Linux Napster Client: User Guide

Peter Selinger (selinger@users.sourceforge.net)

Created March 28, 2001. Updated November 4, 2006 for nap version 1.5.4.


This document describes the linux napster client "nap". It covers basic installation, configuration, and usage, as well as some finer points.

1. General

2. Author and copyright

3. Downloading and installation

4. Basic nap usage

5. More on searching and downloading

6. Messages, channels, and hotlists

7. Configuration and user variables

8. Advanced features

9. Obsolete features

10. Summary of command line options [updated 1.5.1]

11. Summary of nap commands


1. General

1.1. Introduction

Nap is a console napster client for linux and other operating systems, written by Kevin Sullivan. This user guide summarizes some of its most important features, from a user's point of view. Additions and corrections are welcome.

1.2. Brief history

Nap, written by Kevin Sullivan sometime in 1999, was one of the first napster clients besides Shawn Fanning's original Windows client. It was also the first client that ran on Linux. Kevin learned much about the inner workings of the napster protocol by collaborating with Jordan Ritter, who was one of the co-founders of Napster and its chief server architect at the time.

After a period of inactivity, development of nap resumed in early 2001, when I took over the project. Since then, nap has been polished, and many new features have been added, while the original "look and feel" has been preserved as much as possible. Today, nap is one of the most reliable and stable napster clients. Nap has been packaged for a variety of popular platforms, and it is shipped with distributions of some operating systems such as Debian Linux and OpenBSD.

1.3. Reporting bugs

Nap has a sourceforge project page. You are encouraged to use sourceforge's facilities for bug reports, feature requests etc. You can also send me bug reports by email. When you report a bug, please be as specific as you can about what happened and what you were doing when the bug occurred.

2. Author and copyright

This user guide can be freely copied, modified, and distributed under the GNU public license.

The nap software is copyrighted by Kevin Sullivan, under conditions set forth in the file COPYRIGHT.

3. Downloading and installation

The current release of nap is available from http://nap.sourceforge.net/. You can download nap in one of several formats. In the following, XXX stands for a version number.

3.1. Source distribution

This is the most complete distribution of nap, since it contains all the source code necessary to compile nap. On the other hand, this means you have to compile it yourself. This is not very difficult, but if nap is available in precompiled form for your platform, you might find that easier.

Instructions: download the file nap-XXX.tar.gz. The following sequence of commands should compile and install nap.

        tar -zxf nap-XXX.tar.gz
        cd nap-XXX
        ./configure
        make
        su
        (type root password)
	make install

3.2. Linux precompiled distribution

Instructions: download the file nap-XXX.linux-i386.tar.gz. Install nap as follows:

        tar -zxf nap-XXX.linux-i386.tar.gz
        cd nap-XXX.linux-i386
	su
	(type root password)
	cp nap napping /usr/local/bin
	chmod 0755 /usr/local/bin/nap
	chmod 4755 /usr/local/bin/napping
If you are running Linux on a different architecture, such as Alpha, just substitute "alpha" for "i386" in the above instructions.

Napping is a helper application for nap which can be safely installed suid (with permissions 4755). For more on napping, see 5.2. Pings.

3.3. RPM package

RPM is the Redhat Package Manager. It allows for easy installation of packages on Redhat Linux systems, and on other systems where it is available. Instructions: download the file nap-XXX.i386.rpm. As root, install nap with the single command

        rpm -ivh nap-XXX.i386.rpm

3.4. Debian package

A nap package is distributed with the next relase (2.3) of Debian. To install nap on a properly configured Debian system you should use the "apt-get" command:

        apt-get install nap
Alternatively you can download the latest nap_XXX.deb package from the Debian nap page and install it manually with the "dpkg" command:

        dpkg -i nap_XXX.deb
You must be root to do this. If you are not root, read section 3.9.

3.5. OpenBSD package

Instructions: download the file nap-XXX.tgz. Install it with the single command

        pkg_add nap-XXX.tgz
Note: this file is an OpenBSD Package, not a regular tar archive. It should be installed with "pkg_add". If you unpack it with "tar", do it in an empty directory, as it will spill some files into the current working directory. If you do unpack this as a tar file, you will find an executable binary in the "bin" subdirectory.

3.6. Windows precompiled distribution

Instructions: download the file nap-XXX.cygwin32.zip. Unpack it with

        pkunzip nap-XXX.cygwin32.zip
(Note: pkunzip is a relatively dumb program. My version of it, which came with Windows 98, does not understand long filenames, and you may have to type something of the form "pkunzip nap-1.~1.zip". Instead of creating a directory, it may decide to dump the files in the current working directory, and it may rename them. Use "unzip" instead of "pkunzip" if it is available.) Among the unpacked files, you will find an executable file nap.exe and two DLL's (dynamically linked libraries): cygncurses5.dll and cygwin1.dll. You need to put these DLL's in a place where Windows can find them, before running nap.exe. One way to do this is to copy the two "*.dll" files to a location (such as C:\WINDOWS) where Windows looks for DLL's. Another way is to amend your PATH environment variable, by adding something like the following line to C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT:

        PATH=%PATH%;C:\DIRECTORY\WHERE\DLLS\ARE
Special care is needed with nap for Windows regarding the location of the configuration files. Nap normally looks for its configuration files in a directory called ".nap" in the user's home directory. Under Windows, there is no such thing as a user's home directory, and nap will by default look for the .nap directory in the current working directory. You can change this behavior by defining an environment variable HOME. I do this by something like the line

        set HOME=C:\SOME\DIRECTORY
in the file C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT. This will cause nap to look for (and create) its configuration files in the directory C:\SOME\DIRECTORY\.nap.

See also the file README.win which comes with the distribution.

3.7. Binary distributions with ncurses [new 1.5.1]

Some binary distributions for operating systems which do not normally ship with the ncurses library, such as Solaris, come with a file ncurses.so.5 or similar. If nap complains that it cannot find this file, you need to put it somewhere where the dynamic linker can find it. You need to do one of two things: