
Palantir v2.5
=============

This is Palantir, a client-server streaming system designed to transmit live
video, audio and data over a TCP/IP network, as well as to control remote
devices.


Installation
------------

If you are going to build the Palantir server from sources, please see the file
INSTALL.


Running Palantir
----------------

Just run the 'palantir' executable. 'palantir -h' lists the available
command-line options.
Upon startup, Palantir will look for a configuration file in
/usr/local/share/palantir/palantir.conf, but will not complain if such a file
does not exist. (An alternative configuration file can be specified through
the -C option).
Please read the documentation (see below) to learn about the various
command-line options and configuration directives.
A sample, heavily commented, configuration file, 'palantir.conf.sample', is
provided.

The tools/ directory includes the companion program 'sysfeed' which can
feed Palantir with some information about system statistics (memory and CPU
usage, running processes), simulating sensor devices whose data can be
transmitted to clients for remote monitoring. Definitions for three such devices
can be found in the sample configuration file.
Palantir and sysfeed communicate through a special file called a 'named pipe'
whose location must be specified respectively in the Palantir configuration file
and (if different from the default /usr/local/share/palantir/telmu_pipe) as the
first command-line argument to sysfeed.


Documentation
-------------

The "official" documentation resides in the man/ directory. It contains
manual pages for the server program, palantir(1), and its configuration file,
palantir.conf(5).
HTML versions of the man pages are in man/html/ .


License
-------

All the components of Palantir (both server and clients) are distributed under
the GNU General Public License.
In short, you can use this program for commercial and non-commercial purposes,
make copies, modify it, resell it, as long as the copyright notices are
retained and the source code (including your modifications) is made available
to the recipients.
Please see the file COPYING for details.


History
-------

Palantir started as a closed source project by Fastpath Research
<http://www.fastpath.it> on behalf of Gai-Tronics s.r.l.
<http://www.gai-tronics.it>, the Italian subsdiary of worldwide communications
systems provider Gai-Tronics, which funded its development up to version 2.2.
In late 2002, Gai-Tronics agreed to disclose the Palantir code base making it
available under the GNU General Public License. Kudos to the nice people there,
especially Vincenzo Lo Iacono.


Author
------

David Santinoli is the author and current maintainer of the project.
You can contact him about Palantir at <palantir@santinoli.com>.


Credits
-------

The GSM library code included in the Palantir distribution is copyright
by Jutta Degener and Carsten Bormann (see libgsm/COPYRIGHT).


-- 
Copyright 2001-2004 David Santinoli
