## Compiling

If you haven't compiled a Go program before, the following are some brief
instructions to help you compile ipxbox on a Linux-based system.

First, install the Go compiler and the development package for `libpcap`.
On a Debian-based system this will work:
```
sudo apt install golang libpcap-dev
```
Next set `$GOPATH`. This can usually be pointed at a directory inside your
home directory:
```
export GOPATH=$HOME/go
```
You may find it convenient to add the above line to `~/.bashrc`.

The following two commands will fetch ipxbox and all its dependencies, and
then compile it:
```
go install github.com/fragglet/ipxbox@latest
go build github.com/fragglet/ipxbox
```
If successful, you should now have a compiled binary you can run named `ipxbox`.

## Starting a server

To test your server, you can try running it with:
```
./ipxbox --port=10000
```
The server will run on UDP port 10000 until you hit ctrl-c. Try connecting to
it from inside DOSbox. For example, if your server is running locally you can
specify `localhost` as the address to connect to:
```
Z:\>config -set ipx true
Z:\>ipxnet connect localhost 10000
IPX Tunneling utility for DosBox

IPX Tunneling Client connected to server at localhost.

Z:\>
```
If you see that you were able to connect successfully as above, you now know
that the server is working correctly.

If you are trying to connect to a remote machine and it is failing, the
following are two possible causes:

1. If the server is running on a home network, you may need to set up a port
forward. Google search port forwarding to find out more about this subject -
the way to do it depends on your router.

1. Check if a firewall is set up on the machine you are trying to connect to.
If there is, you may need to add a firewall exception. Linux firewalls use
`iptables`, and the following is an example of how to add an exception:
```
sudo iptables -A INPUT --dport 10000 -p udp -j ACCEPT 
```

## Setting up a systemd service

Once you have your server working you may want to set up a `systemd` service
for it. This ensures that if the machine/VM restarts, the server will
automatically restart. In the following example we are setting up a service
running as the user `jonny`.

First create a `systemd` configuration file. You'll need to point the
`ExecStart` path at your executable.
```
mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
cat >~/.config/systemd/user/ipxbox.service <<END
[Unit]
Description=DOSbox dedicated server

[Service]
ExecStart=/home/jonny/ipxbox/ipxbox --logging=syslog
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
END
```
Enable login lingering for `jonny`. This allows the server to run even when
`jonny` isn't logged in.
```
sudo loginctl enable-linger jonny
```
Start the server and enable it as a service that will start automatically.
```
systemctl --user start ipxbox.service
systemctl --user enable ipxbox.service
```
Check it is running as expected:
```
$ systemctl --user status ipxbox.service
● ipxbox.service - DOSbox dedicated server
   Loaded: loaded (/home/jonny/.config/systemd/user/ipxbox.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled
   Active: active (running) since Sun 2020-02-16 00:00:51 GMT; 3 weeks 6 days ago
 Main PID: 5383 (ipxbox)
   CGroup: /user.slice/user-1001.slice/user@1001.service/ipxbox.service
           └─5383 /home/jonny/ipxbox/ipxbox
```

## Advanced topics

Once you have a server running there are various additional features that can
be configured:

* Bridging the server to a real network (see [BRIDGE-HOWTO](BRIDGE-HOWTO.md)).
* Enabling the built-in PPTP server (see [PPTP-HOWTO](PPTP-HOWTO.md)).