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10 ============================================================================== System Manager Users File Maintenance User Info File Maintenance Analyzing Your System Configuration Defining Printer Port Defining Your Editors Customize Colors PCBoard Supported Allocations Command Line Parameters System Manager, as the name implies, is a utility designed to help you manage your system. Not only can you make global changes to the users file, but you can also access other frequently used utilities such as PCBSetup and PCBFiler. There are three ways that you can access System Manager: From the call waiting screen, select PCBSysMgr. While logged in locally (not with the /LOCALON switch for PCBoard), you can press ALT-S. From the DOS prompt you can load PCBSM.EXE. If a PCBOARD.DAT file cannot be found in the current directory and you have not used the /FILE command line parameter, you will receive an error message stating that PCBOARD.DAT could not be found. Once System Manager is loaded, you will see the Main Menu. The various function of system manager are available from these menu options. To select a particular option, press the letter at the beginning of the line, or move the currently highlighted option using the cursor keys and press ENTER to select the option. If you make a mistake, you can always use the ESC to go back to the previous menu. This section will describe each menu item in detail including any sub-menus. In addition, the command line parameters for System Manager are described in detailed at the end of this chapter. Users File Maintenance This is the menu option that you probably use most frequently. Once you select it, you will see you have an entire new menu to select from. These new menu options give you the ability to edit an individual user record, register ranges of users in conferences, sort the users file, pack the users file, etc. Editing A User Record When you select this menu option, you will see user record number one on your system. On the left hand screen is a limited number of fields that you can edit. On the right is a list of keyboard commands you can use to jump to another record, add a new user, etc. This is called the short form. User Record Forms PCBoard stores a lot of information about each user. Because all of this information cannot fit on one screen, PCBoard has multiple views which you can switch between to edit various information about each user. To switch between views, use the F2 and F3 keys. Pressing F2 will move forward one screen or form, and pressing F3 will switch to the previous form. The default view is called the Short Form. When this form is active, you can edit the bare essential information about each user. You can edit the following information when the short form is active. Security The normal security level that is assigned to the user. Reg Ex Date If subscription mode is active, this is the date which the user's subscription will expire on the system. Expired Sec When subscription mode is active and a user is expired. The expired security level will be used in stead of the normal security level. This field shows you the security level of the user when their subscription has expired. Delete User Mark the current user for deletion. You are asked to confirm your choice before the record will be marked. The actual record is not deleted until the next time you pack the users file. Comment 1 This is the response the user enters to PCBTEXT record #2 when creating a new account on the system. Comment 2 This comment field is for your use only. You can enter a brief comment about the user without having to worry about it being viewable by the user. The next view that is available by pressing F2 is called the Long Form. This is the view that you will use to edit a majority of the information about each user. You can edit number of bytes transferred, messages left, username, password, etc. The following describes each of the fields: Name Each person that logs into your system must use a user name. Most commonly this will be the name of the caller. This name simply identifies the caller. City The city or location information entered when creating a new account on the system. B/D Phone The business or data phone entered when creating a new account on the system. H/V Phone The home or voice phone number entered when creating a new account. Password Stores the password selected for logging into the system. Each user must know their password in order to log into the system. If this field is blank, the user will not be prompted for a password at login. Security The normal security level that is assigned to the user. Expert This field will contain a Y if the user wishes to default to expert mode at login. Otherwise, this field will show an N which means the user will default to novice mode. Protocol Stores the default protocol the user wishes to use for file transfers. This question is asked when a new user logs in, but it may also be changed using the T user command. Page Len In order to help control the display of information, PCBoard will use a More? prompt when the screen fills up on the caller's screen. In this field, the height of the caller's screen should be entered. For most users, this should be either 22 or 23. If you set the value in this field to 0, PCBoard will send data in non-stop mode. The user may change this value with the P user command. Reg Ex Date If subscription mode is active, this is the date which the user's subscription will expire on the system. Expired Sec If a user's subscription has expired, the expired security level will be assigned at login instead of the normal security level. This field shows the expired security level assigned to the user. Msg Clear This field will contain a Y if the user wishes to clear the screen before a new message is displayed on the screen. If this field contains an N, the screen will not be cleared between messages. Last in The conference number the user was in when disconnected last. If you have any conference defined as auto-rejoin, this field becomes of great importance. For example, a 3 in this field will mean the user logged off while in conference 3. The next time the user logs in, PCBoard will check to see if conference 3 is defined as an auto-rejoin conference. If so, the user will be placed back in conference 3. Delete User Mark the current user for deletion. You are asked to confirm your choice before the record will be marked. The actual record is not deleted until the next time you pack the users file. Comment 1 This is the response that the user entered to PCBTEXT record #2 when creating a new account. Comment 2 This comment field is for your use only. You can enter a brief comment about the user. The user will not be able to view the contents of this field. Last DIR ListingPCBoard keeps track of the latest valid file date that you have seen when viewing file directories. This field is used for two purposes. 1) For new file scans to determine what the default scan date should be. 2) While viewing file directories * (asterisks) will be placed by any files which are new to the caller. Last Date On Stores the last date the user logged into the system. Last Time On Stores the last time the user logged into the system. Elapsed Time On Contains the total amount of time that was spent on the last date the user called on the system. If the last date the user called is equal to the current date, this field contains how much time the user has spent for the current day. Number Times On The number of times this user has successfully logged into your system. Number Uploads The total number of files this user has uploaded to your system. Number DownloadsThe total number of files this user has downloaded from your system. Daily Download Contains the total number of bytes this user downloaded the last date on the system. If the last date on is equal to today's date, the value of this field will reflect the total number of bytes downloaded today. If you see a negative value in this field, more bytes have been uploaded than downloaded. In essence, the user has a byte credit. Total Upload This field displays the total number of bytes the user has uploaded to your system. Total Download Displays the total number of bytes the user has downloaded from your system. Messages Read The total number of messages the user has read. Messages Left The total number of messages the user has entered. Full Scrn EditorThis field will contain either Y, N, or A. A Y means the full-screen editor will always be used for entering messages. An N signifies that the line editor will be used for entering messages. Finally, an A means the user will be asked if they wish to use the full-screen editor each time they leave a message. The user may change this default with the W user command. 79-Column EditorIf this field contains a Y, both the line and full-screen editor will use 79 character-wide lines when entering messages. If an N is specified, the default will be 72 characters instead. Scroll Long MsgsThis field may contain either Y or N. If this field contains a Y, the message header will scroll off of the screen if the message requires more than one screen full to display. If this field contains an N, the message header will be fixed at the top of the screen with the message body being displayed underneath it. Long Headers If this field contains a Y, long message headers will be used. Otherwise the short message headers will be used. See the R user command for more information on the difference between long and short message headers. Chat Status PCBoard will remember the chat status of the caller. This means that if a caller has made themselves unavailable for group chat using the CHAT;U command, this field will contain a U to reflect that the user was unavailable. When the user logs into the system the next time, the chat status from their previous call will be reinstated. You can control the conference specific information for each particular user from the Conference View. Primarily you will register users in conferences from this view, but you can accomplish other tasks as well. You will notice this screen is split into two lists with 15 conferences listed in each list. Within each list is four columns. The first column displays the conference number, the next displays the name of the conference. The last two columns are fields you can actually edit. The first field you can edit is the flags field, the last column in each list keeps track of the last message that each user read in each conference. To move between the various fields on the screen, you can use down arrow, up arrow, TAB, or SHIFT-TAB. If you have more than 30 conferences, use PgUp, and PgDn to move forward or back 30 conferences at a time. There are five possible flags you can set for each conference. Each flag will specify what type of access the user has to the conference the flags are being set for. Each flag is described in detail below: R Register. This flag is used to control the ability of a user to join a conference. The main use of this flag is to control who will have access to private conferences you create. A user may not join a private conference unless they have an R flag in that conference. You do not need to use this flag for public conferences unless you want to give access to the conference even if the user does not have sufficient security to join the conference. X Expired. When used with the R flag, the user will continue to have access to the conference even when their subscription has expired. Subscription mode (PCBSetup | Subscriptions) must be enabled or this flag will have no effect. S Selected. Even though there may be several conferences defined on your system, only a few of those conferences may interest the user. Using the SELECT user command, users may select those conferences which are of interest to them. There are subcommands for all of the mail reading or scanning commands which permit users to scan either all conferences they can access or only those conferences selected by the user. For example, R;S;ALL will read new mail in all conferences the user can join whereas R;S;A will read mail only in selected conferences. C Conference SysOp. If you wish to give a user what you have defined as SysOp security level (PCBSetup | Security Levels | Sysop Commands) when the conference is joined, use this flag. When the user joins another conference, the security level is changed back to the original security level. L Locked Out. If this flag is set, the user will not be able to join the conference under any circumstances. When you specify the X flag without an R flag, the X flag will be translated to an L flag thereby locking the user out of the conference. The only other edit field on this screen is the last message read field. In this field, PCBoard keeps track of the last message the user has read in each conference. If you need to, you can edit the last message read in any conference for any user. The rest of the views are only active when you install a PSA. Each PSA has a separate screen which you can view information about each PSA. The following describes each of the PSA screens: If you have the Alias PSA installed, the next screen will contain the alias the user has selected to use. Unless you have given the user the ability to edit the alias choosen (PCBSetup | Configuration Options | System Control) the only way that the alias can be changed is while you are viewing the Alias Form. By installing the Full Address PSA you will enable the Address Form screen. From this screen, you can edit the fields that make up the user's address. You will notice that this screen lists the more popular components that make up a mailing address such as street address, city, state, etc. If you install the Password Changing PSA, the Password From will also be active when editing a user record. The following fields are active in this form: Previous Password Lists the most recently used passwords. A password may not be used if it is listed in one of these fields. Of course, each password will eventually be removed as it no longer becomes one of the three most recently used passwords. Last Change Date The date when the password was last changed by the user. # of times Changed Displays the total number of times the password has been changed. Multiple changes on the same day will not be recorded. Expiration Date The date at which the current password will expire. If the user changes the password before the expiration date, the date will be adjusted for the new expiration date. If you have installed the Verification PSA, the Verification Form will be active. This screen is very simple in design because there is only one field you cay edit. This field contains the information that the user entered as verification information when logging in as a new user. This information can be used by you as an additional piece of secret information to identify the caller. Considering that the caller may not view or edit this information once it has been entered, it should be relatively safe to assume that if the user knows this information that they are the original caller. If you have installed the Caller Statistics PSA, the Statistics Form will be active. This form stores various statistics about the caller. The following describes each field: First Date On This date will be equal to the date the user first logged into your system or the date you added the Caller Statistics PSA (if they already had an account). Last Date On The last date the user logged into your system. You can also see this date on the Long Form screen. Num Times On The total number of times this user has accessed your system. This information is also available on the Long Form screen. # Times Paged SysOp This field will record the total number of times this user has paged the sysop to chat. It does not matter if the page was answered or not -- all attempts are recorded. # Times Group Chat If a user uses group chat to chat with others on the system, the total number of chat sessions the user has participated will be recorded in this field. SysOp chats are not included in this total. # Comments to Sysop This field records the total number of comments the user has left to the SysOp using the C user command. If the user begins a comment, but aborts the message, it does not count as a comment to the sysop. # Messages Left For those users that are more active in the message base, this field will store the total number of messages the user has entered. You should be aware that while PCBoard may update this statistic, off-line mail reading doors may not. # Messages Read Displays the total number of messages the user has read on your system. While PCBoard will update this field, some off-line mail door programs may not. # Security Violation You can easily see who may be trying to access restricted functions on your system, by watching this field. It will total up the number of times a user has attempted to access a command which requires a higher security level. # Un-Reg Conf Atmpt. Records the total number of attempts made to join a conference which the user is not registered to join. # Password Failures Displays the number of times the wrong password was used at login. If you keep tabs on this statistic, you may be able to catch someone who is trying to hack into an account on your system. # Dnld Limit Reached Anytime a user exceeds their defined ratio, daily bytes, or total bytes / files allotted, the count in this field will increase by 1. # Dnld File Not Fnd. If the user attempts to download a file, but the filename could not be found on disk, it will be recorded in this field. # Upld Verify Failed After uploading a file, PCBoard will test the file via PCBTEST.BAT unless you have disabled upload testing. If the file uploaded fails the integrity tests, it will be recorded in this field. # Times On at 300 Displays the total number of times the user connected at 300 bps. # Times On at 1200 Displays the total number of times the user connected at 1200 bps. # Times On at 2400 Displays the total number of times the user connected at 2400 bps. # Times On at 9600 Displays the total number of times the user connected at 4800, 7200 or 9600 bps. All three speeds are shown in this field, because they are all only possible with 9600 bps modems. # Times On at 14400+ Displays the total number of times the user connected at 12000 bps or higher. The reason 12000 bps is included in this statistic is because it is a fall-back speed for 14400 connections. Finally, the last PSA screen is called Caller Notes and is only active when the Caller Notes PSA has been installed. You are given 5 lines of 50 characters which you may enter information to remember about the caller. The caller is not able to edit or view the information contained in these notes. Keyboard Commands While you are editing a user record, there are several keyboard commands you may use to perform functions such as printing the current user record, jumping to another record, deleting the current record, etc. The following details each keyboard command that is available while editing a user record. PgUp Move backward one user record. If you are at user record number one, you will go to the last record in your users file. PgDn Move forward one user record. If you are at the last record in the users file, record number one will be the new record you are editing. CTRL-PgUp Move backward twenty user records. When you need to move several records at a time, you can use this keyboard command which will go backwards 20 records at a time. CTRL-PgDn Move forward twenty user records. When you use this keyboard command you will advance 20 records at a time. ALT-A Add a user. Enables you to add a new record to your users file. You can then manually fill in all of the user information. ALT-B Jump to the last user record. Moves you to the last record in the users file. Since new users are added to the end of the users file, this keyboard command provides an easy method to access the records of your newest callers. ALT-D Delete current user. Marks the current user for deletion. You will be asked to confirm your request to delete the current record. If you continue, the security level will be reduced to 0 and the record will be marked for deletion. The actual record will not be deleted until you pack the users file. To undelete the record, simply change the answer to Delete User in the Long Form. ALT-E Located expired security level. Locates the first user in the users file who has an expired security level equal to the one you specify. If you want to search for other users who have the same security level, use the ALT-R keyboard command. ALT-F Find a user name. Enables you to search for a particular user record. When prompted, enter the full name of the user you wish to search for. If the user could not be found, you will be asked if you would like to perform a sound alike search. PCBoard will attempt to find names which sound like the name you typed in. If no matches can be found, you will be returned to the last record you were editing. ALT-J Jump to a record number. If you want to jump to a specific user record number, use this keyboard command. You will be asked for the record number you wish to jump to. You can see the range of users on your system by looking at the upper right hand side of the screen. There you will find Record # of #. If you enter a value that is out of range of your users file, your request will be ignored. ALT-L Locate a security level. When you need to search for a particular security level, use this keyboard command. You will be asked for the security level you wish to search for. Once you enter the security level to search for, PCBoard will take you to the first record in the users file that matches the security level. You can then use ALT-R to search for additional matches throughout the users file. ALT-O Locate deleted user. This keyboard command will locate the first record in your users file that is marked for deletion. This is useful when you have marked a record for deletion but then decide not to delete the record. Of course, if you have already packed the users file, there is no way to recover the deleted user record. As with other searches, ALT-R will find additional records that have been marked for deletion. ALT-P Print current user record. The current user record will be printed. The format of the printout is identical to the format displayed by the 7 SysOp command. See the SysOp Commands section in the PCBoard Commands chapter of this manual for further details. ALT-R Repeat last search. When you use a keyboard command that searches the users file, you can repeat the search (looking for additional matches) by using this keyboard command. If no additional matches are found, you will be returned to the previous user record you were editing. ALT-S Search for text. This keyboard command allows you to search all of the data stored in the users record (and optionally the PSA information) for the text you specify, excluding dates, times, and numerical values which are stored in a special format on disk. ALT-T Goto first record. Takes you to the first record in the users file (the SysOp record). Sorting Users If you prefer to have the users in your system sorted in a particular manner, select this menu option from the Main Menu of System Manager. For example, some SysOps prefer to have their users sorted by security level in descending order so users with the highest security levels are at the beginning of the users file. It all depends on your personal preference. One thing to remember is the first record in your users file will never be included in the sorts you perform because it is considered to be the SysOp record and has special privileges. You can choose to do a single or a multiple field sort. Single Field Sorts Single field sorts are most useful when you want to sort users by a field which does not commonly have duplicates. For example, you can sort by user name and since there cannot be duplicate names on your system. The screen on the following page shows the sorts you can perform. Once you have selected your sort method, you will be asked if you wish to sort in reverse order. Reverse order means that the sort will be done in descending order. In the case of sorting by names, those that begin with Z will be at the top while names that begin with A will be at the end of the users file. System Manager will now attempt to lock the users file for exclusive access so that it may begin sorting the users file. If you do not have all nodes down, you will see a sharing violation message. This message means that System Manager cannot gain exclusive access to the users file which it needs in order to resort the file. Make sure all nodes are down and no other programs are accessing the users file before you continue. Multiple Field Sorts Multiple field sorts enable you to sort by items such as security, number of times on the system, ratios, and more. All of these fields could easily contain duplicates when sorted, which presents a problem. If there are duplicates, how should the duplicate files be sorted (if at all)? You will notice that with multiple field sorts, it will first sort by the primary field, such as security level, and then use the user name as a secondary sort. The following screen shows the sorts you can perform: Once you have selected your sort method, you will be asked if you wish to sort the primary key in reverse order. Reverse order means that the sort will be done in descending order. The primary key is the main sorting method. For example, if you select Security Level then Name from the menu, the primary key is the Security Level and the secondary key is Name. You will also be asked if you wish to sort the secondary key in reverse order. As an example, if you select Security Level then Name from the menu and choose to sort the primary key in reverse order but the secondary key in the normal order, the following will happen: Your users will be sorted by security level -- those with the highest security level will be at the beginning of your user file. If you have more than one user with the same security level, the order that users are listed with the same security level will be determined alphabetically by the user name. Once you have selected your sort criteria, System Manager will attempt to lock the users file for exclusive access so it may begin sorting the users file. If you do not have all nodes down, you will see a sharing violation message. This message means that System Manager cannot gain exclusive access to the users file which it needs in order to resort the file. Make sure all nodes are down and no other programs are accessing the users file before you continue. Packing The Users File When you pack your users file, you can accomplish the following: Physically remove any records marked for deletion. Once a record has been packed out, it is permanently deleted and cannot be undeleted. Remove inactive users from your system to help conserve disk space. Make sure your USERS file is correctly in-sync with your USERS.INF. When you select the option to pack your users, you will see the screen on the following page. You will notice that the pack criteria screen is divided into two logical sections -- removal and keep criteria. You can set the criteria you want to remove user records from and you may also set the criteria to keep a user record. The keep criteria always takes precedence over the removal criteria. If you choose to accept the default values then only the following will happen: Any users marked for deletion will be physically removed from the system. The USERS.INF is checked to make sure it is in sync with the USERS file. Criteria For Removing Records This section of the screen gives you the ability to specify which users will be removed from the users file when the file is packed. There are four options you may specify for removing a user record: Remove Users that are Deleted or 'LOCKED OUT': When this field is set to Y , any record that has a security level of 0 or has been marked for deletion will be deleted out of your users file. Remember, there is an option to keep locked out users (those with a security level of 0 but not marked for deletion) and the criteria for keeping a record takes precedence. Remove Users who have not been on for XXXX days: If you want to pack out inactive users on a regular basis, you will most likely use this option. If you enter 45 in this field, every user who does not meet the keep criteria will be deleted from the users file if they have not called your system within the last 45 days. If you do this on a regular basis, you can be sure only active users are stored in your users files. The default number of days is 9999 which disables this option. Remove Users who have not been on since: You may also choose to pack users out of your system by the last date they logged into the system. For example, you can choose to delete anyone who has not called your system since 01-01-93 by entering that date in this field. The default date is 01-01-80 (the beginning of time for the PC) which disables this option. Remove Users whose Reg. Exp. Date is older than: If you run with subscription mode enabled, you may find it useful to be able to remove those accounts which have been expired for quite some time. The date you enter in this field will be compared against the expiration date in each user record. If the expiration date in the user record is older than the date entered, the user record will be removed. The default date is 00-00-00 which disables this option. Criteria For Keeping User Record This section of the screen gives you the ability to specify the criteria for keeping a user record when packing. The criteria for keeping a record takes precedence over removal criteria. This means that even if a user record would be removed, it will not be removed if it meets the criteria for keeping. The following two options are available: Keep Users with security greater than or equal to: Any user who has a security level equal to or greater than the security level specified will not be packed out of the user file. This is useful for making sure everyone above a particular security level is not packed out. For example, if you setup your system so everyone above security level 100 are SysOps, you may want to specify 100 in this field. Keep Users that are 'LOCKED OUT': A Y in this field will retain user records which have been marked as locked out (security level of 0 but not marked for deletion). As an example of why you may want to keep these records, suppose you have a user who has consistently violated system rules and has been locked out. Keeping the user record prevents this user from accessing your system again with the same user name and information. Performing The Pack One last option you can specify is whether you wish to print out the users that are deleted during the pack. If you choose to print deleted records, you will have a record of those users who are deleted. In each record, most of the user information will be printed, so you may later re-enter a user whom you have deleted. The information is identical to the information displayed by using the 7 SysOp command. See the PCBoard Commands chapter of this manual for further information. Once you have chosen whether or not to print the deleted records, press PgDn to begin the packing process. Because packing will cause a global change to the users file, System Manager requires exclusive access to both your USERS and USERS.INF files. This means no other nodes should be online. System Manager does, however, provide an option which allows you to pack the users file while users are online. The difference between packing offline and online is the fact that users who are currently online or were online when the process began will not be affected by the pack criteria you specify. When possible, it is always best to do a normal pack with no nodes online. NOTE: If you have installed the Alias PSA, System Manager will not allow you to perform an online pack. Print Users File Using this menu option, you can print the entire users file or only a portion by specifying the starting and ending user records to print. There are three fields that determine which records will be printed. Starting Record: The starting record number to print. The default is 1 which will begin printing with the first record in the users file. Ending Record: The last record number you wish to print. The default is the last record number in your users record. The number you enter in this field must be larger than the number entered as the starting record or your print request will be aborted. Exp. users Only: Setting this option to Y means that only users in the specified range whose expiration date is earlier than today's date will be printed. Setting this option to N will print all users regardless of their expiration date. You may pick from three different formats for printing the users file. The information will be sent to the printer you defined in System Manager; all reports will be less than 80 characters in width and will include form feed codes. Each printing form is described in detail: Short Form The short form will print one user per line. On each line the following information will be printed: Name City/State Security Level Business / Data Phone Home / Voice Phone Long Form Each record printed in this style will contain the same information shown via the 7 SysOp command. For information on this format, refer to the PCBoard Commands chapter of this manual. Reg. Expiration Form Like the short form, this form will print one user per line. The information printed in this form is designed to help you easily locate users whose subscription has expired or is about to expire. The following information about each user is printed: Name Business / Data Phone Home / Voice Phone Security Expiration Date Expiration Info - If the user has expired then (EXPIRED) will be printed. If the user is within the warning period you have specified for subscriptions (PCBSetup | Subscription), the number of days until the user expires will be printed. Otherwise, this area of the report will be blank. Make Users File Index In general, both PCBoard and System Manager take care of the users index files automatically. If for some reason you suspect the indexes are out of sync, use this selection to recreate all user index files. When your user index files are out of sync with the users files, you may experience a problem when a user attempts to login, types in the correct password, but PCBoard will report that the password is incorrect. It does not hurt to recreate the index files and it does not take very long. If you get reports such as the one described previously, re-index your users files. Adjust Security Levels This selection brings up a sub-menu allowing you to globally adjust security levels in the users file according to the upload/download ratio, their number of uploads or even just to convert one range of security levels to a new security level. You can also initialize globally all upload/download counters and change security levels a user's real security level to equal the expired security level. The screen on the following page displays the security level adjustments you can perform. Adjust by Ranges Use this menu option to assign a new security level to a group of users within a specified security level range. For example, if you need to change every user with a security level of 35 to a security level of 33, enter the following: Change users whose security is greater than or equal to : 35 and whose security level is less than or equal to : 35 To a new security level of : 33 You may need to consolidate a range of security levels into one single security level. This can be done with the menu option very easily. To change every user with a security level between 20 and 29 to security level 20, enter the following: Change users whose security is greater than or equal to : 20 and whose security level is less than or equal to : 29 To a new security level of : 20 Adjust by Ranges (Expired) This menu option is identical to Adjust by Ranges with one major exception: Instead of modifying the actual security level of the user, only the expired security level is modified. As an example, if you need to change every user who has an expired security level of 45 to reflect a new expired security level of 55, enter the following: Change users whose security is greater than or equal to : 45 and whose security level is less than or equal to : 45 To a new security level of : 55 You may need to consolidate a range of expired security levels into one single expired security level. To change every user with an expired security level between 30 and 49 to an expired security level of 25, enter the following: Change users whose security is greater than or equal to : 30 and whose security level is less than or equal to : 49 To a new security level of : 25 Adjust by Up/Dn File Ratio This menu option gives you the ability to globally adjust security levels of users according to file ratio of each user. System Manager will refer to the file ratio table you create to determine what security level is assigned based on the user's ratio. See Create Up/Dn File Ratio Table for information about creating the table. Before you begin, you are asked if you wish to print the users who have their security level changed. If you choose to print the report, it will be sent to the printer defined in System Manager. The report includes: User name Number of files uploaded Number of files downloaded File ratio Old security level New security level Adjust by Up/Dn Byte Ratio This menu option gives you the ability to globally adjust security levels of users according to the byte ratio of each user. System Manager will refer to the byte ratio table you create to determine what security level is assigned based on the user's ratio. See Create Up/Dn Byte Ratio Table for information about creating the table. Before you begin, you are asked if you wish to print the users who have their security level changed. If you choose to print the report, it will be sent to the printer defined in System Manager. The report includes: User name Number of bytes uploads Number of bytes downloads Byte ratio Old security level New security level Adjust by Number of Uploads You may also adjust the security level of users based on the number of files they have uploaded to the system. System Manager will reference the table created via Create Upload Table. Before you begin, you are asked if you wish to print the users who have their security level changed. If you choose to print the report, it will be sent to the printer defined in System Manager. The report includes: User name Number of uploads Old security level New security level Adjust by Number of Downloads You may also adjust the security level of users based on the number of files they have downloaded from the system. System Manager will reference the table created via Create Download Table. Before you begin, you are asked if you wish to print the users who have their security level changed. If you choose to print that report, it will be sent to the printer defined in System Manager. The report includes: User name Number of downloads Old security level New security level Create Up/Dn File Ratio Table This menu option is the one you want to use to create the table used for adjusting security levels by the file ratio of a user. When you select this menu option, you will see the screen on the following page. Notice that there are two columns where you edit data. One column is titled Ratio and other is titled Security. Based on the file ratio of the user, a new security level will be assigned. When designing your table, keep in mind how System Manager will read the table. It reads two ratio entries at a time. If a user falls in-between the two ratios, the user will get the security level listed to the right of the first ratio. The following illustrates: System Manager will continue to search through the table until a match is found. Notice that the key is the ratio. The user will be assigned a security level based on their ratio. If you are looking to assign a ratio to a particular security level, define the ratio in the PWRD file (PCBSetup | File Locations | Configuration Files). Normally a ratio is specified as something like 10:1 (10 to 1). Entering a ratio in that manner is cumbersome so an alternate method had to be devised. System Manager determines a ratio less than 0 to be a download to upload, while a positive ratio number is considered an upload to download ratio. What is the difference? A download to upload ratio means more has been downloaded than uploaded, while an upload to download ratio means more has been uploaded than downloaded. Rather than limiting you to whole number ratios only (e.g., 25:1) you may enter up to the tenths digits (e.g., 25.3:1). To specify a ratio of 25.3, enter either 253 to specify an upload to download ratio or -253 to specify a download to upload ratio. Remember that 25 is really 25.0 so you must enter it as 250 or -250. If you enter 25, it will be interpreted as 2.5. The following are some important items you will want to remember about creating your ratio table: The ratios you enter should be ordered from smallest to greatest. This means you should enter the negative ratio values at the top of your list and your positive values at the end of the list. Your ratio table will automatically be sorted before it is saved to disk. The ratio you enter for the first entry is ignored because it represents the absolute largest download:upload ratio. The security level for the first entry is important though, because it is the security level that used when System Manager compares the first two entries in your table. The security level to the right of your last entry in the ratio table will only be assigned if the user has a better ratio than the ratio defined on the last line. This means that if your last line is set for a ratio of 50 and a security level of 40, the user will only get a security level of 40 if they have a ratio that is better than 5 uploads for every download. A ratio of 0, 10, or -10 implies that uploads are equal to downloads. Only security levels listed in the security column will be included in ratio checking. This means you can have users that are exempt from being adjusted due to their ratio by simply excluding their security in your ratio table definition. As an example, let's assume you want to create a simple ratio table where if a user has a download:upload ratio greater than 20:1, a security level of 20 will be assigned. In addition, a ratio between 10:1 and 20:1 will result in a security level of 30, and a ratio above 10:1 will get a security level of 40. To accomplish this, create the following table: Ratio Security ---------- -------- -9999999 20 -200 30 -100 40 0 0 If you want to set up another ratio, it is very easy to add. Let's say you want to give users that have uploaded more than they have downloaded a security level of 50. This can be done simply by adding a new line after the -100 line making your table resemble the following: Ratio Security ---------- -------- -9999999 20 -200 30 -100 40 0 50 0 0 So you can get a feeling of how System Manager will use your table to assign security levels, let's look at three sample users and see how their security levels will be adjusted. Security : 20 Number Uploads : 8 Number Downloads : 523 Calculation of this user's ratio reveals it to be about 65.4 downloads for every upload, which is expressed in System Manager as -654. System Manager will look at the first two lines in your ratio table: -9999999 20 -200 30 As you can see, this particular user has a ratio in-between these two lines so a security level of 20 will be assigned (which the user already has). The next user has the following record: Security : 30 Number Uploads : 353 Number Downloads : 751 This particular user has a ratio that equates to approximately 2.1 downloads for every file uploaded. In System Manager terms this is expressed as -21. System Manager will now analyze your ratio table from the top, down to the bottom looking for a match: -9999999 20 -200 30 The ratio for this user does not fit between this range so the next two lines are analyzed. -200 30 -100 40 This user's ratio does not fit between this range either, so the next two lines are analyzed. -100 40 0 50 Finally, a match. This user's ratio was -51, which falls within this range. Now looking at the security level of the first line, we can see the user will receive a security level of 40. This particular user was upgraded from a security level of 30 to a new security level of 40 because of the improved file ratio. The last user has the following information: Security : 35 Number Uploads : 7 Number Downloads : 43 This user will not be affected, not because the ratio would leave him at security level 35, but rather because security level 35 is not even listed in the ratio table. As stated earlier, security levels not listed in the table will not be adjusted due to their ratios. Create Up/Dn Byte Ratio Table The only difference between this option and adjusting by file ratio is that System Manager will determine the ratio based on bytes uploaded and downloaded instead of the number of files transferred. Everything else about byte and file ratios are the same including creating the ratio table. For more information on creating the table, see the previous section. Create Upload Table This option gives you the ability to adjust the security level of a user based on how many files they have uploaded to the system. When you select this option, you will notice that it looks quite similar to ratio tables. This table does not try to relate uploads and downloads to one another so you may find it easier to setup. System Manager will simply analyze two lines of your table at a time. If the number of files a user has uploaded falls between two entries, the user will be given the appropriate security level as shown in the following sample: As an example, let's assume you creat the following table: Uploads Security ---------- -------- 0 15 1 20 50 40 0 0 Until a user uploads a file, the security level will remain 15. A user who has uploaded more than one file, but has not yet uploaded 50 files, will receive a security level of 20. If a user has uploaded 50 or more files, a security level of 40 will be given. Create Download Table The creation and use of this table is identical to the Upload table. The only exception is that the number of files downloaded are checked instead of the number of files uploaded. Refer to the previous section for additional information. Change Security to Expired Level When a user's subscription expires, PCBoard leaves the security level intact but will give the user their expired security level at login. By doing this, a user can renew their subscription and you simply have to update their expiration date to restore the old security level. Sometimes, however, you may want to make permanent the expired security level of a user whose subscription has expired. This menu option allows you to make this change, adjusting the user's normal security level to match the level in the expired security level field. Before you make this change, PCBoard asks if you wish to print a list of users who have their security levels changed. Answering Y at this prompt will cause a report to be printed to the printer defined for System Manager to use. This report includes the following information: User name Old security level New permanent security level (expired security level) Date of expiration Before System Manager makes the change, it must verify it is the only application accessing the users file. If it cannot gain exclusive access to the users file, you will receive notice that all nodes must be down before you can make this change. Initialize Upld/Dnld Counters You can use this option to reset or change the upload/download byte and file counters for every user on the system. You can choose any of the following options: Make the upload counter equal to the download counter. Make the download counter equal to the upload counter. Set both the upload and download counters to 0. Initialize upload and download BYTE counters to be equal to the current users file ratio. If you select this option you are given the option to specify a number to multiply the number of files transferred to store in the bytes transferred fields. For example, if a user has uploaded 3 files and downloaded 10 files and you specify a multiplier of 100, the user's byte counters will show 300 bytes uploaded and 1000 bytes downloaded. The multiplier is simply for cosmetic purposes. Also, you should be aware that if you select this option, your answers to the Adjust Upload / Download FILE/BYTE Counters questions will be ignored. There are two other questions on this screen. Your answer to these questions determine which counters will be set. Adjust Upload / Download FILE Counters Adjust Upload / Download BYTE Counters For example, if you select option number 3, and you set Adjust Upload / Download FILE Counters to Y, the following field will be set to 0 in each user's record: Number Uploads Number Downloads Of course, if you answer Y to both questions, both of the following fields will be reset to 0 for all users: Number Uploads Number Downloads Total Upload Total Download Registering Users In A Conference By Security Level When you need to modify the conference registrations of a large number of users, you certainly would not want to do so manually. System Manager gives you the ability to modify a range of conference flags for users within a particular security range. Selecting Conferences To Modify The following fields allow you to control the users who will have their conference flags modified: First number of conferences to be inserted in registrations Last number of conferences to be inserted in registrations Enter the beginning conference number to be modified in the first field, and in the second field, enter the last conference number to be included in the list of conference registrations to be modified. For example, if you want to modify the conference registrations for conferences 3 through 10, enter the following: First number of conferences to be inserted in registrations : 3 Last number of conferences to be inserted in registrations : 10 If you need to modify just one conference, enter the conference number as both the first and last conference to modify. Setting Conference Flags Once you have selected the conferences to modify, you must determine how you will be altering the access to the conference. The following five fields control what access you can give to a conference: Adjust conferences user is normally allowed to join Adjust conferences user can join with expired subscription Adjust the user selected conferences for scanning Adjust conferences where user becomes a sysop when joining Reset user's last message read to zero in these conferences The first four questions are simply the conference flags you may set (R, X, S, and C). For additional information on conference flags, see Editing a User Record in the Users File Maintenance section of this chapter. If you wish to reset the last message read pointer for each conference you modify, answer Y to the Reset user's last message read to zero in these conferences question. Selecting User Records To Modify The last thing you must determine is the range of users who will have their conference registration information changed. Simply state the lowest security level you wish to modify and then the highest security level to modify. Every user with a security level between the two levels you enter will have their conference information modified. Making The Change When you have finished entering the security levels, conference numbers and the conference flags you wish to modify, press PgDn to begin the process. Before System Manager actually begins modifying the user file, it will attempt to make sure it has exclusive access to both the USERS and USERS.INF files. If it cannot get exclusive access to these files, it will not be able to modify the records for each user. Make sure all nodes are down before you attempt to make a global change such as inserting group conference registrations. Examples Let's assume you just created conference #3 on your system which displays community event information. If you want to have that conference selected for reading by every user on your system, enter the following into each field: As another example, suppose you want to create conference #53 to be a private conference for those with a security level of 90 or higher. Since an R flag is required to be able to join a private conference, you might go about setting the flag manually in all user accounts with a security level of 90 or higher -- this would be quite an undertaking on a system with a large user base. Instead, you can let System Manager do all of the hard work for you by entering the following information: Removing Access To A Conference By Security Level When you need to modify the conference registrations for a large number of users, you certainly do not want to do it manually. System Manager gives you the ability to modify a range of conference flags for users within a particular security range. Selecting Conferences To Modify The following fields allow you to control the users that will have their conference flags modified: First number of conferences to be inserted in registrations Last number of conferences to be inserted in registrations Enter the beginning conference number to be modified in the first field, and in the second field, enter the last conference number to be included in the list of conference registrations to be modified. For example, if you wanted to modify the conference registrations for conferences 3 through 10, enter the following: First number of conferences to be inserted in registrations : 3 Last number of conferences to be inserted in registrations : 10 If you need to modify just one conference, enter the conference number as both the first and last conference to modify. Deselecting Conference Flags Once you have selected the conferences to modify, you must determine how you will be altering access to the conference. The following five fields control what access you can remove from a conference: Adjust conferences user is normally allowed to join Adjust conferences user can join with expired subscription Adjust the user selected conferences for scanning Adjust conferences where user becomes a sysop when joining Reset user's last message read to zero in these conferences The first four questions are simply the conference flags that you may set (R, X, S, and C). For additional information on conference flags, see Editing a User Record in the Users File Maintenance section of this chapter. If you wish to reset the last message read pointer for each conference you modify, answer Y to the Reset user's last message read to zero in these conferences question. Selecting User Records To Modify The last thing you must determine is the range of users who will have their conference registration information changed. Simply state the lowest security level you wish to modify and then the highest security level to modify. Every user with a security level between the two levels you enter will have their conference information modified. Making The Change When you have finished entering the security levels, conference numbers and the conference flags you wish to modify, press PgDn to begin the process. Before System Manager actually begins modifying the user file, it will attempt to make sure it has exclusive access to both the USERS and USERS.INF files. If it cannot get exclusive access to these files, it will not be able to modify the records for each user. Make sure that all nodes are down before you attempt to make a global change such as inserting group conference registrations. Examples If you have 50 conferences on your system (conferences 0-49) and you want to make sure no users have conference SysOp status (the C flag), you can enter the following information: Another example may be when you want to remove everyone with a security level less than 50 from conference #9 which is a private conference. For this task you may want to remove all of their conference flags and reset their last message read to 0 as well. Moving Access From One Conference To Another From this menu option, you can move the access of users from one conference to another conference. Not only can you move the conference flags from one conference to another, but you can also move the last message read to the new conference. Specifying Conferences In the REMOVE user(s) from which conference field, enter the conference number you wish to remove the conference access from. In the ADD to which conference field enter the conference number that you will be moving conference access to. Moving Conference Information The following lists which questions control the conference flags. For a detailed description of conference flags see Editing a User Record in the Users File Maintenance section of this chapter. R Adjust conferences user is allowed in (all times) X Adjust conferences user is allowed in (expired) S Adjust conference user-scan preference list System Manager moves each conference flag field to the new conference exactly as set in the original conference. It is recommended that you either leave all three of these questions set to Y or set to N. The next question you are asked gives you the ability to modify the user record so it shows the Last Conference In field to reflect the new conference. Of course, this will not be of much use unless the new conference is defined as an auto-rejoin conference. If the new conference is defined as an auto-rejoin conference, affected users will be logged into this conference the next time they log in. The last question asks if you wish to also move the last message number read from the old conference to the new conference. If you answer Y in this field, the last message read number will be moved to the new conference, and the old conference will have the last message read set to 0. Selecting Security Levels As with other functions in System Manager, you determine what users will have their records modified by a range of security levels. Simply enter the lowest and highest security level for the records you wish to modify. Every record in the indicated security level range will be affected by the change. Example The following illustrates what to do if you want to move the conference information from conference 2 to conference 3 for users with a security level of 50. First, while editing a user record for which you will be moving conference information, look at the conference form in System Manager. You should see something similar to the following: Num Conference Flags Last Msg ----- ------------- ----- -------- 0 Main Board : RXS : 51371 1 OpSys : : 0 2 Admin : RXS : 120022 3 Chatter : RX : 0 Next, enter the following after selecting Move Users BETWEEN Conferences from the Users File Maintenance menu: Finally, press PgDn to begin moving the conference information. System Manager is going to require exclusive access to USERS and USERS.INF, so make sure no other nodes are online before you press PgDn. Otherwise, you will receive an error message and System Manager will continually try to access the file that until you press E to abort the process or the file is no longer in use. Once the change has been made, you will see user records have been updated. Looking at the same record we reviewed before we made the change, you will now see: Num Conference Flags Last Msg ----- ------------- ----- -------- 0 Main Board : RXS : 51371 1 OpSys : : 0 2 Admin : : 0 3 Chatter : RXS : 120022 Notice that all of the conference information from conference 2 has been moved over to conference 3. Adjusting Expiration Dates When you need to upgrade the expiration date of several users, you can let System Manager's Change Expiration Date menu option do the work for you. Using this menu option you can update the expiration date of users on your system to a new date or add additional days to their expiration date. Security Level Criteria In order to modify the expiration date of users on your system, you need to specify a range of security levels that you wish to modify. First however, you must select if you wish the security level range to be based on the normal or expired security level of each user. The following are valid options for this field: E Expired security level. Base the range of security levels that will be affected on the expired security level of each user instead of the normal security level. N Normal security level. Base the range of security levels that will be affected on the normal security level of each user. Specifying Security Range Using the following field, you can specify the range of security levels (normal or expired) you wish to modify. Adjust Expiration Date if level is Greater than or equal to Adjust Expiration Date if level is Less than or equal to For example, if you want to modify the range of security levels between 20 and 30, enter a 20 in the first field and a 30 in the second field. Setting New Expiration Date You can choose to either set an actual date to change all records to or you may choose to simply add a certain amount of days to the expiration date of the user. If you wish to make the new expiration date uniform throughout the range selected, specify the date at the following prompt: New Expiration Date (01/01/80 is ignored) If you leave the date in that field as 01-01-80, System Manager assumes you want to extend their current expiration date by the amount of days specified in the follwoing field: Current Date in record plus XXXX days Printing Changed Records The final question on this screen asks if you wish to print a report of users who have their user records changed. If you answer Y to this question, a report will be printed to the printer you have defined in System Manager. This report will contain: User name Security level Old expiration date New expiration date Making The Change When you have filled in all of the fields, press PgDn to begin changing the records. If System Manager can gain exclusive access to the users file, it will begin modifying the records you have specified. If System Manager cannot guarantee it has exclusive access, it will print a message that states LOCK FAILED. In order to gain exclusive access to the users file, make sure you do not have any nodes up and running or ready to take calls. Example To help illustrate the advantage of being able to globally change expiration dates, let's use the following example: You accept subscriptions to your system where your users will pay money for one year of access. Your subscribers occupy security levels 60-80. Keeping all of this in mind, let's assume you had system troubles that caused you to be down for two days in a row. To help relations with what may be several angry subscribers, you decide to extend all subscription by an additional week (7 days). Rather than manually modify each record you can use System Manager's Change Expiration Date menu option. Fill in the fields on the screen as follows: Security Level Range -------------------- Base Security Level Criteria on NORMAL or EXPIRED Level (N/E) : N Adjust Expiration Date if level is Greater than or equal to : 60 Adjust Expiration Date if level is Less than or equal to : 80 Change Expiration Date To: -------------------------- New Expiration Date (01/01/80 is ignored) : 01-01-80 Current Date in record plus XXXX days : 7 Print Changed User Records on the Printer : N Standardizing Phone Formats Selecting this menu option will standardize the phone fields for every user on your system. Essentially, this option merely strips all non-numerical information from the phone field and attempts to fit the phone number into the following format: 999 999-9999 If the phone number is shorter than 10 digits, 1t will start building the phone number from the right. Therefore, if one of the phone numbers in the user record was 323-835, System Manager will convert this phone number to 32-3835. Once all of your phone numbers are standardized, you can reliably sort the users file by the contents of this field. Undo Previous Change Selecting this menu option will enable you to undo any global changes you have made to the users file while in System Manager. The following lists all of the global changes you can make in System Manager: Sort Users File Pack Users File Pack Users File while Online Adjust Security Level by Ranges Adjust Expired Security Level by Ranges Adjust Up/Dn File Ratio Adjust Up/Dn Byte Ratio Change Security to Expired Level Initialize Upld/Dnld Counters Insert Group Conference Remove Group Conference Adjust Expiration Dates Standardize Phone Formats When you select the undo option, you will be asked to confirm that you really wish to undo your most recent global change. If you select to undo your changes, System Manger will restore the last backup of the USERS and USERS.INF file and then re-index your users file to make sure the index files are current. User Info File Maintenance User Info File Maintenance refers to maintaining your USERS.INF file. Because the USERS.INF file is so flexible there are a lot of functions you can use, although not nearly so many as with the USERS file alone. Everything you will need to do with the USERS.INF file will be controlled from the menu that will appear after you select User Info File Maintenance from the System Manager Main Menu. Change Conference Allocations The size of the USERS.INF file is dynamic. This means it can grow or shrink based on the components installed inside of the file. For example, PCBoard stores the last message read pointers in this file. As you would expect, the more conferences that you have, the bigger the file will be because you have more last message read pointers to store. To make sure your USERS.INF file is properly configured for the number of conferences you have installed on your system, select this menu option. If you see an error message that says Need to update User Info File Conference Allocations, you need to select this menu option to properly insure that your USERS.INF file is properly sized. If you receive this previously mentioned error message, you will need to load System Manager from the DOS prompt because you will not be able to access it from the call-waiting screen. Simply change to your PCBoard subdirectory and execute PCBSM.EXE. When you select this menu option you will see a status report about your USERS.INF file. Each section is detailed in the following sections. Total Conference Areas This lists the total number of conferences you have defined for your system. PCBoard determines this number by reading the PCBOARD.DAT that System Manager reads when it loaded and looking at what is set for the Number of Highest Conference Desired in PCBSetup | Configuration Options | Messages. System Manager then adds one to this number to account for the Main Board. For this reason, it becomes important that if you increase the maximum number of conferences desired, you should also update every PCBOARD.DAT you use on your system. Otherwise, you can find yourself repeatedly updating conference allocations because you have a different amount of conferences available depending on which PCBOARD.DAT is read. Number of EXTENDED Conferences This field will report how many extended conferences you have (or 0 for none). Any conferences above the first 40 are considered to be extended conferences. This is simply a name reference and does not signify a difference between conferences. The name reference is used because earlier versions of PCBoard supported 40 conferences which has long since been surpassed. Total static user allocation This field will tell you how many static bytes will be allocated for each record. Static allocations are not dependent on the number of conferences. Total dynamic allocations Dynamic allocations are dependent on the number of conferences you have allocated on your system. As the number of conferences on your system increases, so will the dynamic allocations on your system. Updating USERS.INF Conference Allocations After the report of allocations and total conferences on your system, you will see one of the following messages: None of the above allocations require upgrading at this time... WARNING: One or more of the above allocations requires updating If you see the former message, you do not have to worry about updating your conference allocations. However, if you see the latter message, you must update your conference allocations or you will not be able to load PCBoard. List Installed PSA/TPA Areas This menu function will list all of the third party allocation (TPA) and PCBoard support allocation (PSA) areas that are currently installed. TPAs are areas in your USERS.INF file reserved for specific third party applications. PSAs are specific features you can add such as full address support, alias support, etc. When you choose this menu option, you will see a list of all TPA and PSA areas that are installed on your system. If you have not installed any TPAs or PSAs, you will be notified that you do not have any installed. If you do have one or more installed, System Manager will display information about each one. The first piece of information will display if the allocation is a PSA or a TPA followed by the name of the allocation. Even though you may not need to know any additional information, you will also be shown the version number and the total static/dynamic space allocated for each user. For TPAs, System Manager will also show you the Key information which is used by each third party program. Add PCBoard Supported Allocations From this menu option, you can install a PCBoard Supported Allocations (PSA). These give you the ability add functionality to your system such as alias or full-address support. For more information on adding a PSA please see the Adding a PSA section in this chapter. Remove PSA From User Info File Simply select the PSA you wish to remove from your system. Before System Manager removes the PSA it will ask to confirm that you really wish to delete it. For additional information, please see the Removing A PSA section in this chapter. Add/Update Third Party Application A TPA gives a third party application the ability to have PCBoard reserve space in the USERS.INF file for its use. Most applications will use this reserved area or allocation to store information about each user. Using this method, an application does not have to create a separate data file to store redundant user information, nor does it have to worry about maintaining this file of active user data. The TPA is actually part of the USERS.INF file, so when a user is deleted from your system, all TPA information for that user is deleted too. Normally, you will only install a TPA if the application you are installing explicitly tells you to setup a TPA in System Manager. When you choose to add a TPA, you will be asked to enter the TPA name. Enter the name in this field as specified by the author of the application. If you do not, the application may error upon loading because the wrong name was entered in this field. If you enter the name of a TPA which already exists, the existing information will be displayed and you can edit the fields as your needs dictate. Once you have entered a new application name, you will be asked to specify the version number, static allocation, dynamic allocation, and a keyword. The author of the application should provide the values you should enter for everything except keyword. Version: Just as most programs have a version number, a TPA can have a version number as well. The application which uses this TPA may use this version number to verify it is indeed reading proper data. Static Size: There are two size types in a TPA. Static size never changes -- it is a fixed size. You need to enter the value the author of the application specifies. If you enter a value which is too high or too low, chances are the application will error upon loading or behave unpredictably. Dynamic Size: Enter the value the author of the application specifies for this field. This determines how many bytes will be reserved for each conference. Consequently, the more conferences you have defined in your system, the more space this will end up taking on your hard drive. Keyword: In this field, enter the door name that will use this TPA. This information can be obtained from the filename field in your DOORS.LST file. If you do not specify a valid door name, the information in the TPA will not be available to the application requesting the information. Remove TPA From User Info File To remove a TPA, you must know the name. If you do not know the name, you can use the List Installed PSA/TPA Areas menu option for a list of installed allocations. When you enter the name of the TPA that you wish to remove, System Manager will check to see if it exists. If it does, you will be asked to confirm that you wish to remove the TPA. If you choose to remove it, all data stored in the TPA will be lost as it is removed from the USERS.INF file. Create User Info File Normally you will not need to create your USERS.INF file because PCBoard will take care of that for you. However, if you lose the file or if it becomes corrupt beyond repair, you may elect to recreate the file. If System Manager detects a USERS.INF file when you attempt to re-create it, you will be warned that it already exists and will be asked to confirm that you want to recreate the file. Recreating the file will cause all TPA information to be lost as well as the loss of some conference information for all conferences numbered 40 and above. Analyzing Your System Configuration This menu option will load PCBDiag which you can use to help analyze your system configuration. When you select this menu item, you will be preseneted with a list of items that you can analyze. To do a full analysis, make sure you enter a Y in all of the fields. Once you determine what you want to analyze, press PgDn to begin. You will be asked where the report should be printed. In the field, you can enter any printer port or filename. Specifying a printer port such as LPT1 will send the report to the printer attached to LPT1 while entering a filename will print the report to the file you specify. When you are working with the technical support staff to resolve a problem with your system, you may be asked to print or output your analysis to a file. In this situation you should always print the report to a file and upload the file to Salt Air. The technician assisting you will review the file and continue working with you on the problem. Defining Printer Port There are several places in System Manager that allow you to print out reports or results of a particular action. System Manager will use the printer that you define using this menu option. The first thing you will notice about the printer definition is that you can enter more than a simple port number. You can enter any filename or device. If your printer is on LPT1, enter LPT1 in this field. If, instead, you wish to send all printer output to a text file, you can do so by specifying a filename to send the output to. The following are sample printer definitions: LPT1 LPT2 C:\PCB\PRINTER.OUT F:\PRN\PCBOARD.PRN COM1 COM2 Defining Your Editors When you are configuring your system in PCBSetup, there are several places where you need to load an editor to edit a batch file or a display screen. This menu option allows you to specify the editors you want to have available while in PCBSetup. There are two editors you may specify -- text and graphics. Text Editor Throughout PCBSetup you will notice that you can press F2 in several places to edit a particular file. If the file you are editing is a display file or a batch file, PCBSetup will use the editor you define in this field to edit the file. By default, the editor selected here will be PCBEdit, which is a text/graphics editor which ships with PCBoard. If you have a favorite text editor, you may specify that program name instead. However, if you opt to change the editor, you will want to pick a small ASCII text editor rather than a word processing type program because of the memory constraints involved, and because the file must be saved in DOS text format. When PCBSetup calls your editor, it will run the program and pass the filename to edit as the first and only parameter. Therefore, the editor you install must be capable of accepting the filename to edit on the command line. Graphics Editor When a display file is highlighted in PCBSetup, you can use F2 to edit the normal display file, or F3 to edit the graphics specific version of the same file. When you press F3, System Manager will use the editor you have defined as your graphics editor to edit the graphics specific version of the display file. This is most useful when you need to create a plain ASCII file for your non-graphic callers but then choose to make a graphics specific file with animation or similar effects. You will want to use a graphics editor that will support either ANSI or PCBoard @X codes. Included with your PCBoard package you will find PCBEDIT.EXE. PCBEdit will create ASCII text files and it has the ability to create colorized display screens using PCBoard @X color codes. The graphics editor is called in the same manner as the text editor. The filename to edit will be passed on the command line so you need to use a graphics editor program that is capable of accepting the filename on the command line. Customize Colors Everyone has their own likes and dislikes -- color is no exception. Using this menu option you can customize the colors that are used for the PCBoard utilities (PCBSetup, System Manager, etc.) Using Predefined Defaults System Manager provides you with several default color schemes you can use by simply selecting the menu options on your screen. The first color set is the default color set when you first receive PCBoard. If you do not like any of the default color sets you may customize the colors manually using the Customize Colors menu option. Customizing Your Own Colors Upon selecting the Customize Colors menu option you will see the following screen (once you have read the instructions and pressed R): This screen contains several objects. You will notice part of a help window, a menu listing, questions, and many other fields and borders. The instructions for colorizing this screen to your own tastes are very simple: Move the cursor (using the up, down, left, and right arrow keys) until the cursor is on top of the item or object you wish to modify, and press ENTER. From the color box that pops up, use the cursor keys to select the color you wish to use for the currently selected item. It is important to remember that each color selection contains a background and a foreground color. The foreground attribute for each color is represented by an X; this is the color the text will be for the currently selected item. The background attribute is the color the text will be written on. Repeat steps one and two as many times as you need until you have finished customizing your colors. When you are done, press ESC. You will be returned to the Color Customization menu. If you press ESC again to return to the Main Menu you will be asked if you wish to save your color set. PCBoard Supported Allocations You can optionally install what are called PSAs (PCBoard Supported Allocations). These are features that are added into your users file. What Are Supported Allocations A supported allocation is a module you can add to your users file which both PCBoard and System Manager are able to understand and manipulate. These allocations are quite similar to TPAs you can install for doors. The difference is that PSAs are officially recognized by PCBoard and are used to add new features to your system. The following PSAs are available: Alias Support - Enables a user to use an alias in those conferences which have been designated to allow aliases. Full Address Support - Gives you the ability to store street, city, state, zip code, and country information for each user on your system. Password-Changing Support - Gives you the ability to force your users to change their passwords over a pre-determined amount of time. Verification Support - This PSA will store the response to the question asked when a new account is created on your system. You can use this response to help verify the validity of the caller. Caller Statistics - Provides additional statistics about each user on your system. Records statistics such as security violations, speed of connections, etc. Caller Notes - Provides you five additional comment lines which you can store information about each user. These lines may be useful for jotting down general notes. Adding An Allocation First of all, you need to make sure all nodes on your system are down -- you cannot add a PSA while nodes are online. To add a PSA to your system, select Add PCBoard Supported Allocations from the User Info File Maintenance menu in System Manager. Choose the PSA you wish to add to your system from the menu presented to you. Next, you will be shown information about the PSA you are about to install and are asked to confirm you wish to continue with the installation. If you received an error which said there was a sharing violation with USERS.INF, this indicates all of your nodes are not down or something is accessing your USERS.INF file. System manager needs to have exclusive access to that file before it can add a PSA. When you add a PSA, the size of your USERS.INF file will increase in size. The following lists shows how many bytes the file will increase for each users on your system: Alias - 25 bytes Full Address - 160 bytes Password Changing - 42 bytes Verification - 25 bytes Caller Statistics - 30 bytes Caller Notes - 300 bytes If you have 2000 users in your system, your USERS.INF will grow by 60,000 bytes if you add the Caller Statistics PSA. Using An Allocation The following section gives specific details as far as what you can expect after you install each PSA in your system. You will know what changes will be made to your system operation and how to access the various information that each PSA provides. Alias Alias support is added on a conference by conference basis. After you have installed the Alias PSA in System Manager as outlined in the previous section, you need to configure which conferences will enable alias support. When you are editing conference information, you can press PgDn to access conference switches. You will see an option labeled Allow Aliases to be used. If you want aliases to be used in the conference you are editing, change this option to Y. In order for a user to define the alias they wish to use, the W user command must be used. Alias names can only be changed or created in conferences that have been defined to allow Aliases. The name entered must be unique -- it cannot duplicate any user or alias name currently in use on the system. In PCBSetup | Configuration Options | System Control there is an option which reads Allow Alias Change After Chosen. When this option is set to N, a user must request any alias changes be done by you. Otherwise, the alias name can be changed at will by using the W user command. At any time, you can edit or view the alias for any given user through System Manager by editing the user's record. Press F2 until you get to the Alias support screen. On this screen, you will see the alias name the user has chosen. If the field is blank, the user has not defined an alias. If you are editing the user record and you press F2 several times but do not see the Alias support screen, chances are you have not installed the Alias PSA. To make sure you have installed the PSA, check the list of installed TPA Areas in System Manager | User Info File Maintenance | List Installed TPA Areas. When you select this option, you should see a TPA called PCBALIAS. If you do not, you have not installed the alias PSA yet. Aliases are only active when a user joins a conference that has been defined to allow aliases. In the rest of the conferences, the user's real name is always used. Of course with users switching between their real name and alias name upon joining conferences, hiding the name change becomes important to protect the identity change. To help protect the alias, there is an option in PCBSetup | Node Configuration which asks Show ALIAS Names in WHO Display. If you answer Y to this question, PCBoard will modify the node display to show that a user is logging in under that node where the name change is occurring. This will remain for approximately one minute before it changes the actual name in the node display. On the other hand, if you answer N to this question, real names will always be displayed even when a conference is joined where aliases are allowed. Two other changes are made in the way PCBoard operates in order to protect the alias identity. While inside a conference where aliases are allowed, the security level requirement for the USERS command is changed to become equal to that which is required to use the 7 SysOp function. This enables you to still use the USERS command while making it impossible for normal callers to access the command. If users could access the command, they may be able to simply compare logon dates/times to figure out the real name of a particular user. The City/State information normally shown by the WHO user command or the 11 SysOp command will not be shown when a user is using an alias. If that information were available to all callers, it would make it easier for other users to figure out the true identities of those using aliases. When a user has defined an alias either the real name or alias of the user can be used to login to the system. If the user chooses to login using the alias and the conference joined at login is not an alias conference, PCBoard will properly use their real name instead of their alias. Address If you want to keep track of addresses for each of your users, install the Address PSA. This PSA, will store lines for the street address, city, state, zip code and country. If you have the Address PSA installed, new users will be asked to provide address information when the registration questions for createing a new account on the system are asked. If you have existing users on your system who have not entered their address information, you can tell your users to use the W user command to update their address information, or you can use a PPE that is designed to assure that every user has a valid address. On Salt Air (the support BBS for Clark Development) you will find a PPE which will do this under the filename GET-ADRS.ZIP. If you clear out any of the PCBTEXT records between 699 and 704 with MKPCBTXT, those questions will not be asked. This would be useful if you want to eliminate a question such as Country from being asked. The address information can be edited via the W user command or by loading System Manager and editing the user record (Pressing F2 to switch between views). When you use the 7 SysOp Command to edit a user record, you can view the address information but you cannot change it. Password Changing When you install the Password Changing PSA, you add the capability to force your callers to change their password over the period of time that you specify. PCBoard will keep track of the last date the password for each user was last changed, the number of times they have changed it, and the last three passwords used. By accessing the last three passwords used, the user will be prevented from toggling between two or three passwords. In addition, the passwords chosen must contain the minimum number of characters as defined in PCBSetup | Configuration Options | Limits and must also not contain either the first or last name of the user. If you load System Manager and access a user's record, you can look at the password information by pressing F2 until you get to the Password Form screen. On this screen you will see information such as the last three passwords used, the last date the password was changed, etc. The Expiration Date is used to determine when this particular user needs to change their password. When the password is expired, the user cannot login to the system until a new valid password is entered. The following restrictions are in place for the new password: The new password must meet the minimum length requirements specified in PCBSetup | Configuration Options | Limits. Users may not use their name as their password. For example, a user named James Brown could not use either James or Brown as his password. Of course, if you want to expire a particular user's password, edit their user record so the password expiration date is equal to or earlier than today's date. You can control how often a user needs to change their password by changing the Number Days Before FORCED Password Change in PCBSetup | Configuration Options | Limits. If you want to temporarily disable the Password Changing PSA but plan on enabling it at a later date, enter a value of 0 in this field to disable the Password Changing support. You can warn callers of the upcoming need to change their password so they are not caught totally off-guard by the request to change their password. In PCBSetup | Configuration Options | Limits the following field can be changed: Number Days to Warn Prior to FORCED Change Set this value to the number of days you want to warn the caller before their password will expire. When users log into the system during the warning period, record number 711 in your PCBTEXT file will be displayed to let them know their password is about to expire. In recent years, automated calling to pick up messages or files has become very popular. Since PCBoard normally displays a simple one-line message to notify the user their password is about to expire, some of your users may miss the warning. If this becomes a problem on your system, you may want to modify this PCBTEXT record so that it displays a file (which can be multiple lines), or even a PPE which can leave a personal message so they could pick up the notification in their automated mail or file runs. Whatever warning method you ultimately choose, it should be as obvious as possible. Otherwise, your callers who use login scripts, automated calling programs, and such may wonder why they cannot log into the system properly. For this very reason, it might be advantageous to give a two to three week password expiration warning. Verification Verification support adds one 25 character field you can use to store information to help determine the validity of a particular caller. If you have the verification PSA enabled, new users will be required to answer the registration question. By default, this question will ask for the maiden name of the caller's mother. However, you can change this to ask any question you would like by using MKPCBTXT to edit record #706 in PCBTEXT. Once the new user enters the information, it cannot be modified. In fact, users cannot even view the information. The only one who can change or view the verification field is you. There are a lot of things you could use this verification field for. The following is just a short list: Birth date. You could modify record #706 in PCBTEXT so the user is asked for their birth date. When you view a user record with the 7 SysOp command you would be able to quickly and easily reference what a particular user entered for their birth date. Password change request. When a user fails to enter the right password for login, you have the capability of enabling the user to leave a comment. If you have that option enabled in PCBSetup | Configuration Options | System Control, you may want to use a PPE that could ask the user to enter their verification information. If they enter the right information you could use that same PPE to change their password. System security. If the information you distribute on your system requires you to be conscious about system security, you can use the verification field and a PPE to ask each user to enter the data in the verification field at each login. In essence, this will give the user a second password and would greatly diminish the capability of hacking a user account by the brute force method. Caller Statistics If you enjoy gathering statistics about your callers, you may want to enable the Statistics PSA. PCBoard will keep track of how many times a user has connected to the system, what speed they connected at, and numerous other pieces of information. The following is a sample of the Statistics View available when you are editing a user record in System Manager: To view this information for a particular user, load System Manager, select Users File Maintenance, and Edit Users File. Next, press F2 until you see the Statistics Form screen. The following list describes each of the statistics that are tracked: First Date On: This date will be equal to the date the user first logged into your system or the date you added the Caller Statistics PSA if the account already existed. Last Date On: The last date the user logged into your system. You can also see this date on the Long Form screen. Num Times On: The total number of times this particular caller has accessed your system. This information is also available on the Long Form screen. # Times Paged Sysop: This field will record the total number of times this user has paged the SysOp to chat. It does not matter if the page was answered or not -- all attempts are recorded. # Times Group Chat: If a user uses group chat with others on the system, the total number of chat sessions the user has participated in will be recorded in this field. SysOp chats are not included in this total. # Comments to Sysop: This field records the total number of comments the user has left to the SysOp using the C user command. If the user begins a comment but aborts the message, it does not count as a comment to the sysop. # Messages Left: This field will store the total number of messages the user has entered. You should be aware that while PCBoard may update this statistic, off-line mail reading doors may not. # Messages Read: Displays the total number of messages the user has read on your system. While PCBoard will update this field, some off-line mail door programs may not. # Security Violations: You can easily see who may be trying to access restricted functions on your system, by watching this field. It will total up the number of times a user has attempted to access a command which is not available to the user's security level. # Un-Reg Conf Attempts: Records the total number of attempts to join a conference the user is not registered to join. # Password Failures: Displays the number of times the wrong password was used at login. If you keep tabs on this statistic, you may be able to catch someone who is trying to hack into a given account. # Dnld Limit Reached: Records the total number of times the user has exceeded the defined download limits. Any file that will exceed the user's ratio or daily download limit is recorded as a violation. # Dnld File Not Found: If the user attempts to download a file, but the filename could not be found on disk, it will be recorded in this field. # Upld Verify Failed: After uploading a file, PCBoard will test the file via PCBTEST.BAT unless you have disabled upload testing. If the uploaded file fails the integrity tests, it will be recorded in this field. # Times On at 300: Displays the total number of times the user connected at 300 bps. # Times On at 1200: Displays the total number of times the user connected at 1200 bps. # Times On at 2400: Displays the total number of times the user connected at 2400 bps. # Times On at 9600: Displays the total number of times the user connected at 4800, 7200 or 9600 bps. All three speeds are shown in this field, because they are all only possible with 9600 bps modems. # Times On at 14400+: Displays the total number of times the user connected at 12000 bps or higher. The reason 12000 bps is included in this statistic is because it is a fall-back speed for 14400 connections. All of these statistics are stored in your USERS.INF file. Therefore, if you lose your USERS.INF or it becomes corrupted for some reason, you risk the chance of losing your statistics. In addition, you can lose your statistics if you re-create your USERS.INF file via System Manager | User Info File Maintenance | Create User Info File. Caller Notes You may find the 30 characters you are allocated in Comment 2 for each user may not provide enough space to enter comments about each user. If you need more room, you can install the Caller Notes PSA. If you do, you will find that you have 5 additional 60 characters lines that you can enter comments about each user. As you can see there is plenty of room to leave comments about any user on your system. The notes section provides a good place where you can enter things you want to remember about a particular user. Since the user cannot edit or even view these notes, you can be as frank as you wish. Viewing PSA Information There are two methods of viewing information on the various PSAs you have installed. From within System Manager each PSA will have a separate screen. These screens can only be viewed while you are editing a user record. Press F2 to switch between the various screen views. Normally, the Short Form, Long Form, and Conference screens are the only screens available. However, when you install a PSA, additional screens will become available when you press F2. When you are viewing PSA information in System Manager, you can also edit the PSA information for each user. While inside PCBoard, you can also view selected PSA Information with the 7 SysOp command. All PSA information with the exception of the Password Changing, and Caller Statistics can be viewed with the 7 command. This is the information that will be displayed via the 7 SysOp command if you have all of the PSAs installed and there is information in each PSA. Notice, that only the Alias, Address, Notes, and Verification information is displayed. To edit this information or to view the rest of the PSA information, use System Manager. Removing An Installed PSA To remove a PSA you have installed, you will need to select System Manager | User Info File Maintenance | Remove PSA From User Info File simply select the PSA you wish to remove. If the PSA does exist, you will be asked to confirm that you really wish to delete the PSA. If you the PSA was not installed, you will receive an error message notifying you that you attempted to remove a PSA which is not installed. Command Line Parameters Most of the functionality of System Manager can be accessed directly by using command line parameters when you load PCBSM.EXE. Since you can access most common functions of System Manager from the command line, you can setup your event or other batch files to perform these tasks without actually having to move around in the menu structure or even be present to fill in all of the options. To specify a command line parameter, simply add it after PCBSM.EXE when you load it, as shown in this example: PCBSM.EXE /ADJUST;byteratio In this example, the /ADJUST is the command line parameter and byteratio is a sub-parameter used to specify more information or to further clarify the command line parameter. As shown in the previous example, you separate sub-parameters with semi-colons (;). You will learn more about /ADJUST in the detailed explanations of the command line parameters that follow. /ADJUST This command line parameter gives you the ability to adjust the security level of users based on their upload and download activities. You can adjust based on their file or byte ratio, or by the number of file transfers the user has completed. To control which method you will use to adjust their security levels, use the following sub-parameters. fileratio This sub-command will adjust the security levels of users by using the file ratio table you have created in System Manager | Users File Maintenance | Adjust Security Levels | Create Up/Dn File Ratio Table. Using this sub-parameter will perform the same action available via System Manager | Users File Maintenance | Adjust Security Levels | Adjust by Up/Dn File Ratio. byteratio This sub-command will adjust the security levels of users by using the byte ratio table you have created in System Manager | Users File Maintenance | Adjust Security Levels | Create Up/Dn Byte Ratio Table. Using this sub-parameter will perform the same action available via System Manager | Users File Maintenance | Adjust Security Levels | Adjust by Up/Dn Byte Ratio. uploads If you use this sub-parameter, the security levels of the users on your system will be adjusted based on the table you have setup in System Manager | Users File Maintenance | Adjust Security Levels | Adjust by Upload Table Using this sub-parameter is identical to System Manager | Users File Maintenance | Adjust Security Levels | Adjust by Number of Uploads downloads If you use this sub-parameter, the security levels of the users on your system will be adjusted based on the table you have setup in System Manager | Users File Maintenance | Adjust Security Levels | Adjust by Download Table Using this sub-parameter is identical to System Manager | Users File Maintenance | Adjust Security Levels | Adjust by Number of Downloads print Use this to specify you wish to print any user that have their security level changed. The output will go to the printer defined in System Manager. This is the only sub-parameter in this section that you can combine with others. For example, the following is perfectly valid: PCBSM /ADJUST;byteratio;print However, this example is not: PCBSM /ADJUST;byteratio;fileratio Example PCBSM /ADJUST;byteratio;print This command line would load System Manager and adjust security levels based on the byte ratio of each user. All users who have their security levels changed will be printed to your defined printer. /SECURITY This command line parameter will allow you to assign a new security level to an existing range of security levels on your system. For example, if you wished to change the security level of everyone between 20 and 30 to simply have security level of 25, use this parameter. lowsec:[security level] Specifies the lowest security level of the range you wish to adjust. You need to also use the highsec sub-parameter to specify the highest number in the range of security levels. Any user record that has a security level which is either equal to or between the lowsec and highsec sub-parameters will have its security level adjusted. Replace [security level] with the actual security level between 0 and 255 (e.g., 82). highsec:[security level] Specifies the lowest security level of the range you wish to adjust. You need to also use the lowsec sub-parameter to specify the lowest number in the range of security levels. Any user record that has a security level which is either equal to or between the lowsec and highsec sub-parameters will have its security level adjusted. Replace [security level] with the actual security level between 0 and 255 (e.g., 105). newsec:[security level] This sub-parameter defines what the new security level will be for the security levels that are specified with the lowsec and highsec sub-parameters. Replace [security level] with the actual security level between 0 and 255 (e.g., 35). Example PCBSM /SECURITY;lowsec:32;highsec:42;newsec:58 Would change the security level of any user with a security level between 32 and 42 and make their new security level 58. /EXPSECURITY This parameter performs the same function as the /SECURITY parameter, but the expired security level is used instead of the normal security level. Using this parameter will prove very useful if you have a bunch of users that have expired security levels between 30 and 40 but you realize you can save time by consolidating them into one single expired level. lowsec:[security level] Specifies the lowest expired security level of the range you wish to adjust. You need to also use the highsec sub-parameter to specify the highest number in the range of expired security levels. Any user record with an expired security level that is either equal to or between the lowsec and highsec sub-parameters will have its security level adjusted. Replace [security level] with an expired security level between 0 and 255 (e.g., 82). highsec:[security level] Specifies the lowest security level of the range you wish to adjust. You need to also use the lowsec sub-parameter to specify the lowest number in the range of expired security levels. Any user record with an expired security level that is either equal to or between the lowsec and highsec sub-parameters will have its expired security level adjusted. Replace [security level] with a valid expired security level between 0 and 255 (e.g., 105). newsec:[security level] This sub-parameters defines what the new security level will be for the security levels specified with the lowsec and highsec sub-parameters. Replace [security level] with the actual security level between 0 and 255 (e.g., 35). Example PCBSM /EXPSECURITY;lowsec:50;highsec:70;newsec:45 Will modify the user records of those who have an expired security level between 50 and 70. Their old expired security level will become 45 as specified by the newsec parameter. /COPYEXPIRED This command line parameter will change the normal security level of users whose subscription has expired to that of their expired security level. This type of change is most helpful when you do not plan on renewing the subscription for a particular user. Usually, the user's normal security level will remain unchanged so that when they renew their subscription they will retain their old access. Using this parameter is the same as selecting System Manager | Users File Maintenance | Adjust Security Levels | Change Security to Expired Level. print This is the only sub-parameter you may specify. If you use it, any users who have their security levels changed will be printed to the printer defined in System Manager. Example PCBSM.EXE /COPYEXPIRED;print This example will change the security level of any user whose subscription has expired. The user's normal security level will be set to equal their expired security level. In addition, because the print sub-command was specified, any user who has their record changed will be printed to the defined printer. /EXPIRE This command line parameter will allow you to change the expiration date of a group of users. The group of users who have their expiration date changed is based on either a range of normal or expired security levels. normalsec If you use this sub-parameter, the security levels you specify using the lowsec and highsec sub-parameters will be based on the normal security level of the user. You must select either this or the expiredsec sub-parameter to tell System Manager whether it should use the regular or expired security level. expiredsec If you use this sub-parameter, the security levels you specify using the lowsec and highsec sub-parameters will be based on the expired security level of the user. You must select either this or the normalsec sub-parameter to tell System Manager whether it should use the regular or expired security level. lowsec:[security level] This sub-parameter will specify the lowest security level for which to adjust the expiration date. Remember that the security level you specify will be based on the normal or expired security level, depending on whether you used the normalsec or expiredsec sub-parameter. Replace [security level] with the actual security level (e.g., 38). This sub-parameter is required. highsec:[security level] This sub-parameter will specify the highest security level for which to adjust the expiration date. Remember that the security level you specified will be based on the normal or expired security level, depending on whether you used the normalsec or expiredsec sub-parameter. Replace [security level] with the actual security level (e.g., 75). This sub-parameter is required. date:[date] You can modify the expiration dates for users specified via the lowsec and highsec parameters, either by a entering a specific date or by increasing the current expiration date by a set amount of days. If you use this parameter, the user's expiration date will be set to the calendar date entered here. The date you specify must be in the MMDDYY format where MM is the month, DD is the day, and YY is the year. You are required to use either this sub-parameter or the days parameter but you may not specify both. days:[number of days] You can modify the expiration dates for users specified via the lowsec and highsec parameters, either by a entering a specific date or by increasing the current expiration date by a set amount of days. If you use this parameter, the user's current expiration date will be increased by the number of days you specify. You are required to use either this sub-parameter or the date parameter but you may not specify both. print This parameter will print information about users whose expiration dates have been modified. This report will be printed to the location you specified in System Manager | Define Printer Port. Example PCBSM /EXPIRE:normalsec;lowsec:30;highsec:40;days:30 This example will add 30 days to the subscription of every user who has a normal security level between 30 and 40. /GROUP This command line parameter will enable you to set or remove the three most commonly used conference flags for a group of users in a range of conferences you specify. insert Use this sub-parameter if you wish to set the flags for the conference(s) you specify. Using this parameter also requires that you use the first, last, lowsec, and highsec parameters. remove Use this sub-parameter if you wish to remove the flags for the conference(s) you specify. Using this parameter also requires that you use the first, last, lowsec, and highsec parameters. first:[conference number] This sub-parameter specifies the first conference number in which users will have their flags modified. This is always used in conjunction with the last sub-parameter to define the range of conferences to be acted upon. last:[conference number] This sub-parameter specifies the last conference number in which users will have their flags modified. This is always used in conjunction with the first sub-parameter to define the range of conferences to be acted upon. lowsec:[security level] This sub-parameter is used to define the lowest security level which will be affected by the conference registration flag modifications. When used in conjunction with the first, last, and highsec sub-parameters, the group of users who will have their conference registration flags modified is defined. highsec:[security level] This sub-parameter is used to define the highest security level which will be affected by the conference registration flag modifications. When used in conjunction with the first, last, and highsec sub-parameters, the group of users who will have their conference registration flags modified is defined. main This sub-parameter enables you to either set or remove the conference registration flag (R). Whether the flag is set or removed depends on whether you use the insert or remove sub-parameter. expired This sub-parameter enables you to set or remove the expired access flag (X). If you use the insert sub-parameter, the user will be given access to the conferences specified even if their subscription has expired. If you use the remove sub-parameter, the users will not have access to the conference when their subscription expires (assuming you have subscription mode enabled). NOTE: Setting the X flag without having an R flag set will lock the user out of a conference. If you really wish for a user to have non-expiring access to a particular conference, you should use the main sub-parameter in conjunction with the expired sub-parameter. scan This sub-parameter sets the scan conference flag (S). Setting this flag selects the conference to be included in any message scans performed, and is similar in effect to the user SELECT command. If a user is unable to join a conference where the S flag is set, the flag will be ignored and the conference will not be included in the scan. reset If this parameter is specified, the last message read pointer will be set to 0 in the conferences specified by the first and last parameters. Example PCBSM /GROUP;insert;first:0;last:2,lowsec:20;highsec:30;main;expired This particular example will register users who have a security level between 20 and 30 in conferences 0, 1, and 2. In addition to being registered, all users will be given access to the conference when their subscription expires because the expired sub-parameter is used. /INDEX Use this parameter to re-index the user file. For this operation all nodes do not have to be down. Normally, you will not need to re-index the user file because PCBoard takes care of maintaining it. However, there are circumstances that can occur in your system configuration (corrupt media, etc.) which may corrupt your index files. Example PCBSM /INDEX This example will index the user file making sure that it is current. /PACK Packing your user file can do the following for you: Insure the USERS, USERS.INF and user index files are all in sync with one another. Remove users from your system who have not called in a specified amount of time. Delete user records that have been marked for deletion or that have been locked out from the system. If you do not use any sub-parameters, System Manager will insure that the USERS, USERS.INF, and user index files are in sync with one another. Because this is a global change to the user file, all nodes must be down before selecting this option. Otherwise, System Manger will continually try to open the USERS file. remove When this sub-parameter is specified, any user who has been marked for deletion (ALT-D when editing user records) or who has a security level of 0 (locked out) will be physically removed from the user file. If you do not want to remove users who are locked out from the system so as to prevent them from recreating a new account, use the lockout sub-parameter. days:[number of days] To help keep the size of your user file in check, you may wish to remove accounts of users who have not called in a certain number of days. This sub-parameter gives you this ability. Replace [number of days] with the actual number of days to have elapsed since the user's last call to be considered an inactive account which may be purged from the user file. since:[date] This sub-parameter will remove users who have not accessed the system since the date you specify. That date you specify must be in MMDDYY format where MM is the month, DD is the day, and YY is the year. expdate:[date] When you use this sub-parameter, any user who has an expiration date earlier than the one you specify (MMDDYY format) will be removed from the user file. keep:[security level] This sub-parameter will prevent users who have the security level you specify (or higher) from being removed regardless of any criteria specified. lockout When you use this sub-parameter it will prevent any users who have been locked out of your system (security level 0) from being deleted. Use this subparameter in conjunction with the remove sub-command. print Any users who are removed from the users file will be printed to the location you specified in System Manager | Define Printer Port Example PCBSM /PACK;remove;lockout;days:180 The example above will remove any user who has been marked for deletion or who has not called within the last 180 days. Because the lockout parameter is specified, users who are locked out of your system will not be deleted. /PURGE This command line parameter is identical to the /PACK parameter except the entire system does not need to be down to pack the users file. This will enable you to perform an online pack of the users file without having to take the entire system down, which becomes increasingly difficult as you add more nodes to your system. Any user who is online when the pack is performed will not be affected. This means that even if the user would have been packed out with the criteria that you specified, the record will not be deleted because the user was currently online. This should not present much of a problem though, as you can pack the file again at a later time when the user is not online. NOTE: Online packing is disabled if you have installed the Alias PSA. Example PCBSM /PURGE;since:010194;keep:100 The example above will remove any user who has not called since January 1, 1994. The keep parameter will insure that no users above security level 100 will be removed. /STANDARDIZE Use this command line parameter if you plan on sorting your users file by phone number, or if you desire a more "standard" looking phone number format for all of your users. When this parameter is specified, System Manager will strip all of the non-numerical data from the phone number fields and reformat it into the following format: 999 999-9999 If a number is shorter than 10 digits, System Manager will begin formatting from the right. This means that if a user enters 5551212 for the phone number, it will be formatted as: 555-1212 Example PCBSM /STANDARDIZE Adjust the home/voice and business/data phone number fields to a standard 999 999-9999 format. /ADDTPA This particular command line switch is designed for third party authors to use so they can easily install a TPA for their software without making you do all the hard work. This is the format of the command line: /ADDTPA;[App_Name];[Version];[Static];[Dynamic];[Keyword] App_Name The name of the application Version The version number to install (digits only) Static Represents the static size (in bytes) to allocate or 0 for none. Dynamic Represents the number of bytes to allocate for each conference or 0 for none. Keyword The keyword for the TPA. For additional information on installing a TPA, please see Add/Update Third Party Application earlier in this section. Example PCBSM /ADDTPA;mail;10;128;1;mail Add a TPA with an application name of Mail and a version number "10". 128 bytes will be reserved for each user on the system with an additional 1 byte per conference. Finally, the keyword is mail. /SORT Sorting the user file gives you a quick method to access information. For example, if you want to find out who has uploaded the most to your system, you can sort the user file by total number of bytes uploaded. When a user file is sorted, you have all of the users in order based on how many bytes they have uploaded. You can sort on a single field or with multiple fields. When you sort on a single field, select an item such as the number of times a user has called the system. System Manager will sort users by the total number of times they have called. If two users have called the same number of times, no attempt is made to put those users in any particular order. If you wish to sort these users by name, do a multi-field sort. Multi-field sorts, will sort any of the following fields: Security level Times ON Files download Files uploaded File ratio Bytes downloaded Bytes uploaded Byte ratio When using a multi-field sort by security level and two or more users have the same security level, System Manager will sort these users who have the same security level alphabetically by name. Once the users are sorted by name, it will move on to the next security level. As a quick example, let's assume you have 5 users in your system: JOHN SMITH Security: 10 JIM JONES Security: 20 SPENCER KORM Security: 20 BILL GATES Security: 0 PAUL BRAINERD Security: 20 If you were to do a single field sort, the users will most likely end up in this order: BILL GATES Security: 0 JOHN SMITH Security: 10 JIM JONES Security: 20 SPENCER KORM Security: 20 PAUL BRAINERD Security: 20 Notice that the security level 20 users are not sorted by name. While this does not present much of a problem for 5 users, it could be very annoying if you have 30,000 users on your system. If you do a multi-field sort based instead on security level then on name, the five users will be sorted in the following order: BILL GATES Security: 0 JOHN SMITH Security: 10 JIM JONES Security: 20 PAUL BRAINERD Security: 20 SPENCER KORM Security: 20 With the exception of the prireverse and secreverse sub-parameters, all parameters specify types of sorts you can perform. If you want to perform a multi-field sort, use name and any of the following: security - Security level timeson - Times on dlfile - Files download ulfile - Files uploaded fratio - File ratio dlbyte - Bytes downloaded ulbyte - Bytes uploaded bratio - Byte ratio The following is a list of the many sub-parameters you can specify for this command line parameter: name Sort by user name field. password Sort by password field. dataphone Sort by the business/data phone number field. homephone Sort by the home/voice phone number field. expdate Sort by the expiration date of each user. usercomment Sort by the comment #1 field. sysopcomment Sort by the comment #2 field. city Sort by the city field. security Sort by the security level field. timeson Sort by the number of times the user has successfully logged in. dlfile Sort by the number of files downloaded. upfile Sort by the number of files uploaded. fratio Sort by the file ratio. dlbyte Sort by the number of bytes downloaded. upbyte Sort by the number of bytes uploaded. bratio Sort by the byte ratio. reverse This sub-parameter is used when you sort by a single field. If you use it, the records will be sorted in reverse order. For example, if you sort by security level, the highest security level will be first in the user file and the lowest security level will be the last record in the file. prireverse This sub-parameter is used in conjunction with multiple field sorts. Normally sorts are performed in ascending order. When you use this parameter, the primary sort field will be sorted in descending order. secreverse Since the only field you can use as a secondary field is the user name, this will cause any duplicates caught by the first sort field to be sorted by name in reverse order. This means that William Plasger will be placed before Andrew Leaver. Examples PCBSM /SORT:security;reverse Sort the user file by security in reverse order placing those with the highest security level at the beginning of the file. PCBSM /SORT:dlbyte;name;prireverse Sort the user file by the number of bytes downloaded (in reverse order) placing those who have downloaded the most towards the beginning of the user file. If two users have the same number of bytes downloaded, they will be sorted by name to determine who should be placed first in the user file. /RETRY:[max number of retries] This command line parameter specifies the number of attempts System Manager should retry on an error. Most commonly, the error will occur when trying to access the USER file when all nodes are not down. However, it is conceivable for the error to be an error reading from disk or other critical error. When you are using the command line parameters to run System Manager in your event, this command line parameter can prove very useful. With the exception of the /PURGE, /INDEX, /RETRY, and /FILE command line parameters, all others require all nodes to be down before proceeding. If all nodes are not down, System Manager will make continuous attempts every 10 seconds to access the USERS file until it becomes free. Of course there is a real problem if you are trying to sort the user file in your 1:00 am event but one of your nodes either failed to go down for the event or was improperly configured. If you were not to catch this until 7:00 am the next morning, you could have lost 6 hours of dial-in time. In a situation like this, using the /RETRY parameter to make 10 retry attempts and then exit to DOS (returning control to your event batch file) is very advantageous. Example PCBSM /PACK;remove /RETRY:20 The example above would pack the users file removing any user that has been marked for deletion or who has a security level of 0. Should an error occur, 20 attempts will be made before System Manager will finally abort the attempt. /FILE:[location of PCBOARD.DAT] System Manager needs to access the PCBOARD.DAT file so it can determine where your user files (and other configuration files) are stored. Normally, System Manager will only look in the current directory for the PCBOARD.DAT file. However, you can tell it where to find the file by using this command line parameter. Simply replace [location of PCBOARD.DAT] with the full path and filename where it can be found (e.g., C:\PCB\PCBOARD.DAT). Example PCBSM /FILE:H:\SHARE\PCBOARD.DAT The example above will load System Manager and specify that it should use the PCBOARD.DAT located in H:\SHARE to find the information about PCBoard.