100 lines
5.0 KiB
HTML
100 lines
5.0 KiB
HTML
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<HTML>
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<HEAD>
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<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO 8859-1">
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<META http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css">
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<META name="author" lang="en" "content="Michiel Broek">
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<META name="copyright" lang="en" content="Copyright Michiel Broek">
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<META name="description" lang="en" content="MBSE BBS Manual">
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<META name="keywords" lang="en" content="MBSE BBS, MBSE, BBS, manual, fido, fidonet, gateway, tosser, mail, tic, mailer">
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<TITLE>Running a BBS under Linux.</TITLE>
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<LINK rel=stylesheet HREF="manual.css">
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</HEAD>
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<BODY>
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<BLOCKQUOTE>
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<h5>Last update 28-Jan-2001</h5>
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<P> <P>
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<H1>Introduction to MBSE BBS.</H1>
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<P>
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<H3>Distribution.</H3>
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<P>
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There are only five official distribution sites for the mbse bbs package. They are:
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<OL>
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<LI><A HREF="http://mbse.sourceforge.net">http://mbse.sourceforge.net</A> Primary site
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<LI><A HREF="http://mbse.freezer-burn.org">http://mbse.freezer-burn.org</A> Mirror site
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<LI><A HREF="http://www.telematique.org/mbse">http://www.telematique.org/mbse</A> Mirror site
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<LI>fidonet node 2:280/2802 (+31-255-515973).
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<LI>fidonet node 2:280/2801 (+31-255-533858).
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</OL>
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If you find mbse bbs on another site it may be out of date. I have no control over these sites.
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New versions of mbse bbs are announced in the fidonet area LINUX_BBS. On the official fidonet
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nodes you can request the latest version with the magic MBSEBBS. You will then get a zip file,
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in this zip file is the original tar.gz file. This is to let systems who only support 8.3
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filenames to pickup the distribution package. You can also subscribe to the mailinglist
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<b>mbse-announce@lists.sourceforge.net</b> to receive announcements. This will also work for fidonet
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systems if you send your netmail via the official fido/internet gateway. You can also
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subscribe online at <A HREF="http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mbse-announce">sourceforge</A>
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<P> <P>
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<H3>History.</H3>
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<P>
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At the end of 1997 I was looking for several BBS systems that could run on
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Linux and it must be capable to run Fidonet mail. After reviewing almost
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all packages that were available at that time I found that there were no
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packages that suited my needs. Some had the plain user interfaces that
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my bbs users were used to but no Fidonet capabilities, others looked
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awfull or were difficult to use by normal bbs users without Unix experience.
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I also didn't want to run shareware anymore, one day you pay for some program,
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and the next day support is over because the writer of that program decided
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to stop development or simply dissapears from the Fidonet stage. With all
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Y2K problems ahead the solution should be Open Software so that you have
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the sources in case something goes wrong.
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One package was very interesting and had the look and feel of RemoteAcces,
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that package was RapidBBS. There was only one problem, it had no Fidonet
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capabilities. I rewrote the data structures and created a deamon that should
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control all bbs acivities. In march 1998 I started writing the mbfido program
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that should handle all Fidonet mail and .tic files. In june 1998 the final
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message base format became JAM using the LoraBBS sources as a guide to create
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the JAM libraries. The original JAMapi was not stable enough to do all the work
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that needed to be done.
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<P>
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In Juli 1998 the first version of MBSE BBS was installed on the bbs I have,
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on the second line. The first line was running McMail, GEcho and RA on a
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Novell client while on the Linux box the mars_nwe emulator from Martin Stower
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was running. In november 1998 mbcico was created from ifcico from Eugene M.
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Crosser. In Januari 1999 it did also compile and run on a Sun Sparcstation 2
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system.
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<P>
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In April 1999 the motherboard of the Linux server died, I replaced it with
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the MOBO of one of the client machines. From that day on, MBSE BBS became the
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only bbs running on my system, because I was short on serial port boards at
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that time. McMail and RA became history and MBSE BBS was on its own. From that
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day on, updates were almost daily, all users and up and downlinks showed that
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there were plenty of bugs to solve. One month later most problems were solved.
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<P>
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In juli 1999 Jan van de Werken started beta testing MBSE BBS on his system.
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In September 1999 MBSE BBS was public released for the first time.
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<P> <P>
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<H3>Is it Y2K ready?</H3>
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<P>
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There have been no problems since 1 januari 2000 with MBSE BBS. I do run
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pktdate by Tobias Ernst in the tosser, this solves problems with incoming
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mail. Due to the internal date format, this program should run until 2038,
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just as long as Unix/Linux and the internet will function without changing
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the date format.
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<P> <P>
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<H3>Future plans.</H3>
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<P>
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Plans are to complete integrate news, email, www and chat into MBSE BBS. It
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should work for browsers about the same as with ANSI character terminals.
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<P> <P>
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<A HREF="index.htm"><IMG SRC="images/b_arrow.gif" ALT="Back" Border="0" width="33" height="35"> Go Back</A>
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</BLOCKQUOTE>
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</BODY>
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</HTML>
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