    Discworld Bundle FAQ

    Written by Cratylus @ Dead Souls, October 2006

    What is the first thing I should know?

    What is the second thing I should know?

    Who is this for?

    What is Discworld?

    Aren't you the Dead Souls maintainer? What's your angle here?

    Why were you working on Discworld?

    Well, you wasted your time. It doesn't work.

    It works, but the thing keeps rebooting every 20 minutes.

    Where can I get support for Discworld lib, then?

    I work with DW lib all the time. It's not that hard to set up.

    Where can I get it?

What is the first thing I should know?
The Discworld Bundle is NOT DEAD SOULS. It is the Discworld mudlib,
which is a completely different set of files than those distributed
with Dead Souls. I, Cratylus, am not the author of Discworld, and
you can consider this an official disclaim of any credit for its
brilliance or blame for its pitfalls.
What is the second thing I should know?
The authors and maintainers of the official Discworld mudlib
do not take responsibility for this bundle. This is a strictly
"third party" deal which they will not support in any way. You
are free to download and use it, but you are not entitled to
receive support from anyone. Note that I can't give you
authorization to distribute it either, since I am not the
copyright holder. If you want to mirror it, you'd be wise
to ask the Discworld/FluffOS guys first, like I did.
Who is this for?
The Discworld bundle is absolutely not for newbie admins. This
is not intended to be a "get started on your own mud the
easy way!" sort of deal. I am making it available as a
courtesy and favor to mudlib hobbyists who have an interest
in tinkering with this lib. But if what you're looking for
is a quick-start kit for your own mud, I strongly recommend
you stop reading now and look elsewhere, because even though
the Discworld Bundle makes installation easiER, it does not
necessarily make it eaSY.
What is Discworld?
You're best off reading the official definition on the
Wikipedia entry for the mud itself.
And this is the entry for the mudlib.
Aren't you the Dead Souls maintainer? What's your angle here?
I am indeed the maintainer of a different mudlib
called Dead Souls (which I am not ashamed to plug
here by pointing you to its Wikipedia entry). However, I
have a general affection for the LP mud codebase family.
During some experimentation I found that I had a
relatively easier way of installing Discworld that people
could take advantage of, and it seemed like a nice thing
to do, making it available generally.
I'm not afraid that people will use Discworld instead of
Dead Souls. For one thing, I think that "more LPmuds",
regardless of the codebase, is a net plus for DS. And
anyway, what kind of lib author would I be, if I was
afraid to let people compare my work side by side with that
of others? Let the chips fall where they may.
Why were you working on Discworld?
During Dead Souls development I decided to take a serious look
at database integration. I discovered that the work done
on Dead Souls before I became the maintainer lacked the
core lib systems that were needed to have the lib and
driver communicate with a database.
So I started messing around with other libs, to see how they
did it, to get some inspiration.
Well, you wasted your time. It doesn't work.
There is such a vast and bewildering array of operating
system and development software and system hardware architecture
combinations out there that there is simply no way for
me to guarantee that the bundle will work for everyone...
or indeed for most.
I can assure you that the bundle puts you much much closer
to a successful DW start than you'd be without it. If it
still doesn't work out of the box, there are a few pointers
I might suggest:
* I haven't tested this on Cygwin or any other Windows emulation
or native windows compilation suite. For all I know it is not
possible to get it to work on Windows.
* DW/FluffOS expects your system to have file compression libraries.
If you don't have zlib, or it's in an exotic location, or
your library search path is munged, you will probably experience
some level of sadness. If sadness what you feel, try ensuring
that none of those three conditions apply to you.
* Because dw seems to make frequent use of compression both
for data storage and connections, some events appear to take
an inordinately long period of time. This will be especially
noticeable on slower computers. Just be patient.
* Do NOT under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES attempt to contact Discworld
mud personnel or Discworld mudlib maintainers to complain that
this bundle is lame or to ask for help with it. It'll be like
asking Bill Joy to come over and help you install Solaris. His
involvement with the development of UNIX doesn't entitle you to
help from him, and the Discworld people don't deserve to be
exposed to noob brainwaves from people who think they are owed assistance.
* Perhaps the most important thing you can read is this:
http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/faqs/smart-questions.html
Note that the people on that page also are not to be contacted for support.
It works, but the thing keeps rebooting every 20 minutes.
You got me there. I never claimed to be a Discworld expert. I
can set it up so it's not impossible to install, but after that,
getting it to work *well* is on you.
Where can I get support for Discworld lib, then?
Once it is installed, it might not be unreasonable to
ask for advice on the discworld-chat line. Certainly it's
a good idea to review all the docs at the Discworld site:
http://discworld.atuin.net/lpc/about/mudlib.html
You're also welcome to visit the LPMuds.net discussion forum
and chat there, but don't expect quick turnaround on your
questions. Discworld lib experts are fewer and far between
than they once were, so you may have to wait a little
for a helpful response.
I work with DW lib all the time. It's not that hard to set up.
Now that I've done it, I have a better chance of being able to
do it again starting from 0 again, in say, under 3 hours.
Old DW'ers need to keep in mind that the driver available out
there is FluffOS 1.22, which is sufficiently old to present
inconveniences on newer compilers. The lib itself needs some
refitting to work, such as the mappingp()/mappp() define
conflict, and the max-number-of-inheritables problem in
simul_efun.c. If you don't happen to be handy at truss/strace,
or gdb, or coredump analysis, some of this stuff is super
super hard to troubleshoot.
The idea of this bundle is that people with advanced lib
skills but limited compiling/syscall tracing experience
can indulge in examining the lib, without having to
invest days investigating problems that they can't tell
whether they are lib issues, driver issues, bugs in
either, or misconfigs.
So, yes, definitely, there are lots of people out there for
whom slapping dw together and checking it out is fairly
ho-hum stuff, but the casual mud hobbyist has, from
everything I've heard, found it too frustrating.
Many people will still run into problems, I'm sure, but
even for those, this should get them closer to the ballpark.
Where can I get it?
http://lpmuds.net/files/discworld/
LPMuds.net