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██████ ██ ██ ██████ ███████ ███████ ██▒▒▒▒██ ██ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒▒▒▒▒▒ ██▒▒▒▒▒▒ ██▒▒▒▒██ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒ ████████▒ ██ ██ ██████ █████ ██▒ ██▒ ██████ ██████ ███████▒ ██▒▒▒▒██▒ ██▒ ██▒ ▒██▒▒▒ ██▒▒▒██ ██▒ ██▒ ▒▒▒▒██ ██▒▒▒▒▒ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒ ██▒ █████▒▒ ██▒ █████▒ ███████▒ ██████▒▒ ███████ ██▒ ██▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ─────────────────────── Version 2.31 ─────────────────────── For Remote Access & QuickBBS USERS.BBS format user files (C) Copyright 1991, 1992 by Brian Pirie - All Rights Reserved This software may be distributed and used free of charge, so long as no changes are made to the distribution package, and that no profits are made from the distribution or use of the software. The author of this software will not be responsible for any damages, coincidental or otherwise, that result from the use of the programs enclosed. The newest version of AutoUser is file-requestable from 1:243/8 under the magic word AUTOUSER, for you FidoNet folks. INTRODUCTION ──────────── AutoUser is a powerful program that will automatically update your QBBS/RA compatible USERS.BBS files, according to various criteria. You can have it automatically change the flags or security levels of all users according to their flags, security levels, or upload:download and/or msg:call ratios. AutoUser provides the following distinct functions for user base managment: 1.) "AUTO-UPDATING" - This is the feature of AutoUser that allows you to automatically adjust the security levels of all users according to their Upload:Download and Messages Written:Calls ratios. This can be used to provide a system whereby users who contribute more to the system are rewarded by having more access to the board. You tell AutoUser which people you wish it to qualify for Auto- Updating, and which security levels to assign them according to the ratio's you decide upon. You can then customize your BBS to provide more time / more features to those users with the higher security levels. A second utility, USERSTAT, will provide you with a list of users, along with their security levels and ratios, to allow you to easily decide which ratios should have which access level, and to make it easy to spot "deliquant" users. 2.) "MASS-EDITING" - This second, distinct feature of AutoUser can be used to do a mass-update of user security levels or flags. You can have AutoUser make these changes to all users, or only to users with certain flags or secuirty levels. There are a great many uses for this feature, most of which you will probably not realize off- hand. For example, say you wanted to provide a feature that you only wanted users to be able to access once-per week, such as a trivia game. You could simply have a flag that indicates whether the user has used that feature yet, and only allow access if the flag is not set. When they access this feature, the flag is turned on, to prevent repeated access. Then, once per week, you could use AutoUser to switch all the flags off again. Also, if you decide to change your system structure, AutoUser could be invaluable in adjusting users' security levels and flags. The possibilities are endless! 3.) "USER LOTTERY" - This third feature of AutoUser provides a user lottery system whereby each day one or more users are drawn from the user base to recieve an extra high access level for just that day. 4.) "TOP USERS BULLETINS" - This fourth feature of AutoUser can be used to generate ANSI and ASCII bulletin files, which list the users who participate the most in the BBS. These include top callers, message writters, uploaders and downloaders. If you also choose to use the lottery feature, these bulletins will include the lottery winners each day. THE CONFIGURATION FILE ────────────────────── The first thing you must do before being able to use AutoUser is to create an AUTOUSER.CFG file. Some sample configuration files are included in the distribution package. All lines in the configuration file with a ; are ignored, but blank lines are not permitted. The first, non-comment line of your AUTOUSER.CFG file must be the name (full-path optional) of your USERS.BBS format user file. Here is a sample .CFG file: ; AUTOUSER.CFG - Configuration file for AutoUser. ; ; USERS.BBS path: users.bbs ; ; Produce log when Auto-Updating? AUTOLOG OFF ; ; Lottery settings LOTTERY 5 100 ; ; Top User bulletins settings TOP TOPUSERS.ANS TOPUSER.ASC ; ; ; Default Security level: (for users with no UL:DL ratio) 10 ; ; Security Levels to Auto-Update: (in order) 10 20 30 40 50 ; ; Best UL:DL ratio (as decimal) to still be placed ; at each of the above security levels: (again in order) ; 1:3 1:2 1:1 2:1 3:1 0.333 0.5 1 2 3 ; ; Type of Ratio to use (either RATIO K or RATIO TIMES) RATIO TIMES ; ; Minimum Msg written:Call ratio's required to change ; security level's by given amount: (must be in decending ; order) 5 2000 3 1000 o If you wish to use the "Auto-Updating" feature, the lines following the USERS.BBS filename, are: Security levels to qualify for Auto-Updating, the UL:DL ratios (calculated as a decimal of UL's ÷ DL's) to be placed at each security level, and the MSG:CALL ratios to adjust these security levels. These settings are described in much more detail in the AUTO-UPDATING section. o If you wish to disable the "Auto-Updating" feature, the first non-commented line following the USERS.BBS filename should have the word (in upper-case) NOAUTO, as shown here: ; AUTOUSER.CFG - Configuration file for AutoUser. ; ; USERS.BBS path: users.bbs ; ; Disable the Auto-Updating feature: NOAUTO ; ; end-of-file. It is strongly suggested that you edit the sample AUTOUSER.CFG files instead of starting from scratch - it is much easier this way. AUTO-UPDATING ───────────── For the sake of argument, let's say you wanted to setup a system whereby the users of you BBS are given more time on-line, and greater download limits per day the more they contribute to the board, as follows: Upload:Download Ratio │ Time Per Day │ Download limit ───────────────────────┼────────────────┼──────────────── 1:3 │ 50 min │ 300K 1:2 │ 58 min │ 350K 1:1 │ 66 min │ 400K 2:1 │ 74 min │ 450K 3:1 │ 82 min │ 500K (you can choose any numbers you wish here....) Also, you want to "bump up" the security level of any users who write more than 3 messages per call once, and bump it up twice for those who write more than 5 messages per call. All you have to do is setup the AUTOUSER.CFG file, run AUTOUSER either once per day as an event, or everytime a user logs off, and setup your LIMITS.CTL file as shown in your QBBS or RA manual! I'll leave the second two of these up to you, and concentrate on how to setup the AUTOUSER.CFG file... The second non-commented line in your AUTOUSER.CFG file will allow you to turn on and off the log feature. Depending on wether you wish to use this function, this line must contain either AUTOLOG ON or AUTOLOG OFF. You may find it usefull for figuring out which ratios to use, to turn on the AutoLog function. This feature will simply produce an AUTOUSER.LOG, listing users' names, security levels, and why the Auto- update feature made any changes it did. The third non-commented line in your AUTOUSER.CFG file should list the security level to be given to users who have either not uploaded, not downloaded, or both. In this case you will probably want to set this value to 10. The fourth non-commented line in your AUTOUSER.CFG should list the security levels you wish to use for these users, in order, seperated by a single space. Let's say you wanted to make the first entry on the above chart have a security level of 10, the second 20, and so on up to 50, this line would simply list: 10 20 30 40 50 AutoUser will then only Auto-Update (this will NOT effect any Mass-user-edits you wish to do) users with any of these security levels. It will never Auto-Update users to security levels higher than the last number, nor to any lower than the lowest number (again, keep in mind that this does not effect the Mass-user-edit feature). This way, you can also have users (perhaps those who have donated money), who are not required to upload at all in order to keep their access level, by giving them, say level 100 access. Also, if you give new users a secuirty level of 5, then this program will not automatically upgrade them to a higher level before they have been verified! The fifth non-commented line in your AUTOUSER.CFG should then list the upload download ratios for each user. Calculate this value by dividing the number of uploads in the ratio to the number of downloads. Therefore, 1 upload per 10 downloads would become 0.1. For the ratios listed in the chart, we would then make this line read: 0.333 0.5 1 2 3 These numbers are the highest ratio to place at each of the corresponding security levels. If the user's ratio is better than the one listed for a given security level, then they are bumped up to the next one. Therefore, if a user had a ratio of 1 upload per 5 downloads, they would have a security level of 10, as they would if their ratio was exactly 1:3. However, if they had a ratio of 1 upload per 2.5 downloads, then they would then be given a security level of 20. Again, you will probably want to adjust these numbers for your own particular situation. Just keep in mind that the numbers should each be seperated by one space, and that you must list the same number of ratios as security levels. If you do not wish to have a users' upload:download ratio to effect their security levels, but only their Message Written:Calls ratio, then simply set all ratios to a ridiclously high or low value (which no user will have), depending on whether you want the default security level to be the first or last one on the list. The next non-commented line in AUTOUSER.CFG will allow you to choose what type of ratio to use for the Upload:Download's. This may be either RATIO K for the total K uploaded and down- loaded, or RATIO TIMES, for the total number of transfers performed. In addition to the Upload:Download ratios adjusting users security levels, you may wish to give users who have written an extra large number of messages a higher security level than their Upload:Download ratio would normally give them. Or, alternatively, you may wish to decrease their security level if they have written too few messages relative to their number of calls. These ratios are listed on the remaining non-commented lines of the AUTOUSER.CFG file, with each line listing first the MSG:CALL ratio (as a decimal again), followed by the amount to change the security level. If you do not wish the MSG:CALL ratios to effect users' access, simply do not list any more lines in the file. It is important that you list these ratios in decending order, with the best ratio first, and worst ratio last. Therefore, for the hypothetical system we mentioned above, the remaining lines of the file would look as follows: 5 20 3 10 People with a 5:1 or better MSG:CALL ratio would have their security levels increased 20 (to a maximum of 50, in this case), and people with a 3:1 or better MSG:CALL ratio would have their security levels increased 10. If you wish to decrease their security levels for extra poor ratios (say 0.4 or worse), simply add to the list as follows: .4 0 .000001 -10 Notice the different structure here... In this case, anyone with .4 or BETTER would not have their security levels changed (hence the 0), and people between .0000001 (no-one will ever be worse than this) and .4 would have their level decreased by 10. As well as using the Auto-Updating feature for awarding users who contribute a lot to the system with more time / access, you may wish to use it to provide an upload:download ratio enforcer for QuickBBS. Since all versions of QuickBBS to date do not offer any way to enforce an upload:download ratio (without using an external program), you can have AutoUser decrease users with UL:DL ratios less than say, 1:10 to a security level where you do not allow downloads, forcing them to upload before they can download some more. MASS-USER-EDITING ───────────────── This second feature of AutoUser is not affected by your settings in AUTOUSER.CFG, except that it still requires the USERS.BBS path to be supplied. If you have also enabled the Auto-Updating feature, AutoUser will perform this function at the same time as it does the Mass-User-Edit. If you do not wish to use the Auto-Updating feature, as mentioned before, you can disable it by placing the NOAUTO keyword on the second, non-commented line of the AUTOUSER.CFG file. Mass-User-Editing is a feature that allows you change the flags or security levels of you users according to their current settings. The Mass-User-Editing feature is activiated by entering the user-edit command on the command line. Please note that the command line MUST BE IN CAPS! The format for the AutoUser command line is as follows: ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ AUTOUSER IF <L|=|G|flag=><value> <SL|flag=><value> │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ If no parameters are specified, then only the Auto-Update feature will be activated. To use the Mass-User-Edit feature, the format is the keyword IF, followed by the test value, followed by what to do if the users meets the test value. For example, AUTOUSER IF A4=0 A4=1 would turn on the A4 flag for any users in which it is turned off (essentially just turning it on for everyone). The test value can be any of the following: o A1= through D8= - test a given flag's value. (ie. C4=1 would make changes only to users who have flag C4 switched on. o = - test for security levels equal to the given value. (ie. =100 would make changes only to users who have a security level of 100) o G - test for security levels greater than the given value. (ie. G5 would make changes only to users who have a security level greater than 5) o L - test for security levels less than the given value. As above. The third parameter, the result operator, simply tells AutoUser what to do with all users who meet the test value above. It can either be a flag setting (A4=0, C8=1, etc.) or a security level setting, in which case you use SL= (eg. SL=200). Here are some sample Mass-User-Edit commands for AutoUser: AUTOUSER IF G5 A1=0 - Turn off flag A1 if security level is greater than 5. AUTOUSER IF =10 SL=20 - Upgrade all users with security levels of 10 to 20. AUTOUSER IF L31 D5=1 - Turn on flag D5 for all users with a security level of 30 or lower. AUTOUSER IF B8=0 SL=0 - Lock out all users (set security level to 0) who have flag B8 off. AUTOUSER IF C3=1 C3=0 - Turn off flag C3 for all users. Again, remember that the command line must be in UPPER CASE, and be careful in what you do with the Mass-User-Edit feature. AutoUser will reliably do whatever you tell it, without asking any questions. If you make a mistake, and say turn off flag C1 instead of B1, you would accidentally loose information such as which users have donated, or whatever. Even if you did not user AutoUser, I would still strongly encourage you to backup your USERS.BBS file on a regular basis! THE LOTTERY FEATURE ─────────────────── This function, as described above, will on a daily basis, draw one or more users who will win an extra high access level. To activate this feature, simply place at the end of the LOTTERY line in the configuration file the number of users you wish win each day, and the security level they should be given for that day. If you have the Bulletin feature turned on AutoUser will also list each day's winners in this file. Note that only users with security levels listed in the Auto-Update security level line will be adjusted by the lottery feature. If a user wins the Lottery, but does not qualify, his security level will not be adjusted. Thus, if you have AutoUser set to draw five users per day, but one of these users does not qualify, there will actually be only four winners that day. Also, note that in this version of AutoUser you may only have a maximum of ten winners per day. When you run AutoUser the next day, the previous winners will be returned back to the normal security level. WARNING!!! It is very important that if you use the lottery feature, that the security level for lottery winners is NOT used for anything else! TOP USERS BULLETINS ─────────────────── This feature of AutoUser is used to generate an ANSI and ASCII bulletin file listing the users with the most number of calls, the users who have uploaded the most, the users who have downloaded the most, and the users who have written the most number of messages. Also, if you are using the lottery feature of AutoUser, each day's winners will be included in these bulletins. To activate the Top Users Bulletins generator, you simply include the ANSI and ASCII filenames you wish to have generated after the TOP keyword in the AutoUser configuration file. These files will have Remote Access / QuickBBS control codes for pausing and clearing the screen imbedded in them. THE INCLUDED SAMPLE SETUP ───────────────────────── Also included in the AutoUser distribution package are some sample configuration, control and text files for a typical AutoUser setup. You will most likely want to make many changes to this configuration, but it will get you started. The SEC10.ASC, SEC100.ASC and so on files would be placed in your textfiles directory, and everything else in your main BBS directory. The sample setup is configured to auto-update user's according to their file upload:download ratios and msg :call ratios, to draw 5 users per day for the lottery, and to produce the Top Users Bulletins. Security level 5 is set as new user security, levels 10-50 are used for auto-adjusting, level 100 is used for Lottery winners, and 32000 for the sysop. There is no reason why you should have to stick with this setup, however! THE USERSTAT UTILITY ──────────────────── Also included with AutoUser is the UserStat utility, a program which will list all uses, along with their security levels, UL:DL ratios and MSG:CALL ratios in an easy to read chart. On the command line, you must specify the filename/path of your USERS.BBS file; this utility does not refer to the AUTOUSER.CFG file. For example: USERSAT USERS.BBS Would list all users, along with the above mentioned information on the screen. If you wish to re-direct this output to a file, you can: USERSTAT USERS.BBS > USERSTAT.TXT This utility can be useful for deciding what ratios to use in your AUTOUSER.CFG file to be most fair to your users. It will also be useful for spotting "delinquant" users who have not uploaded very much, have not written many message, and so on. THAT'S ALL FOLKS! ───────────────── If you experience any problems with this software, or if you would like either a newer version, or to make suggestions you wish to see in future version, you can contact me via FidoNet netmail to 1:243/8. Alternatively, you may log onto the BBS by calling +1 613 526 4466. Also, if you wish to fill out the included feedback-form, it would be more than appreciated! Thank-you, and enjoy!