Subj : Best UNIX/LINUX BBS for F
To : Daryl Stout
From : Leslie Given
Date : Sat Apr 16 2016 12:42 pm
15 Apr 16 11:46, you wrote to James Coyle:
DS> I do NOT recall anything in the documentation that said anything
DS> about MIS to start it up. What I saw in the documentation was under
DS> "Starting Mystic BBS" -- with options of -CFG, -HOST$ , -IP$, -N#,
DS> -T#, -TID#, -U$, and -X$.
Mystic has very detailed Documentation if you look, search, FIND key word MIS
that your looking for in a text file WHATSNEW.TXT 06/09/2014. You may need to
find and download older verions in order to catch up with all the changes with
a BBS packages that is supported, one that moves very fast with their
upgades/releases. A glance at the history.txt explains quite a bit of info.
+ MIS in Linux now has the ability to Snoop telnet nodes if you use the
MIS console as a telnet server.
+ MIS Linux can now accept telnet connections and properly redirect STDIO
while spawning Mystic. This means it can entirely replace a Linux
telnet daemon if desired such as ddTelnet or xinetd, etc.
+ MIS now passes both the IP and HOST command lines when creating a telnet
session.
+ Mystic Internet Server (MIS) can now be started in daemon mode by
executing MIS with the -d command line option for Unix platforms.
+ MIS and MYSTIC now switch ownership to the group/user who owns each
binary upon startup on Unix-based systems. MIS waits until after it
binds the ports, so if it is SUDO started, it can listen on ports less
than 1024 while not running as a root application/daemon.
+ MIS telnet in Windows now has an option to hide node windows.
+ Mystic now sends IAC_DO_BINARY as part of the starting telnet negotiations
done by MIS. This will help fix some weird issues with Linux/OSX default
telnet command line client.
+ Complete rewrote the MIS telnet server for Unix platforms. It should be
much faster now. There is no reason not to use MIS now at all and you
should switch to it as soon as possible - at least if you want to take
advantage of future features that will require MIS (new event system, FTN
mailer and tosser, etc).
+ MIS FTP server now will display 'ftpbanner.txt' from the DATA directory
if it exists when a user connects via FTP.
+ New MIS event system is active. This event system has four event types
which can be used to fully automate your BBS including echomail and QWK
networking transmission, among other things.
** IF YOU ARE UPGRADING YOU MUST DELETE "EVENT.DAT" IN YOUR DATA FOLDER
** DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP OR YOU WILL HAVE ISSUES THE EVENT FILE FORMAT HAS
** CHANGED NOW THAT WE HAVE ACTUAL EVENTS!
Here is a description of each Event type:
TYPE1: Semaphore
================
This event type listens for one or more "semaphore" files, and will execute
a command line if one or more of the semaphore files are found. Prior to
executing the command line, MIS will also delete the detected semaphores.
The following options are used for Semaphore type events. Any other options
not mentioned here can be ignored for this type:
Active - If yes this event will be active. Set to No to disable.
Description - This can be any description you want.
Exec Type - This is one of BBS, Shell, or Semaphore
Semaphore - This defines the semaphore filename to "look" for. If
there is no path included, Mystic will automatically look
in the configured semaphore directory. In addition, more
than one semaphore file can be monitored by using a pipe
symbol to separate them (|). For example:
Semaphore: echomail.out|netmail.out
The above example will look for the existance of EITHER
echomail.out or netmail.out in the configured semaphore
directory. If either file is found, the event will remove
the semaphore files and then execute the event.
Semaphore: c:\mybbs\somefile.txt
The above will list for the c:\mybbs\somefile.txt and
trigger the event if it is found.
Shell - This is the command line which will be executed when the
event is triggered. Similar to the Semaphore detection,
this can have one *or more* executions per event each
separated by a pipe. If no path is supplied, MIS will
default to the root Mystic BBS directory. For example:
Shell: domail.bat
The above example will execute domail.bat in the root
Mystic BBS directory.
Shell: mutil export.ini|fidopoll send|mutil import.ini
The above will execute 3 command lines in a row:
mutil export.ini
fidopoll send
mutil import.ini
If we put it all together we can get something like this:
Active: Yes
Description: Send outgoing echomail
Exec Type: Semaphore
Semaphore: echomail.out|netmail.out
Shell: mutil export.ini|fidopoll send|mutil import.ini
The above example wait for echomail or netmail.out, and
execute mutil to export, then fidopoll to send, then
mutil to import any new packets. Completely automated!
TYPE2: Shell
============
This event type executes on a defined time, defined on a weekly schedule.
When the event executes, it will execute the Shell command line. Like the
Semaphore event type, this Shell command can also execute multiple command
lines by separating them with a pipe character (|).
The different between this type and Semaphore is that instead of waiting
for a file, the event is defined by a specific execution time. This is
defined by picking which days of the week the event should execute, and
what time per day it should be ran (in 24-hour format). For example:
Active: Yes
Description: Pack message bases
Exec Type: Shell
Shell: mutil msgpack.ini
Exec Hour: 01
Exec Min: 30
Sun: No Mon: Yes Tue: No Wed: No Thu: No Fri: No Sat: No
The above event would execute once per week, at 1:30am on Monday morning
and execute the command line "mutil msgpack.ini" from the root Mystic BBS
directory.
TYPE3: Interval
===============
This event type is similar to the shell event type, except that the hour
and minute define a time interval. For example, if you want to execute
the event every 15 minutes you would set:
Exec Hour: 00
Exec Mins: 15
If you wanted to run the event every 3 hours and 30 minutes, you set:
Exec Hour: 3
Exec Mins: 30
When the time interval expires, the shell command line is executed with
the same possiblities as the other events (using the pipe character, etc).
This event is commonly used to polling for mail.
TYPE4: BBS
==========
This event type is not actually executed by MIS itself, and is similar to
what you might have found in old DOS-based BBS software. The purpose for
this event is to provide an option to force users to log off the BBS if
you want them to.
Like the scheduled Shell event, a BBS type event can be scheduled at a
certain hour/min and one or more days of the week. In addition to the
time/day scheduling there are some other options:
Node: This defines the node number for which the event will execute. If you
keep the node number at 0, it will be applied to all users on all nodes.
Warning: This determins the time before the event to notify the user of the
upcoming event. This can be set to 0 to never warn them, or (for example) 10 to
give them a message that they will be required to logoff in 10 minutes.
When this event time hits, the user will be logged off of the BBS if they
have not already logged off on their own.
Point people in to right direction, then letting them learn on their own, seem
to work the best for me when I was first starting to use a new software.