Oakland CPM Archive/oakcpm.iso/sigm/vol092/rbbs31a.doc

Text File | 1984-04-29 | 8.6 KB | 218 lines

Changes for RBBS 3.1:

1.  User now receives the message ">>>ACCESS DENIED<<<" if he attempts
to enter CP/M and there is an asterisk next to his entry in USERS.

2.  The Kill Command reprompts for another message to kill in the same
fashion as the Read command.

3.  A ^K during a forward sequential Read just skips the rest of the
current message being displayed and goes on to the next one.
--------------------

                  RBBS 3.0 Preliminary Documentation

RBBS Version 3.0 is based on RBBS 2.4 and incorporates several mods
from RBBS-RTN.001.  However, it goes far beyond those mods to fix many
longstanding bugs as well as add many new features.

The major new feature is a working user password scheme which
minimally impacts present systems running older versions of RBBS.

The first version of this program has been in use for about a month on
three RCP/M systems in the El Paso, TX area and has received a
thorough debugging which led directly to this first public release.

To run this version, you will also need MENURBBS and NEWCOM text
files, as well as making up your own versions of PWDS, BULLETIN, INFO,
and ENTERCPM text files.  Only MENURBBS and ENTERCPM are new, and
ENTERCPM may be extracted from your existing RBBS source file to use.

Users running older versions of RBBS will have to edit their USERS
file to replace the blanks between fields with semicolons and add a
new field for the initial default password as follows:

JOE USER;ANYCITY, USA;DEFAULT

Be sure to us overwrite rather than insert mode to make these changes.

The only major drawback to bringing this program up in .COM file
format is that you will not only need BASCOM and L80, but also a TPA
of at least 54K to run L80.  Alternately, if you have access to
PLINKII, you will not have a problem with linking this program.

You will also have to make some trivial mods to the source to
customize it for you local implementation:

1.  Change VERS1$ in line 190 to be your own system name.

2.  Change SYS1$ and SYS2$ in line 200 to your (the SYSOP's) first and
last name, respectively.

3.  Change DSK$ in line 220 to the drive containing all the files read
or used by RBBS.

4.  Remove the REM in lines 890 and 7140 if you want RBBS to store the
first four characters of the caller's last name beginning at 40H.
This information may then be used by other programs, such as special
versions of XMODEM, to log the caller's name in some file.

5.  Change the value for the OUT statement in line 4290.  It is
presently set up to output a zero in port 82H for a DCHayes modem
addressed at 80H.

6.  Change your PWDS file to add two new fields, ending up looking
like the following format:

field1,field2,field3,field4

where:

field1 is the "first name" for direct entry to CP/M

field2 is the "last name" used for the SYSOP login

field3 is the "password" or answer to the prompt in field4 (or NOPASS,
in which case no password is required of the user)

field4 is the prompt string that the user must answer to match field3.

Enjoy!

--Frank Wancho

------------------------------------------------------------

     EARLIER DOCUMENTATION DISTRIBUTED WITH VERSION 2.2
     ==================================================

    This is a preliminary documentation file for the 2.0
version of RBBS (Remote Bulletin Board System).  More com-
plete documentation, to include a complete overview as well
as more detailed implementation notes, is planned.

============================================================

RBBS PROGRAM

    The RBBS software has four new features with the 2.0
implementation:

    1) Personal messages:  A caller can leave a personal
       message to anyone else by entering the password
       "*".  This causes the message to be invisible in
       summary commands, and retrieve and kill, for any-
       one but the sender and receiver.  An attempt to
       Kill a personal message by anyone other than the
       sender or receiver (and, of course, the SYSOP),
       will result in a "message not found".

    2) Re-entry:  when a user has exited to the operating
       system, RBBS will retain his name in a file called
       "LASTCALR".    If RBBS is subsequently re-entered
       with RBBS P (the "P" was arbitrarily chosen), the
       system will retrieve his name from the "LASTCALR"
       file, and skip the sign-on printing.  Note that if
       you are using a loader program to load RBBS from
       another user area (under cp/m 2.x), you can make
       this function automatic, by having the loader fill
       in the "P" immediately before it transfers control
       to RBBS.  In this case, your BYE program should
       store a non-"P" character at location 5DH (default
       cp/m file control block).

    3) Killed messages will now have additional information
       in the record used to store the message number:
            0:<#>:<user name>
       where 0 indicates a killed message to RBBS, <#> is
       the original message number, and <user name> is the
       name of the user who killed the message.  This should
       be helpful in restoring messages improperly killed
       by inept/malicious individuals.  Note that after
       using an editor to restore the message (be careful
       here - the editor must not choke on blank-filled
       lines), the "BUILDSUM" function of the RBBSUTIL pro-
       gram can be used to generate a new summary file.

    4) Message passwords, previously only stored in the sum-
       mary file, are now duplicated in the message file.
       This was necessary to allow the BUILDSUM function of
       RBBSUTIL to generate a complete summary file.

==============================================================

RBBS UTILITY PROGRAM (RBBSUTIL)

    The utility program has the following changes with the
2.0 upgrade:

    1) When transferring a disk file to the message file,
       the files must have already been purged.  This in-
       sures that the files will have been backed up prior
       to any messages being added.  Note also that the
       file "COUNTERS" will also be backed up by purge.

    2) The purge function writes deleted messages to an ar-
       chive file called <DATE>.ARC, where the date is sup-
       plied by the operator when purge is invoked.  The
       archive file is written sequentially, and lines are
       unpacked before writing to conserve space.

    3) The purge function allows renumbering of the messages
       starting at any number specified when purge is in-
       voked.  You may choose not to use this option if you
       maintain archives, because duplicate message numbers
       can be left in the archive files.

    4) A new function, "B", will build a summary file from
       the message file.  This can be useful after editing
       the message file.  It also allows only the message
       file to be saved when doing back-up operations, as
       the summary file can now be derived from the message
       file.  Note that releases of RBBS previous to 2.0 did
       not save the passwords in the message file, there-
       fore, a summary file, rebuilt from such a message
       file will not have password protection.

                    Ron Fowler
                    Nov 18, 1980
                    Westland, Mich.


      PREVIOUS DOCUMENTATION OF THE RBBS SYSTEM
      =========================================


            RBBS.DOC as of 10/23/80

   RBBS is short for "Remote Bulletin Board System".
   RBBS.ASC is a file that was created with MBASIC 5.2.  Do
not try to edit it with a CP/M text editor because some  of
the multiple line statements may have special end-of-line
sequences which may mess up a video-oriented editor, making it
impossible to see some of the lines.  Use MBASIC 5.2 to edit the
file.  This is public-domain software, feel free to use it on
your own system.  The  best  way to run this program is to com-
pile it with the MBASIC compiler, making a COM file out of it.
It will run much faster  that way.  This is what Bruce Ratoff
did, and it works great on his system.
   The POKES to address 0000h change the C3 to a CD during
execution  of this program.  Bruce Ratoff tests for this in
his DCHBYE55  remote  console program. This testing is also done
in the PMMIBY63 remote console program. In the input from modem
port routine a test is made to see if address 0000h is a CD, if
so it causes the input routine to ignore control-C, changing it
to to a null character instead.  This makes it impossible for
the user to control-C  out of RBBS.   When the program is done,
if you are exiting to CP/M for file transfers, it changes the CD
back to a C3 and then jumps to 0000h (warm boot).
   RBBSPURG.ASC is a program for purging dead messages out of
the RBBS message files.  This should be done periodically to
compactthe message files, since  the "Kill" function simply
deletes  the pointer to the message, not the message itself.

-------
 NOTE: The above RBBSPURG.ASC has been superceded by
     RBBSUTIL.ASC      rgf
-------