MagickaBBS

Linux/FreeBSD bulletin board system (Should also work on NetBSD and Mac OS X, if it doesn't it's a bug)

As I lost the code to my initial BBS flea, I've decided to start over from scratch and this time I'm using git hub so I dont lose it again!

Magicka is meant to be a modern (haha) BBS system, using modern technologies, like Sqlite3, long filenames (gasp!) etc while still retaining the classic BBS feel. ANSI & Telnet, and good old ZModem.

If you want to install Magicka BBS, follow these steps.

1. Ensure you have git, c compiler, libsqlite3-dev, libreadline-dev, libssl-dev, libssh-dev libncurses5-dev and gnu make

   sudo apt-get install build-essential libsqlite3-dev libreadline-dev git libssl-dev libssh-dev libncurses5-dev

   should work on debian and debian derivatives.

2. Clone the repo git clone https://github.com/MagickaBBS/MagickaBBS

3. Build the BBS (You may have to adjust the Makefile for your system)

   make

4. Make a directory for logs.

   mkdir logs

5. Copy the config-default directory to a config directory.

   cp -r dist/config config

6. Edit the config files and update essential information, like system paths and BBS name etc

7. Copy the ansi-default directory to the one specified in your system path

   eg.

   cp -r dist/ansis ansis

8. Copy the menus-default directory to the one specified in your system path

   eg.

   cp -r dist/menus menus

9. Magicka also include optional lua scripts for menus and login / logoff. If you want to use these, copy the scripts-examples to the one specified in your system path.

   eg.

   cp -r dist/scripts scripts

10. Make a link to the magicka.strings (or copy it if you want to modify it)

    eg.

    ln -s dist/magicka.strings magicka.strings

11. If you are going to run SSH, you will need to create keys. To do this

    mkdir keys

    ssh-keygen -f keys/ssh_host_rsa_key -N '' -t rsa

    ssh-keygen -f keys/ssh_host_dsa_key -N '' -t dsa

12. Run Magicka BBS on a port over 1024 (Below require root, and we're not ready for that).

    ./magicka config/bbs.ini

13. Your BBS is now running on the port you specified in the config.ini, log in and create yourself an account! (By default there is only one security level, you can add more, but you will need to use an SQLite Manager to modify users.sq3 and set security levels, as there is no user editor yet.

For information on how to configure your BBS, check the wiki https://github.com/MagickaBBS/MagickaBBS/wiki

About the webserver

Magicka now includes a built in webserver based on libmicrohttpd. It is not built by default, if you'd like to build it you will need a recent version of libmicrohttpd. Once you have these prerequisites, you can build magicka with make www be sure to do this from a clean source tree.

The webserver will use templates in the www/ folder to create internal webpages on the fly, anything in www/static/ is served up as is.

Misc Notes:

• FreeBSD requires libiconv to be installed from ports in addition to other dependencies.

• macOS makefiles are intended to be built with dependencies provided by macports, homebrew support will require significant changes.

• NetBSD requires libiconv to be installed from pkgsrc in addition to other dependencies.

• OpenBSD as of 6.2 does not have libmicrohttpd in ports, but current does. Requires libiconv.

• OpenIndiana does not have libssh in packages, so it needs to be built separately. Requires libiconv.

• DragonFlyBSD also requires libiconv.