• Contemplations?

    From Jeff Smith@1:282/1031 to Vince Coen on Sun Sep 30 22:09:58 2018
    Hello Vince,

    I have never tried bbbs as it is paid for software and as I am retired do not have funds to spend on such when there are more than enough FOC products.

    I am starting to think similarly as I have gotten on in years. I have tried most if not all of the (Then or Now) available BBS software. Both the paid for types like Wildcat/WinServer and BBBS to the other 'Free' BBS packages that would run on my selected OS platforms of DOS, Windows, Linux, OS/2.

    The one issue is for bbbs or for that matter any s/w is, can you select exactly where to install it ?
    If so then it should work - subject to testing of course.

    I have run into both aspects of that issue with BBS software. With BBBS one can
    specify the install location. For me I use /home/bbbs as the install location.
    Other BBS's like Mystic need to to create the BBS install directory and it can
    not preexist. Although I have found a workaround for the Linux version of Mystic.

    Currently my preferred BBS software is BBBS, Mystic, and Synchronet as they are
    all multi-platform packages.

    Jeff

    --- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-3
    * Origin: Fidoneet: The Ouija Board - Anoka, MN -bbs.ouijabrd.ne\ (1:282/1031)
  • From Vince Coen@2:250/1 to Jeff Smith on Tue Oct 2 13:30:30 2018
    Hello Jeff!

    Sunday September 30 2018 22:09, you wrote to me:

    I am starting to think similarly as I have gotten on in years. I have
    tried most if not all of the (Then or Now) available BBS software.
    Both the paid for types like Wildcat/WinServer and BBBS to the other
    'Free' BBS packages that would run on my selected OS platforms of DOS, Windows, Linux, OS/2.

    Currently my preferred BBS software is BBBS, Mystic, and Synchronet as
    they are all multi-platform packages.

    IF you need too, try mbse and yes you can control where it is installed via configure --prefix= command.

    How ever that said as you have paid the big bucks to use bbbs I guess you will stick to it :)


    Vince

    --- Mageia Linux v6 X64/Mbse v1.0.7.9/GoldED+/LNX 1.1.501-b20150715
    * Origin: Air Applewood, The Linux Gateway to the UK & Eire (2:250/1)
  • From Jeff Smith@1:282/1031 to Vince Coen on Tue Oct 2 13:09:44 2018
    Hello Vince,

    Both the paid for types like Wildcat/WinServer and BBBS to the other
    'Free' BBS packages that would run on my selected OS platforms of DOS,
    Windows, Linux, OS/2.
    Currently my preferred BBS software is BBBS, Mystic, and Synchronet as
    they are all multi-platform packages.

    IF you need too, try mbse and yes you can control where it is installed via configure --prefix= command.

    Actually, back when I first installed Slackware MBSE was the first BBS that I installed on Linux. Since then I have installed BBBS, SBBS, and Mystic.

    I think the reason that I didn't stick with MBSE longer than I did wasn't a fault of MBSE. It was at the time a lack of understanding of Linux's functionality. Everything was in odd and/or unknown places in Linux. As opposed
    to Windows of the day. Hech, now I prefer Linux over Windows. :-)

    How ever that said as you have paid the big bucks to use bbbs I guess you will
    stick to it :)

    While I probably will maintain a BBBS presence...

    I try to always make sure that I have a few spare Linux PC's including a few Pi3's sitting around to try/test things on. I must confess my lack of looking at MBSE recently but will acquire the current MBSE package and investigate. :-)

    Jeff

    --- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-3
    * Origin: Fidoneet: The Ouija Board - Anoka, MN -bbs.ouijabrd.ne\ (1:282/1031)
  • From Robert Wolfe@1:261/20 to Vince Coen on Wed Oct 17 18:38:18 2018
    I have never tried bbbs as it is paid for software and as I am retired do not have funds to spend on such when there are more than enough FOC products.

    Yeah, you know that the two node version of BBBS is available, right? The only
    limitations to it that I know of are a 2 node max and a 30 minute hard time limit for users.

    The one issue is for bbbs or for that matter any s/w is, can you select exactly
    where to install it ?

    By default, IIRC, it unzips to 'bbbs' in whatever directory you unzip it to. So
    if you unzip it in /home/myhome, the directory it creates is /home/myhome/bbbs/. I am sure that with some tweaking that can be changed once the files are unpacked.

    --- BBBS/2 v4.10 Toy-3
    * Origin: Omicron Theta (BBBS/2) * Southaven MS USA (1:261/20)
  • From Robert Wolfe@1:261/20 to Janis Kracht on Wed Oct 17 18:39:02 2018
    I have never tried bbbs as it is paid for software and as I am retired do not >> have funds to spend on such when there are more than enough FOC products.

    It's not that expensive, and you only pay for the number of nodes you want to run... I think I mentioned this before as well, when I first started using BBBS, I just ran the free trial nodes until I determined it would do everything I needed... after that I registered 5 nodes IIRC, then eventually
    bumped it up to 15. It is a great system IMO, including essentially everythin
    you might need.

    I agree. I started with the 8 node version first, I believe, then upgraded to a 27-node license that I use today.

    --- BBBS/2 v4.10 Toy-3
    * Origin: Omicron Theta (BBBS/2) * Southaven MS USA (1:261/20)
  • From Robert Wolfe@1:261/20 to Jeff Smith on Wed Oct 17 18:40:00 2018
    I am starting to think similarly as I have gotten on in years. I have tried
    most if not all of the (Then or Now) available BBS software. Both the paid for
    types like Wildcat/WinServer and BBBS to the other 'Free' BBS packages that would run on my selected OS platforms of DOS, Windows, Linux, OS/2.

    I run WINServer 7 as my main system, BBBS/2 on of of my 2 ArcaOS VMs and Telegard/2 with Internet Rex/OS2 and FastEcho/2 for my main mail system.

    --- BBBS/2 v4.10 Toy-3
    * Origin: Omicron Theta (BBBS/2) * Southaven MS USA (1:261/20)
  • From Jeff Smith@1:282/1031 to Robert Wolfe on Wed Oct 17 19:18:38 2018
    Hello Robert,

    The one issue is for bbbs or for that matter any s/w is, can you select
    exactly
    where to install it ?

    By default, IIRC, it unzips to 'bbbs' in whatever directory you unzip it to. S
    if you unzip it in /home/myhome, the directory it creates is
    /home/myhome/bbbs/. I am sure that with some tweaking that can be changed onc
    the files are unpacked.

    Since I have a preference that BBBS runs out of the user directory as in /home/bbbs I installed BBBS to use and install to that directory and
    created the user "bbbs" and told Linux to use the pre-existing bbbs home directory.

    A number of programs default to installing to a /home/<user>/<program> while others are hard coded to install to a predetermined directory and refuse to install IF the install directory already exists.

    Jeff

    --- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-3
    * Origin: Fidoneet: The Ouija Board - Anoka, MN -bbs.ouijabrd.ne\ (1:282/1031)
  • From Robert Wolfe@1:261/20 to Jeff Smith on Wed Oct 17 22:21:12 2018
    Since I have a preference that BBBS runs out of the user directory as in /home/bbbs I installed BBBS to use and install to that directory and
    created the user "bbbs" and told Linux to use the pre-existing bbbs home directory.

    Oh and this is a good preference to have. I have Mystic for Linux set up on that VM in very much the same way. I just have the mystic user having sudo privs so that the servers that require privileged ports can use those.

    --- BBBS/2 v4.10 Toy-3
    * Origin: Omicron Theta (BBBS/2) * Southaven MS USA (1:261/20)
  • From Vince Coen@2:250/1 to Robert Wolfe on Sat Oct 20 12:32:29 2018
    Hello Robert!

    Wednesday October 17 2018 18:38, you wrote to me:

    I have never tried bbbs as it is paid for software and as I am
    retired do not have funds to spend on such when there are more than
    enough FOC products.

    Yeah, you know that the two node version of BBBS is available, right?
    The only limitations to it that I know of are a 2 node max and a 30
    minute hard time limit for users.

    The minimum service as you say is two nodes although I do not run any modems is still a paid
    for function.

    Even with internet based connections with mbse/web/ftp services I often can have 5 - 10
    connections at the same time although rare and 2 - 4 is more likely.

    Mbse has a max of two but that is to help with nodes downloading as my upload speed is only
    18Mb and helps to minimise time connection times.

    The Web or ftp connections is mostly robots and these are only connected for a max of 10
    seconds.

    So a 2 port bbbs is not practical on a cost or function basis.

    How ever that said the main gain for mbse is that the sources are freely available so minir
    fixes are done by the users (experienced in C) since the programmer quit the scene.

    The only feature missing that I could make use of is a file description editor for the entries
    that have poor comments or too many non textual comments anyway.
    Here the only way around using a internal database for each function is to convert it to say
    MySQL to allow better record updating. Then I could just use the code of another bbs editor to
    work with mbse but my current time is spent on updating a publishing my Cobol tools and
    applications on SF.



    Vince

    --- Mageia Linux v6 X64/Mbse v1.0.7.9/GoldED+/LNX 1.1.501-b20150715
    * Origin: Air Applewood, The Linux Gateway to the UK & Eire (2:250/1)