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<div align='right'><h5>Last update 06-Jun-2001</h5></div>
<div align='center'><H1>Starting and Stopping the BBS.</H1></div>

Now it is time to check the starting and stopping of the BBS. As you have
installed everything, setup the BBS etc, you must check if the shutdown and
reboot work properly. As root type <strong>shutdown -r now</strong> and
watch the console. You should see messages that the BBS is closing while
the systems shuts down. This should be one of the first things to happen.
Because Slackware up to version 7.0.0 is tricky to automatic install the shutdown scripts,
you won't see this happen on older Slackware versions. If you want, you can edit
/etc/rc.d/rc.6 and /etc/rc.d/rc.K and insert the line /opt/mbse/etc/rc.shutdown
at the proper places.<p>

When your system comes up again, one of the last messages before the login
prompt appears or just before X-windows starts, you should see messages that
the BBS is started.<P>

Login as user <strong>mbse</strong> and check the logfiles if everything looks
good. If something is wrong, reread the previous documentation and check if
you did everything right.<p>

Next logon to your BBS locally using the account "bbs". 
You can do that by typing <b>su - bbs</b> or if you already have installed
<b>mblogin</b> as login replacement for telnet, then type <b>telnet
localhost</b>.
You will then create the first user of your BBS, this will be you, the sysop of course. 
After you logout the BBS start as user <strong>
mbse</strong> the program <strong>mbsetup</strong> and edit your user record
to set your level to that of the sysop. One more thing, the unix account you
must create when you logon as new BBS user may not be <strong>mbse</strong>
as this is the normal Admin account the BBS and its utilities use.<p>

Now login with your unix account and see if everything still works. 
If you have setup <strong>mgetty</strong> you may want to test if
users really can login with a modem. Also check a mailer session, can you
dialout, ie. poll other nodes and can they call you. There is a lot that can
go wrong with unix permissions if you are not precise in wat you are doing.<P>

If everything is working it is time to create poll events, and adjust other 
scripts to your local needs to get your BBS full up and running.<P>

To do this you must install a crontab for user <strong>mbse</strong>.
As user <strong>mbse</strong> go to the directory <strong>~/mbsebbs-0.33.xx</strong>.
In that directory type <strong>sh ./CRON.sh</strong> and a default crontab will be installed.<p>

To add poll events, edit the crontab with the command <strong>crontab -e
</strong> At the bottom of that file there is an example of how to do that.
Now that the crontab is installed, all maintenance will now work, automatic
dialout, scanning and tossing mail etc. In other words, the bbs is up and
running.
<p>

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