Setup Guide

Installation and configuration of Reptor is not a task for the timid or weak of heart. You'll need to master such arcane tools as a command shell, a task scheduler, and a text editor such as notepad, vi, or that other one. If you don't understand this document, find your system administrator. If you don't understand this document and you are the system administrator, click here.

Install Perl

You will need Perl version 5.004 or greater. If you already have Perl installed, you can check the version with the command:
perl -v
If you have an older version, or don't have Perl at all, refer to the download page to obtain a more recent version. Instructions for installing Perl are included with the Perl distribution. After installation, you'll probably want to make sure that the Perl binary is in your default PATH.

Install networking modules

You will also need the Net::FTP and Net::SMTP modules, which are distributed with the Perl libnet bundle. If you've installed the pre-built binary package for Windows NT that is referenced on the download page, you've already got the libnet bundle installed, and you can skip this step.

Determine if you already have the modules installed with the commands:

perl -mNet::FTP -e ';'
perl -mNet::SMTP -e ';'
If the command prompt returns without any errors, the modules are correctly installed. Otherwise, refer to the download page for more details. Instructions for installing the libnet bundle are included with the libnet distribution.

Install Reptor

Download the Reptor distribution from the download page. Uncompress the archive, preferably to its own directory, preferably named reptor.

Configure Reptor

Edit reptor.cfg or create a new configuration file to suit your site preferences. Refer to the configuration page for details. You can optionally create additional configuration files and use the --config command line option at runtime to specify which one you want to use. Edit the reptor.css default style sheet if desired.

Verify the configuration

Issue the command:
perl reptor.pl --verify
Reptor will warn you about any problems it detects in the configuration file or while attempting to read the logfile.

Configure web server

If you are going to be serving the reports from an internal web server, you'll probably want to create a separate directory for them. If you're going to use the graphs option, copy the file pixel.gif to this directory. Refer to the hints page for some more ideas.

Generate a report

Generate a report for yesterday's logfile by issuing the command:
perl reptor.pl
If no error messages appear, the report that was generated should have been placed in the location indicated by your configuration file. Verify that this occurred and view the report with a browser to make sure everything looks ok.

Configure task scheduler

At this point, Reptor should be working. You'll probably want to have it run automatically every day so that the previous day's report is ready for you in the morning. If you're running Reptor on a Unix system, you probably don't need any help. Even if you do, you're not going to find it here. Try "man cron". For NT, you can use the at command or the task scheduler that comes with IE4. There are also a load of other freely (and not-so-freely) available task schedulers out there. Check out TUCOWS or WinFiles. Be sure to edit the vulture.runtime file on the firewall server so that your scheduler doesn't get killed. This page at the Raptor site contains some more details.

Tweak it

Over time, you'll probably find that your initial configuration file settings weren't exactly what you wanted. So change them. The hints page might give you some ideas.