SCoopFS Installation Guide

There are several parts to the SCoopFS. The most important is the mailbox through which one sends files as auto-synchronizing attachments. For more on operating the scoopfs mailbox, see the SCoopFSIntro.doc.

If your organization requires that computers use a proxy server to reach the web, you will have to contact your IT organization and get the proxy host name and port number.

To install either a fred (described later) or a mailbox, first run installSCoopFSpart1.bat. This configures the execution platform upon which both mailboxes and freds operate. If you need a proxy server, the proxy host and port should be arguments on the command line when invoking the installation script. Linux users should find that, though the batch file will not work under linux, the instructions are straightforwardly gleaned from the batch file.  Mac users may try SCoopFS, but our only attempt failed, we believe because of a problem with the Mac version of flash.

To install a mailbox, next run the batch file installMailbox.bat. This will also need the proxy host/port.

Once the mailbox has been installed, the scoopfs server needs to be launched every time you boot your machine. Use the startScoopfs.bat to launch the scoopfs server in the background; like the other scripts, the proxy host/port is needed.

File synchronization can run between machines separated by multiple firewalls because of the use of the Forwarding Redirectory, called Fred. Your installation comes configured to use the fred hosted by HP Labs. To share confidential information, or to achieve reliability levels suited to your own needs, you can construct your own Fred. You will need a machine outside the corporate firewall if you wish to run across firewalls. The installFred.bat file can be used to construct a new fred (after running installSCoopFSpart1.bat), though we recommend installing the fred on a Linux machine since it must be outside the firewall, and so the batch file should be used as an installation guide (it will not execute correctly under Linux). The new url for the fred, presented at the end of the installation process, must be used to replace contents of the fred.url file in the installation zip for all mailboxes that should use the new fred: a mailbox only configures its fred once, during its installation, so the correct fred.url must be a part of the installation system.

Once the fred has been installed, relaunch it when the machine reboots using the same startSCoopFS.bat that is used to launch the background server for the mailbox; the fred and the mailbox are different applications running on the same server platform.