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https://github.com/ddugovic/capablanca

An Internet Chess Server supporting Chess variants (based on Lasker-2.2.3)
https://github.com/ddugovic/capablanca

chess server

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An Internet Chess Server supporting Chess variants (based on Lasker-2.2.3)

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README 

        
[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/ddugovic/capablanca.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/ddugovic/capablanca)



Introduction

------------



This is a version of the internet chess server which supports a wider

variety of variants, allowing other board sizes than 8x8 and more pieces

than the 6 orthodox piece types. I renamed it 'capablanca', in remembrance

of Jose Capablanca, who rediscovered and popularized Chess on a 10x8 board.

(Which is one of the better known variants now supported, next to Xiangqi

and Shogi.) It was derived from 'lasker', of which the original README is

shown below.



It also fixes some bugs that remained in the original code.



H.G. Muller



---------------------------------------------------------------------



This is an enhanced version of the 'lasker' internet chess server. I

started to enhance Lasker when I needed a working chess server for a

local school. You can download the original 'lasker' release from

http://chessd.sourceforge.net/ and my enhanced version from

http://chess.samba.org/



Here is a list of some of the new features in this version:



     - lots and lots of bugs fixed

     - timeseal support added (see timeseal/README for details)

     - server configuration via 'aconfig' command instead of config.h

     - added multi-part command parsing (commands separated by ';')

     - enhanced aliases

     - build/install process fixed (32-bit binary on 64-bit architecture)

     - fixed help system

     - transparent server reload (upgrade without disturbing connections or games)



Installation

------------



First you need to configure and compile the chessd server. Do

something like the following:



	  cd src

	  ./configure --host=i686-linux-gnu "CFLAGS=-m32" "CXXFLAGS=-m32" "LDFLAGS=-m32" "LTCC=gcc -m32" --prefix=/usr/local

	  make



Then to install the server run "make install". That will install a

basic skeleton installation in /usr/local/chessd. 



Setting up

----------



Next you will want to launch your chess server using the command:

     bin/chessd -p 5000

while in the chessd/ directory. This will launch the chess server

using the skeleton data you installed above.



I highly recommend creating a separate account on your machine to run

the chess daemon. This user should own all files in the chessd

directory.



After you launch chessd for the first time you will need to login as

the special user 'admin'. That username will be recognised as the

server administrator and you will be logged in with the rather unusual

combination of a head administrator who is also an unregistered

player.



The first thing you will want to do as the admin user is create a

proper 'admin' account with a password. Use the command 'addplayer'

while logged in as the admin user to create the admin account. You

will be told the password. Then you should immediately logout and log

back in using the admin password you have just been given. You will

probably want to change this password using the 'asetpass' command. 



You may also find the following commands useful:

    ahelp addplayer

    ahelp asetpass

    ahelp commands



Securing your server

--------------------



The source code for this chess server has been hacked on by dozens of

people over the years. It almost certainly has exploitable buffer

overruns or other security holes. If you are like me then you won't

like the idea of running an insecure program like that on your server.



To make it a lot more secure you can choose to run the chess server in

a chroot jail. This makes it much harder for an attacker to gain a

foothold on your server. It won't prevent them from crashing the

chessd process but it will prevent them from gaining access to other

parts of the system.



To run chessd in a chroot jail you need to do the following:



   1) chessd needs to be setuid root. I know this sounds bizarre, but

      it needs root privileges to use the chroot() system

      call. Immediately after the chroot chessd will permanently lose

      its root privileges and instead become the user that launched

      chessd. To make chessd setuid root do this as root:

	      chown root chessd

	      chmod u+s chessd



   2) pass the command line option -R to tell chessd that it should

      chroot to the current directory. So to launch chessd you can use

      this:

		chessd -p 5000 -T /usr/local/bin/timeseal_decoder -R /usr/local/chessd



      You may also like to look at the start_chessd script in the

      scripts directory. This is the script I use to keep chessd

      always running on my machine.



If you do use the -R option then I also recommend that you don't place

any of the chess server binaries (or any other binaries or libraries)

inside the chessd directory. That will increase the security of your

server a little.



Email spool

-----------



This chess server does not send emails directly, instead it puts

outgoing emails in the spool/ directory and waits for some external

program or script to deliver them. I designed it this way as it makes

it possible to send email from a chess server in a chroot jail, and

offers more flexibility in how email is handled (as that tends to vary

a lot between systems).



If you run sendmail then the sample script in scripts/spool_sendmail

might be good enough. Just run this script at startup and it will send

all spooled mail every minute.



Server reload

-------------



This version of chessd supports reloading the server code without

having to shutdown the server or disturb any games that are in

progress. This allows for on the fly upgrades, hopefully without the

users even noticing that the system is being upgraded.



In order to support this functionality I had to make the source code

rather more Linux specific than it was previously, but I think that is

worth it for the functionality. It would be possible to port the code

to many other platforms, but I have not yet done so.



To reload the server use the command 'areload'. You must be at the

ADMIN_GOD admin level to issue this command.



License

-------



This chess server release is under the GNU General Public License,

which is the license used by the original chess server written by

Richard Nash. Various parts of the server are under different

licenses, depending on who wrote what part, but I believe that all of

the licenses are compatible with the GPL.



The reason I chose the GPL for this release is that I don't want this

code to become proprietary again. This has happened at least 3 times

in the past with this source code and while I'm sure there were very

good reasons at the time, it does mean that the freely available chess

servers have not benefited from the considerable development that has

happened over the past seven years. 



I also chose the GPL because it allows me to incorporate source code

from other GPLd projects. This saved me quite a lot of time, and is

sure to be useful again.



--------------------------------

Andrew Tridgell

[email protected] June 2002

--------------------------------