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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
<META http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css">
<META NAME="Language" content='en'>
<META name="author" lang="en" content="Michiel Broek">
<META name="copyright" lang="en" content="Copyright Michiel Broek">
<META name="description" lang="en" content="MBSE BBS Manual - Introduction to MBSE BBS">
<META name="keywords" lang="en" content="MBSE BBS, MBSE, BBS, manual, fido, fidonet, gateway, tosser, mail, tic, mailer">
<TITLE>Running a BBS under Unix.</TITLE>
<LINK rel=stylesheet HREF="manual.css">
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<!-- MBSEADVERT -->
<div align="right"><h5>Last update 01-Mar-2007</h5></div>
<div align="center"><H1>Introduction to MBSE BBS.</H1></div>
<H3>Distribution.</H3>
<P>
These are the only official distribution sites for the mbse bbs package. They are:
<OL>
<LI><A HREF="http://www.mbse.eu" rel="nofollow">http://www.mbse.eu</A>
<LI>fidonet node 2:280/2802 binkp fido.mbse.eu
</OL>
If you find mbse bbs on another site it may be out of date. I have no control over these sites.
New versions of mbse bbs are announced in the fidonet area LINUX_BBS and MBSE
support echo. On the official fidonet
nodes you can request the latest version with the magic MBSEBBS. You will then get a zip file,
in this zip file is the original tar.gz file. This is to let systems who only support 8.3
filenames to pickup the distribution package.
<P>&nbsp;<P>
<H3>History.</H3>
<P>
At the end of 1997 I was looking for several BBS systems that could run on
GNU/Linux and it must be capable to run Fidonet mail. After reviewing almost
all packages that were available at that time I found that there were no
packages that suited my needs. Some had the plain user interfaces that
my bbs users were used to but no Fidonet capabilities, others looked
awfull or were difficult to use by normal bbs users without Unix experience.
I also didn't want to run shareware anymore, one day you pay for some program,
and the next day support is over because the writer of that program decided
to stop development or simply dissapears from the Fidonet stage. With all
Y2K problems ahead the solution should be Open Software so that you have
the sources in case something goes wrong.
One package was very interesting and had the look and feel of RemoteAcces,
that package was RapidBBS. There was only one problem, it had no Fidonet
capabilities. I rewrote the data structures and created a deamon that should
control all bbs acivities. In march 1998 I started writing the mbfido program
that should handle all Fidonet mail and .tic files. In june 1998 the final
message base format became JAM using the LoraBBS sources as a guide to create
the JAM libraries. The original JAMapi was not stable enough to do all the work
that needed to be done.
<P>
In Juli 1998 the first version of MBSE BBS was installed on the bbs I have,
on the second line. The first line was running McMail, GEcho and RA on a
Novell client while on the GNU/Linux box the mars_nwe emulator from Martin Stower
was running. In november 1998 mbcico was created from ifcico from Eugene M.
Crosser. In Januari 1999 it did also compile and run on a Sun Sparcstation 2
system.
<P>
In April 1999 the motherboard of the GNU/Linux server died, I replaced it with
the MOBO of one of the client machines. From that day on, MBSE BBS became the
only bbs running on my system, because I was short on serial port boards at
that time. McMail and RA became history and MBSE BBS was on its own. From that
day on, updates were almost daily, all users and up and downlinks showed that
there were plenty of bugs to solve. One month later most problems were solved.
<P>
In juli 1999 Jan van de Werken started beta testing MBSE BBS on his system.
In September 1999 MBSE BBS was public released for the first time.
<P>&nbsp;<P>
<H3>Is it Y2K ready?</H3>
<P>
There have been no problems since 1 januari 2000 with MBSE BBS. I do run
pktdate by Tobias Ernst in the tosser, this solves problems with incoming
mail. Due to the internal date format, this program should run until 2038,
just as long as Unix/Linux and the internet will function without changing
the date format.
<P>&nbsp;<P>
<H3>Future plans.</H3>
<P>
Plans are to completly integrate www and chat into MBSE BBS. It
should work for browsers about the same as with ANSI character terminals.
<P>&nbsp;<P>
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</BLOCKQUOTE>
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