
client that a gnats server may have to cater for:
Each type of client requires a different approach when it comes to providing access.
If all the machines involved reside on the same local network as the gnats server, you can simply share out the directories on the server that contain the user tools, by default /usr/local/bin and the directory which contains the send-pr.conf configuration file (see The send-pr.conf configuration file), by default /usr/local/etc/gnats. If you have a heterogeneous environment, i.e. hosts running different operating systems, you need to create several shared gnats installations, one for each platform. The send-pr.conf file is platform-independent, though.
In order to submit a new PR, send-pr would then be invoked as
follows on the client machines:
send-pr -d hostname:port:database:username:password
Or by first setting the environment variable GNATSDB as follows
(the exact syntax will vary depending on what shell you use):
export GNATSDB=hostname:port:database:username:password
Then, send-pr can simply be invoked without any options.
The other tools, query-pr and edit-pr, work in similar
ways, honoring the -d option as well as the GNATSDB
environment variable. See GNATS user tools.
When client machines reside on the general Internet, both security and practical considerations may make it impossible to provide a shared installation of the gnats tools. In this case, you may choose to only provide access through a web interface such as Gnatsweb. For clients that need the gnats tools, the following needs to be carried out on the remote machines:
send-pr on the client machine
You should unpack the distribution and run configure on the
client machine in the same way as described in Configuring and compiling the software. Note, however, that you
do not need to create a gnats user on the client and you should
not use the make all info command to build. Instead, issue the
following commands from the top level directory of the source
distribution:
cd gnats
make install-tools
cd ../send-pr
make all install
This builds and installs the send-pr, query-pr and
edit-pr tools on the client machine. You should now configure
send-pr by editing the send-pr.conf file
(see The send-pr.conf configuration file.)
Users on the client machine can now either use the send-pr syntax or the
GNATSDBenvironment variable described in the previous section.
For sites that need to submit Problem Reports by having send-pr send
e-mail instead of speaking directly over the network to the gnats
server, you need to create a problem report template on the gnats
server and have that template copied to a suitable location on the
client machine (any filename and any location will do, as long as
send-pr on the client machine can read the file). On the
gnats server, use the command
send-pr -p > filename
The file filename now contains a PR template for your database.
Copy this file to the client. Then edit the send-pr.conf file
that you created on the client, set the TEMPLATE variable to
point to the template file (see The send-pr.conf configuration file) and make sure that the MAILPROG and
MAILADDR varables in send-pr.conf are correctly set. You
should now have a working remote tool installation.
For clients that have no direct network access to your gnats
server, such as those that are located behind strict firewalls, you
either need to set up a web interface such as Gnatsweb (provided that
the firewall lets web traffic through) or use the procedure above which
sets up send-pr to submit Problem Reports by e-mail. In order to
query PRs, users on the remote machines will then have to use the the
e-mail functionality of query-pr (see Invoking query-pr.
Editing PRs by e-mail is not possible, so clients in this group who need
edit access have to get access through a web interface if possible.
Note that when send-pr is set up to work over e-mail, the
GNATSDB environment variable and the -d command line
option have no effect since send-pr is tied to a specific
database by way of the value of MAILADDR in the
send-pr.conf file.