HAM Radio 1/HamRadio.cdr/misc/rs150run/rs134upd.rme

Text File | 1990-05-14 | 9KB | 186 lines

  *** NOTE *** always assume CONFIG date/version must be changed unless
  otherwise specified.


PRMBS/ROSERVER v1.34B 05/14/90



(1) CONFIG file addition. Immediately before the "logging' option questions
goes a YES/NO parameter that asks if you want and 'open login' If this is
YES, any condole user may hit ESCAPE from the console, or come in through
the modem, type his call and hit ENTER for password and he is in. I added
this option for my system when I set up at hamfests etc. Clubs might take
advantage of this also.

(1a) There has been a long running problem in the handling of text files,
particularly the MSG_BID.RS file and hand editing such files. The problem
being that editors add ctrl-Zs. Since I had some time while others were
checking 133/134a I played some considerably with it. This version 1.34b
has as good of a 'fix' to the problem as you are going to get. You may use
any editor that appends NO MORE THAN ONE (1) CTRL-Z. This means 'WORDSTAR
is out and any other editor that feels compelled to bad out and even 128
nyte boundry with CTRL-Z's (this a carry over from CP/M days for those of
you who go that far back with micros!) the Microsoft 'open to write/read
in text mode "at+" ' will handle a single ctrl-Z in the end of the file,
clearing it out and appending and getting file lengths just right. But if
it gets a slew of ctrl-Zs it dropes the first and then appends after the
rest, effectively blocking read access to anything appended. RSBIDMGR program
has been modified to do the same translation and removal of ctrl-Zs.

  I have been tap-dancing around this problem for a couple of years and
thanks to Mark Herson (N2MH) for some comments which finally got me into
right perspective to see the problem correctly and get this solution.


(2) Messages being forwarded may now take an additional option. This is an old
option from pre 0.99 that got 'broke'. The "-T" option to specify order of
priority for messages to be sent, by type. If no "-T" option is specified
the string "*" is used whihc will mean one pass through the mail file and all
types eligible will be forwarded sequentially. If you specified "TP*" It would
make 3 passes through the mail file first oving traffic, then, Private, then
anything that was left.

   One use for this might be to set up regular forwarding of T and P mail to
certain stations around the clock, but then move bulletins from 0400 to 1000.

  Examples:
         swap a -t tpb* wb2mnf midlan south deflt
         swap a -t tp k2adj
         swap a -ot tpb* k2uk

  Examples in an EVENT file:

      M0100 swap a -t tpb* wb2mnf midlan deflt
      M0622 swap a -t tpb* k2adj
      M2305 swap a -t tp k2adj

 note I send only traffic and personal message to K2ADJ during prime time
bulletins wait til off-hours.

(3) <F>iling a message used to append the "/EX" to a message and many people
would include that filed message text with a "~R" - this would cause a hiccup
in the receieving system when it was forwarde beacuse the "/Ex" was interpretted
as endo of message and the CTRL-Z confused hell out of the receiver, so the
system went crapola - the cycle reset itself with a disconnect so it should
blow em out of the water. I modified  msg2fil() to use " <End of Message>"
istead, but I also modifed PRMBS import_msgs() to accept the
" <End of message>" the same as with a "/EX". If you send your exported files
to someone else to IMPORT the strings will have to be changed back to "/EX"s

(4)  Thanks to Rod (K2ADJ) I have identified  a potentially serious problem in
the code. It is unlikely that many PRMBS sysops will ever set up the
circumstances, but here's the scenario;

   As you know you can set the port timeout to zero (0) minutes and the
port will never timeout. Those of you with DDOS or DV who run a 'console
only' copy in one window might be prone to set it up like so

   FILE: CONFIG.CON

     134 05/14/90
     #
     # Local Console Port
     PORT L HCE 0 00 0 0000
     Connected
     # ANSI Color keys - background
     ....
     ....

   There is a tendency to want to just zero the whole line of parameters
since you do not care about knowing when you logged in.  The problem is in
the zeroing of the number of items in the heard list, the number just after
the timout value (shown above as "00"). If that gets zero and you log in,
when you type a "BYE", the system tries to log your call to the 'heard'
table for the console , in effect, the "who was logged in" list, and goes
haywire writing the call sign to a memory table that was never allocated,
since the value passed was zero! Itr is now fixed.

(5) The MESSAGES.RS processing used to be sensitive to total length of
message. I have bumped that length to 1152 bytes. This number is absolute
and includes "$" token expansion. So if a message seems to be truncated,
its probably close to 1152 by itself and token expansion throws it over.
I added code to chop the message if it gtes betwwen 1070 and 1152. This
is better than random trips to LA-LA land!

(6) Any time a new user is added to the database a onetime only message is
displayed to him giving him some insights. he will never see the message
again - it is triggered by adding a new user record. (Please take note of
the comment attached to this message #151 in MEssages.RS concering its
size and format.

(7) in the process of tracing the logic for item 6 above, I found some holes
in the user record locking and and processing - they have been correcyed, all
seems OK. I added logic to get a fresh copy of the user record prior to its
being worked upon for anything. I added write-to-disk of the USER.DAT header
record any time a user record is written. I added locking of the user record
from the instant it is refreshed til after its written. The SETMESSAGE has
brought inot the same routines as the other user attributes so now all user
record chnages relfect immediately if you do an LU on your own call.

(8) deleted records no longer display in an LU command.

(9) two new local and sysop commands which have little use to you right now
expcet maybe in some creative EVENT file programming SYSTEM and SYSMSG. The
SYSTEM command takes and ragument in quotes whihc may contain $-tokens and
executes it. SYSMSG takes a number as argument and will display that numbered
message from MESSAGES.RS.

 Examples:
                 SYSTEM "!dir >$!"
                 SYSTEM "make all $!"
                 SYSTEM "del $!"

   This would do a dir of your default directory in DOS dir format and send
it too a temporary work file the system has then make a message from it to ALL
and then erase it.


  These new commands will get greatser use in a coming enhancement.

 New $-tokens:

$# : System - name of first  temporaray work file
$! : System - name of second temporaray work file
$> : System - name/path of user   directory
$< : System - name/path of system directory
$[ : System - timeout value of current active port


PRMBS/ROSERVER v1.33 05/06/90

(1) "~C" command got broken, it is fixed

(2) EXPORT allowed you to export with no routes specified, and it tried to
match nothing to empty routes and would randomly select messages to be
exported. The minimum arguments in command table was corrected - problem gone

(3) ROSEBOOT chains to ROSERVER.PGM. I used the wrong variant of "execl()"
and it demanded ROSERVER.PGM be in same directory - this is a problem to
floppy based systems - it is corrected now and will search PATH.

(4) Minor change in display format for LIST commands.

(5) I am writing a BINARY FILE TRANSFER routine for PRMBS. So the "DB" command
has been changed to "DA" ([D]ownload binary in [A]scii) so "DB" can be used
for the new routine at a later time.

(6) While importing 450K of messages to my system from a floppy, I noticed a
lot of churning with no messages added, it dawned on me that many were bulls
I probably had seen. But, its maddening not knowing - I added a message display
indicating tha a bulletin being imported with BID checking not disabled has
been rejected for BID, so each message read will either generate a RCVD
or a REJECTED message.

(7) If you typed  ROSEBOOT -nm0 CONFIG.xxx - you would get screwy time
delay values - because of stacking several options on one "-" thats fixed.

(8) Old bug - just discovered! (by K2ADJ) if you were in message reply entry
in sweeper or remote user in MAIL reply, and timed out, the system would drop
back to sweeper command entry and require a second timeout to expire before
being dropped. This is fixed.


  73 de brian