Hydra Portal

Welcome to the portal for Hydra!

= DirectConnect =

Perhaps the service which is most immediately beneficial for Hampshire is the DirectConnect service. This allows an immense increase in academic collaboration among students across campus by providing means to instantly communicate with any other student and share files with one another. When you connect, you are automatically in a main chat room with all other students, and the ability to private message any other individual is there as well.

For speed and firewall purposes it is not recommended to use wireless connections with Hydra's DirectConnect hub. If you attempt this you are mostly on your own.

In order to join Hydra's DirectConnect hub, you need a properly configured DirectConnect client for your computer. What follows are directions for each of the three major operating systems.

GNU+Linux
GNU+Linux users have it the easiest. The recommended client to use is called LinuxDC++. For those of you running Debian or Ubuntu, you just need to install one package called 'linuxdcpp' by either selecting it for installation in your package manager, or by typing this command in your terminal:

After the package is installed, run the LinuxDC++ application and go to File --&gt; Preferences. Here you should configure the name people see you as in the Nick field, put your Hampshire e-mail address in the E-Mail field, change your max upload speed to "100", and optionally add a Description which can say anything you want. Then go to the Downloads tab within the Preferences window and choose the directories on your system you would like downloaded files to be placed. Finally, go to the Sharing tab and Add a directory (or multiple directories) on your system the contents of which you would like to make available to other students on the hub.

The data will have to hash, which means scanning through all of the files you chose to share, but it only has to do this one time, so let it complete by leaving LinuxDC++ open (it's okay if it closes: it'll resume upon reopening). You must share at least 512 MiB of data to connect.

Hit the "Connect" button and connect to 'hydra'.

Windows
Windows users should download the DirectConnect client called DC++ from here. Once installed, run DC++ and enter the Preferences window.

Configure your nickname and optionally a contact e-mail address and description to be associated with your nick on the hub. Then configure where DC++ downloads files to your computer and add a shared directory (or multiple shared directories).

The data will have to hash, which means scanning through all of the files you chose to share, but it only has to do this one time, so let it complete by leaving DC++ open (it's okay if it closes: it'll resume upon reopening). You must share at least 512 MiB of data to connect.

Go to File --&gt; Quick Connect (or just hit Ctrl+Q) and type in 'hydra' and hit enter.

Note: If users have a red bar accross their icon in DC++ change your connections settings from "Let DC++ determine the best connection settings" to "Let DC++ configure my router"

Mac OS X
Unfortunately, and somewhat ironically, using DirectConnect is the most difficult and complicated for Mac OS X users. The best client available is called ShakeSpeer which you can download from here.

For information on how to backup DVDs to your computer on a Mac, see this wikiHow article.

Once installed to your Applications folder, run ShakeSpeer and enter the Preferences. Choose a nickname, and optionally an e-mail address and description to be displayed alongside your nick. By default ShakeSpeer downloads to a directory called "ShakeSpeer Downloads" on your Desktop. You can change this if you want by editing the appropriate option in the Preferences.

Go to the "Sharing" tab and hit the button with a "+" symbol and browse to a directory on your system which you would like to share with others on the hub. You can share as many directories as you like, but the data within them must be hashed, or scanned through once over by ShakeSpeer so that others may search through it easily and quickly. This only happens once so keep ShakeSpeer open until it's done (it's okay if you close it, it'll start hashing again once you reopen ShakeSpeer if it's not completed yet).

Next, go to the "Network" tab in ShakeSpeer's preferences. There are two modes to choose from, Active and Passive. You want Active, which is set by default. But because ShakeSpeer is silly and reports the incorrect IP address (your external one) to Hydra when you use Active mode, Hydra will kick you unless you modify your ShakeSpeer network preferences slightly to use the correct internal IP address. You must uncheck the box called "Detect automatically" and in the field next to it paste the IP address of your ethernet port. By doing this, ShakeSpeer will report your correct internal IP address to Hydra and you can successfully use Active mode.

If you have trouble knowing your IP address, simply go into Mac OS X's System Preferences and click on "Network". In the description next to "Built-in Ethernet" there is a number which looks like "172.30.x.x" where the x's are two other numbers. This is the IP address which needs to be pasted into ShakeSpeer's network preferences. Unfortunately such an address is assigned dynamically at Hampshire, so this number might change, in which case you need to find the IP address again and update ShakeSpeer's configuration. As of now the only way to avoid this annoyance is by switching to Ubuntu so you can use LinuxDC++.

You must share at least 512MiB of data to connect. Hit the "Connect" button and join 'hydra'.

If you are using the Mac OS X firewall, you will have to allow for communications on port 1412. After setting everything up as described above, you are able to connect to Hydra and search for files, but you are experiencing problems downloading a file (the file will say it's queued for downloading, but won't ever actually download), the following should help. Close shakespeer and click the blue apple in the top left of your screen, click on system preferences, click on "sharing", click on the "firewall" tab. The firewall should be on (for general security reason when on any network), you should click the "New" button, select "Other" for the port name, then in the TCP Port Number field, type in "1412", leave UDP Port Number field blank, and for the name "Shakespeer" (or what ever you want to remind yourself this is to make shakespeer work). Open shakespeer back up and yould be able to download files now!

Another option is EiskaltDC++