Back Forward Table of Contents

1. Introduction

1.1 What is Hawkeye?

Hawkeye is a complete Internet/Intranet server suite, implementing the most important Internet protocols for information interchange. Think of it as an integrated Web, Mail, News, File and Chat server. Traditionally, all of these services are provided by seperate servers. Such a scenario can be a real horror to set up and maintain. Hawkeye solves this problem by letting all services operate on a single SQL database. You don't have to worry how to give your users access to your FTP server and installing mail accounts - just create a user in Hawkeye's database and he can receive and send Internet mail, send postings to news groups, upload and download files, chat with other users...

Hawkeye is ideal for Internet content providers who want to provide several services to their customers, as well as for companies who want to run and maintain their Intranet efficiently. With Hawkeye, you don't have just another boring Web Site, you can have interactive functions, SQL database services, discussion groups and chat boards! Hawkeye itself can be installed in a couple of minutes, and there is no Unix wizadry necessary to set up the software. In fact, once running, every detail can be configured by using your favourite web browser and operating system.

And: using Hawkeye for private or educational purposes is free. If you are using Hawkeye in a commercial environment, for example providing services to your customers, using it for a site sponsored by advertisements, managing an Intranet in your company or if you making money with it in any way, you have to buy a license if you decide to continue the use of the software after a certain evaluation period. Still, you can save hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars compared to other commercial solutions. Please consult the license and copyright terms for more information on license terms and pricing.


1.2 Hawkeye Features

Hawkeye combines a lot of different features and services in one single program. Please note: it is not necessary to connect a Hawkeye server to the Internet! You may as well use it as a kind of Intranet server, or a modern version of a Bulletin Board System. By implementing open Internet standards, your users won't be forced to use any proprietary software. They can use the Web browser, email client and newsreader of their choice. Here is a small list of features:
HTTP server
Hawkeye is a full-featured Web server. It supports the HTTP/1.0 command set, as well as the most important HTTP/1.1 features such as persistant connections and cache control commands. Interactive Web applications are supported by the CGI/1.1 gateway. Additionally, the Hawkeye HTTP server supports so-called parsed HTML pages which allow you to place user-dependent information inside your web pages. You can create pages that allow your users to read their email or news messages, and even the whole system administration can be done by special web pages. Users can even see who else is on-line at the moment, and for example meet each other in a chat area.

SMTP/POP3 server
The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol server allows your users to interchange email messages with the rest of Internet. Every account on your system has a word-wide unique Internet mail address, and your users can send emails by using parsed HTML pages or by using their favourite Internet mail software. Incoming mail is handled by the Post Office Protocol, Version 3 which is an open Internet standard for storing mail on the server until the user downloads it. Hawkeye's SMTP and POP3 servers support the full RFC 821 and RFC 1939 command sets for exchange of Internet email and are perfectly suited to work with any other SMTP based mail gateway.

NNTP server
The discussion groups you can create by using parsed HTML pages can also be made available with the Network News Transfer Protocol. NNTP is supported by numerous Internet news software, so your users can use the software of their choice to participate in your discussion areas. Hawkeye currently supports the whole RFC 977 command set for communication with news reader clients. Some extensions used by modern news readers and proposed by the current Internet Drafts are also supported.

FTP server
The File Transfer Protocol server operates on the same directory structure as the Web server, thus making it easy to have shared resources between your graphical front end and file database. Users have the choice between downloading files directly by clicking on them (using the HTTP protocol) or by using their favourite FTP client for additional comfort, such as re-starting broken downloads. Besides the capability to create directories and store files in them, Hawkeye has an advanced, full indexed file database where your users can store information and descriptions of the files. Through a Web based interface, it is easy to search and display the file database and to download the contents right away. Hawkeye's FTP server supports all major aspects of RFC 765, including both active and passive downloads, re-starting of incomplete file transfers and the directory management functions.

Chat boards
Giving people the chance to talk to each other using a chat area is an important step in making your server attractive. The integration of chat boards into Hawkeye's internal HTML capabilities makes this implementation more powerful as several CGI based applications. You can have an arbitrary number of different chat rooms, along with restricting access to certain user groups.

Radius support
Hawkeye is compatible to Radius. That means, theRadius server can get his login information from the Hawkeye database. The combination of both - Hawkeye and Radius - is real simple. Furthermore Hawkeye collect and store some login information in it's own database. A very usefull feature, if you want use a Radius server as login machine to your Hawkeye web server. There is no need for additional programs, the Radius support is part of Hawkeye since release 0.9.6!

Web-based Administration
As mentioned above, every detail of the server administration can be done by using a set of special HTML pages. No more fiddling with cryptic configuration files, just create users, groups, discussion areas and chat boards with the mouse! Modify your basic system configuration, restrict access to certain discussion areas or directories on your server, view and edit the user database just by using your favourite Web browser software.
The HTML Administrator's tools are a kind of GUI to the SQL database.

1.3 System Requirements

Software
Hawkeye was developed to run on Linux, even if it might be easy to port it to other Unices. It may even compile out-of-the-box on Linux/Alpha and Linux/Sparc, but I haven't tried that yet. You are welcome to report any success stories. The system was thoroughly testet on several Intel systems running Linux kernel versions above 2.0. It might as well run on Linux 1.2.13, but with the improved network performance of the 2.x.x series of kernels, I don't see any reason why not to upgrade.

Internal data structures are implemented on top of the MySQL database engine (home page: www.tcx.se). MySQL itself is bundled with the Hawkeye distribution, so you don't need to download, install and maybe pay seperately.

Hardware
Basically, any machine which is capable of running Linux can be used to run Hawkeye. For smaller sites, an i486 (or something comparable) might be fine. If you're connected to the Internet and expect many visitors, a Pentium 90 with 16MB of RAM would be the optimal choice. Of course you can always speed things up...

Hawkeye and MySQL themselves need very little disk space (only a couple of MBytes). So, the space needed on your hard drive depends on what you are going to do with Hawkeye.


1.4 Copyright and License Issues

Hawkeye is developed and © by Roland Haenel. The Hawkeye Project is supported by Thomas Haberland (web pages, basic consulting, advertising).

YOUR INSTALLATION AND USE OF THIS SOFTWARE CONSTITUTES YOUR AGREEMENT TO THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE. THIS IS A LEGAL AGREEMENT TO WHICH YOU ARE CONSENTING TO BE BOUND. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO ALL OF THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE, DO NOT USE THE SOFTWARE - DELETE IT FROM YOUR SYSTEM.

DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE SOFTWARE IS BORNE BY YOU. SHOULD THE SOFTWARE PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU AND NOT THE HAWKEYE PROJECT ASSUME THE ENTIRE COST OF ANY SERVICE AND REPAIR. THIS DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY CONSTITUTES AN ESSENTIAL PART OF THE AGREEMENT.

You are welcome to distribute the original, unchanged Hawkeye archives. No modifications may be applied neither to the archives nor the to program itself.

Licence terms

Hawkeye is not free software. The use of the Hawkeye program is subject to the following license terms. Note however, that you may be allowed to use the program for free under special circumstances.

  1. Private Licence
    You are granted to use the Hawkeye software for free, if you don't make any profit using the program. This includes that you are not allowed to place advertisements on your web pages, nor charge your users any fee for entering your site. The private licence applies also if you use the program solely for educational purposes, for example as a Web server of a school or college. This includes access to the public areas available on the Hawkeye home site. It does not include any kind of support.

  2. Single Licence
    If you use Hawkeye in a commercial environment (for example a company Internet/Intranet Web server) or you are a government agency, you have to pay for a licence depending on the number of copies you have in use. The single licence includes the following: The price for this kind of licence is US-$ 250 or 480 DM.

  3. Multi Home Licence
    The multi home licence includes the following: The price for this kind of licence is US-$ 450 or 800 DM.

  4. Multi PC Licence
    The multi PC licence includes the following: Please ask for a price. We are looking forward to make you an offer according to your needs.

All licences contain basic installation support and free access to the Hawkeye home site for one year, including access to a support newsgroup. If you want or need more support or guaranteed email response times, maybe these special offers might be helpful to you:

  1. Basic E-Mail Support
    The price is US-$ 300 or 550 DM.

  2. Extended Support
    The price is US-$ 1000 or 1800 DM.

  3. Online Support
    Please ask for a price. We are looking forward to make you an offer according to your needs.

  4. Development Support
    Maybe you need a specific feature added to the Hawkeye program? Or you want to make your site look more 'unique', but don't know how to do it with your version of the software? Don't hesitate to ask if you feel the need for a new feature. If it's useful for all Hawkeye users, we may add it ourselves by the time. But we can always talk about the conditions if you need it now. The price would probably depend on the amount of work to be done.
Licence payment

Currently we can only accept order checks (Europe: EC check) or international money transfers. We're currently evolving more methods of payment and want to accept credit card payments as soon as possible. Please note: all prices mentioned are without VAT (German: "ohne Mehrwertsteuer"). German customers must add the current VAT, of course. Please send your money order check to the following address:

     Thomas Haberland 
     The Hawkeye Project 
     P.O. Box 667 
     D-52007 Aachen 
     Germany 

If your licence situation is not mentioned, please contact the Hawkeye Project for a special offer.


1.5 Getting Hawkeye

For obtaining the newest version of Hawkeye, please take a look at our home site, hawkeye.net. You will need to have a system that supports RPM (Red Hat Package Manager) archives. As most modern Linux distributions do, this should not be a real problem. If you lack RPM support, you can download it directly from RedHat, ftp.redhat.com.

Hawkeye comes in a binary and a source distribution. There is no need to take the source distribution unless you want to take a look at the source code. The binary package is the easiest to install and to set up. And once again, please remember: Hawkeye is not free software, although download and private use is permitted free of charge. Please read the license and copyright terms. Thank you.


1.6 The Future of Hawkeye

We would like to hear from you if you find Hawkeye useful, and you can always talk to us about implementing new features. There are some things that are already on our feature list:


Back Forward Table of Contents