Last update 11-Aug-2004

MBSE BBS Basic Installation

Introduction.

Before you compile and install MBSE BBS you must first setup the basic environment. If you don't do this, things will fail.

To compile and install MBSE BBS most distributions have installed all needed packages. If important packages are missing then the configure script will tell you. There are also less important packages which if missinng still let you compile MBSE BBS, but you will miss some features. Here is a short list of these packages:

  1. Zlib. On some distributions you also need zlib development. When you have zlib installed, then in mbcico extra code will be compiled in the Hydra and Binkp protocol drivers that will allow the PLZ extension. When a connection is made with another system that also supports this extension (currently MBSE BBS and Radius beta versions), the files will be sent compressed even if they are already compressed. The increased throughput will be between 1 and 10 times, that's even better then modem compression can do.

 

Step 1: planning the filesystems.

MBSE BBS is default installed in /opt/mbse. The default filesystem layout looks like this:

/opt/mbse                      0775  Default MBSE_ROOT
/opt/mbse/bin                  0770  Binaries
/opt/mbse/dutch/macro          0750  Dutch macro files
/opt/mbse/dutch/menus          0750  Dutch menu files
/opt/mbse/dutch/txtfiles       0770  Dutch ANSI files
/opt/mbse/english/macro        0750  Default english macro files
/opt/mbse/english/menus        0750  Default english menu files
/opt/mbse/english/txtfiles     0770  Default english ANSI files
/opt/mbse/etc                  0770  System configuration files
/opt/mbse/etc/dosemu           0750  DOSemu configuration files
/opt/mbse/fdb                  0770  Files database
/opt/mbse/ftp/pub              0755  Default FTP root for download areas.
/opt/mbse/galego/macro         0750  Galego macro files
/opt/mbse/galego/menus         0750  Galego menu files
/opt/mbse/galego/txtfiles      0770  Galego ANSI files
/opt/mbse/home                 0770  Users homedirectories
/opt/mbse/home/bbs             0770  Newuser account
/opt/mbse/html                 0755  HTML documentation
/opt/mbse/italian/macro        0750  Italian macro files
/opt/mbse/italian/menus        0750  Italian menu files
/opt/mbse/italian/txtfiles     0770  Italian ANSI files
/opt/mbse/log                  0770  MBSE BBS logfiles
/opt/mbse/magic                0750  Magic filerequest names
/opt/mbse/sema                 0777  Semafore files
/opt/mbse/share/doc            0750  Generated sitedocs
/opt/mbse/share/doc/html       0750  Generated html sitedocs
/opt/mbse/share/doc/tags       0750  Generated area tags
/opt/mbse/spanish/macro        0750  Spanish macro files
/opt/mbse/spanish/menus        0750  Spanish menu files
/opt/mbse/spanish/txtfiles     0770  Spanish ANSI files
/opt/mbse/tmp                  0770  Temp directory
/opt/mbse/tmp/arc              0770  Temp archiver directory
/opt/mbse/var                  0770  Var root
/opt/mbse/var/arealists        0750  Areamgr arealist files
/opt/mbse/var/badtic           0750  Bad TIC files
/opt/mbse/var/boxes            0770  Base for nodes fileboxes
/opt/mbse/var/bso              0770  Binkley Style Outbound directory
/opt/mbse/var/bso/outbound     0770  Default outbound for main aka
/opt/mbse/var/dosemu           0770  Base for DOS drives
/opt/mbse/var/dosemu/c         0770  DOS drive C:
/opt/mbse/var/inbound          0750  Protected inbound directory
/opt/mbse/var/mail             0770  JAM messagebase root
/opt/mbse/var/msgs             0770  *.msgs netmail directory (not yet in use).
/opt/mbse/var/nodelist         0750  Nodelists
/opt/mbse/var/queue            0750  Queue for before outbound
/opt/mbse/var/rules            0770  Echomail area rules files
/opt/mbse/var/run              0770  Pid files of running programs
/opt/mbse/var/ticqueue         0750  Queue for TIC files
/opt/mbse/var/unknown          0750  Unprotected inbound directory

Don't use UMSDOS or SAMBA filesystems for the bbs, stick by the standard GNU/Linux filesystems (ext2, ext3 or reiserfs) or ufs if you use FreeBSD. If you intent to make your bbs also accessible by FTP and WWW you must create the directory structure under the ftp user behind the pub directory. Read the ftp server doc for details. If you don't follow these guidlines, you will run into trouble later and have to spend a lot of time in correcting this error.

 

Step 2: Running the installation script.

First, if you use FreeBSD, install the psmisc package. This will make sure that MBSE BBS is stopped properly if you shutdown your computer.
If you are upgrading, proceed with step 4. If not, follow the next steps very carefully!
The installation script must be run by root. It checks if there is a previous or failed installation on your system. If that's so the script will not run. In other words, you can only run this script once. The script makes backup copies of the system files it changes, these files will get the extension .mbse To run the installation script you need the archive mbbsebbs-@VERSION@.tar.bz2. Unpack this archive on your system, in /tmp: 

cd /tmp
tar xfvj /path/to/the/mbsebbs-@VERSION@.tar.bz2
To start the script type: 
cd mbsebbs-@VERSION@
bash ./SETUP.sh
Yes, use bash as shell here. On some systems root doesn't use bash as login shell, calling the script with bash forces the use of bash. The script does the following:
  1. Create the group bbs
  2. Create the user mbse
  3. Create a .profile for user mbse
  4. Create and set owner of directory tree under /opt/mbse
Then the script will ask you to give a password for user mbse This password is for system maintenance and for you to make changes to the bbs. You will need that frequently but you should not make that password easy to guess of course. The script will then continue again:
  1. The user bbs is added.
  2. The password will be removed from user bbs This action will make changes in /etc/shadow (if you have that) otherwise in /etc/passwd. On FreeBSD it uses other tools to modify the master database. On NetBSD you have to do that manually, there are no tools to do that.
  3. If they don't exist in the file /etc/services the services fido, tfido and binkp will be added.
  4. If they don't exist in the file /etc/inetd.conf the internet protocols for the mailer will be added. The inetd is restarted to activate the changes. If your distribution uses xinetd instead of inetd, an include file for xinetd is added instead.

 

Step 3: Check the basic installation

The last screen of the script is about sanity checks. Perform those checks! If something is wrong, now is the time to fix it. Don't panic and remember the backups of the system files that are changed are in /etc with the extension .mbse i.e: those were the original files. The installation logfile is copied to /opt/mbse. If everythings is allright, then remove the directory /tmp/mbsebbs-@VERSION@: 

cd /tmp
rm -Rf mbsebbs-@VERSION@

 

Step 4: Install the basic packages.

Login as user mbse. Yes, very important, login as user mbse. While in mbse's home directory (/opt/mbse) unpack the distribution archives: 

tar xfvj /path/to/mbsebbs-@VERSION@.tar.bz2
You now have the subdirectory with sources in the right place. Next build the binaries and install them using the following commands: 
cd ~/mbsebbs-@VERSION@
./configure [--enable-optimize] [--enable-newsgate]
make
su        important, do not use "su -"
password: enter root password here
make install
exit
Important: it seems logical to use the --enable-newsgate option but it isn't. When you do, the mbnntp program is disabled and you cannot serve echomail as news to your users via internet. But you can gate echomail to the internet. Independant of your choice, you can allways make internet news available for your bbs users. Only use --enable-newsgate if you really need to gate echomail to the internet.

The last part of the installation procedure shows you the location of the bbs startup script that is added to your system. Remember this one for a moment. Because this is your first time installation, example menus and example textfiles are installed. If they already exist on your systems (when you do an upgrade) they will not be installed again.

Now start the bbs for the first time (still as root) by executing the startup script you just saw on the screen followed by a space and the word start. For example: 

/etc/rc.d/init.d/mbsed start
This will start the mbtask daemon. After that the bbs will be opened for use. Check the file /opt/mbse/log/mbtask.log for startup problems. The first time mbtask is started on your system it will create a lot of new configuration files with default settings.

 

Step 5: Ready.

Now you have shell scripts in ~/etc, most of them are called by cron, some are called during system startup and shutdown. You also have some default configuration files, these are ttyinfo, modems, fidonet networks. In the default (english) directory you now have default menu datafiles and ansi screens. These are copies of my test system so you have to edit them to build your own bbs.
Editing ansi screens can be done on a GNU/Linux system with one of the following packages:

  1. duhdraw, this is available from 2:280/2802 as duhdraw.tgz (68 Kbytes). The binaries are included in this archive, if you compile it yourself it may give trouble so if the binaries work, use these.
  2. bmdraw This editor is available from http://www.drastic.net/bmdraw/, you can find the tar.gz file in http://www.drastic.net/bmdraw/files/bmd022.tgz, it's about 36 Kbytes. This is also a thedraw clone for Linux. Note, at my system I needed to run it as root.
  3. TetraDraw This is a very nice Ansi editor, you can get this file as TETR~VC#.TGZ from 2:280/2802. The file is 157 Kbytes.
You may also want to edit ~/etc/header.txt and ~/etc/footer.txt, these files are the top and bottom of the newfiles/allfiles listings.

Now the basic environment is finished, the next thing to do is configure the bbs.

 

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