You must read and agree to abide by the terms of the license before installing and/or using the software. Copy the Romulan.acgi, Romulan.config, logofactions.db, and logofactions.html to your already overcrowded WebSTAR™ folder.
A Macintosh® computer running WebSTAR with AppleScript® software installed is required
The configuration:
Step 1) edit the Romulan.config file
Step 2) use WebSTAR admin to set Romulan.acgi as the preprocess
Open Romulan.config with any TEXT editor. You should see a single line of data which looks something like this:
{.filt,logofactions.db,logofactions.html,jp,arpa}
This data tells Romulan the following:
The suffix of the pages to be cloaked is .filt
The name of the file to use for the database is logofactions.db
The name of the file to use for the html is logofactions.html
The domain names that end with jp or IP addresses which do not resolve to domain names are to be blocked from accessing the cloaked pages.
You should change this line to reflect how you want Romulan to cloak your pages and record actions of clients accessing your WebSTAR™ server.
You may change the suffix to a suffix of your own choice. This suffix should be appended to the name of each page you wish to have cloaked. If you use the suffix none, no cloaking will take place, but you can still have Romulan update your database and/or html files with logs of client actions.
You may change the names of the database and html files to those of your own choice. Be sure you either change the names of the logofactions.db and logofactions.html files to match your names or use any TEXT editor to create new files with the correct names. If you use the name none for either or both of the files, that file will not be updated with the actions of clients accessing your server, but cloaking can still take place. (Assuming you did not set the name of the suffix to none.) If you do want to log the actions of clients, files with the names you indicate in this line MUST exist when Romulan.acgi is run.
You may change/add to the domain names/IP addresses to reflect those domains and addresses you wish to cloak from access to the pages with the suffix you indicated. Strings are compared to the last characters in the domain name/IP address of the client requesting access to your page.
The order of the data in this line is important. Be sure to use none to disable the filtering or the logging if you wish. Don't leave anything out!
Now you are ready to start up the WebSTAR admin application and set Romulan.acgi as the preprocess. This is found under the configure menu in the misc. settings. Put a colon (:) before the name Romulan.acgi.
The example:
Looking at the example line of data above, this line tells Romulan.acgi to:
1) cloak any pages which end in the suffix .filt
2) update a file named logofactions.db with the actions of clients accessing my pages
3) update a file named logofactions.html with the actions of clients accessing my pages
4) block clients whose domain name ends with jp from accessing my cloaked pages (jp is the domain name for Japan)
5) block clients whose IP address does not resolve into a domain name. (in.addr.arpa is appended (by WebSTAR?) to the IP address when it cannot resolve the IP address number into a domain name, so we can filter using that as our string. I just shortened it to arpa)
The domain name strings can be as specific as you wish. For example:
jp would block anyone from Japan (if their IP address resolves to a domain name)
ac.jp would block anyone from academic institutions in Japan
ktokai-u.ac.jp would block anyone from my school
camelo.ktokai-u.ac.jp would block only me
The plea:
Romulan is shareware. I, Daniel W. Minor, hold the copyrights on the software and all rights are reserved. I DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WITH RESPECT TO THE SOFTWARE. If you continue to use the software beyond the ten day evaluation period you must pay me $20 or ¥2000 to license the use of this software. I am and remain the owner of the software. Please read the license document for more details.
When you pay the license fee, I will send you, via an attachment to email, another companion applet for Romulan which I am currently developing. This applet will simplify the task of configuring Romulan. This companion product will not be available except directly from me and only to registered users. You can use Romulan without the applet, it just makes things a little easier.
If you do not have email service, please enclose an additional $5 or ¥500 to cover the costs of a disk and postage.
The version history:
1.0 - first version used on the internet (May 30, 1995) - a simple applet to cloak certain pages from certain clients - not a public release
1.0.1 to
1.1 - various adjustments to filtering behavior - none were released to the public
1.5 - added logging clients actions feature - not a public release
1.5.1 - small adjustment in html output file - not a public release
1.6 - added config file to simplify adjustments - added ability to disable filtering, logging of db and/or logging of html files - not a public release
1.6.1 - bug fix - now Romulan can cloak pages from individual IP addresses (ie 202.250.1.203) and individual domain names (ie camelo.ktokai-u.ac.jp) as opposed to just domains ( jp or ac.jp) - not a public release
1.6.2 - wrote up the documentation - added comments to the code - first public release (June 11, 1995)
The future:
As I stated above in The plea:, I am currently working on a companion applet which will simplify the configuration process, including changing settings in the config file.
I am working on code to add a number of hits line to any page with the appropriate suffix.
I also have plans for code to create separate db or html files for logging only those requests which were denied by cloaking.
The rest:
WebSTAR is a trademark of StarNine Technologies, inc.
Macintosh and AppleScript are registered trademarks of Apple Computer.
