IPTraf User's Manual
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# Starting and Stopping IPTraf

After installation, you can start the program by simply entering

    iptraf

at the shell prompt. You will see a copyright notice, with an instruction to press any key to get started. Just press any character key, and you will be immediately taken to the main menu. All major functions of the program are found there.

Entering the IPTraf command without any command-line parameters brings up the program's main menu. From there, you can select the facilities you want.

IPTraf determines and makes use of the maximum number of lines and columns on the terminal.

| Note
| IPTraf does not yet have a SIGWINCH handler, and does not adjust itself when an xterm or some other X terminal is resized.

| Technical note
| IPTraf needs to refer to the terminfo database in `/usr/share/terminfo`. If the supplied executable program fails with `Error opening terminal`, your terminfo database may be located somewhere else. You can control the terminfo search path by using the `TERMINFO` environment variable. For example, if you're using the sh or bash shell, and your terminfo database is in `/usr/lib/terminfo` (typical for Slackware distributions), you can use the commands:
    TERMINFO=/usr/lib/terminfo
    export TERMINFO
You can place these commands in your `~/.profile` or the systemwide `/etc/profile` startup files. You can also create a symbolic link named `/usr/share/terminfo` to let it point to your existing terminfo (assuming again your terminfo is in `/usr/lib/terminfo`):
    ln -s /usr/lib/terminfo /usr/share/terminfo
Or you can recompile your program to use your existing ncurses library installation. If you do this, make sure you have ncurses 4.2 or later.

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