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We call these type of screens "Lists". They look very similar to menus and the little difference is the number in the top left corner of the window and the arrows on the line at the left (it was changed to a "v" here). The number tells you how many items are in the list. If there are more items in the list than fit in the window, you can scroll through the list. The arrows at the top and bottom of the line will tell you if there are more items in a certain direction. Because you can only see an arrow at the bottom of the line, we must be near the top and there are more items below.
You can use a lot of keys to scroll through the list, including the cursor keys Up, Down, PgUp, PgDn, Ctrl+PgUp, and Ctrl+PgDn.
Some lists contain wider lines than fit in the window. In that case, you can also scroll horizontally using the cursor keys Left and Right and the Ctrl+Left, Ctrl+Right, Home, and End keys. There will also be arrow indicators on these oversized lines. We will get to some of these lists later. Let's get back to the AKAs.
In this list you enter all the Fido addresses (AKAs) this system must be know as. Don't start typing all the AKAs at once, but add some more as you configure more and more networks.
The first AKA you enter here will be your main Fido address. Normally, the program will try to use a system AKA that matches closely to the network it has to send a message to. The main AKA is used when it is not possible to find a proper match, or on other occasions, such as when the system has to send a message to you, the SysOp.
Optionally, you can specify a Fakenet or Pointnet number. Only use this if you have (or are) a point using old 3D Fidonet software, which can't handle complete point addressing directly.
For those of you who don't know what a pointnet is: if a mailer is incapable of handling 4D (zone:net/node.point) addresses, but only 3D (zone:net/node) addresses, it would be very inconvenient to have to use node numbers for your points instead. Pointnets have been invented to solve this. A point with an address 2:280/802.33 would then be translated to 2:1017/33 if your pointnet for that AKA is 1017.
Note: if you want WaterGate to use the pointnet for a certain point, you have to define that user in the userbase with the pointnet address as his AKA. More on this later. Once again back to the list.
The left side contains the AKA and the right side the pointnet number. If you want to change a line, press Enter and you will be presented a little (two line) window. You can change the AKA at the top line and enter the pointnet number at the bottom line.
Since WaterGate supports 5D addresses, you can enter your fido AKA as zone:net/node.point@domain. The minimum is zone:net/node, though.
WaterGate supports up to two such directories. Each directory has a switch to toggle security on or off. When security is ON for an inbound directory, mail bundles are only decompressed if they were sent by a system that is configured as a user on our system.
Second, decompressed mail bundles are checked to ensure they contain the same password as defined for the user sending the bundle. If no password is defined for a node, the password within the mail bundle is ignored.
A mail bundle from an unknown node will be renamed to *.UNK and logged. Mail bundles with a wrong password are renamed to *.PWD and logged as well.
WaterGate tries to create Binkley sub-directories when needed. For FrontDoor systems, all outgoing mail bundles are stored in this directory.
Since The TBBS mailer TIMS also uses the Binkley outbound style directories, you can have WaterGate and TIMS operate on the same directories as well. WaterGate does not _yet_ check for TIMS busy files yet, nor does it create them. It does do this for Binkley, though.
Just as TIMS and BinkleyTerm are almost the same, you can select FrontDoor if you are using InterMail.
Warning: always make sure that WaterGate's primary system AKA (the first one in the list) is also the primary AKA that the mailer uses! If you fail to do so, the wrong users can get the wrong archives!!
Note that this selection changes WaterGate's behavior drastically. Don't forget to set this switch properly, or you will have a very hard time processing your inbound and creating a proper and compatible outbound!
d'Bridge DBRIDGE.RSN FrontDoor FDRESCAN.NOW InterMail IMRESCAN.NOW
WaterGate does this by setting a flag file. For FrontDoor's editor FM for example, you could have WaterGate set the flag file FMRESCAN.NOW.
Although both the Squish and JAM specifications allow for unlimited message sizes, most editors have trouble reading messages that are over 64Kb in size. If you want WaterGate to split the messages when importing them, enter a maximum message size, or use 0 to ignore the message size and disable message splitting.
Note: These are approximate values. WaterGate checks them after having added a line of text, so there might be a slight deviation in the final message size.
When packing outgoing messages for other nodes, WaterGate will group them in .PKT files. You can specify a maximum size for those .PKT (Max *.PKT length) files before WaterGate creates a new one. During buildup, these .PKT files are named *.QQQ. At the end of the run they are renamed to .PKT one at a time and then added to the final archive.
When creating a new Fido style user, you have to set the groups he or she is allowed to access. Because you don't want to set these every time, you can enter a default list of groups in this screen.
After pressing enter, you are presented with the standard group editing method. The groups are listed on the left side of the screen (complete with description and read-only flag). You can press the Insert key to add new groups, or use the Delete key to remove one. After pressing Insert, a new list pops up on the right side of the screen.
Select the group you want to add with the cursor keys and then press Enter. If you change your mind and don't want to add a group, simply press Escape. When you are done changing the groups, you have to press Escape or F10 to return to this screen again.
More advanced users can also use tagging to add or remove more than one group at a time. Use the F5, F6, and F7 keys for tagging. F5 selects or deselects one item; with F6 you can select all the lines that match a certain search string (an empty string matches all); and F7 deselects all lines that match a certain search string.
ArcMail: (day of week) + 0..9 Hex: (day of week) + 0..9, A..F All: (day of week) + 0..9, A..ZEnsure that the software your up- and downlinks are using can handle the format you specify. The default setting is ArcMail, which results in archive bundles with names like .SU0, .TH3, .FR4, etc.
WaterGate keeps track of the digit or letter it last used for each user. If the .SU0 file has been sent, for example, WaterGate will create a .SU1 file instead of a new .SU0 file.
The result is something like:
--- WtrGate v1.00 Unreg --- WtrGate+ v1.00
If you set it to *.MSG, the path has to point to a directory. If you set it to Squish or JAM, the path has to include the message base name without an extension.
If you're using FrontDoor as your Fido system type, then a *.MSG directory is required! Also, for compatibility with many other programs, usage of a *.MSG netmail path is advised.
Notice that you DO NOT have to create an Area Record (Area definitions from the main menu) for the netmail area, nor the badmail or dupes message areas! Doing so might result in operational problems.
If you set this option to ON IMPORT, then WaterGate will decode files from messages that are imported into you *.MSG netmail area and are addressed to one of your system AKAs. All messages for downlinks are left as they are for the moment. Decoding those files means routing them as well and this is not built in yet.
The decoded files will be written to the path given in "Files path".
If you want that area as a message base later on, you have to enter the path to the message base and set the correct type. The path might be a lot of typing work, so you can enter the default path for the message base in the "Default new path" field.
If you also want to have a message base created for it (very handy for small systems, like points, where you know that the new areas are OK), you can set the message base type for these areas in the "Auto Create Type" field.
Because you need a message base name for Squish and JAM, WaterGate automagically creates one for you. Since the first eight characters of an area are not unique (and completely useless for Usenet areas like ALT.BBS.SOMETHING, where you have the dots), WaterGate creates a magic number. This is the CRC32 value of the complete string that represents the area-name, padded with spaces to the maximum length. This number is used as the filename (Squish, JAM) or directory name (*.MSG) for that message base.
The only disadvantage of this magic number is that the real areaname cannot be determined from the base-name, other than by consulting the configuration program. You can manually change the name of the message base afterwards, although WtrConf will not (yet) rename the message base files automatically. But if you use WtrConf to export a Squish config file (also good for JAM bases!) and feed that to your editor, you don't have to know the message base name at all!
WaterGate is capable of recognizing 7 of the most widely used compression programs within Fidonet: ARC, ARJ, LZH, PAK, ZIP, ZOO and RAR.
When it encounters compressed Fidomail bundles, it tries to start the correct decompression program. If it is unable to recognize the compression method, it checks whether a GUS (General Unpack Shell) is defined and lets the GUS have a try at it.
Use this screen to enter the correct program names and options for each compression and decompression program. A special option is 'OP1', which you can use to compress your mail using a program unknown to WaterGate. There is, of course, no way for WaterGate to recognize and decompress this sort of archive.
Use the last line to select a Default type for WaterGate to use in situations when it has to pack messages for an undefined node, for example when sending crash mail messages. This is also the default type for newly created user records.
Notice that there is a separate section about newsfix forwarding and a section that explains how to use AreaFix and newsfix.
When WaterGate does this, the area is created automatically and both the requesting user and the uplink system are connected at once.
The areas that can be requested dynamically are stored in one or more listings on disk. You tell WaterGate what the node number for your uplink is and which file to check for area names. You can define up to 50 listings for Fidonet and the same amount for UUCP.
You can configure the Areafix forwarding by selecting Fido areafix Forwarding from the System Configuration menu. You can then select one of the ten entries and press enter to edit it. You will see the following screen to edit an entry.
Specify the Fido address of each uplink system in the 'Address' field. When you flag an uplink as 'unconditional' the request is always forwarded to this node, and WaterGate makes no attempt to search the specified area list.
Specify the full path to the area listing in the "Arealist path". Then select the type of listing: the AREAS.BBS type follows 'standard' areas.bbs convention, while for the 'Name list' each line in the file has to contain a single area name.
Select the program name of the Area Manager program on your uplink system. Most should be capable of understanding the default 'AreaFix'. The password is used when writing the AreaFix message.
Specify to which group the new area is to be added. WaterGate will only scan the lists for groups to which the requesting user has access. Adding a '+' is used to support AreaFix programs that need one for each requested area. Instead of just listing the requested areas, each one has a '+' added in front.
Comments or questions? Send an e-mail to editor@wsd.wline.se.
Last updated 13 October 1996
