yhdev/dat/ncdc-faq

=head1 About ncdc


=head2 What about other text-mode clients?

L<microdc2|http://corsair626.no-ip.org/microdc/> - A rather nice client, yet
not exactly there. It's limited to connecting to a single hub, hasn't been
updated since 2006, and the readline interface is slightly awkward to use.

L<nanodc|http://sourceforge.net/projects/nanodc/> - Can't comment much on this,
except maybe that rocket science is perhaps easier than getting nanodc to
compile.

LDCC - Uses DCTC as backend and an interface based on TurboVision. All
mentioned projects are dead: neither LDCC, DCTC nor TurboVision are seeing any
recent development.

L<ShakesPeer|http://shakespeer.bzero.se/> - Appears to have a commandline
interface as well. I haven't personally tried it, but have not heard many
positive things about it.  Has not seen any recent development, either.


=head2 Why did you start from scratch? Why not use the DC++ core?

There are many reasons why I chose not to use code from existing projects, but
all of them boil down to the following two: 1) I am a control freak, and 2)
personal preferences. That is the short answer. The long answer will require a
full article, and I don't feel like writing that much at this point. >_>


=head2 What protocol features does ncdc support?

For ADC: BASE, RF, TIGR, BZIP, ADCS and KEYP.

For NMDC: NoGetINFO, NoHello, UserIP2, MiniSlots, XmlBZList, ADCGet, TTHL and TTHF.

ncdc also support TLS-enabled connections for both hub connections and
client-to-client connections on both ADC and NMDC protocols. Note that ncdc
does not support some of the older NMDC protocol features, like $Get,
$GetZBlock, $CHUNK, $Cancel or non-XML file lists. I am not aware of an other
up-to-date client that still uses any of these features.




=head1 Troubleshooting

=head2 How do I install ncdc on Ubuntu?

Try the package from the L<Open Build
Service|http://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=home:yorhel&package=ncdc>
and follow those instructions.

Alternatively, you can also build directly from the source. To do so, run the
following command:

  sudo apt-get install libbz2-dev libsqlite3-dev\
    libncursesw5-dev libxml2-dev libglib2.0-dev

And then follow the instructions in the README.


=head2 Ncdc crashes a lot!

Make sure client-to-client TLS is disabled:

  /set tls_policy disabled

If that doesn't fix it, please report a bug. You may also wish to debug the
problem a bit further yourself, in which case the L<HACKING
file|http://g.blicky.net/ncdc.git/tree/HACKING> will have some valuable
information.


=head2 Ncdc uses too much disk space!

First, look where this disk space goes to (hint: use
L<ncdu|http://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu>). If it's the log files: you can safely
delete or rotate them (see next question).

The I<db.sqlite3> file can also grow quite large in certain situations. If you
modify or rename a lot of files in your share and ncdc re-hashes them, the old
hash data associated with the files is not removed from the database, resulting
in wasted disk space. The C</gc> command in ncdc can be used to clean up this
unused data. Be warned, however, that this command needs roughly twice the size
of the old db.sqlite3 file for temporary storage, so make sure you have enough
space available. (Note that this behaviour is not specific to ncdc, most other
DC clients do the same.)


=head2 Why doesn't ncdc rotate log files automatically?

Because you can easily do that yourself. You can either use logrotate or a
simple script that runs from a cron. For an example of the latter option,
L<this is the script I use|http://p.blicky.net/s7132>, which is run as a
monthly cron job.


=head2 I'm getting the error "No PEM-encoded private key found" on startup

(This issue should be fixed since 1.6) Most likely this is caused by a
L<bug in glib-networking|https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=664321>. To
get around it, install the "certtool" utility that comes with gnutls (package
"gnutls-bin" on Ubuntu), delete the old certificates (C<rm ~/.ncdc/cert/*>),
and then start ncdc again.



=head1 Can ncdc...


=head2 Can ncdc use the hash data or configuration from an existing DC++ installation?

No, ncdc uses its own configuration and hash storage directory.  However, on
popular demand I could write a conversion utility to transfer the hash data
from other clients to ncdc's format.


=head2 Can ncdc run in the background / as a daemon?

As with most ncurses applications: no. At least, it does not have this
functionality built-in. Ncdc is designed to be used in combination with a
separate terminal multiplexer or detach utility to handle this. Have a look at
L<GNU screen|http://www.gnu.org/s/screen/>,
L<tmux|http://tmux.sourceforge.net/> or L<dtach|http://dtach.sourceforge.net/>.


=head2 Does ncdc support TLS?

Yes! To make use of this, however, you need to have a relatively new version of
glib2. If you're still working with an outdated system, an alternative is to
use L<stunnel|http://www.stunnel.org/> to connect to TLS-enabled hubs. This
trick does not allow encrypted client-to-client connections, so your file
transfers will remain unencrypted.

The following example stunnel configuration is what I used to connect to
the DC Development hub before ncdc had native TLS support:

  [dcdev]
  client = yes
  accept = 127.0.0.1:16591
  connect = hub.dcbase.org:16591

The URL C<adc://127.0.0.1:16591/> can then be used to connect to the hub from
within ncdc.


=head2 Does ncdc support UPnP?

Not natively. However, it is possible to use L<this
script|http://www.howtoforge.com/administrating-your-gateway-device-via-upnp>
and manually keep a port open using a cron job. I have no experience with this
myself, though. I just run ncdc directly on my router. :-)


=head2 Are there any programs available for analyzing the transfers.log file?

Nothing like that is included in the release yet, but there is a simple Perl
script available: L<ncdc-transfer-stats|http://p.blicky.net/agolr>, and a short
Go program: L<ncdc-share-report|http://p.blicky.net/h25z8>.