Simtel MSDOS - Coast to Coast/simteldosarchivecoasttocoast2.iso/citadel/k2ne603b.zip/CTDL_MAN.ZIP/UTIL3.MAN

Text File | 1988-02-25 | 17KB | 531 lines

                        UTILITIES MANUAL

                        CITADEL-86 V3.03

                            by Hue, Jr.

                      C-86 Test System Sysop

                             88Mar01



















































                       TABLE OF CONTENTS

     History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
     Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
     Clog.exe  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
     Clray.exe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
     Recover1.exe  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
     Expand.exe  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
     Recover2.exe  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
     DataChng.exe  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
     Logedit.exe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
     Popular.exe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
     Culldir.exe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
     Nodelist.exe  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
     Loadshar.exe  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7








































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                              History

        The following is a chronological chart of the history of the updates
     of the C-86 utilities.

     88Jan04 HAW Culldir, Nodelist, and Loadshar detailed.  Lexpand deleted.
     87Oct16 HAW V3 of Citadel-86 update.
     86Apr08 HAW Version 2 of Popular detailed.
     86Apr01 HAW Popular detailed.
     85Aug25 HAW Ctdlchng expanded.
     85Aug10 HAW Logedit detailed.
     85May25 HAW Lexpand detailed.
     85Apr25 HAW Reviewed for MS-DOS conversion.
     85Feb18 HAW Recover2 detailed.
     84Dec09 HAW Expand changed.
     84Jun29 HAW Ctdlchng detailed.
     84Jun28 HAW Expand detailed.
     84Jun27 HAW Recover1 detailed.
     84Jun26 HAW Clray detailed.
     84Jun26 HAW Created. Clog detailed.


                               Introduction

        Since the days of yore when we received Citadel from CUG (C User's
     Group), several utilities of interest have been added to the package to
     supplement the original two .com files that came with the package, to wit
     CITADEL.COM and CONFIGUR.COM.  These come in two types: one, to provide
     information about what's going on inside this monster which, due to
     runtime space considerations, could not be gotten at; two, the ability to
     change certain parameters which were either impossible to change once a
     BBS was set up, or were, at the least, difficult to change.
        The descriptions (such as they are) follow herein!

                               Clog.exe

        Clog provides access to the userlog for the Sysop.  To use it, the file
     CTDLTABL.SYS (the one generated by CONFG and maintained by CTDL.EXE)
     must be on the default disk, and so must be CTDLLOG.SYS.

        There are two ways of using Clog.  First, there is the simple call:

             D>CLOG

     This will print out on the console the list of users in the file as they
     appear in the file.  The user of this program should be warned that
     Citadel does not put new users into the userlog in sequential order.
     Instead, they are hashed into the log.  Usually, first user to log into
     the system ends up occupying the last position in the file!  In general,
     users are sprinkled everywhere, so don't be alarmed if nothing shows up
     right away.  Be patient.








                                    -2-






        In any case, the list is printed out as follows.  First, the log
     position will be printed out, which will always be in sequential order.
     If nobody occupies that position, then Clog proceeds to the next log
     position.  If somebody does occupy that position, then the name of that
     person (or alias) will be printed out, followed by his/her status as
     aide, expert/non-expert, and screen width.

        The second way to use Clog is to give it arguments.  There is one
     argument currently available in the MS-DOS version, and it is the -P
     argument:

           D>CLOG -P

        This will cause the passwords to be listed along with the user's name.
     This is useful if somebody forgets their password.

        If, for some reason, the sysop wants a list to be put out to a file,
     use the MS-DOS re-direction commands. If you want the list to be put out
     to the file LOG.LST, the type

           D>CLOG >LOG.LST

     Naturally, the -P argument may still be used when re-directing output.

                               Clray.exe

        Clray.exe is another program used to view the userlog.  As before,
     CTDLTABL.SYS must be on the default disk in the root directory, as must
     CTDLLOG.SYS.  There are currently no arguments for Clray.

        Clray's purpose is to allow the sysop to see what order the users have
     been calling in, starting with the last caller.  Along with the users
     name, his/her aide status, column width, and expert status will be
     printed, as in Clog.

        Simply call Clray to run it. Output redirection may be used as in CLOG.

                               Recover1.exe

        Occasionally, a room may be killed by accident by an aide.  Or worse,
     a Village Idiot will break an aide's password, and then kill rooms which
     the Sysop thinks has socially redeeming value.  It is at this point that
     Recover1 may be of use.

        Recover1 may only be used if the following applies -- rooms have been
     killed, but no rooms have been created.  If a room(s) has been created,
     it may have overwritten the old data. Rooms which weren't overwritten can
     still be saved of course.  If new rooms have been created, Recover2.exe
     should be used.










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        To use Recover1, the system should be setup as normal. Simply call
     Recover1.  It will read in CTDLTABL.SYS.  Then it will start looking at
     the rooms as found in CTDLTABL.SYS.  When it finds evidence that a room
     has been killed, it will printout on the screen the name of the room, and
     ask the Sysop if s/he wants Recover1 to try to save the room.  If it
     receives an upper or lower case Y, then it will do so.  Currently, there
     is no reason known why it shouldn't succeed.

        When finished it will announce so and replace CTDLTABL.SYS with the
     updated version, and then leave.  However, hopefully you'll never need
     this program.

                               Expand.exe

        Expand's purpose in life is to allow the sysop to expand the size of
     his/her message file (CTDLMSG.SYS).  This makes it easy to move upwards
     as one gets rich running Citadel for cold, hard cash and acquires better
     and better equipment.

        Expand expects to the system to be in its normal setup.  Simply call
     Expand without arguments.  Once it has loaded CTDLTABL.SYS, it will
     display the current size of the message file, and then ask for the new
     size.  Answer in Kbytes.  Now Expand will do it's job.  THIS IS A SLOW
     PROCESS.  Be patient.  The program will be printing some stuff out that
     might allow the sysop to figure out where the program is.

        Once the program is done, it will say so, and will also tell you that
     there is no reason to reconfigure.  This is true.


                               Recover2.exe

        Recover2.exe is to be used in the extreme emergency of either A)
     someone breaking an aide pwd and deleting rooms and then creating other
     rooms, thus negating the utility of Recover1.exe, or B) the loss or
     contamination of CTDLROOM.SYS.

        Use of Recover2.exe really should be avoided. The effects of
     Recover2.exe are:

      * All <Z>Forgotten room lists are totally screwed up;
      * Privacy status of rooms are lost and will have to be reset;
      * Directory status of rooms are also lost and will have to be reset;
      * Deleted messages will reappear in their rooms of origin;
      * And so will inserted messages.
      * Various other room privileges will be lost or screwed up.
      * Everything will end up on the base floor.

        Recover2.exe works by scanning the message file. Each message has
     associated with it its room of origin, so the program is fairly simple.

        However, it is also rather slow.

        The system should setup as normal.





                                    -4-






                               DataChng.exe

        The purpose of the DataChng.exe utility is to give the sysop the
     ability to non-destructively several CTDLCNFG.SYS parameters.  The
     relevant parameters are:

     #MAXROOMS
     #MSG-SLOTS
     #MAIL-SLOTS
     #LOGSIZE
     #SHARED-ROOMS
     #NET-ARCH-ROOMS

        ALWAYS MAKE BACKUPS BEFORE USING THIS UTILITY!

        DataChng is a very crude and simple menu-driven program which exits
     when an illegal selection is made from the menu.  On valid selections,
     DataChng will ask for a new value, and then ATTEMPT to modify your
     installation for the new value.  NOTE: As of this writing, the system
     attempts all changes IN MEMORY.  If there is not enough RAM, then this
     utility fails.  This should only happen for very large installations
     ("large", in this case, does not refer to the message base; see
     EXPAND.EXE for details on expanding your message base).  If this happens
     to you, then you should either attempt to hack the source for this
     utility so that it uses temporary files (a tedious but simple procedure),
     or entice someone into doing it for you (ibid).

        With the exception of the LOGSIZE parameter, all of the parameters may
     either be shrunk or expanded.  LOGSIZE can only (currently) be expanded.

        Make sure to update your CTDLCNFG.SYS after using DataChng.exe!
     However, you do NOT need to use CONFG.EXE after using DataChng.exe.

                               Logedit.exe

        LOGEDIT is provided for when strange things start happening in the
     log file, such as duplicate or semi-duplicate logs start appearing.
     LOGEDIT allows any account to be killed purely by account# (position
     in the log).

        To run, make sure the system is setup normally, and run LOGEDIT.  After
     some grinding, the system will ask you what account you want to kill.
     Give it the number, it will display name and pwd, and ask for
     confirmation.  If you answer yes, then the account will be killed.  It
     will then ask for an account to kill again.  When finished killing
     accounts, answer this prompt with the number it should provide.













                                    -5-






                               Popular.exe

        The POPULAR utility is a statistics-gathering utility, and, as such,
     can be easily viewed as your basic feeping creaturism.  However, for those
     of us who have somehow acquired that horrible taste for odd statistics
     about how people use Citadel, it does serve some purpose.

        POPULAR gathers statistics about the Public rooms on a system.  These
     statistics consist of simply calculating how many people have forgotten
     each Public room on a system.  Yes, a rather odd statistic to gather, but
     there it is.  Once it has finished processing the data, it displays the
     results in tabular form, in (roughly) the following form:

     <room name>  <# of people who have forgotten this room> <% of total users>

        To use this utility, simply make sure your data files are in their
     normal drives, and run this program.  The output of this program may be
     redirected to a file via the MS-DOS ">" directive, although not all the
     output will end up in the output file.  Unimportant output will continue
     to go to the screen; the important data will end up in the file you
     designated.

        There is one command line option available, "-M".  If this option is on
     the command line to Popular, it will also scan the message file, counting
     the number of messages that originated in each room, and display that
     value for each public room in the same tabular format.


                               Culldir.exe

        The Culldir utility is to be used in conjunction with active directory
     rooms.  Let's face it: while the FILEDIR.TXT/.RE option is real handy for
     directory rooms, it's a real pain trying to keep FILEDIR.TXT culled of
     files that no longer exist in the directory.  That's what Culldir is for.
     It will go through a FILEDIR.TXT and delete all entries in it for which
     files do not exist in the current directory.

        Usage is very simple.  Place yourself in the DOS directory that has
     a FILEDIR.TXT with extra entries in it, and run Culldir.  It expects all
     of the data that it will work on to be on the default drive, in the
     current directory.  If it doesn't find a FILEDIR.TXT, it will abort
     operation.  Culldir is unique amongst the utilities in that it doesn't
     need any of the normal Citadel-86 data files -- only a directory with
     FILEDIR.TXT in it.















                                    -6-






                               Nodelist.exe

        Nodelist is intended to help you maintain, in some slight way, your
     netlist.  There are two modes to Nodelist, with and without arguments.

        When you run Nodelist without arguments, its output to the screen will
     consist of a listing of shared rooms.  Underneath each shared room will
     be a list of the systems that you are sharing the room with, terminated
     by a blank line.  If you redirect this output to a file via MS-DOS's
     redirection ('>') abilities, then the file's format is adequate for the
     Loadshar utility.

        Using arguments with Nodelist will, of course, alter its behavior.
     There are two arguments currently supported.  The first is "-n".  This
     causes all the nodes on your nodelist that are not disabled to be listed.
     The second argument is "-nd", and causes all nodes on your nodelist,
     regardless of their status, to be listed.


                                Loadshar.exe

        Loadshar is unique amongst the Citadel-86 utilities -- it's
     self-documenting!  Its purpose is to make it easy to setup a room sharing
     list, particularly when starting a new system that will be part of a
     heavily networked area, or after a crash that destroys a nodelist.  Using
     this utility, a sysop can create necessary room sharing lists by simply
     creating a textfile that lists what systems are sharing which nodes.

        The format of such a textfile is like this:

                <room name 1>
                <node 1>
                <node 2>                        -- nodes sharing this room
                ...
                <last node>
                <blank line>
                <room name 2>
                ...

        Each room name must be correct and complete (case-insensitive), as must
     be the node names.  The blank line indicates the end of the list of nodes
     sharing that room.

        Loadshar should be run like any other utility: all of the system data
     files should be in their normal places so that the utility can access
     them.  Loadshar without arguments prints its documentation.  Loadshar
     accepts as arguments one or more filenames which list the room names and
     the nodes sharing them.  No ambiguous file names, please.

        Running Loadshar more than once is not dangerous.

        There are some problems with Loadshar, although generally they are not
     significant for the typical sysop.  First, do not EVER run this from the
     <O>utside commands menu -- NEVER!  Second, there is no way to indicate
     backbone status using this stuff.  Sorry.




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