Any client with fully implemented chat features should do fine. Lopster, Teknap and Xnap are our favourite clients. You may find other fulfilling this requirement in this extensive list of clients

Any client for the original Napster protocol is basically usable. However, only few clients fully comply to the protocol. The majority of clients is either incomplete (regarding protocol compliance) or violates the protocol on purpose, to implement own, product-specific extensions. The three top recommended clients are: Lopster, Xnap and Teknap. See this extensive list of clients for further options.

Please see section System Requirements in the manual or on the homepage. In short: a free computer, at least a 100 MHz CPU, plenty of RAM (at least 128 MB free for a small filesharing server) and a reasonable internet connection (see below). 24h/day machine availability and connection to the internet is preferred although not required.

Opennap 0.44 from 2001 was the last version by DrScholl. After its release DrScholl completely left the scene. The Opennap NG (Next Generation) project was created in early 2002 by a group of volunteers, consisting mostly of then existing server owners with more or less programming skills. It directly based on Opennap 0.44 but introduced many new features and bugfixes. Major versions of Opennap NG were 0.45 and 0.46, both released in 2002. After that, development was mostly halted again. 0.

Preferrably a flat rate with ISDN speed or above. Bandwidths of at least 1024 / 256 kbps down/up are recommended for linked servers. See System requirements in the manual or on the homepage for more detailed explanations.

No. Server demands on the three main resources RAM, CPU and bandwidth are highly variable, depending on the configuration. It's just a matter of how big (in terms of numbers of users and files) you plan your server to become. For instance, if you plan to run a standalone server with no more than 100 connections, where each user shares an average of 500 files, you could get by with even an old 80486 machine with less than 100 MHz clock speed, 64 MB RAM and an ISDN line with no noteworthy lag.

No. You just need a proper configuration file. Opennap NG operates completely independent from the config tool. However, since the configuration file of Opennap NG becomes increasingly complex and difficult to overview, it is recommended at least to check out the config tool, as it displays a logical hierarchy of variable groups with inline help.

Most of 2003 and 2004 Opennap NG development was dormant, because a person who generally rejected most improvements from others was in response. After this person has left Opennap NG development team and others took over responsibilities again, Opennap NG development has revived and some major improvements became available. As of April 2005, Opennap NG is actively being developped towards upcoming 0.5x releases, which will be major new feature releases.

No. The server will always run as a non-GUI application with only basic output to a console or terminal window or screen. However, additional GUI software to manage or control Opennap NG operation (at least partly) isn't ruled out by this.

For Windows users Slavanap has become the 1st choice during past two years due to lack of development and stable versions of Opennap NG for Windows for Unix users always was and is the better choice. We hope to gain back some Windows users with new stable Windows versions of Opennap NG never had stability problems on Unix, believed to have stability problems on Windows fixed since 0.49.

Yes. You just need to open Opennap NG's listen port to the outside world. This is by default 8888 but can be changed using the server_ports setting. If you want to run a public server which is listed at GotNap's server list then you also need to allow the server to make outgoing TCP connections to server stat_server_host at port stat_server_port.

One of the strengths of Opennap NG is, that it allows pretty detailed insight about what it is doing and what is going on. Except for users sharing content rated as criminal, no private information about users will be emitted. If being stored, much of the output by Opennap NG can be used for later performance analysis, fault detection, configuration optimization and creation of statistics.

Yes. Actually, parts of server administration can be carried out remotely only. Special messages are to be sent to special nicks to conduct server and channel administration. Elites can use any client software that supports private messages for that. See administration for further details. Currently the only thing that can't be conducted remotely is a permanent change of the server config file. All remote changes last only until the next

From the technical side, there are no major risks known. Opennap NG appears to be a solid server application. Despite many people having examined the source code meanwhile, no previous or current vulnerabilities are known by today. Nevertheless, on Unix system Opennap NG's default behaviour is to run as user nobody, if not configured otherwise. Neither on Unix nor on Windows Opennap NG requires root / Administrator privileges, neither for configuration nor operation.

Opennap started being programmed in plain ANSI C, hence being portable across very many platforms and compilers. Meanwhile, Opennap NG sources have been upgraded to new language standard ISO C99. The sources make frequent use of some of its language extensions like inline, new data types and library functions. This is for better performance, better source code readability and to get rid of security risks.

Short summary: during 2003 and 2004 the Opennap NG project was mostly controlled by one particular (now former) member of the development team. There was little progress during that time. In January 2005 Opennap NG 0.49 became available. It was being developped mostly by other volunteers. It featured massive extensions and important bugfixes over 0.47.2. However, that former project member declined to accept the 0.49 improvements, claiming especially the new features were unneeded.

The Opennap NG project was created on May 26th, 2002, basing on Opennap 0.44. The first publically available version Opennap NG 0.45b2 was released on June 9th, 2002. Original Opennap was registered January 10th, 2000. Latest version 0.44 is from September 29th, 2001.

Opennap NG is in use especially on Unix systems for years. Some servers are known to have run a year(!) and more without any need to restart Opennap NG software! Many bugs were removed and improvements applied since 0.44. So we think Opennap NG is to be considered mature, indeed. One of the remaining issues, a well performing, reliable Windows version, has been addressed with Opennap NG 0.49. Note that between March 3rd and March 15th 2005 unfortunately some premature versions of 0.

No. Linking to other servers contains some proprietary protocol extensions which are server specific and differ between Opennap NG and Slavanap. Networks are composed of either Slavanap or opennap (NG) servers, respectively. However, you can link all versions of Opennap NG (starting with 0.45) together, including servers running on different platforms (i.e servers running on Windows and servers running on Unix).

Yes. If you set allow_share to off then no files will be listed, searcheable or transmitable through your server. Only channel and private chats will be supported then, making Opennap NG behaving much like an IRC server.

Opennap NG is in use especially on Unix systems for years. Some servers are known to have run a year(!) and more without any need to restart Opennap NG software! Many bugs were removed and improvements applied since 0.44. Thanks to the excellent code base by DrScholl, no vulnerabilities were discovered in the code so far, although many people were studying it ever since. One of the remaining issues, a well performing, reliable Windows version, has been addressed with Opennap NG 0.49.

Press CTRL + C in the console (window) in which Opennap NG is running (on Unix: only if running in foreground, non-daemon mode).

When Opennap NG runs with filesharing enabled and is filled with users it usually has many millions of distinct items to keep in memory. Most important are the lists of file informations. Separate memory records are created for each single file to be shared by a user. Filenames are split into keywords, assigned to user records, stored in communication buffers for inter-server communication or user search results, etc. Between 10 and 20 memory allocations per file to be shared are required.

The only limit for this is the amount of available physical RAM. On Unix calculate up to 350 KB of RAM usage per 1000 files. On Windows calculate up to 500 KB of RAM usage per 1000 files. So if you have 512 MB RAM you should be able to serve well over 1 million files on Unix and nearly 1 million files on Windows. See also: system requirements.

In general the number of users connected to a server is limited by available hardware resources and operating system limits only. If you run a filesharing server, most users will consume more or less RAM as they upload their file lists (see previous question). Also consider the increasing demand of internet bandwidth and CPU power, as more and more users upload their file lists, search and request response file lists, keep requesting downloads, etc.

Yes. Via the log_level setting you can pretty precisely control what sorts of information you want to have emitted and what not.

Opennap NG's current codebase is written in ISO C99. Unfortunately, most commercial C compilers do not (or not fully) support ISO C99 but rather define their own, proprietary and non-portable language extensions. GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) fully supports ISO C99. As it also makes some use of features unique to GCC, such as platform-dependent inline assembly, Opennap NG requires GCC as compiler.

Opennap NG bases on the original Napster file sharing protocol. It features some own extensions to it and hence is referred to as the Opennap protocol. Slavanap adopted those extensions and supports them as well, as far as we know.

You should have an idea about the features and limitations of the original Napster protocol, which Opennap NG bases on. Possibly you need to know how to configure your firewall or router equipment for proper Opennap NG operation. You should be able to administer your users and files base in a well-balanced and fair way, to protect your server(s) and other users from evildoers

Opennap NG was written to basically support all POSIX-compliant operating systems. This includes most Unices. Furthermore, a native Windows build (without need for any additional emulation software) has become available with 0.49. However, most Unices feature some specific sorts of POSIX aberrations or custom interpretations. Most of them are minor ones. A rule of thumb is: if Opennap NG sources compile on a given platform it will likely run flawless as well.