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Text File | 1992-08-17 | 202KB | 4,348 lines

┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ ▒▒▒▄▄▒▒▒▄ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▄ ▒▒▄ ▒▒▄ A QWK-compatible mail door for RBBS-PC │ │ ▒▒█▒▒█▒▒█ ▒▒█▀▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ Copyright (C) 1991-92 Newark Connections │ █ │ ▒▒█ ▀▀▒▒█ ▒▒▒▒▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ All rights reserved │ █ │ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ │ █ │ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▄ Version 2.02 - August 17, 1992 │ █ │ ▀▀ ▀▀ ▀▀ ▀▀ ▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀ │ █ │ ▒▒▒▄▄▒▒▒▄ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▄ ▒▒▒▄▄ ▒▒▄ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▄ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▄ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▄ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▄ │ █ │ ▒▒█▒▒█▒▒█ ▒▒█▀▒▒█ ▒▒█▒▒█▒▒█ ▒▒█▀▒▒█ ▒▒█▀▀▀▀ ▒▒█▀▀▀▀ ▒▒█▀▒▒█ │ █ │ ▒▒█ ▀▀▒▒█ ▒▒▒▒▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▀▒▒▒█ ▒▒▒▒▒▒█ ▒▒█▒▒▒▄ ▒▒▒▒▒▄ ▒▒▒▒▒█▀ │ █ │ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█▀▀▀ ▒▒█▀▒▒▄ │ █ │ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒▒▒▒▒█ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▄ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ │ █ │ ▀▀ ▀▀ ▀▀ ▀▀ ▀▀ ▀▀ ▀▀ ▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀ ▀▀ │ █ │ Newark Connections ▒▒▒▒▒▒▄ ▒▒▄ ▒▒▄ ▒▒▄ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▄ │ █ │ P.O. Box 2023 ▒▒▄ ▒▒█▀▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█▀▀▀▀ ▒▒▄ │ █ │ Heath, OH 43056 ▒▒▒▒▒▒▄ ▒▒▒▒▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▄ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▄ │ █ │ ▒▒█▀▀ ▒▒█▀▀▀▀ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▒▒█ ▀▀▀▒▒█ ▒▒█▀▀ │ █ │ Data #1 614-366-4392 ▀▀ ▒▒█ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▄ ▒▒▒▒▒▒█ ▒▒▒▒▒▒█ ▀▀ │ █ │ Data #3 614-366-6588 ▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀ │ █ └───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ █ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ "Go gently among the messages and comments that have been left and remember what peace there may be in silence." "...Be proud of those whose company you keep -- all those that are running or have ever run RBBS-PC." "...Be careful. Strive to be happy and enjoy......." Tom Mack July 28, 1986 MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page i TABLE OF CONTENTS An Introduction to Mail Manager +Plus+ . . . . . . . . . . 1 Warranty, distribution, & registration . . . . . . . . . . 2 Registration form. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Features & limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Checklist of requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 INSTALLING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 * Before you begin, READ THIS! *. . . . . . . . . . . 7 Upgrading from a previous version . . . . . . . . . . 8 Installing the door . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 If you have a locked BPS rate . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Planning your user interface. . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 SysOp-configurable text files . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 CONFIGURING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ (MAILCFG.EXE). . . . . . . 18 Screen #1 (General configuration #1). . . . . . . . . 20 Screen #2 (General configuration #2). . . . . . . . . 24 Screen #3 (Conference selection). . . . . . . . . . . 28 Screen #4 (Conference edit) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Multiple configuration files. . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 FIDO-STYLE *.MSG MESSAGE AREAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 An introduction to FIDO land. . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Configuring FIDO conferences. . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Netmail areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Netmail messages within reply packets . . . . . . . . 42 Last minute thoughts on *.MSG areas . . . . . . . . . 44 MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Debugging your setup, and running in local mode . . . 45 Handling NON-STANDARD ports . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 DESQview, networks, and multiple nodes. . . . . . . . 49 Working with a FOSSIL driver. . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Security features of Mail Manager +Plus+ . . . . . . 52 Additional features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 UTILITY PROGRAMS BUNDLED WITH MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ . . . . 57 CFG2TXT & TXT2CFG - the binary<-->text utilities. . . 58 MailFix, the *M.DEF purge/repair utility. . . . . . . 62 MMIndex, the indexing program for *.MSG areas . . . . 66 MMGRNode, the nodelist compiler . . . . . . . . . . . 67 UPDATE and UPDATUSR - upgrade utilities . . . . . . . 68 MAIL MANAGER'S MAIN MENU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 C)onfigure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 D)ownload . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 E)xpedite! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Q)uit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 H)elp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 I)nformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 M)essage number (lowest) to extract in each conf. . . 74 U)pload your replies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 W)ho's online to RBBS-PC? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 X)pert toggle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Appendix A: Common problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Appendix B: Contacting the authors . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Appendix C: How to get the latest version . . . . . . . . 79 Appendix D: Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Appendix E: For TRULY curious types only . . . . . . . . . 81 Appendix F: Mail Manager's file formats (for programmers) 82 Appendix G: About this document. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 INTRODUCTION Page 1 ------------ The 'QWK' format has been around for some time now, and is intended as a standardized way to transfer mail, news, and bulletins to and from your bulletin board, and your users. Mail Manager was conceived as a way to handle RBBS-PC message bases offline, via this 'QWK' format used by popular mail readers such as SLMR, JABBER, OFFLINE, OLX, and many others. This type of mail transfer is normally a four-step process: 1) The users call your BBS, open the QWK-style mail door, and download their *.QWK mail packets. 2) The users then log off the BBS, and use any number of QWK-compatible offline mail readers to read and reply to messages contained in the mail packets. When they exit their mail readers, any messages entered in that session are packed up into what is termed as "reply packets". 3) The users then call your BBS back up, open the QWK-style mail door, and upload their reply packets (*.REP). 4) The QWK-style mail door then processes the reply packet, and inserts the new messages into the proper message base(s). Enter RBBS-PC and Mail Manager +Plus+. The original purpose was to create a small, secure, functional door for our users here on our own 3-node RBBS-based system, but has since expanded quite a bit beyond what we had originally intended (to put it mildly). We acknowledge that there are at least four QWK mail doors for RBBS-PC message bases: JIMMER by Jim Goodenough, (Shareware) TQM by Tom Collins, (Shareware) our original Mail Manager, and (Free) Mail Manager +Plus+ (Shareware) One of these four packages should be able to handle your QWK needs. Naturally, we're hoping that you choose Mail Manager +Plus+! JIMMER popped up during development of Mail Manager's initial release, and TQM followed a few months later. Mail Manager +Plus+ is our continuing effort to add additional features to the basic Mail Manager package. Mail Manager and Mail Manager +Plus+ have been in nearly continuous development since late January of 1991, and they are by far the largest projects that we have ever tackled. WARRANTY, DISTRIBUTION, & REGISTRATION Page 2 -------------------------------------- Mail Manager +Plus+ is NOT guaranteed in any way, shape, or form. Although we have worked very hard to keep our door compatible with a wide variety of possible RBBS configurations, we are forced to deal with two very important aspects of your RBBS-PC: your USERS files, and your MESSAGES files. While it works just fine here, there may be differences in your setup that can cause problems. THEREFORE: RUN MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ AT YOUR OWN RISK! The Mail Manager +Plus+ package (MPLUS202.ZIP) may be distributed freely (in un-modified form) to friends, associates, and bulletin boards. Re-archiving into your favorite format (ARJ, LZH, etc) is permitted, provided that the entire package (and all documentation) is included in the re-archiving process, and no files are modified. If you received this package in some other format than MPLUS202.ZIP, or the .ZIP file does not have Chip Morrow's "-AV" verification, then you did not receive an original copy. Please see the appendices on how to obtain a copy of Mail Manager +Plus+ directly from the authors. If you are a registered user of our door, do *NOT* distribute the registration code that you received from us. This is your own personal registration, and is not for distribution. If you are a shareware distributor/dealer, a normal disk copying and postage charge is permitted, provided that the amount to do so does not exceed the REAL costs. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Mail Manager +Plus+ is a fully-functional SHAREWARE package. If you like our door, and continue using it beyond a reasonable evaluation period, you are obligated to register it. Mail Manager +Plus+ is the result of nearly two years of work on our part. Registration of our door simply removes the "* UNREGISTERED * Evaluation copy" notice that you see when the door loads, and replaces it with your registration number and name. Mail Manager +Plus+ is not otherwise crippled in *ANY* way. The registration fee for Mail Manager +Plus+ is $25.00. We're not attempting to get rich here, just trying to cover some of the cost of development and support. As a sysop, you already know what it costs for any LD connect time at all. If you never intend to register Mail Manager +Plus+ with us, and/or need only a fraction of it's features, you may wish to consider our "free" version of the door instead, which does not require a registration fee for continued use. REGISTRATION FORM FOR MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 3 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Name: __________________________________________________ Address: __________________________________________________ City/State/Zip: __________________________________________________ Mail Manager +Plus+ version that I am currently using: ___v2.02___ BBS Name (as you'd like it to appear in the registration information). This can be your orginazation name, your name, or any other one-liner that you would like your users to see when the door loads. Should not exceed 60 characters: ______________________________________________________________________ Specify disk size: [ ] 720K 3 1/2" [ ] 360K 5 1/4" [ ] 1.2M 5 1/4" Comments (optional): _________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ OPTIONAL: BBS phone number and/or Zone:Net/Node ID (for our own use, in case we feel it necessary to contact you directly). ______________________________ HST [ ] v32 [ ] 2400 [ ] OPTIONAL: User name/password combination one of us could use to log onto your system and post you a message or send you a file as a first-time caller. ______________________________ We will mail you a copy of the current version of Mail Manager +Plus+, and instructions for registering the door in the name entered above. One registration covers all nodes of your RBBS-PC. Send check or money order (payable to Newark Connections) for $25.00 in U.S. Funds to: Newark Connections P.O. Box 2023 Heath, OH 43056 FEATURES/LIMITATIONS Page 4 -------------------- The length of this list has gotten ridiculous. So, we'll only list the MAJOR stuff that you might be interested in: ■ Can use a FOSSIL for communications. ■ Supports both DESQview and NetBIOS file & record locking schemes, as well as file sharing under NetBIOS, and supports Novell networks. ■ Mail packets can be downloaded in either text or QWK format. Both types of mail packets can, at the option of the sysop, contain all sorts of additional stuff such as bulletins, news, new file listings, etc. ■ Supports the optional multiple message headers that are present in the recent release of RBBS-PC v17.4. ■ Supports both types of RBBS-PC message bases, fixed-length and 'elastic'. (Your message bases are 'elastic' if you have configured them to GROW as messages are added). Can handle a mix of both 'fixed-length' and 'elastic' message bases. ■ Supports FIDO-style *.MSG message bases, as well as RBBS-PC's own *M.DEF's. ■ Supports FIDO-style *.MSG netmail areas, complete with CRASH capability, file-attaches, and file requests. ■ Each FIDO-style *.MSG area is configured with its own Zone:Net/Node address, so you can painlessly be a part of many different mail zones. Also, AKA addresses are supported for Netmail areas, so crash mail can be sent to many different zones with a single netmail area. ■ MANY different configuration options for FIDO conferences. ■ Multi-node support (up to 36 nodes) via DORINFOx.DEF and separate subdirectories for each node (built by Mail Manager on-the-fly). ■ Up to 500 conferences can be configured. ■ Up to 1,000 messages can be extracted & downloaded in any one mail packet. Subsequent downloads will extract any additional waiting messages. (1,000 messages means at least a 300K compressed mail packet). ■ BPS rates up to 115K, and COM ports 1-4 are supported. ■ Support for non-standard communication ports & IRQ's via FOSSIL, MAILMGR.PRO, and batch files. FEATURES/LIMITATIONS Page 5 -------------------- ■ X, Y, and Zmodem for file transfers via Forsberg's DSZ, or you can use our implementation of PROTO.DEF (MAILMGR.PRO) and configure a number of different protocols. ■ "(R)", and "Re:", when found at the beginning of the subject field of extracted messages, are stripped from the field. This allows offline readers to group related messages together, rather than into one group with and one without. ■ *FAST* message extracting (in *M.DEF message bases) and handling of ".REP" uploads. ■ High/low ASCII can be allowed or stripped in each conference. ■ ANSI can be allowed or stripped in each conference. ■ Mail reader tearlines in uploaded messages can be altered (for possible FIDO compatibility) from "--- " to " ", or left alone for each conference. ■ The popular "alias" merge is supported, and alias names can be allowed or disallowed by conference. ■ Conferences can be joined from within the door, or can be configured to force the users to join from RBBS-PC. ■ Extensive security checks. CHECKLIST OF REQUIREMENTS Page 6 ------------------------- [ ] DOS 3.10 or above. [ ] Un-damaged RBBS-PC message bases. (Not all are!) [ ] Separate RBBS-PC users files for each conference/subboard. [ ] DORINFOx.DEF for remote operation. [ ] A recent version of DSZ.COM (one that supports the "handshake slow" command) *IN A DOS PATH!*, or the external protocols of your choice via MAILMGR.PRO (our implementation of RBBS-PC's PROTO.DEF). [ ] The environment variable of your choice set to indicate where Mail Manager is to look for "XFER-[node].DEF" (where [node] is the node number). XFER-x.DEF is no longer required to be in the default directory. [ ] The file compression/extraction programs of your choice in a DOS path, or wherever you specified them in Mail Manager's list of archivers (MAILMGR.ARL). [ ] Memory: - About 250K free memory for Mail Manager +Plus+ itself, plus - 384 bytes for each conference, plus - whatever you need for your file compression software and external protocols. Think about this. 200 conferences * 384 bytes each = 76,800 additional bytes. That's about 326K BEFORE your external compression and file transfer software. The full slew of conferences (500 * 384) would be an additional 192K (or a total of about 442K). Figure in another RAM-hungry application like Robert Jung's ARJ archiver, and you could need more conventional memory than your PC has available! There is a wonderful shareware program available out there, written by Davis Augustine, by the name of "SHROOM". SHROOM has the ability to swap an application to disk (or a RAM disk, for speed) whenever the application "shells" to an external program. SHROOM works very well with Mail Manager +Plus+ (RBBS-PC, too!), and you would be well-advised to look into this utility if you are tight on RAM, and/or have a large number of conferences to configure into Mail Manager +Plus+. You can locate SHROOM on many Bulletin Boards, or by contacting the author directly: Davis Augustine (Shroom Shareware) P.O. Box 610 Sausalito, CA 94966-0610 INSTALLING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 7 BEFORE YOU BEGIN ---------------- *PLEASE READ THIS!!!!!! ********************************************* RBBS-PC has the unique ability to create, read, and manipulate its own corrupted message bases, without ever telling you that anything's wrong. Mail Manager is not as forgiving, and requires that your message bases be in good condition. It is therefore STRONGLY suggested that you run some type of a checkout/repair utility against your message bases BEFORE installing Mail Manager. We've included an alternate utility named MailFix to repair/purge your message bases, which you can try out as an alternative to CONFIG.EXE's repair and purge functions. MailFix is compatible with RBBSMail'ed, MsgToss'ed, and OverMail'ed message bases (which have differently-formatted message headers), as well as RBBS-standard message bases, INCLUDING v17.4 multi-headers. This is in contrast to RBBS-PC's CONFIG option #185, which simply will not properly handle a message base that has been manipulated by any of these mail processors. *PLEASE* take a few minutes to read the section of this document regarding MailFix before you attempt to utilize this program! In any event, you really SHOULD check out the integrity of your message bases before attempting to install Mail Manager. INSTALLING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 8 UPGRADING FROM A PREVIOUS VERSION --------------------------------- Version 2.02 is a quick maintenance release to the v2.0 series. If you installed the limited-distribution v2.00 package, or the initial widely-distributed release (v2.01), you can simply drop in the new v2.02 executables and go. There are no format changes to any of Mail Manager's system files between versions 2.00 and 2.02. For those updating from v1.3x of the "free" Mail Manager, we have included a pair of utilities to help you convert your existing setup over to the new formats. Put the enclosed utilities "UPDATE.EXE" and "UPDATUSR.EXE" into your Mail Manager directory, and run both of them once from DOS. This will update your existing MAILMGR.CFG and MAILMGR.USR files to the new format of Mail Manager +Plus+, and will allow the new MAILCFG.EXE program to read your configuration file. After that, you can throw these two utility programs away - you won't need them again. *** RUN UPDATUSR.EXE ONCE AND ONLY ONCE!!! *** Now replace all of the executables in your Mail Manager directory with the ones included in this package, and continue reading this document. There are many new options that you may want to take advantage of. If you are upgrading from a version number of Mail Manager LOWER than 1.30, you should re-install the program from scratch. There are too many new options (and filename changes) since the early releases to easily update your current installation. INSTALLING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 9 INSTALLING THE DOOR ------------------- If for some reason these instructions are not clear to you, or this is your first attempt at installing a door in your RBBS-PC, there's really not much that can take the place of RBBS-PC's documentation. With that said... Check your environment variables (type "SET" at the DOS prompt). Both RBBS-PC and Mail Manager +Plus+ use the log file "XFER-x.DEF", where "x" is the node number. Mail Manager +Plus+ needs an environment variable to determine where this file is located on your system. Most of us seem to be using Forsberg's DSZ for file transfers, so there should be a line referencing "DSZLOG" in the batch file you use to load RBBS-PC, which would look something like this for node 1: DSZLOG=C:\RBBS\XFER-1.DEF or... DSZLOG=XFER-1.DEF If Mail Manager +Plus+ cannot find "XFER-x.DEF", it will report that all file transfers have failed. In any case, make a note of the environment variable name (in this case DSZLOG), since you'll need it later. Once you're past this, you can get on to the actual installation. Create a subdirectory just for Mail Manager +Plus+. Stick it anywhere you want, and name it anything you want, just be sure that it is a drive and directory specificially meant for Mail Manager +Plus+. From here on we'll just refer to it as the "\MAILMGR" directory. De-compress the imbedded archives "202-EXE.ZIP" and "202-TXT.ZIP" to the directory you just created. Change to it (making it the current directory). Now go through the motions of adding a new door to your system. On a 'normal' RBBS-PC this would entail: - Editing MENU5* (or whatever you have named your door menu) and adding the word " MAILMGR ". - Creating a MAILMGR.BAT file, and sticking it where RBBS can find it. Your batch file that calls Mail Manager is very important, and must logically do the following: * Change to the Mail Manager +Plus+ directory, * Copy RBBS-PC's DORINFOx.DEF to that directory, * Run MAILMGR.EXE, passing the NODE NUMBER on the command line (such as MAILMGR 1 for node 1), and * Change back to your RBBS directory when finished. INSTALLING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 10 INSTALLING THE DOOR ------------------- With that in mind, your batch file should look something like this: cd\mailmgr copy \rbbs\dorinfo%1.def mailmgr %1 cd\rbbs If you're running the new "DOORS.DEF" method that RBBS-PC provides, here's an example line to implement Mail Manager: MAILMGR,5,,D,"MAILMGR.BAT [NODE]",N,, This line tells RBBS-PC the following: 1) The name of the door is MAILMGR. 2) Security level 5 and above can access the door. 3) No questionnaire is to be invoked. 4) Exit to this door. (Mail Manager requires a lot of RAM) 5) The name of the batch file to invoke is MAILMGR.BAT. 6) RBBS-PC is to pass the node number to the batch file. * NOTE - Type the word "[NODE]" as shown above, and RBBS-PC will replace it with the true node number when it calls the batch file. If you are running a single- node system, and find this confusing, you can instead pass the node number directly, but it isn't necessary to do it this way. This would make your DOORS.DEF line look something like this: MAILMGR,5,,D,"MAILMGR.BAT 1",N,, 7) Don't ask for a password when returning back to RBBS-PC. 8) Don't display a text file when the door closes. 9) Use the time limit from RBBS-PC as the time allowed in the door. INSTALLING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 11 IF YOU HAVE A LOCKED BPS RATE ----------------------------- If you have your communications port locked higher than what the user's actual connect speed is going to be, you will find that Mail Manager +Plus+ will not report the correct BPS rate, nor will it estimate the amount of time required for file transfers properly. This is due to RBBS-PC passing the locked BPS rate to the door, instead of true connect speed. RBBS-PC versions 17.3C and lower had no provision for passing the true connect rate to doors. The locked rate is always passed to DORINFOx.DEF. The only way around this is to run RBBS-PC v17.4 or later, and modify the command line used to call Mail Manager +Plus+. The following will work *ONLY* with RBBS-PC v17.4 and up! (or with copies of RBBS-PC compiled with the CBAUD merge): Change the DOORS.DEF example mentioned on page 10 to read: MAILMGR,5,,D,"MAILMGR.BAT [NODE] [CBAUD]",N,, Then, in your batch file that loads the door: mailmgr %1 /CBAUD%2 If the door is called on node 2 of your system, and the user's connect rate is 2400 BPS, the above line will look like this to Mail Manager +Plus+: mailmgr 2 /CBAUD2400 With this done, your basic door installation is finished, and the time has come to plan your interface for the users, and to configure the door for your system. INSTALLING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 12 PLANNING YOUR USER INTERFACE ---------------------------- As with most aspects of your RBBS-PC, you will get the best results out of Mail Manager +Plus+ with a little advance planning. To your users, the single most important aspect of Mail Manager will be the ability to locate which conferences they want to follow. This sounds simple enough, but think about that for a second, especially if you're running a system with more than a handful of conferences. Here are some serious points to consider BEFORE diving into the configuration program: 1 - Your MAIN message base must ALWAYS be configured as conference #1. This is VERY IMPORTANT - Mail Manager +Plus+ simply will not function properly if your MAIN area is not #1 on the list. 2 - Once MailCFG creates your configuration file, and your users start using the door, you cannot easily re-sort your conferences. 3 - If you have several different TYPES of conferences (such as local, RBBS-NET, FIDO-NET, etc.), you'll want to consider how to group the conferences together for the user's purposes. 4 - Will you be adding more conferences at some point? Will you want those conference names to be inserted in the middle of your list of conference numbers? It is easy to tack conferences onto the end, but to insert them in the middle requires a little forethought *NOW*. 5 - After Mail Manager +Plus+ has been running for a while, and you decide to delete a conference, delete it, but RESERVE THE SPACE FOR THAT CONFERENCE NUMBER!!! If you don't, your conferences will be re-numbered, and the unsuspecting users might inadvertantly upload a reply to the wrong conference number. If all this is too much to think about for the moment, consider this relatively simple example... Say you have a total of 3 conferences: 1 MAIN message base, 1 RBBS-NET area, and 1 FIDO-NET area. Now, if you think at some point that you might add two more conferences to your list of RBBS-NET conferences, and maybe five more local areas, here's how you might want the conference numbers to look from Mail Manager's standpoint: 1 - MAIN 2 - --- 3 - --- 4 - --- 5 - --- 6 - --- 7 - RBBSNET 8 - --- 9 - --- 10 - FIDONET INSTALLING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 13 PLANNING YOUR USER INTERFACE ---------------------------- Now, when you do add an extra local conference, you can insert it in position #2, 3, 4, 5, or 6. Otherwise, your conferences will be ordered as: 1 - MAIN 2 - RBBSNET 3 - FIDONET ... and you would have to tack that new local conference on at position #4. Starting to make sense now? OK... with that in mind, if you have a CONFMAIL.DEF file (RBBS-PC's list of conferences), copy it to your Mail Manager directory, and take a look at it. If you don't have a CONFMAIL.DEF, go ahead and skip this section. Are your conference types grouped together? Do you want to leave spaces between any of them? Now's the time to sort it however you see fit, making sure that your MAIN area is the very first one listed, at the top of the file. If you want to add empty conference numbers between any of them, add the following line: {EMPTY}U.DEF, MailCFG will reserve that spot for future use. Using a real quick example, say you have two conferences, and your current CONFMAIL.DEF looks like this: C:\RBBS\MAINU.DEF,C:\RBBS\MAINM.DEF C:\RBBS\BBSADSU.DEF,C:\RBBS\BBSADSM.DEF If you wanted to reserve a space between these two, you would edit CONFMAIL.DEF (the one that you copied to Mail Manager's directory, obviously) to look like this: C:\RBBS\MAINU.DEF,C:\RBBS\MAINM.DEF {EMPTY}U.DEF, C:\RBBS\BBSADSU.DEF,C:\RBBS\BBSADSM.DEF Mail Manager will see conference #2 as empty, and you'll be able to go back into MailCFG to add it in later. DON'T FORGET THE COMMA AFTER {EMPTY}U.DEF !! INSTALLING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 14 PLANNING YOUR USER INTERFACE ---------------------------- Last thing to note here is that Mail Manager always displays conferences to the users in columns of 10, like so: 1 11 21 2 12 22 3 13 etc.. 4 14 5 15 6 16 7 17 8 18 9 19 10 20 If you have a large number of conferences, you may want to take that into consideration as well. Once you have prepared CONFMAIL.DEF for Mail Manager +Plus+ as mentioned above, you can import it into the configuration program (MAILCFG.EXE). BEFORE YOU DO THIS, set up your text files that Mail Manager +Plus+ is to use. These are described on the next page of this document. INSTALLING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 15 SYSOP-CONFIGURABLE TEXT FILES ----------------------------- The last step before getting into the configuration program is to set up your text files, and Mail Manager +Plus+ uses quite a few. Here goes: (All in Mail Manager's directory) MAILMGR.HLP - The online help file that will be displayed to the users whenever they press "H" from the main menu. You can customize it if need be (maybe you want to add long descriptions of each conference here, for instance), but should otherwise be pretty much OK as-is. MAILMGR.PRE - The initial screen displayed when Mail Manager loads. Again, you might want to customize it for your own individual system, but it is generic enough as- distributed that you may not need to. If this file (and the corresponding graphic and ANSI versions) do not exist, Mail Manager +Plus+ will take the user directly to the main menu after it loads. Otherwise, this screen will be displayed, and the prompt "Press any key to continue..." will be shown. MAILMGR.MNU - Mail Manager's main menu, displayed to the users just before the command prompt. PRELOG.RBS - The welcome message that your users will see when they first fire up their mail reader against one of Mail Manager's QWK's. Probably the most common thing that you'd want to put here would be a copy of your RBBS-PC prelog or welcome screen, but this is entirely up to you! EPILOG.RBS - The signoff message that the users will see just as they exit your QWK packet from their mail reader. You might want to put an adaption of RBBS-PC's EPILOG.DEF here. MAILMGRG.HLP \ MAILMGRG.PRE \ MAILMGRG.MNU > ASCII graphic versions of the above. (Optional) PRELOGG.RBS / EPILOGG.RBS / MAILMGRC.HLP \ MAILMGRC.PRE \ MAILMGRC.MNU > Color/ANSI versions of the above. (Optional) PRELOGC.RBS / EPILOGC.RBS / INSTALLING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 16 SYSOP-CONFIGURABLE TEXT FILES ----------------------------- MAILMGR.BUL - The list of bulletin path/filenames that you'll want to include in your users QWK's. Edit this file to pertain to your system bulletins, (and/or any other text files that you'll want to include in your users' QWK packets), and if any of them are newer than the user's last call to RBBS-PC, the user will get them included in his/her QWK packet. Bulletins preceded with a double-asterisk are considered mandatory for inclusion in the user's mail packets, and if new, they will be included regardless of whether or not the user has configured Mail Manager to send new bulletins. Example: c:\bulet1 c:\bulet2 **c:\bulet3 bulet1 and bulet2 are optional, bulet3 will always be included if it has been updated. (NOTE - The path\filename of MAILMGR.BUL is sysop-configurable in MailCFG.EXE.) MAILMGR.PRO - A copy of the RBBS-PC PROTO.DEF that you intend to have Mail Manager +Plus+ use. Mail Manager +Plus+ can use all of RBBS-PC's "template" variables in here, such as [NODE], [PORT#], [BAUD], [CBAUD], etc. Refer to the RBBS-PC documentation for information on these "template" variables. For the purposes of Mail Manager +Plus+, it is important that you configure "N)one" as the last protocol in this file! You will also need to configure an external X)modem and Y)modem, since Mail Manager obviously cannot use RBBS-PC's internal X and Y that are probably listed in your existing RBBS-PC PROTO.DEF. If you are running multiple nodes, with different communication port setups, you may want to create copies of this file with the necessary arguments changed accordingly (MAILMGR1.PRO, MAILMGR2.PRO, etc.). (NOTE - The path/filename of MAILMGR.PRO is sysop-configurable in MAILCFG.EXE). MAILMGR.ARL - The list of archivers that are available to your users through Mail Manager +Plus+. MAILMGR.ARL is a "template" file, similar in structure to MAILMGR.PRO. INSTALLING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 17 SYSOP-CONFIGURABLE TEXT FILES ----------------------------- MAILMGR.ARL The supplied copy of MAILMGR.ARL allows the use of (continued) ARC, ARJ, LZH, and ZIP compression methods, which the user can pick and choose from to suit their own preference. You can configure fewer or additional archivers as you see fit. Format of each line: Name, EXT, Compress, Extract Name = The name of the archiver, as shown to the user. EXT = The three-letter extension that this archiver creates by default for compressed files. Compress = The line to send to DOS to compress the mail packets. Extract = The line to send to DOS to extract the uploaded reply packets that the user uploads. "Template" variables that can be included in the Compress and Extract lines (Mail Manager will convert these to their true values): [FILE] - Compressed file to create, or extract from. [INC] - All files that Mail Manager normally includes in the downloadable archive. [REPLY] - Reply file that Mail Manager expects to be contained within the compressed upload. [NODE] - Current RBBS-PC node number. See the supplied MAILMGR.ARL for an example implementation of this file. (NOTE - The path/filename of MAILMGR.ARL is sysop-configurable in MAILCFG.EXE). CONFIGURING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 18 Mail Manager +Plus+'s configuration file (MAILMGR.CFG) is binary in nature (for FAST loading), and can be directly manipulated by the supplied program, MAILCFG.EXE. Since many SysOps are VERY accustomed to using text editors against the various configuration files on their systems, we have managed to catch quite a bit of unexpected flak about the way MAILCFG does things. We even had one brief report from a user of a Tandy computer that MAILCFG.EXE locked up on his system. Said user went on to give glowing reports of another QWK mail door, without giving many details of exactly what the problem was, and we never heard back from him. In any case, we decided in the end that the best thing to do would be to give you two options: MAILCFG.EXE - Manipulate the configuration file directly, or use the following pair of executables: TXT2CFG.EXE - Convert a text configuration file to MAILMGR.CFG. CFG2TXT.EXE - Convert MAILMGR.CFG to a text file. MAILCFG.EXE is the recommended way to go, so the following instructions pertain to the use of this program. The other pair of programs are covered in the section of this document entitled: "UTILITY PROGRAMS BUNDLED WITH MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+". The first time you fire up MAILCFG, it isn't going to find the configuration file, MAILMGR.CFG. MAILCFG will report to you as such, and ask you if this is a first-time setup. (Just answer "Y" at this point). Just for the record, if you tell it "N", (this is not a first-time setup), MAILCFG will figure that you started it from the wrong directory, and will ask you for the correct path/name to MAILMGR.CFG. After you press "Y", MAILCFG will prompt you whether to A)uto-config, or M)anually configure your conferences. A)uto - If you're not familiar with CONFMAIL.DEF, ignore this option, and choose M)anual instead. This option will let you choose the path\filename of your CONFMAIL.DEF, and then ask you for default values to auto- create for EVERY conference. This can save LOTS of time if you have many conferences to configure into Mail Manager. SUGGESTION: At this point, you should key in the path/name to THE EDITED COPY of CONFMAIL.DEF that you created a few pages back. MailCFG will then step through your CONFMAIL.DEF and set things up for Mail Manager +Plus+'s use. CONFIGURING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 19 The ONE REQUIREMENT for using CONFMAIL.DEF is that your MAIN message base absolutely *MUST* be the first conference listed! M)anual - Will create a default configuration file, and require you to manually add all of your conference information. If you have FIDO *.MSG conferences to add to your Mail Manager +Plus+ configuration, and would like to auto-import them in the same manner as above, you should first set up all of your RBBS-PC *M.DEF areas via CONFMAIL.DEF as above, read through this section so that you will know what each option is for, and then read up on the section of this document specific to FIDO *.MSG message areas. Now let's talk about MAILCFG.EXE itself. There are four main screens. Use the cursor keys to move around in each one. [Esc] always takes you back to the previous level. [PgUp] and [PgDn] usually lets you switch screens. Starting on the next page, we'll take each one individually. CONFIGURING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 20 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SCREEN 1 - GENERAL CONFIGURATION (Screen #1 of 2): ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unless you're configuring Mail Manager +Plus+ for the first time, this is the screen that pops up when you load MAILCFG. It looks someting like this: Name of your BBS................ : RBBS-PC Remote Sysop Name............... : SECRET LOGONNAME Sysop First Name................ : SYSTEM Sysop Last Name................. : OPERATOR Security to read ALL messages... : 10 Security to use in local mode... : 10 Use ANSI graphics in local mode? : Y Tagline : Your friendly neighborhood RBBS-PC - (123) 555-1212 Network type (local mode only).. : DOS Filename to use for extracts.... : RBBS-PC Default file compression........ : ZIP Path/Name of your NEWS file .... : C:\RBBS\MAIN.NWS Path/Name of your FMS directory. : C:\RBBS\MASTER.DIR Handshake method (F, R, X, N)... : XON/XOFF Next Screen Edit Conference selections Exit ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now to take these one at a time: - Name of your BBS................ : This should be the name of your board as set in RBBS CONFIG. You can stick anything in here, however. This name will be shown to the user several times, and will be shown in the offline mail reader as the board name. - Remote Sysop Name............... : This *MUST* be the full name that you use to log on remotely. Mail Manager +Plus+ will not operate properly if it cannot find you (the SysOp) in the various users files. - Sysop First Name................ : Your first name as you are known to your users. - Sysop Last Name................. : Your last name as you are known to your users. CONFIGURING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 21 - Security to read ALL messages... : * A VERY IMPORTANT SECURITY LEVEL! * This should be set to either SYSOP or CO-SYSOP level only! Anyone with this security level or higher can read any message addressed to any user, regardless of whether or not it's private! Mail Manager +Plus+ also uses this security level for most of it's SysOp-only functions, such as the ability to use the I)nfo option from Mail Manager +Plus+'s main menu. - Security to use in local mode... : Should be set to SYSOP level. Whenever Mail Manager +Plus+ is brought up locally, it will use this security level, and the SysOp name(s) as listed above. - Use ANSI graphics in local mode? : Either "Y" or "N", and pretty self-explanitory, I think. - Tagline : This can be anything that you'd like to stick on the bottom of all messages. (Usually a very brief BBS advertisement). If this is left blank (or "NONE"), Mail Manager will not append a tagline to the bottom of each message that the user downloads. Please note that taglines can be different in each conference. This is simply what you use as a default. - Network type (local mode only).. : This setting affects local operation only. Valid settings are: D = DOS - No file/record locking in place. Q = DESQview - Use DESQview resource locking. N = NetBIOS - Use NetBIOS file/record locking, and implement file sharing. Unless you're running in a Novell network, this option requires that DOS SHARE be installed. Type of network is fully explained elsewhere in this document. - Filename to use for extracts.... : Specify up to 8 characters here. All downloaded files will begin with this filename. You might want to abbrieviate your board name here to make it clearer to the users once they've downloaded their file(s). Mine's "NC", for instance. CONFIGURING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 22 Using this example, QWK downloads would be named NC.QWK, and text extracts would be named NC.ZIP, ARJ, etc. Also, all uploaded replies will be expected to have this filename, with the extension ".REP". Any uploads that don't have an exact match on filename are ignored. - Default file compression........ : Must be three characters, and one of the following: ARC - Use Katz's PKARC. ARJ - Use Jung's ARJ. LZH - Use Yoshi's LHARC. ZIP - Use Katz's PKZIP/PKUNZIP. Unless you use Mail Manager +Plus+'s list of archivers, all downloads will be compressed using this format, and all uploads will be expected to be in this format. The archiver of your choice absolutely *MUST* be in a DOS path if you are not using the list of archivers! Just sticking it in the Mail Manager directory won't do. If you are using the list of archivers, Mail Manager will use the archiver list to determine how to call the archiver. - Path/Name of your NEWS file.... : Type in the full path to the *NON-GRAPHIC VERSION* of your RBBS-PC news file (usually MAIN.NWS in your RBBS-PC bulletin directory). If the user is using ASCII or ANSI graphics, Mail Manager +Plus+ will automatically attempt to pick up the appropriate graphic version of this file for them. If this file is newer than the user's last logon, it will be included in their QWK packets. Otherwise it will be skipped when their QWK packet is created. - Path/Name of your FMS directory : If you are using an RBBS-standard FMS directory, and would like to make a list of new files available to your users (since their last trip into the Mail Manager door), key in the full path/filename of your FMS directory here. If you do not want to use this option, leave this blank, or key in the word "NONE" (with no quotes). - Handshake method (F, R, X, N)... : Allows you to specify the type of flow control that you'd like Mail Manager +Plus+ to use. The four possible settings are as follows: CONFIGURING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 23 F = FOSSIL (Always try to use a FOSSIL) If Mail Manager +Plus+ is unable (for whatever reason) to initialize your FOSSIL driver, it will default to XON/XOFF. R = RTS/CTS (Use request to send/clear to send) X = XON/XOFF (Use XON/XOFF) N = NONE (No handshaking) If set to R, X, or N: The FOSSIL argument is passed to Mail Manager from RBBS-PC in the DORINFOx.DEF file. If Mail Manager finds that a FOSSIL is active in RBBS-PC, it will automatically attempt to utilize the FOSSIL, regardless of this setting. Mail Manager will default back to this setting if it is unable to use your FOSSIL driver. Use of a FOSSIL with Mail Manager is further explained elsewhere in this document. - Next Screen Position the cursor over this option, press [ENTER], and you will be taken to the second general configuration screen. - Edit Conference selections Position the cursor over this option, press [ENTER], and you will be taken to the conference selection screen. - Exit Position the cursor over this option and press [ENTER] (or press [Esc] from anywhere on this screen), and you'll be asked to save your configuration before MAILCFG exits to DOS. Thus endeth screen #1. CONFIGURING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 24 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SCREEN 2 - GENERAL CONFIGURATION (Screen #2 of 2): ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This screen should look someting like this: Path/Name of your bulletin list. : C:\MAILMGR\MAILMGR.BUL Path/Name of protocol definitions: C:\MAILMGR\MAILMGR.PRO Path/Name of list of archivers...: C:\MAILMGR\MAILMGR.ARL Environment variable to check....: DSZLOG Modify uploaded msgs date/time? .: No Location of your BBS.............: Anytown, USA BBS Phone number (xxx-xxx-xxxx)..: 123-456-7890 Smart text character (1-255).....: 123 Default path to RBBS-PC msg bases: C:\RBBS\ Log file for FIDO conferences....: NONE Door is timelocked from (xx:xx)..: 00:00 to (xx:xx)..: 00:00 Previous Screen Edit Conference selections Exit ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now to take these one at a time: - Path/Name of your bulletin list : Type in the full path to your list of bulletins that you would like to include to your users in their QWK packets. This is a text file, and simply lists the paths and names of your commonly updated bulletins. The default is MAILMGR.BUL in a directory named C:\MAILMGR. This file should look something like this: C:\RBBS\BULLET1 C:\RBBS\BULLET2 C:\RBBS\BULLET3 **C:\RBBS\ALWAYS.BUL ... etc. The date stamp on these files will be checked against the last logon date of the user, and if they are determined to be the same as (or newer than) the user's last logon date, they will be included in his/her QWK packet. Bulletins preceded with a double-asterisk "**" are deemed as "mandatory for inclusion", and will be included in the user's mail packets (if they are newer than the user's last date into the door) regardless of whether or not the user has turned "off" the ability to receive new bulletins. Bulletins without the leading double-asterisk are deemed as "optional", and will not be sent to the user if they have turned "off" the ability to receive new bulletins. CONFIGURING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 25 - Path/Name of protocol definitions : Type in the full path to the RBBS-PC PROTO.DEF that you wish to use with Mail Manager +Plus+. The supplied file MAILMGR.PRO allows X, Y, and Zmodem via DSZ. The very last protocol letter listed in this file MUST be "N", for none. - Path/Name of list of archivers...: Type in the full path to Mail Manager +Plus+'s list of archivers (default is MAILMGR.ARL in the C:\MAILMGR directory). If you do not want to give your users the option of which compression format to use, leave this line blank, or enter "NONE" (no quotes), and Mail Manager will use only your default type of file compression. See the section of this document entitled "SYSOP-CONFIGURABLE TEXT FILES" for further details regarding the format of MAILMGR.ARL. - Environment variable to check....: Key in the name of the environment variable that Mail Manager +Plus+ is to check to determine where to look for "XFER-x.DEF". Most of us seem to be using Forsberg's DSZ for transfers, so in this case you would key in the default name of "DSZLOG". When you're finished configuring Mail Manager +Plus+, check your environment variable to insure that it points to XFER-x.DEF. Without XFER-x.DEF, Mail Manager +Plus+ will assume that all file transfers have failed. - Modify uploaded msgs date/time? .: Either "Y" or "N". Setting to "Y" tells Mail Manager +Plus+ to use your computer's current system date and time for all uploaded replies. Setting to "N" tells Mail Manager +Plus+ to use the date and time stamp as it was received in the uploaded reply packet. Advantage: Having Mail Manager +Plus+ modify this field assures that all uploaded messages will have the correct date and time stamp applied before inserting into your message base(s). Disadvantage: If a user uploads several replies in the same mail packet (many do), some mail networks (like FIDO-NET) will have trouble with several messages containing the exact same date & time stamp, and will likely refuse everything but the first msg of the "offending" group. If you're a member of one of these networks, you'll probably want to take the date/time stamp as-received from the user. CONFIGURING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 26 - Location of your BBS The City, State that your system is located in. This is added to the CONTROL.DAT file that is included in all QWK packets, is part of the QWK standard, and is not used anywhere else by Mail Manager +Plus+. - BBS Phone number (xxx-xxx-xxxx) The phone number to your system. This is also added to the CONTROL.DAT file that is included in all QWK packets, is part of the QWK standard, and is not used anywhere else by Mail Manager +Plus+. - Smart text character (1-255) The ASCII value of the "lead-in" character for RBBS-PC smart text. RBBS-PC default for this value is "123", which is the "{" character. This value must match what you are using with RBBS-PC, or smart text in bulletins and news files will not be converted properly. Mail Manager +Plus+ will attempt to replace all possible "smart text" variables with their true values in bulletins and news files. - Default path to RBBS-PC msg bases This should be set to the path where your *M.DEF message bases are located. MAILCFG.EXE will then attempt to save you some keyboard entry time by "guessing" the true path/filename of all conferences entered manually. For instance, if this value is set to "C:\RBBS\", and you configure a conference named BBSADS, MAILCFG.EXE will "guess" the path/name of the users file as: C:\RBBS\BBSADSU.DEF - Log file for FIDO conferences This is an optional argument, and pertains only to sysops who have configured FIDO-style "*.MSG" areas into Mail Manager +Plus+. If this path/filename is set to anything other than "NONE", Mail Manager +Plus+ will append this text file with the FIDO-style area names of all "*.MSG" conferences that the user uploaded messages to. For instance... if the user uploaded 3 messages to area name "RBBS-PC", two messages to "HS_MODEMS", and 1 message to "FOR-SALE", the resulting log file would have the following appended to it: CONFIGURING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 27 RBBS-PC HS_MODEMS FOR-SALE Your system's batch files can then take care of any necessary external mail processing based on the contents of this file. - Door is timelocked from (xx:xx) to (xx:xx) If you run an echomail system, there may be certain times of the day that you do not want your users into your message bases. These two arguments tell Mail Manager +Plus+ when to disallow access to the door. To disable, set the "from" and "to" times identically. For example: 00:00 to 00:00 would let users into the door 24 hours a day. Users with sufficient security to read ALL messages are allowed into the door during the time lock, after receiving a brief warning message. All other users attempting to access the door during the timelock will be informed that you are processing mail, and will be asked to try again later. - Previous Screen Position the cursor over this option, press [ENTER], and you will be taken to the first general configuration screen. - Edit Conference selections Position the cursor over this option, press [ENTER], and you will be taken to the conference selection screen. - Exit Position the cursor over this option and press [ENTER] (or press [Esc] from anywhere on this screen), and you'll be asked to save your configuration before MAILCFG exits to DOS. Thus endeth screen #2. CONFIGURING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 28 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SCREEN #3 - CONFERENCE SELECTION ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This screen should look something like this: 1 MAIN 11 21 31 41 2 12 22 32 42 3 13 23 33 43 4 14 24 34 44 5 15 25 35 45 6 16 26 36 46 7 17 27 37 47 8 18 28 38 48 9 19 29 39 49 10 20 30 40 50 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- CONFERENCE SELECTION SCREEN Use cursor keys to select a conference to edit. [ENTER] = Edit this conference. [PgUp] = Move to previous screen. [PgDn] = Move to next screen. [Esc] = Finished editing. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- You can use the cursor keys, [PgUp], and [PgDn] to switch between all of the different conferences possible. You can configure as many as 500 conferences. Position the cursor over the conference that you wish to edit, press [ENTER], and you will be taken to the conference edit screen. ********************************************************************** * It is VERY IMPORTANT to have your MAIN message area as the first * * conference listed, and that ALL MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ USERS have * * sufficient security to at least READ in this area! Mail Manager * * +Plus+ uses this internally for some of it's functions (such as * * W)ho's online). * ********************************************************************** Press [Esc] (or [PgUp]) when you're finished editing your conferences, and you'll be taken back to general configuration screen #2. CONFIGURING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 29 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SCREEN #4 - CONFERENCE EDIT ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Once you've pressed [ENTER] at the conference selection screen, up will pop something that looks like this: Editing Conference #1 Conference name .............................: MAIN FIDO area name ..............................: N/A Path/Name of conference USERS file: C:\RBBS\MAINU.DEF Path/Name of conference MESSAGES file: C:\RBBS\MAINM.DEF Allow ANSI graphics in uploaded messages? ...: Y Allow high & low ASCII in uploaded messages? : Y Security level to READ this conference ......: 5 Security level to POST in this conference ...: 5 Tagline for this conference: Add tag: N/A NONE Use Fido-style tearlines? ...................: N Zone: N/A Message base type: Y=Fixed, N=Elastic, F=Fido: N Net: N/A Allow users to join within Mail Manager? ....: N Node: N/A Path/Name of conference ALIAS file: Netmail: N/A NONE Press [Esc] or [F10] when finished with the conference. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Several of these options pertain only to FIDO *.MSG areas, and some have different meaning to FIDO *.MSG areas. We will attempt to cover each one individually as completely as possible: - Conference Name Up to 7 characters that you will use to describe this conference to the users. Normally set as the first 7 characters of the name of the MESSAGES and USERS file, although you can put anything in here. For FIDO *.MSG areas, you will want to match this as closely as possible to the true FIDO-style area name of the conference, since this is what will be displayed to the users. The important thing is to describe the conference as fully as possible (for the users) in the 7 characters that you have available. If the conference name is left blank, or it is set to "{EMPTY}", pressing [F10] will cause MAILCFG to ask you whether or not to reserve a space for this conference number. If you do NOT reserve the space, this conference number will be skipped when you save your settings. CONFIGURING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 30 - FIDO area name Pertains only to FIDO *.MSG areas, and optional. If not a FIDO *.MSG area, this field will be skipped. This should be set to the exact FIDO-style area name of the conference, as your external mail processor knows it. This name is used ONLY when appending the optional log file, as set in the general configuration. - Path/Name of conference USERS file Full path to your RBBS-PC users file for this conference. A quick note here: You really should have a unique USERS file for each conference/subboard. RBBS-PC does not absolutely require this, but it is necessary to keep the last message read in each conference updated, and for Mail Manager to know exactly which messages to extract and prepare to download for the users. If this is a FIDO *.MSG area, this setting has no meaning to Mail Manager +Plus+, and you can literally put whatever you want in here in this case. - Path/Name of conference MESSAGES file Full path to your RBBS-PC messages file for this conference. If this is a FIDO *.MSG area, this must be set to the full pathname to this area's *.MSG's. The trailing backslash is optional. For example, if set to: C:\MAIL\4SALE Mail Manager +Plus+ will manipulate files named: C:\MAIL\4SALE\*.* - Allow ANSI graphics in uploaded messages? "Y" or "N". If set to "N", Mail Manager will strip all escape characters out of uploaded messages, effectively disabling ANSI. - Allow high & low ASCII in uploaded messages? "Y" or "N". If set to "N", Mail Manager will strip all high and low ascii characters out of uploaded messages, replacing them by either blank spaces, or an equivalent "normal" character. CONFIGURING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 31 The most common reason for disabling both ANSI and ASCII is to conform to FIDO-NET rules & regs, although there are several reasons why you might want to disable ANSI. - Security level to READ this conference Minimum security level required to see this conference listed in Mail Manager's configuration menu. If the user does not have sufficient security to READ this conference, the conference name will be replaced by " --- " in Mail Manager's menu, and the user will not be allowed to download messages (or upload replies) in this conference. - Security level to POST in this conference Minimum security level required to leave a message in this conference. If the user's security level is lower than this, yet the same as (or higher than) the security required to READ, any messages that he/she uploads to this conference will result in the following: ■ A Mail Manager security violation notice being passed back to the user in the MAIN area, as a private message. This message will be shown as being from "MAIL MANAGER". ■ The uploaded message itself being ignored. Nothing will be posted in the conference. - Tagline for this conference The tagline that you want to use for this particular conference. If set to "NONE", Mail Manager will use the default tagline. If the default tagline is also "NONE", no tagline will be appended to the end of the message. If this is a FIDO *.MSG area, this is the tagline that will be posted to the message if tear/taglines are turned on. - Use FIDO-style tearlines? During our development of Mail Manager and Mail Manager +Plus+, there was much discussion to and fro in the various echos regarding the allowability of mail reader tearlines "---". At this writing, it is not clear as to whether or not these additional tearlines on echo messages will be permissable. In any case, we gave you an out. Set this to "Y", and any mail reader tearlines on uploaded messages will be replaced by three blank spaces. Set to "N", and they will be passed into the message untouched. CONFIGURING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 32 - Type of msg base: Y=Fixed, N=Elastic, F=Fido? VERY IMPORTANT, and either "Y", "N", or "F". RBBS-PC and Mail Manager +Plus+ handle fixed-length conferences differently from those that are configured to "grow" as messages are added. If set to "F", you are telling Mail Manager +Plus+ that this is a FIDO *.MSG area, and all of the "N/A"'s that you see on this screen will be replaced by the current settings. You will also be allowed to edit the options specific to FIDO *.MSG areas. Setting this option to "Y" or "N" turns "off" all of the FIDO- specific options, and replaces their values with "N/A". All of the FIDO-specific options will be unavailable for edit. - Allow users to join within Mail Manager? Either "Y" or "N". (Has no meaning to FIDO *.MSG areas) If set to "Y", Mail Manager +Plus+ will allow your users to automatically "join" this conference when they attempt to flag it as active, and add them to the conference user file if they have not joined it from the BBS. If set to "N", the user will have to use the J)oin command in RBBS-PC to become a member of the conference. FIDO *.MSG areas cannot be joined from within RBBS-PC, and can therefore always be "auto-joined" from within Mail Manager +Plus+, regardless of this setting. - Path/Name of conference ALIAS file There is a popular merge available for RBBS-PC that allows the use of alias names. If you are not using the ALIAS merge, you can still make use of this option, if you would like a few users to be able to post messages under a different name than the one they use on the BBS. Set this option to "NONE" if you are not using alias names. Since alias names are taboo in the Fido kingdom, this setting is ignored for Fido *.MSG areas. The filename that this option points to is a text file, formatted as follows: REAL NAME, ALIAS NAME So, to have all messages uploaded by "JOE DOE" posted as being from "MAIL ADDICT", and to have the SysOp's own messages posted as being from "TEST SYSOPNAME", this file would look like this: JOE DOE, MAIL ADDICT REMOTE NAME, TEST SYSOPNAME CONFIGURING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 33 "REMOTE NAME" would of course be replaced by the name that you use to sign onto your system remotely. Mail Manager +Plus+ is smart enough to take care of updating the mail waiting flag in RBBS-PC for the REAL NAME of the recipient, and to add messages addressed to the user's alias to the personal index of the recipient's mail packets. - Add tag Applies to FIDO *.MSG areas only. If set to "Y", Mail Manager +Plus+ will append a tear and origin line to messages uploaded to this conference. It will look like this on the message itself: --- MMGR+ v2.02 * Origin: [Tagline for this conference] (Zone:Net/Node) If set to "N", the tear/tag is *NOT* appended to the uploaded messages. (Normally, this is a function of your mail processor, but you may want Mail Manager +Plus+ to append these lines in your NETMAIL areas). - Zone Applies to FIDO *.MSG areas only. FIDO-NET is normally "1", RBBS-NET is normally "8". Each conference can be set to different Zone:Net/Node arguments, so Mail Manager +Plus+ allows you to be in MANY different mail zones! - Net As above, applies to FIDO *.MSG areas only. Set this to the net number you are using for this conference. - Node As above, applies to FIDO *.MSG areas only. Set this to the node number you are using for this conference. For these three options, settings of: Zone: 8 Net: 965 Node: 9 ...would mean a FIDO-style address of "8:965/9". CONFIGURING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 34 - Netmail Applies to FIDO *.MSG areas only. THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT SETTING. If this is a netmail area, set it to "Y", otherwise DEFINITELY set it to "N"! Mail Manager +Plus+ handles netmail areas quite differently than standard *.MSG echo areas, and messages will *NOT* be posted properly if this setting is incorrect. Please see the section of this document regarding FIDO *.MSG areas for all the info on Mail Manager +Plus+'s handling of netmail areas. CONFIGURING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 35 MULTIPLE CONFIGURATION FILES ---------------------------- MAILCFG.EXE allows you to edit multiple configuration files, by specifying the filename on the command line. Mail Manager +Plus+ itself will first look for MAILMGR1.CFG, MAILMGR2.CFG, MAILMGR3.CFG, etc, and default back back to MAILMGR.CFG if the corresponding configuration file couldn't be found. For instance... if Mail Manager +Plus+ is called via: MAILMGR 2 ...[other options]... The program will look first for MAILMGR2.CFG, and use that if it exists. To edit MAILMGR2.CFG from the MAILCFG command line, your command might be: MAILCFG C:\MAILMGR\MAILMGR2.CFG MAILCFG will look for and edit the filename MAILMGR.CFG (in the current directory) if nothing is passed on the command line. Please be aware that Mail Manager +Plus+ can use the same configuration file between the various nodes of your RBBS-PC, and file sharing/locking is fully implemented. Therefore it is not necessary to create multiple configuration files unless you have unique requirements between nodes. (Non-standard port configurations is one example, where you may want to have different MAILMGR.PRO files. Since the path/name of MAILMGR.PRO is specified in the configuration file, this would make for a good argument to use multiple configuration files). FIDO-STYLE *.MSG MESSAGE AREAS Page 36 AN INTRODUCTION TO FIDO FORMAT ------------------------------ If you do not wish to use FIDO-style *.MSG formatted conferences with Mail Manager +PLUS+, you may skip this section. Mail Manager +PLUS+ merely allows you to access FIDO-style message bases via an offline mail door, it does not handle the actual transmission or reception of these messages. For that you need a separate (what is the correct term here) mail handling utility such as Binkleyterm or Front Door. Mail Manager's handling of FIDO conferences is MUCH slower than its handling of RBBS conferences. You may seriously wish to consider tossing FIDO conferences into standard RBBS message bases in order to speed up Mail Manager operation. Utilities from other authors for doing this include RBBSMail, MsgToss, and OverMail. The time spent doing this ONCE for each mail packet received may amount to considerable time savings for EACH time a caller uses this door. Before we talk about the intricies of setting up Mail Manager +Plus+ with your FIDO-style system, we should talk about this particular format for a bit. RBBS-PC is capable of running under a frontend mailer such as Binkley-Term, Frontdoor, Seadog, etc. etc. Depending on what type of mail processor the Sysop is using, mail can normally be "tossed" into either RBBS-PC message bases, or into the native FIDO-NET format, which is termed here as "*.MSG". Some Sysops prefer to keep their echo mail in FIDO format, rather than converting all incoming and outgoing messages to and from RBBS-PC *M.DEF's. FIDO "message bases" consist of a unique DOS subdirectory for every conference, with each message in a separate file. A DOS directory structure for this type of message format will typically look something like this: C:\FIDO (Base mail directory) C:\FIDO\4SALE (First conference) C:\FIDO\RBBS (Second conference) ... ...so on and so forth. Within each directory (or "conference") will be filenames like 1.MSG, 2.MSG, 3.MSG, etc. etc. The first message in each conference (1.MSG) is normally some type of "checkpoint" file for mail processors (such as QM, et al), and is therefore not usually available for reading by the user. An exception to this is any "NETMAIL" area that the sysop has set up. Netmail conferences do not go through quite the same process as regular echo conferences do, and in these types of areas, 1.MSG is usually permissible reading material. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, here. We'll come back to handling netmail later. Setting up FIDO conferences in Mail Manager is a fairly straightforward process, but there are several things that you will need to keep in mind: FIDO-STYLE *.MSG MESSAGE AREAS Page 37 - FIDO conferences don't have a user file for Mail Manager +Plus+ to rely on. Therefore, Mail Manager +Plus+ creates one for itself in each FIDO area, named "MMGR.USR". - FIDO conferences don't have any built-in indexing available, short of reading each and every message every time the conference is accessed. Therefore, Mail Manager +Plus+ creates one for itself in each FIDO area, named "MMGR.NDX". - FIDO conferences cannot be joined from within RBBS-PC. Therefore, Mail Manager +Plus+ will allow every user with sufficient security to read the conference to "join" transparently from within the door. - FIDO conferences are usually renumbered every night. This means that what was message number 175 on one day might become message number 37 on the next. Mail Manager therefore determines a unique CRC for each message, based on selected unchanging portions of each message header. This information is stored in the "MMGR.NDX" file within each conference. - This index should be updated right after your renumbering/maintenance event, to save the first hapless user a *LOT* of time while Mail Manager +Plus+ re-creates it. That's what the supplied MMINDEX.EXE program is for, and we'll get into the usage of this program shortly. - Mail Manager must know your Zone:Net/Node ID for each FIDO conference, so that it can properly create the message headers of all uploaded replies to these areas. SETTING UP YOUR FIRST FIDO *.MSG AREA ------------------------------------- With all that in mind, try setting up your first FIDO conference in Mail Manager +Plus+. Make sure that it is working properly before you add the entire slew of conferences! At MAILCFG's conference edit screen, there are several options unique to FIDO conferences that are worthy of note: Path/Name of conference USERS file ..: Ignored by Mail Manager for FIDO conferences. You can literally put whatever you want in this field. Path/Name of conference MESSAGES file: This is the DOS PATH to the conference, rather than the name of the *M.DEF file. For instance, if you enter "C:\MAIL\4SALE", Mail Manager will manipulate files named "C:\MAIL\4SALE\*.*". The trailing backslash is optional: Mail Manager will function either with or without it. Allow ANSI graphics in uploaded messages? : NO. FIDO-NET doesn't like ANSI. Allow high & low ASCII .................. : NO. Moderators will be all over you if they find messages containing high ASCII that originated on your system. Use FIDO-STYLE tearlines? ............... : YES. This strips out the "---" tearlines that offline readers like to stick on uploaded messages. Your FIDO-NET mail processor will add a tearline and tag of its own, and duplicate tearlines are taboo in the FIDO kingdom. FIDO-STYLE *.MSG MESSAGE AREAS Page 38 Message base type: Y=Fixed, N=Elastic, F=FIDO: F Allow users to join within Mail Manager? ....: Ignored by Mail Manager +Plus+ for FIDO areas. Any user with sufficient security to READ the conference can "join" from within the door. Path/Name of conference ALIAS file? .........: Aliases aren't much good in FIDO land, either. This setting is ignored for FIDO conferences. (See the section regarding "CONFIGURING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+" for more information regarding alias names). Zone: Set to your mail zone (RBBS-NET would be 8). Net: Set to your net ID (my RBBS-NET ID is 965). Node: Set to your node ID (my RBBS-NET ID is 9). (These examples would mean an address of 8:965/9). Netmail: VERY IMPORTANT. If you are configuring a netmail conference, set this option to "Y". Otherwise, DEFINITELY set it to "N"! FIDO-STYLE *.MSG MESSAGE AREAS Page 39 SETTING UP YOUR FIRST FIDO *.MSG AREA ------------------------------------- Now save your configuration, and as far as Mail Manager +Plus+ is concerned, you just added a FIDO conference. BEFORE YOU EXTRACT MAIL FROM THE CONFERENCE, be sure that there is a file named "1.MSG" in that directory. Results can be unpredictable if Mail Manager +Plus+ sees only "2.MSG" and up. Also, remember that there is no Mail Manager +Plus+ index created as of yet. You'll want to run the MMINDEX.EXE program to initialize the conference for Mail Manager +Plus+'s use. Although this last is not TRULY necessasry, it will speed up initial operation for that conference considerably, especially if it contains a few hundred messages or so. Usage for MMINDEX: MMINDEX D:\PATH\MAILMGR.CFG If no filename is passed on the command line, MMINDEX will look for MAILMGR.CFG in the current directory. MMINDEX reads your Mail Manager +Plus+ configuration file, and creates an index file in all of your FIDO conferences. At this point, you're ready to test out the conference from within Mail Manager +Plus+ itself. When satisfied, you can do one of two things: 1) Go back to MailCFG and repeat all but the MMINDEX.EXE step for the rest of your FIDO confs. Or, 2) Run the supplied CFG2TXT utility against your MAILMGR.CFG. This will create a text file that you can use your favorite text editor against, and add the balance of your FIDO conferences. When finished, run the companion program, TXT2CFG to convert the text file back into Mail Manager +Plus+'s binary configuration format. If you have MANY Fido conferences to configure, this might be the way to go. See the section of this document regarding "UTILITY PROGRAMS" for more information on these two utilities. After doing one of these two things, run MMINDEX.EXE as the very last item BEFORE firing Mail Manager +Plus+ back up for more testing. Remember to add it to your nightly event, as the very LAST thing run before your BBS comes back up. FIDO-STYLE *.MSG MESSAGE AREAS Page 40 NETMAIL CONFERENCES ------------------- Guess what! Netmail areas require a little more work. "Regular" echomail *.MSG areas are scanned out by your mail processor for sending to your host. NETMAIL, on the other hand, can be sent anywhere, either directly from your system to destination, or through your HOST. The most courteous way to do this is generally thought to be via "Crash" or "Direct" netmail, which bypasses the network and puts you in immediate contact with the individual system. By going direct, there are other fun things that are considered almost automatic for Sysops of frontend mailer systems, such as "File Attach", and "File Request" (commonly referred to as "FREQ"), not to mention that non-involved parties shouldn't have to front the long distance bill for personal messages between two individuals in the net. On the other hand, if you're sending mail to your host, you might want to send the message normally, which means that it would be sent out when your mail packer picks it up during your regular mail event. This way, you don't have to make two separate (and possibly long-distance) calls to your host if you want to send them netmail. In any case... you need to inform Mail Manager of your outbound directories for NETMAIL zones. In most cases, you will have a separate outbound directory for each mail zone. There are a number of ways to go about this from the standpoint of your frontend mailer, but the important thing is that as the SysOp of the board, you should already know where they are! Create a file named MMGRNODE.OB in your Mail Manager Directory. This is a simple text file, and does nothing more than inform Mail Manager where to put File requests, File attaches, and outbound netmail when creating a CRASH message. The format for each line is: Zone, X:\PATH\OUTBOUND.DIR So, if you are in 3 different mail zones, your MMGRNODE.OB file would look something like this: 1, C:\BINKLEY\OUTBOUND 8, C:\BINKLEY\OUTBOUND.008 10, C:\BINKLEY\OUTBOUND.010 ...and that's all that's needed for your MMGRNODE.OB text file. NOW, we have to get into something that we're probably going to catch flak about, and that's our implementation of how to handle searching the nodelist to find the system that you're sending netmail messages to. Mail Manager +Plus+ uses a proprietery nodelist format. It just is not feasible at this stage of the game for us to attempt to support Version 6 and/or Version 7 nodelists, so we deemed it best to use a format of our own, optimized for FAST searches and small file size. You need not use our implementation of the nodelist, but if you don't, you will lose convenience, and will then need to be able to enter in the exact Zone, Net, and Node ID of the recipient on every netmail message, with no search options. FIDO-STYLE *.MSG MESSAGE AREAS Page 41 NETMAIL CONFERENCES ------------------- MMGRNODE.EXE is Mail Manager +Plus+'s proprietery nodelist compiler. This executable should be placed in your Mail Manager +Plus+ directory, and should be run whenever you update your nodelists. It's usage is: MMGRNODE [/A] X:\PATH\NODELIST.FIL /A - Tells Mail Manager +Plus+ to append to the existing compiled nodelist. If omitted, Mail Manager +Plus+ will create the compiled nodelist from scratch, overwriting any pre-existing one. (By "Compiled nodelist", we are referring to Mail Manager +Plus+'s proprietery one, MMGRNODE.DAT). X:\PATH\NODELIST.FIL - The path/filename to the raw nodelist that you are compiling. MMGRNODE will create two files in the current DOS subdirectory: MMGRNODE.DAT - The main data file containing Sysop names, Zone, Net, and node numbers, and phone numbers. All other information in the raw nodelist is ignored, to save on file size as much as possible. MMGRNODE.DIX - The data file's index. This file will be MUCH smaller, and contains information to quickly jump to an individual system's info based on Zone, Net, and Node. Mail Manager +Plus+ will look for these two files in your Mail Manager directory whenever a netmail message is found within a reply packet. For those using multiple nodelists, consider which one you'll use the most, and compile that one FIRST, to improve on search speed. For example, say you're compiling the RBBS-NET nodelist (zone 8) and the entire FIDO-NET nodelist. RBBSLIST is so small that the search time to go through it to get to FIDO addresses is minimal. On the other hand, it would take considerably longer to have to go through the entire FIDONET nodelist when you're looking for someone in RBBS-NET. You get the idea. To compile using this scenario, here's the command lines you'd use (we'll just use dummy nodelist filenames for the moment). Make sure you're in your Mail Manager +Plus+ directory!: MMGRNODE C:\BINKLEY\RBBSLIST.178 MMGRNODE /A C:\BINKLEY\NODELIST.094 This would create MMGRNODE.DAT and MMGRNODE.DIX from scratch, starting with the RBBS-NET nodelist. The FIDO nodelist would be appended to it. You can append as many nodelists as you'd like in this way. (I tried five, for testing purposes, and had no trouble). At this point, you should be all setup and ready to roll with your FIDO areas, as well as your NETMAIL areas. FIDO-STYLE *.MSG MESSAGE AREAS Page 42 NETMAIL MESSAGES WITHIN REPLY PACKETS ------------------------------------- Uploaded *.REP's will work just like they always have within Mail Manager and Mail Manager +Plus+, until you run into a NETMAIL message. When Mail Manager +Plus+ encounters a message for a conference you have configured as netmail in your REP packet, it stops to ask you a few questions, so DON'T RUN MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ FROM A SCRIPT, IF YOU'RE UPLOADING NETMAIL! You'll be informed that this is a *NETMAIL MESSAGE*, then will be asked a series of questions: Users that have sufficient security to read ALL messages (or higher) will get the option of posting the message as C)rash, and will also get the file request and attach options. Users with security LOWER than this will not get these options, and their netmail will be posted "normally" (as an *.MSG in your netmail directory, waiting to be tossed out by your mail processor). If the user has sufficient security, the first question will be: Send message [N]ormally, or C)rash? (Defaults to normal). A crash message goes directly to your outbound area, and is also posted (and marked as sent) in your netmail area. A normal message is posted in your netmail area, and is not sent to anyone until your mail packer finds and moves it. If a (C)rash message, you'll be asked: "File attach Y/[N]? " (Defaults to No). If you tell it yes, you'll be prompted for the path/filename to send out. If a (C)rash message, you'll be asked: "File request Y/[N]? " (Defaults to No). If you tell it yes, you'll be prompted for the name to request. NOTE - In our current state of development, you can do one or the other (attach or request), but not both! If you really need to both attach and request to the same system at the same time, you'll have to upload two separate netmail messages: 1 for the request, and 1 for the attach. Private Message Y/N? Defaults to whatever it was set to in the REP packet. Search by I)D, or S)ysop name ([ENTER] = bypass the search)? This is where Mail Manager +Plus+ will look at the MMGRNODE.DAT and MMGRNODE.DIX files created by the MMGRNODE.EXE nodelist compiler. Here are what the 3 options mean to you: FIDO-STYLE *.MSG MESSAGE AREAS Page 43 NETMAIL MESSAGES WITHIN REPLY PACKETS ------------------------------------- (I)D - You'll be asked for an exact Zone, Net, and then Node number to look up. If Mail Manager +Plus+ finds a hit, it will first ask you whether or not to [A]ccept what it found, then either search again, or ask you whether or not to post the message. The ID search uses the data index file, and is VERY fast. (S)ysop name - You'll be asked for a partial sysop name to look for. The search is NOT case sensitive. As soon as Mail Manager +Plus+ finds the first hit, it displays what it finds, and asks you whether to accept what it found, or search again. [ENTER] - Bypass the search. You'll key in the Zone, net and node ID's, and *NO* error checking will be performed. Mail Manager will take whatever you give it, and attempt to post the message. This is the only option available to you if you did not utilize the MMGRNODE.EXE program. Post Message Y)es, N)o, M)odify ([ENTER] = Y)? We do give you one last chance to abort the message. <grin> If you made a mistake, you can choose "M" to start over and re-enter the information. FIDO-STYLE *.MSG MESSAGE AREAS Page 44 LAST MINUTE THOUGHTS ON FIDO ---------------------------- I guess that's about it for the FIDO *.MSG and NETMAIL implementations. A couple of things that should probably be mentioned: Eddie Rowe has written a program that I have never tried, and that's NoSnail. NoSnail has the capability of sending netmail from an RBBS-PC message base (*M.DEF). If you are using this utility, you can ignore all of the above for netmail areas, and use Eddie's instructions instead. Message extracting, and manually setting last message read markers are noticeably slower in *.MSG conferences. There are several reasons for this, most of which probably don't need a lot of explanation, but here are a few anyway: Each message is in a separate file. Therefore, there's an awful lot of file opening and closing going on. A user might be posting (or have just posted) a FIDO message via Mail Manager (or some other utility) on another node of your BBS. We perform checks to guard against this (and allow for it), which slows things down a bit. Fido messages don't have a whole lot of "standardization". A perfectly valid message could have any number of different things determining end of printable line, or *NO* end of line markers at all. So, there's a lot of checking and conversion to be done in order to get the message into QWK format. Beyond that... it is acceptably fast on a non-networked system (even a fairly slow one), but the extraction process really bogs down when run through a network with fairly slow transfer rates. Doug and I are working on a few ideas to speed up the extraction process. MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS Page 45 DEBUGGING YOUR SETUP, AND RUNNING IN LOCAL MODE ----------------------------------------------- Assuming (again) that your Mail Manager +Plus+ directory is named \MAILMGR: Change to the \MAILMGR directory, and run MAILMGR.EXE with no command line to bring the door up in local mode. NOTE - Depending on how many conferences you've entered, Mail Manager +Plus+ may take a while to come up. Mail Manager +Plus+ attempts to find the user in each and every conference as soon as it loads to determine which conferences the user has and has not joined. The more conferences you have, and the slower your hard disk, the longer this will take. This is required by the security measures mentioned in the 'features' section. If this is a first-time installation, Mail Manager +Plus+ should say that you're a new user and walk you through the user setup. We think it is necessary to mention Mail Manager +Plus+'s own running scenario, since it is important for you as the SysOp to understand this for any debugging purposes on your end. You created +-- Work directories created & maintained by the door. | | \MAILMGR | | \MAILMGR\LOCAL \NODE1 \NODE2 ...etc. Mail Manager +Plus+ changes to these work directories as it runs, and changes back to the parent directory just as it exits. Two files that absolutely MUST be in the directory that you created: MAILMGR.EXE, and RBBSQWK.BAT. Don't rename RBBSQWK.BAT!!! You can edit RBBSQWK.BAT if you are familiar with the format of the CONTROL.DAT file that is included in all .QWK packets, and/or want to modify what the users will receive in their QWK's. This is not for the faint of heart, requires some knowledge of how things work in QWK land, and simply isn't necessary. RBBSQWK.BAT is run each time that Mail Manager +Plus+ creates a QWK packet for the user to download, and doesn't do anything at all if you are using the list of archivers, MAILMGR.ARL. FOR A FIRST-TIME INSTALLATION, WE RECOMMEND YOU DON'T MODIFY RBBSQWK.BAT! An important consideration is what to do with your own personal QWK's and REP's created locally. You may find it convenient to configure your offline reader to use the \MAILMGR\LOCAL directory for all .REP's and .QWK's, since that's where Mail Manager will manipulate your mail in local mode. MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS Page 46 DEBUGGING YOUR SETUP, AND RUNNING IN LOCAL MODE ----------------------------------------------- To stick a .REP packet into your message bases, just U)pload while in local mode, and select any protocol other than N)one. If your .REP packet is in the \MAILMGR\LOCAL directory, it will be processed as if you'd uploaded the file remotely. It is important to make you aware that there is a sysop-only menu option available, and that's "I" (Info), which isn't listed in either the command prompt, or the menu itself. This menu option is available only to those with sufficient security to read ALL messages, or greater. If the user does not have at least this security level, they will see the familar "Command not recognized", instead. If you have set yourself up with sufficient security to use this option, pressing "I" at the Mail Manager +Plus+ main menu will greet you with something like this: SYSOP INFORMATION: Mail Manager version ............: v2.02 Mail Manager path ...............: C:\MAILMGR MailMGR's operating environment .: LANtastic v4.00 (NetBIOS) DOS version .....................: 5.00 DOS SHARE detected? .............: Yes Flow control method .............: Local mode Free string space ...............: 23624 Non-string array avail ..........: 373408 Available stack space ...........: 1738 MAIN message base ...............: E:\RBBS\MAINM.DEF MAIN users file .................: E:\RBBS\MAINU.DEF Highest message # in MAIN .......: 6132 Last msg # YOU read in MAIN .....: 6131 Filename of protocol definitions : C:\MAILMGR\MAILMGR.PRO Filename of list of archivers ...: C:\MAILMGR\MAILMGR.ARL Filename of FMS directory .......: E:\RBBS\MASTER.DIR RBBS-PC semaphore file ..........: E:\RBBS\IBMFLAGS MailMGR semaphore file ..........: MMFLAGS RBBS-PC semaphore file size (6) .: 6 MailMGR semaphore size size (3) .: 3 These 20 are all of the possible lines that can be shown to you. The last four will be displayed only if your environment is NetBIOS. Some of the more important information in here: Mail Manager path should reflect the drive and directory that you have installed the program in. If it doesn't, your batch file is probably not changing to the proper directory prior to running MAILMGR.EXE. Mail Manager's operating environment should reflect what you've told Mail Manager to use. If it doesn't, there's definitely a problem! MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS Page 47 DEBUGGING YOUR SETUP, AND RUNNING IN LOCAL MODE ----------------------------------------------- DOS version must be 3.10 or above in order for Mail Manager +Plus+ to operate properly. DOS SHARE must be detected if you are operating in a NetBIOS environment. The only exception is if you are running under a NOVELL network, in which case SHARE checking is bypassed. Flow control method can report one of five things: Local mode, FOSSIL, RTS/CTS, XON/XOFF, or NONE. Free string space is pretty darned important, too. This should really be up around 10,000 or higher at all times when you display this screen. If it is less than that, we want to hear about it! Non-string array available is approximately the amount of free memory that is available for DSZ and your file compression/extraction programs. If this number is less than 200K, you are likely to run into trouble, and should check to make sure that you are EXITING, (NOT SHELLING!) from RBBS-PC to Mail Manager +Plus+. The only other way that we can think of that would cause you to have less than 200K available on today's 640K+ PC's would be if you have a VERY large # of conferences. If you have less than 200K here, you will probably need a utility like SHROOM (mentioned in the requirements section of this document) in order to use Mail Manager +Plus+. MAIN message base and user file names must match what is true for your MAIN area. If not, you don't have MAIN as your 1st conference listed, and Mail Manager +Plus+ will NOT operate properly. Highest message number in MAIN, and highest message # that you read in main should be accurate. If they're not, then Mail Manager +Plus+ didn't properly find you in the MAIN users file, and/or it wasn't able to correctly access the MAIN message file. Filename of list of protocol definitions should match what you told MAILCFG to use for MAILMGR.PRO. Filename of list of archivers should match what you told MAILCFG to use. (If this file does not exist, Mail Manager will use the default type of compression that you chose, and will require said archiver to be in a DOS path!) Filename of FMS directory should match what is true for your system if you are using an RBBS-PC FMS directory, or "NONE" otherwise. The last four lines will only be shown to you if you are running under NetBIOS, and they are described in better detail elsewhere in this manual. If, after following these instructions, you continue to have trouble, take a look at the "COMMON PROBLEMS" section of this manual. MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS Page 48 HANDLING NON-STD PORTS VIA MAILMGR.PRO -------------------------------------- The easiest way to handle nonstandard port addresses in Mail Manager +Plus+ is to create a separate configuration file for each node, and have each configuration file point to a different copy of MAILMGR.PRO. However, it is possible to acheive the same results with a single configuration file. In order to support a nonstandard port address in a single configuration file, have your MAILMGR.PRO specify a custom batch file, rather than a direct call to the protocol executable itself. Your custom batch file can then send the correct commands to the protocol, depending on which port is involved. Here's what an entry in the MAILMGR.PRO file might look like. This should all be on one line, of course, but is split here for clarity): "Z)modem (Batch)",0,S,8,,B,1024,,0.95,,1=E, "X:\ZMODEM.BAT S [PORT#] [BAUD] [FILE]", "X:\ZMODEM.BAT R [PORT#] [BAUD] [FILE]" With drive X: of course being whatever drive\directory you want. Then the ZMODEM.BAT file could look something like (assuming that you have ports 1 and 2 at standard addresses, and port 3 at non-standard address 3e8, irq 5): @ECHO OFF : -------------------------------------- : 1st arg is either S or R, : 2rd arg is comm port number : 3rd arg is bps rate, and : 4th arg is filename being transferred. : -------------------------------------- IF (%1)==(S) GOTO SEND IF (%1)==(R) GOTO RECEIVE GOTO END :SEND IF NOT (%2)==(3) dsz port %2 speed %3 sz -m %4 IF (%2)==(3) dsz portx 3e8,5 speed %3 -m sz %4 GOTO END :RECEIVE IF NOT (%2)==(3) dsz port %2 speed %3 rz %4 IF (%2)==(3) dsz portx 3e8,5 speed %3 rz %4 :END This could, of course, be refined into a single batch file that handles all protocols, not just Zmodem, but it should serve to illustrate the principle. Or a separate batch file could be set up for each protocol. We leave it to you to adapt to protocol drivers other than DSZ. MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS Page 49 DESQVIEW, NETWORKS, AND MULTIPLE NODES -------------------------------------- Operating in a multitasking environment or on a network is a special case, worthy of further explanation! First off, Mail Manager +Plus+ can automatically detect the following conditions: - Is DOS SHARE installed? - Is DESQview present? - Is Artisoft's LANtastic present? - Is Novell present? What Mail Manager +Plus+ detects will be used as the basis for initially determining the operating environment, which will be: - DESQview, if it is present, regardless of whether or not SHARE is installed. - NetBIOS, if DESQview is not present, and SHARE is installed, or Novell is detected. - Good ole' normal DOS if neither of the above is true. Mail Manager +Plus+ will then use the appropriate file locking technique for the type of environment that was detected. At this point, the only file being accessed is Mail Manager's own configuration file, so your RBBS files are quite safe even if this is not the same environment that you have specified for RBBS to use. Once the program has progressed far enough to have read what network type that you told it to use (from DORINFOx.DEF if operating remotely, or MAILMGR.CFG if operating in local mode), Mail Manager +Plus+ will, if necessary, switch to your specified type of network. With that out of the way, let's talk about the three possible types of environments, and what they mean from the standpoint of Mail Manager +Plus+: DESQview - Mail Manager +Plus+ will use the same file & record locking scheme that RBBS-PC itself uses. In fact, it uses the very same assembler source, which was written by Jon Martin in 1988. Therefore, the DESQview semaphore locking routines used by Mail Manager +Plus+ are copyrighted by Jon Martin, and are in fact available to anyone who has a copy of RBBS-PC's source code. Look for RBBSDV.ASM in RBBS-PC's assembler source. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- NetBIOS/ - This is a special case, and requires that physical file and Novell record locking take place. RBBS-PC uses what is termed as a "semaphore" file, to control access to what Mail Manager +Plus+ is concerned with: Your USERS file(s), your MESSAGES file(s), and your FMS file (if any). MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS Page 50 DESQVIEW, NETWORKS, AND MULTIPLE NODES -------------------------------------- This is done with the hard-coded filename "IBMFLAGS", which will exist in the same directory as your MAIN message base. If you're already running RBBS-PC under NetBIOS, look for it... it should already be there. IBMFLAGS is 6 bytes in length, and contains nothing but three empty 2-byte records, which are controlled by RBBS-PC and Mail Manager +Plus+ to limit access to USERS and MESSAGES files. Under NetBIOS, Mail Manager +Plus+ will create and maintain its own "semaphore" locking file, using the same principle as IBMFLAGS. The Mail Manager +Plus+ semaphore file is named MMFLAGS, and will be created in your Mail Manager +Plus+ directory. MMFLAGS will be 3 bytes in length, and manipulated by all nodes of Mail Manager +Plus+. It is also noteworthy to mention that all files will be opened in a SHARED fashion under NetBIOS, which is the nature of the beast. If you are running under Novell Netware, Mail Manager +Plus+ will detect it, and will not check for the installation of DOS SHARE. If Novell is not detected, yet NetBIOS is specified as the environment, Mail Manager will check for DOS SHARE before allowing itself to continue. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- DOS - Gee, isn't it nice when you don't have to worry about all this? Under good 'ole DOS, none of the above is meaningful, and all files will be opened normally, with no locking mechanisms in place. If you happen to be running in an environment that does NOT match any of the above three methods, AND you are sharing the same set of RBBS message bases and users files between nodes, you will want to consider having DOS SHARE loaded, and configure both RBBS-PC and Mail Manager +Plus+ to use NetBIOS as the operating environment. Or, if file sharing is not a concern, just configure Mail Manager +Plus+ to use DOS as its environment. You should NOT set up a separate Mail Manager +Plus+ configuration for each node unless your network drive letters are different on each one: (C:\MAINM.DEF on one, D:\MAINM.DEF on another). Why you'd set your network up that way we don't know, but it isn't our place to, is it? Mail Manager +Plus+ always operates out of a unique work directory for each node, and can handle up to 36 nodes with a single configuration. MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS Page 51 WORKING WITH A FOSSIL DRIVER ---------------------------- Mail Manager +Plus+ does support a FOSSIL driver. If you told RBBS-PC to use a FOSSIL, Mail Manager +Plus+ will also. The door has been tested extensively with both BNU v1.70 and X00 v1.2x FOSSILs. PLEASE NOTE that some door converters & programs that 'launch' doors for you may not correctly set the FOSSIL argument in DORINFOx.DEF!!!! The very last line of your DORINFOx.DEF (line #13) should be either a zero or minus one (0 or -1). -1 indicates that the FOSSIL is active in RBBS-PC, and tells the door that it too should use a FOSSIL. To keep you from having to dig up the RBBS-PC documentation, here's what Mail Manager +Plus+ expects from DORINFOx.DEF: NEWARK CONNECTION <- BBS name (ignored by Mail Manager +Plus+) CHIP <- Sysop's first name MORROW <- Sysop's last name COM1 <- Communications port 2400 BAUDD,N,8,1 <- Communications parameters 6 <- Network type (4=DV, 6=NetBIOS) JOE <- User's first name USERNAME <- User's last name NEWARK, OH <- User's city/state 2 <- User's graphics preference (2=ANSI) 10 <- User's security level 30 <- Number of minutes remaining -1 <- FOSSIL in use (0=no, -1=yes) * NOTE - The second "D" in "BAUDD" is a bug in RBBS-PC 17.3C, and may or may not be present in your own DORINFOx.DEF files. Either way, it does not affect the operation of the door. It is possible to configure Mail Manager to ALWAYS check for a FOSSIL driver, regardless of the setting in DORINFOx.DEF. This is done in the MAILCFG program, by setting the flow control method to "F". In this case, Mail Manager +Plus+ will ALWAYS try to use a FOSSIL for communications. MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS Page 52 SECURITY FEATURES ----------------- Mail Manager +Plus+ has extensive built-in security functions. We hope you agree that it does make for a pretty secure mail door. We want to make you aware of the importance of the security level that you configured in the MAILCFG program for the ability to read ALL messages. This security level is checked for all of the SysOp functions that Mail Manager +Plus+ performs, and should be set to either SysOp or Co-SysOp level only! Some of the more important things that users with this security level or higher can do: - Use the SysOp-only function I)nfo from the main menu (which shows where everything that pertains to your Mail Manager +Plus+ setup is located). - Upload a message under a name other than the one that they use on the BBS, regardless of the setting of the "Alias file" argument in the MAILCFG program for that conference. - Read everybody's mail, regardless of whether it's marked as private or password-protected. - Use the C)rash option when uploading netmail messages, and also the file attach and request options. You get the idea. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Contrary to some of the concerns we have received on this subject over the last several months, a user CANNOT inadvertantly download a mail packet that was extracted by a previous user of the door. Mail Manager +Plus+ temporarily keeps the mail packet on disk so that the SysOp can check it out for appearance, if there were any problems in the transfer, etc. etc. Mail Manager +Plus+ deletes any existing mail packet whenever a user attempts to D)ownload, E)xpedite, or U)pload. Conferences are configured with two minimum security levels: One for the ability to read, and the other for the ability to post. User can only extract mail from conferences that they have joined. (Either from the BBS itself, or via Mail Manager +Plus+, if you have turned "on" this ability in the MAILCFG program). Mail Manager +Plus+ will add a user to a conference only if you have specified that it is OK to do so in the MAILCFG program. Mail Manager +Plus+ bypasses all killed messages. Only conferences which the user has joined are shown in the QWK packets that the user downloads. Password-protected messages are only extracted and downloaded to users with an exact name match in the "TO" or "FROM" fields, or to those with sufficient security to read ALL messages. MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS Page 53 SECURITY FEATURES ----------------- Only users with sufficient security to read ALL messages are permitted to upload messages under a name other than the one they use on the BBS. The exception to this is if you have configured Mail Manager +Plus+ to look for an ALIAS file, in which case it will accept messages from the user's pre-defined alias, and will change the user's real name to his alias before posting. Users cannot upload messages to conferences that they have not joined. Mail Manager +Plus+ posts a private message (in the MAIN area) to the sender's true name whenever a security violation regarding an uploaded reply occurs. This can be triggered by: - Uploading a message with the "FROM" name not matching the user's name on the BBS or his pre-defined alias. - Uploading a message to a conference that the user has not joined. - Uploading a message to a conference that the user does not have sufficient security to post a message in. - Uploading a message to a conference number that does not exist. Files listed in your FMS directory that were uploaded as "SYSOP-ONLY" will be extracted only in the SysOp's own mail packets. They will be bypassed for everyone else. MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS Page 54 ADDITIONAL FEATURES ------------------- CHAT MODE: While Mail Manager +Plus+ is waiting for a keystroke [F10] (preferably at the MAIN MENU), the Sysop can press [F10] to jump into a no-frills chat mode with the user that's currently online. When finished with the chat, either one of you can type "/QUIT" to return to Mail Manager. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DOS SHELL: While Mail Manager +Plus+ is waiting for a keystroke (again, [F2] preferably at the MAIN MENU), the Sysop can press [F2] to jump to DOS. When finished, type EXIT to return to Mail Manager +Plus+. Naturally, this works only from the local keyboard. Mail Manager +Plus+ will automatically return to the proper drive and directory, no matter where you are when you type "exit" to return from the DOS shell. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TIME LIMIT: This is passed to Mail Manager +Plus+ from RBBS-PC in DORINFOx.DEF. It will be either the amount of time remaining on your RBBS-PC, or whatever time limit that you specified in DOORS.DEF, otherwise. In local mode, the time limit is always 120 minutes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- KYBD IDLE: If Mail Manager +Plus+ has to wait more than 180 seconds for the user to press a key, it will exit back to the BBS. The user will get a beep and a warning message after 90 seconds, and every 30 seconds thereafter, until keyboard time expires. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CARRIER DETECT: If the user drops carrier, Mail Manager +Plus+ will report to you as such, write this info to the appropriate log file, and return to the BBS. RBBS-PC will see that no carrier detect is present, re-cycle itself, and wait for the next caller. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DOWNLOAD & EXIT: Although the E)xpedite! option is documented elsewhere in this manual, we didn't make it clear as to the best way to automate this from RBBS-PC's standpoint. RBBS-PC 17.3C and above allow you to specify "/G" after the name of the door, which allows the user to be logged off immediately after returning to RBBS-PC. Therefore, the user could type: d mailmgr /g Then, from within Mail Manager +Plus+, select E)xpedite!, and the user will be logged completely off the BBS after downloading their mail. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS Page 55 ADDITIONAL FEATURES ------------------- NEW FILES: If you are running a standard RBBS-PC FMS directory, you should be able to use this built-in capability. If you are not running a standard FMS, and the path/name of your FMS directory is set to "NONE" in the MAILCFG program, Mail Manager +Plus+ will not attempt to include a new file listing in the user's mail packets. It should be noted here that the users do have the ability to turn this feature "off", if they do not desire a file listing in their mail packets. Here's what is required of your FMS directory: - No 'special' lines contained within it (semi-private filenames preceded with an asterisk (*) before the filename, special comment lines, etc). - Oldest files listed at the top of the FMS, and most recent files listed at the bottom. If yours fits all of the above, NEWFILES should work fine. Here's the way NEWFILES works: 1) Finds the date that the user last checked the file listing (from the RBBS-PC main users file). If user never listed your file directories, the user's last date into the Mail Manager +Plus+ door is used, instead. 2) Grabs the very first line of your FMS, to determine the line length, since this can vary depending on how you set things up via RBBS-PC's CONFIG. HOWEVER, all lines in your FMS are expected to be the same length as the first line listed! 3) After determining line length, moves to end of file, grabs the very last line of your FMS, and checks the date stamp against the user's "last check" date. 4) If the last file's date is the same as, or newer than, the user's date that they last listed your files, NEWFILES steps through your FMS in reverse order, pulling out filenames & extended descriptions until the date stamp is earlier than the user's last check. The file created (NEWFILES.DAT) is then included in the user's QWK mail packet, and can be viewed easily within his mail reader. If the last file's date is older than the user's last check, NEWFILES figures no new files, and doesn't include a NEWFILES.DAT in the QWK packet. PRIVATE UPLOADS TO THE SYSOP are included ONLY in the sysop's own mail packets. These files (and their extended descriptions) are skipped for everyone else. MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS Page 56 ADDITIONAL FEATURES ------------------- If you use chained FMS directories, or any of the "\FMS" directives, NEWFILES will stop searching when it reaches that line of your FMS. Why? The line won't be an extended description (" ." as the last three characters on the line), and won't have a file date in the proper positions on the line. In this case, NEWFILES will consider the file date to be 00-00-00, and will quit searching your FMS directory. UTILITY PROGRAMS BUNDLED WITH MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 57 We supply several utility programs to aid in your setup and operation of Mail Manager +Plus+. A quick overview: MailCFG, the configuration program: We recommend using MailCFG to configure Mail Manager +Plus+. MailCFG directly edits the binary configuration file, and is easy to use. MailCFG is covered in the separate section of this manual entitled: "CONFIGURING MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+". CFG2TXT & TXT2CFG - the binary<-->text utilities: Throughout Mail Manager's relatively short life, we have heard from several SysOps who simply do not care for the configuration program MailCFG. These two utilities are provided as an alternative, and also to ease the installation of FIDO *.MSG message areas. MailFix, the *M.DEF purge/repair utility: A handy utility intended as an alternative (or replacement) for RBBS CONFIG's "repair" facility, MU-EDIT, and similar utilities. MailFix has the ability to keep a physical number of messages in a given message base (handy for echo areas), purge killed messages, and repair damaged messages. MMIndex, the indexing program for *.MSG areas: Optional (but HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!) utility for SysOps running Fido *.MSG message areas. This program has no meaning if you are running only RBBS-PC *M.DEF message bases. MMGRNode, the nodelist compiler: Optional (but HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!) utility to compile raw nodelists into a shortened binary format readable by Mail Manager +Plus+. Useful only if you are running an *.MSG netmail area or two. The following pages describe these programs in greater detail. UTILITY PROGRAMS BUNDLED WITH MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 58 CFG2TXT & TXT2CFG ----------------- Mail Manager +Plus+ uses a binary configuration file, which can be directly edited by the configuration program, MAILCFG.EXE. However, there are some situations where MAILCFG becomes repetitive, and there are many SysOps who have expressed the desire for a text configuration. So... to address the above, these two utilities are provided. The two programs are companions: CFG2TXT converts a binary configuration file into text format, and TXT2CFG converts a text file in Mail Manager +Plus+ binary configuration format. Usage of these programs: CFG2TXT [INPUT.FIL] [OUTPUT.FIL] Where INPUT.FIL is the name of the Mail Manager +Plus+ binary configuration file to convert, and OUTPUT.FIL is the name of the text file to create. If nothing is passed on the command line, CFG2TXT will default to: INPUT.FIL = MAILMGR.CFG OUTPUT.FIL = MAILMGR.TXT TXT2CFG [INPUT.FIL] [OUTPUT.FIL] The reverse of the above. INPUT.FIL is the name of the text file to convert, and OUTPUT.FIL is the name of the binary configuration file to create. If nothing is passed on the command line, TXT2CFG will default to: INPUT.FIL = MAILMGR.TXT OUTPUT.FIL = MAILMGR.CFG Each line in the text configuration file must be flush left. The supplied MAILMGR.TXT file should be pretty self-explanitory, but here is the run-down: Lines beginning with a semi-colon ";" are ignored as comments. ANY BLANK LINES WILL BE CONSIDERED PART OF THE CONFIGURATION! Lines without semicolons (the order in which TXT2CFG will read them) are as follows: UTILITY PROGRAMS BUNDLED WITH MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 59 CFG2TXT & TXT2CFG ----------------- MAX = Maximum number of characters, INT = Integer (cannot exceed 32767) Line # Meaning MAX ------ ------------------------------------------------ --- 1 Name of your RBBS-PC. 35 2 Name you use to log onto your BBS remotely. 31 3 Your first name as you are known to your users. 15 4 Your last name as you are known to your users. 15 5 Security level to read *ALL* messages everywhere INT 6 Security level to use when operating locally. INT 7 Graphics to use locally (0=no, 1=ascii, 2=ansi) 1 8 Default tagline to use for ALL conferences. 61 9 First eight characters for packet filenames. 8 10 Default file compression (ARC,ARJ,LZH,ZIP only) 3 11 Path/Name of *NON-GRAPHIC* news file. 40 12 Path/Name of list of system bulletins. 40 13 Type of network to use in local mode. (D,N,Q) 1 14 Type of handshaking to use remotely (F,R,X,N) 1 15 Path/filename of your FMS directory (optional) 40 16 Path/filename of your list of available archivers 40 17 Environment variable pointing to XFER-x.DEF 15 18 Modify REP time stamp to system date/time? (Y,N) 1 19 City/State where your BBS is located. 31 20 Your BBS phone number. 12 21 Character to use for smart text (default=123) 3 22 Default path to *M.DEF conferences. 40 23 Path/filename of echo toss log. 40 24 Start of timelock. Use 24-hour clock (HH:MM) 5 25 End of timelock. Use 24-hour clock (HH:MM) 5 26 and up = Conference configuration section. Each conference is configured as follows (20 arguments = 19 commas on each line): 1,2,"3","4",5,6,7,8,"9",10,11,12,"13",14,15,16,17,18,19,20 MAX = Maximum number of characters, INT = Integer (cannot exceed 32767) Arg # Meaning MAX ------ ------------------------------------------------ --- 1 Conference number (1 to 500). 3 2 Conference name 7 3 Path/Name of this conference's USERS file. 80 4 Path/Name of this conference's MESSAGES file. 80 5 Allow or dis-allow ANSI (Y or N). 1 6 Allow or dis-allow high/low ASCII (Y or N). 1 7 Security level needed to read this conference. INT 8 Security level needed to post in this conference. INT 9 Tagline for this conf (NONE = use default tag). 61 10 Modify mail reader tearlines? (Y or N). 1 11 Type of msg base (Y=fixed, N=elastic, F=FIDO). 1 12 Allow users to join from within the door? (Y, N). 1 UTILITY PROGRAMS BUNDLED WITH MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 60 CFG2TXT & TXT2CFG ----------------- 13 Path/Name to alias file (leave empty if none). 80 14 Zone for this conf (applies to FIDO areas only) INT 15 Net for this conf (applies to FIDO areas only) INT 16 Node for this conf (applies to FIDO areas only) INT 17 Is this a FIDO *.MSG NETMAIL area? (Y or N). 1 18 Add tear/origin line (Y or N) (FIDO areas only) 1 19 True FIDO symbolic area name (FIDO areas only) 15 20 Allow private messages in this conference? (Y/N) 1 Your MAIN RBBS-PC MESSAGE BASE must be listed as conference #1! From there on, you can mix/match as you see fit. Your MAIN conference might look something like this: 1,MAIN,"C:\RBBS\MAINU.DEF","C:\RBBS\MAINM.DEF",Y,Y,5,5,"NONE",N,N,N, "NONE",0,0,0,N,N,"",Y NOTE that it should all be on one line! It is split here for the purposes of this documentation. This line tells Mail Manager that: This is conference #1, named "MAIN". The path to the users file is "C:\RBBS\MAINU.DEF". The path to the messages file is "C:\RBBS\MAINM.DEF". Both ANSI and high/low ASCII are allowed in uploaded replies. Users with security level 5 and above can both read and reply. Default tagline will be used. We are not bothering with FIDO-STYLE tearlines. This is an "elastic" message base. Users cannot join this conference from within the door. There is no alias file for this conference. This is not an *.MSG Fido-style area. (Last argument): Private messages will be allowed. -------------------------------------------------------------------- ...and that's the way it works. Conferences do NOT have to be listed in numerical order: MAILCFG will handle them no matter where they are in the list. HOWEVER, if you need "gaps" between conference numbers, pay close attention to the following: *PLEASE NOTE* - TXT2CFG will *NOT* automatically "fill-in-the-blanks" for you. This INCLUDES conference numbers! If you intend to reserve a space for a conference, set the conference name to "{EMPTY}". The bare minimum line to reserve a conference would look like this: X,{EMPTY},,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, (Yes, that's 19 commas). Replace "X" with the conference number. If you intend to leave gaps in conference numbers, you will have to add one of these lines for every conference in question. TXT2CFG will completely ignore any unused conference numbers, meaning that if your text configuration looks like this: UTILITY PROGRAMS BUNDLED WITH MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 61 CFG2TXT & TXT2CFG ----------------- 1,MAIN,..... 3,CONF3,..... TXT2CFG will convert them to: 1,MAIN,..... 2,CONF3,..... But, if you configure it like this: 1,MAIN,..... 2,{EMPTY},..... 3,CONF3,..... TXT2CFG will import them that way, and "reserve" conference #2. UTILITY PROGRAMS BUNDLED WITH MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 62 MAILFIX ------- MailFIX is an alternate purge/repair utility for RBBS-PC message bases. USAGE: ----- MAILFIX [/V] [/F] [/R] [/O] [/Knnn] D:\PATH\MESSAGE.FIL /V - View the integrity of the message file only. Do not perform the actual repair work, and do not create the output file. /F - Informs MAILFIX that this is a fixed-length message base. If "/F" is not chosen, MAILFIX assumes the message base to be configured as 'elastic'. /R - Informs MAILFIX that the sysop uses RBBSMail or MsgToss on this message base. Both of these mail processors format the time field in the message header with a period instead of a colon, which CONFIG's option #185 (repair messages) chokes on. /O - Informs MAILFIX that the sysop uses OverMail on this message base. OverMail formats the time field in the message header with a semicolon instead of a colon, which CONFIG's option #185 (repair messages) chokes on. /Knnn - (Where "nnn" is the number of messages to keep.): Tells MAILFIX to trim down the physical size of the message base, regardless of whether or not the messages to delete are flagged as "killed". This is useful for things like an echo area that grows almost out of control daily. "nnn" must be 3 digits. If you want to keep 50 messages, your switch would be "/K050". * NEVER use this switch in conjunction with "/V"! ~~~~~ Use of this option will OVERWRITE your original message file! D:\PATH\MESSAGE.FIL is the name of the messages file to purge/repair. Unless the /V option is used, MAILFIX will create an output file with the same name and the extension '.FIX'. Above example would create D:\PATH\MESSAGE.FIX. If the /Knnn switch is used, MAILFIX will make a second pass on your message base, using the *.FIX file for input, and the original file name for output. When finished your original message file will have been replaced by MAILFIX's work, and the *.FIX file will be deleted. UTILITY PROGRAMS BUNDLED WITH MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 63 MAILFIX ------- TECHIE STUFF FOR THOSE WHO CARE: ------------------------------- If you run a mail system that utilizes RBBSMail, MsgToss, or OverMail for echo mail processing, you're likely to have run across the fact that the repair utliity out of CONFIG (option #185) no longer works for you. This is due to the fact that these mail processors place either a period or a semicolon in the time field of the message header on every message that they process. This just happens to be one of CONFIG's five "key fields" that it looks at to determine whether or not the message is corrupt. These key fields are: Description Should be ------------------------------------------- --------- The "killed" flag, Ascii 225 or 226 "ß,Γ" the first separator in the 'time' field, ":" the second separator in the 'time' field, ":", ".", or ";" the first separator in the 'date' field, "-" and the last separator in the 'date' field. "-" Therefore, this string of five characters is very important, and is what will be displayed to you if the message needs repaired, and you specify the "/v" option on MAILFIX's command line. If you don't specify "/v" on the command line, MAILFIX will do it's best to fix the message, and report "<fixed>". If you use a mail processor on your RBBS-PC message bases OTHER than RBBSMail, MsgToss, or OverMail, and said mail processor *DOESN'T* use a period or semicolon as its 'mark' in the second separator in the TIME field, we'd sure like to hear about it so that we can attempt to make MailFix compatible with your system. WHEN, AND HOW MAILFIX FIXES A MESSAGE: ------------------------------------- To determine whether or not a message is valid, MAILFIX looks at the following in the message header: Message number - Should never be zero. Killed flag - Should always be ASCII 225 or 226. Number of 128-byte records - Should never be less than 1. If the message header passes these three tests, MAILFIX assumes it has a valid message on it's hands, and moves on to do one of three things: - Copy it (if it isn't marked as killed, and doesn't need fixed). MAILFIX will step through the message's records and write them to the output file. UTILITY PROGRAMS BUNDLED WITH MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 64 MAILFIX ------- - Fix it (if it isn't marked as killed). If, during all of it's checks, MAILFIX finds that it has a valid message on it's hands, yet the five key characters mentioned above DON'T MATCH what they're supposed to, the message header is adjusted as follows: * Sets the "killed" flag to indicate that this is an active message (Ascii 225) "ß". * Sets the TIME separators to: :: - RBBS-PC (un-scanned by RBBSMail/OverMail) :. - RBBSMail :; - OverMail You must have specified "/R" or "/O" on the command line for the RBBSMail/OverMail checks to take place. If "/R" or "/O" is specified, MAILFIX is smart enough to discover whether or not the message has been scanned by either one of these mail processors yet, and will not mark an un-scanned message with the special "." or ";" separator. * Sets both DATE separators to "-". - Purge it (if it's marked as killed). MAILFIX will skip the entire message (and it's records) if the message is marked as killed (ASCII 226) "Γ". If the message didn't pass the tests, MAILFIX assumes that this is not a message header, reports to you as such, purges the offending record, and moves on to the next one. EXAMPLES: -------- Unless you use the "/Knnn" command line option, MAILFIX will not overwrite (or modify in any way) your original message file. If you want to replace your old message file with the one that MAILFIX creates, your best bet is to run MAILFIX from a batch file, like so: MAILFIX C:\RBBS\MAINM.DEF IF EXIST C:\RBBS\MAINM.FIX DEL C:\RBBS\MAINM.DEF IF EXIST C:\RBBS\MAINM.FIX COPY C:\RBBS\MAINM.FIX C:\RBBS\MAINM.DEF IF EXIST C:\RBBS\MAINM.FIX DEL C:\RBBS\MAINM.FIX UTILITY PROGRAMS BUNDLED WITH MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 65 MAILFIX ------- On the other hand, if you have an echo area that's scanned by RBBSMail, and you want to keep it purged down to 100 messages, your command line would be: MAILFIX /R /K100 FILENAME.DEF If you wanted to do the same thing with a message base that's been scanned by OverMail: MAILFIX /O /K100 FILENAME.DEF Either of these last two examples would replace "FILENAME.DEF" with the fixed/purged/pruned message base. Run MAILFIX without a command line to get a help screen. *=- ABOUT RBBS-PC v17.4 MESSAGE BASES -=* --------------------------------- MailFix *DOES* work with message bases that have been configured with the new "carbon copy" feature of RBBS-PC v17.4. MailFix does not go through any special gyrations to look for multiple-recipient messages, but it will not trash your message base, either. In the nearly 2 years of Mail Manager's life thus far, we have found that there are MANY utilities floating around out there that do not strictly adhere to the RBBS-PC message format as-defined in the documentation for our favorite BBS software. MailFix was specifically written to be as generic as possible, and to work with the widest possible variety of RBBS-PC message bases. The only incompatibility with RBBS-PC v17.4 message bases is the following scenario: The message base is configured with "carbon-copy" turned on, and 1) - The very first header of the "carbon-copy" message is bad, or 2) - The very first header of the "carbon-copy" message is marked as "killed". In the first case, MailFix will skip the "bad" message, and maybe the one following it as well, until it can get its bearings and find the next "good" message header. In the second case, Mailfix will purge the message. UTILITY PROGRAMS BUNDLED WITH MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 66 MMINDEX ------- MMIndex is the Mail Manager Plus indexing utility for Fido-style *.MSG message areas. If you are not running any of these types of message areas, you do not need MMIndex, and can skip this section. Usage: MMINDEX X:\PATH\MAILMGR.CFG If nothing is supplied on the command line, MMIndex will look for a file named MAILMGR.CFG in the current directory. MMIndex reads the Mail Manager +Plus+ binary configuration file, and looks for all conferences configured as F)ido (*.MSG). It then creates a file named MMGR.NDX in each FIDO *.MSG subdirectory, which is what Mail Manager +Plus+ uses to move as quickly as possible through the messages within. The index is 4 bytes per message, so if you have 100 messages in a FIDO conference, MMGR.NDX should be 400 bytes in length. Mail Manager +Plus+ creates/updates the index file, but you will save yourself (and your users) some time by putting MMINDEX.EXE in your nightly event. If you renumber your messages in the middle of the night, Mail Manager +Plus+ will find that the index in each conference is invalid, and will have to re-create it from scratch. MMINDEX deletes any pre-existing indexes, and creates new ones from scratch. If you are running FIDO *.MSG conferences, you should put MMINDEX in your nightly event (after your renumbering/maintenance) as the very LAST thing before your BBS comes back up. UTILITY PROGRAMS BUNDLED WITH MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 67 MMGRNODE -------- MMGRNODE.EXE is meaningful only if you are running one or more FIDO *.MSG netmail areas. If you are not configuring any such areas into Mail Manager +Plus+, you have no need for this utility. Mail Manager +Plus+ uses a proprietery compiled nodelist format for all Zone:Net/Node searches in your netmail areas. Although it is not absolutely necessary to use our implementation, you will lose the convenience of being able to confirm that you are sending netmail to the correct Zone:Net/Node, and will have to blindly enter in your Zone:Net/Node arguments for netmail messages that you upload into Mail Manager +Plus+. MMGRNODE reads a "raw" nodelist, and compiles it into a format that is optimized for small file size and fast searches. MMGRNode can use a single nodelist, or can combine several different ones together. Usage: MMGRNODE [/A] X:\PATH\NODELIST.FIL /A = Instructs MMGRNODE to append to any pre-existing compiled nodelist that it created previously. If no "/A" on command line, MMGRNODE will create the compiled nodelist and index from scratch, overwriting any pre-existing ones. X:\PATH\NODELIST.FIL = The path/filename of the raw nodelist that you wish to compile. MMGRNODE should always be run from your Mail Manager +Plus+ directory. It creates the following two files whenever it is run: MMGRNODE.DAT - The main data file containing Zone, Net, and node numbers, as well as SysOp name, and BBS phone number. MMGRNODE.DIX - The main data file's index (MUCH smaller in size). If you intend to compile several different nodelists together, it is important to consider which list contains the addresses that you will want to access frequently, and also the physical size of the nodelist itself. For instance, if you ever need to send something to someone in RBBS-NET, and you intend to compile both the RBBS-NET and FIDO-NET nodelists, you may want to compile the RBBS-NET list first, since the file size is so small. The search time to get through RBBSLIST is minimal in comparison to having to scan the entire FIDO nodelist just to find someone in RBBS-NET. To compile using this scenario, your command lines would be: MMGRNODE X:\PATH\RBBSLIST.178 MMGRNODE /A X:\PATH\NODELIST.094 This would create the two files MMGRNODE.DAT and MMGRNODE.DIX from scratch, starting with the RBBS-NET nodelist. The FIDO-NET nodelist would then be appended to them. UTILITY PROGRAMS BUNDLED WITH MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ Page 68 UPDATE AND UPDATUSR ------------------- The pair of utilities UPDATE.EXE and UPDATUSR.EXE are intended as "one-shot" programs for SysOps who are upgrading from v1.30 through v1.34 of Mail Manager. If you are not upgrading from one of these previous versions of Mail Manager, you do not need these two utilites. By the time you read this, you will likely have already converted your files, but here is the scenario anyway: - BACK UP YOUR ORIGINAL MAILMGR.CFG and MAILMGR.USR FILES! (Just in case something goes wrong). - BOTH programs must be run from your Mail Manager directory. - UPDATE.EXE updates your binary configuration file (MAILMGR.CFG) to the new format used by Mail Manager +Plus+. - UPDATUSR.EXE updates Mail Manager's binary user file (MAILMGR.USR) to the new format used by Mail Manager +Plus+. These utilities are "run-once-then-throw-them-away". Once your files are converted, you won't need them again. MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ MAIN MENU Page 69 THE MAIN MENU ------------- Although we hope that you'll find Mail Manager to be pretty self- explanatory, a complete run-down on everything that you can do with this door follows. A shorter version of this is available to the user, in the online help file MAILMGR.HLP and MAILMGRC.HLP. The menu itself looks like this: --------------------------------------------- / MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ MAIN MENU / \ / / \ l C)onfigure MAIL MANAGER l l l D)ownload mail l l l E)xpedite! (Download then exit to bbs) l l l Q)uit (return to bbs) l l l H)elp! l l l M)sg selection (for active conferences) l l l W)ho's online to RBBS-PC? l l l U)pload your replies. l l l X)pert toggle (this menu on/off) l l -------------------------------------------------------------------. HHHHHH "--------------------------" HHIIII HHIIII Your choice, Username <C,D,E,Q,H,M,W,U,X,?>? MAIN MENU commands are as follows: C - Configure Mail Manager. Allows you to select your personal options, and change your selected conferences from which to extract new mail. Please note that you must J)oin the conference from the BBS before you can extract mail via this door. Otherwise, Mail Manager will not find you as a valid conference user, and will not access the conference for you. You'll be presented with a screen that looks something like this: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ MAIN MENU Page 70 C)ONFIGURE ---------- Configuration options: A - Select conferences to extract and download. B - Download messages in Q)WK or T)ext format..........: Q C - Msgs addressed to ALL marked as personal (QWK only): No D - Extract ONLY your personal mail ...................: No E - Extract messages written by YOU ...................: Yes F - Abort packet if no messages .......................: No G - Send updated bulletins ............................: Yes H - Send new file listings ............................: Yes I - Ask before sending packet .........................: No J - Type of file compression to use ...................: ZIP K - Default file transfer protocol ....................: Z L - Tell RBBS that you've read your downloaded messages: Yes T - Use 'TurboKeys' (act on 1-character commands) .....: No ----------------------------- Q - Quit. (Finished configuring) Enter your choice(s), UserName <A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,Q> -> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- A - Select conferences to extract and download. You'll be presented with a list of conferences that you are able to access, which will look something like this: --------------------------------------------------------------- You may select any conference which is shown in UPPER CASE. Your SysOp MAY permit you to select confs shown in lower case. Confs you've marked as active are surrounded in brackets '[]'. Confs marked as --- are not available. 1 - [MAIN ] 11 - TEEN 21 - [RSYS ] 2 - [4SALE ] 12 - [PRIVATE] 22 - [BITS ] 3 - [MS-DOS ] 13 - [SYSOP ] 23 - [POL ] 4 - BBS 14 - [USER ] 24 - [CRES ] 5 - --- 15 - grafx 25 - [WINB ] 6 - [CODE ] 16 - arj 26 - [MAILMGR] 7 - [DEBATE ] 17 - --- 8 - [HAM ] 18 - [QB ] 9 - HUMOR 19 - [RBBS ] 10 - [IBM ] 20 - [DEV ] Enter conference number(s) to toggle on/off, or [ENTER] to quit. -> --------------------------------------------------------------- In this example, all conferences that you have joined are flagged as active, except BBS (conference 4), HUMOR (conference 9), and TEEN (conference 11). MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ MAIN MENU Page 71 C)ONFIGURE ---------- If you wanted to mark those three as active, you'd enter: 4 9 11 at the above prompt. Conferences #5 and 17 are unavailable, meaning that the user either has insufficient security to access them, or you (the Sysop) have "reserved" these conference numbers in the MAILCFG program, for future use. Conferences #15 and 16 are active conferences, but the user has not yet joined them from the BBS. If you set the conferences up to allow joining within the door, the user could select them here, otherwise they would have to join them from within RBBS-PC. B - Download messages in Q)WK or T)ext format Set to text if you want to use Mail Manager as a simple "extract and download" system (all messages in a single continuous ascii file). Set to QWK if you want to read and reply offline using a QWK-compatible mail reader like SLMR. C - Msgs addressed to ALL marked as personal (QWK only) If set to "Y", Mail Manager will add messages addressed to "ALL" to your personal index. This applies to QWK packets only. D - Extract ONLY your personal mail If set to "Y", Mail Manager will not extract a message unless it is addressed to you. (Will also extract msgs addressed to "ALL" if you have option C set to "Y".) E - Extract messages written by you If set to "NO", Mail Manager will not include messages from you in your packet. F - Abort packet if no new messages You might not want to do this if you would still like to receive new file listings or updated system news or bulletins. MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ MAIN MENU Page 72 C)ONFIGURE ---------- G - Send updated bulletins If set to "No", any updated bulletins which the sysop has designated as mandatory will still be included. H - Send new file listings If you select this option, a listing of newly-uploaded files will be included in your mail packet. This option may not be operational on all systems. I - Ask before sending packet If set to "Yes", will cause Mail Manager to prompt you whether or not you want to receive the mail packet that it just created for you. Will otherwise go right into the download when finished extracting. J - Type of file compression to use If the Sysop has activated this option, you can choose from the file compression utilities offered on this system (ZIP, ARC, etc.). K - Default file transfer protocol Choose from the protcols offered by your sysop (Xmodem, Zmodem, etc.). If set to N)one, Mail Manager will prompt you for which protocol to use at each file transfer. L - Tell RBBS that you've read your downloaded messages If this is set to NO, both RBBS and Mail Manager will think that you haven't read the messages that you've downloaded. (Mail Manager will extract them again your next time in). T - Use 'TurboKeys' (act on 1-character commands) Works like RBBS-PC's toggle of the same name. If set to Yes, Mail Manager will not wait for [ENTER] when asking you for input. Q - Quit. (Finished configuring) (Or just press [ENTER] to accomplish the same thing). -------------------------------------------------------------------------- MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ MAIN MENU Page 73 D)OWNLOAD --------- D - Download new mail. Will find and extract all new mail from your selected conferences, in the format that you told Mail Manager to use (Text or QWK). Mail Manager will then compress the file(s) in your selected file compression format. Unless your file protocol is set to N)one, Mail Manager will then send you the mail packet. If your default protocol is set to N)one, you'll be asked for the transfer protocol of your choice. If you choose "N", the file will not be sent to you, and you'll be returned to the main menu. Otherwise Mail Manager will do its best to send a compressed version of the mail to you via your selected choice. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- E - Expedite! Same as Download (above), except automatically exits back to the main bulletin board when finished. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q - Quit (return to BBS). This one should be pretty self-explanatory. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- H - (Or '?') Display help file. Displays an abbreviated version of these command descriptions. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- I - Sysop Information This command is not shown in the online help file, is not displayed in the command prompt, and is not shown in the menu itself. Only those with sufficient security to read ALL messages will be able to activate this command. Everyone else will get the familiar "Command not recognized". The purpose of this command is to assist you in debugging your setup, and it is covered in detail elsewhere in this manual under "DEBUGGING YOUR SETUP". -------------------------------------------------------------------------- MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ MAIN MENU Page 74 M)ESSAGE SELECTION ------------------ M - Msg selection menu (for active conferences). Mail Manager will normally download mail based on the last message that you've read in each conference. Since you can read mail both online AND offline, and have the option of telling Mail Manager NOT to update your last message read markers, you might want to use this option to reset them to what you want. You can also use this option to set individual conferences to extract the type of mail that you're after. Each conference can be configured in 1 of 3 different ways from this menu: A)ll - Extract all mail from this conference P)ersonal - Extract only your personal mail S)ys Default - Extract based on what you told Mail Manager to do by default from the C)onfigure menu. If you get an error while changing your message markers, try going back through the C)onfigure option, saving your settings, and try again. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- U - Upload your replies. Works with QWK-compatible mail reader/repliers only. Your uploaded file is expected to be compatible with the .REP format used by popular mail readers such as SLMR. Mail Manager will look for the REP packet after the upload and attempt to place your replies into the proper message bases. If your default protocol is set to N)one, you'll be asked for the protocol that you wish to use. If you select N)one, you'll be returned to the main menu. If you're in local mode as the Sysop, place the .REP file in the \MAILMGR\LOCAL directory, and choose this option. This is covered further in the section regarding "DEBUGGING YOUR SETUP". --------------------------------------------------------------------------- W - Who's online? Displays a list of who's online to all nodes of this RBBS-PC. (Much like RBBS's command of the same name). Those with sufficient security to read ALL messages will have the following displayed: - User's name, - City/State, and - Baud rate. MAIL MANAGER +PLUS+ MAIN MENU Page 75 W)HO'S ONLINE? -------------- If a node is inactive, the last user's information is displayed, and will be reported as "Last call". All other users will have the following displayed: - User's name, and - baud rate. If a node is inactive, "Waiting for next caller" is displayed. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- X - Expert toggle. Turns the main menu on or off. (Much like RBBS's command of the same name). This setting is saved for the user's next time into the door. APPENDIX A - COMMON PROBLEMS Page 76 ---------------------------- Problem : Not finding the Sysop in any conferences. Solution: Double-check your setting of "Remote Sysop Name" on the first screen of the MAILCFG program. This setting must be the name that you use to log onto your system remotely, NOT your name as you are known to your users. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Problem : Shows "Error finding new message" when trying to extract your first mail packet. Solution: Run MAILFIX.EXE against the message base in question (using the proper command line switches). Re-read the section of this document entitled "Before you begin". -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Problem : Always showing Sysop name when operating remotely. Solution: Probably not copying the correct DORINFOx.DEF file to the Mail Manager directory prior to loading the door. Drop to DOS, and take a look at the DORINFOx.DEF that was in use at the time. Also possible that the door is coming up in local mode. Check your DOORS.DEF and MAILMGR.BAT files to be sure they are set correctly. Mail Manager should be called like so: MAILMGR %1 (Where %1 is the node number). If you suspect that it is NOT being passed correctly, turn ECHO ON at the top of your batch file and watch what it actually passed to the door. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Problem : Always using locked BPS rate for download estimates, instead of true connect rate. Solution: No fix if you are running stock RBBS-PC v17.3C and lower. You must upgrade to RBBS-PC v17.4 to get this figure reported correctly, or recompile RBBS-PC with the CBAUD merge. If you are running RBBS-PC v17.4 and above, change your DOORS.DEF line to read something like: MAILMGR,5,,D,"C:\MAILMGR.BAT [NODE] [CBAUD]",N,, Then, in MAILMGR.BAT, change the line that calls Mail Manager to read: MAILMGR %1 /CBAUD%2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- APPENDIX A - COMMON PROBLEMS Page 77 ---------------------------- Problem : Program gives error message "Unable to pack...", followed by "Error -1 (RETURN without GOSUB)" after trying to compress a mail packet. Solution: We have heard this one before, (and have run into it ourselves), and it has always been one of three things: - Your file compression program was not where the list of archivers said it was (MAILMGR.ARL), or - There was insufficient memory to run the archiver, or - There was insufficient disk space to archive the mail packet for the user. (A 1,000-message packet can be over 1 meg in size before compression). Read the section of this document entitled "CHECKLIST OF REQUIREMENTS" for Mail Manager +Plus+ memory requirements. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Problem : Program gives errors while extracting mail from a FIDO *.MSG area, and/or has problems when updating last message read in a FIDO area after a download. Solution: More than likely, Mail Manager +Plus+ experienced an error with the index file for that FIDO area that it wasn't able to recover from. Try running the MMINDEX.EXE program, and insure that MMINDEX is in your nightly event as the LAST thing before your BBS comes back up. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Problem : Local screen looks fine, but the caller on the remote end of the line has incomplete and partially garbled screens. Solution: If your communications port is locked higher than the user's true connect speed (typically 19200 or 38400 for today's fast modems), Mail Manager +Plus+ is probably overrunning the communications buffer. You can get around this problem by installing a FOSSIL driver such as BNU or X00 (available on bulletin boards all over the place), and telling Mail Manager +Plus+ to always use the FOSSIL for flow control. Set the flow control option (in the MAILCFG program) to "F". See the section of this document entitled "IF YOU HAVE A LOCKED BPS RATE" for more information on this subject. APPENDIX B - CONTACTING THE AUTHORS Page 78 ----------------------------------- Mail Manager +Plus+ is a joint effort by Chip Morrow and Doug Wilson (SysOp and Co-SysOp of Newark Connection RBBS-PC). Comments, suggestions, ideas, and whatever else you want to throw our way would be GREATLY APPRECIATED and should be directed to any of the following: Good ole' US Mail: Newark Connections PO Box 2023 Heath, OH 43056 Or via modem: Netmail 8:965/9 v.32bis (via RBBS-NET), or 1:226/1240 v.32bis (via FIDO-NET) Public BBS lines: Data #1: (614) 366-4392 HST (SYSOP or DOUG WILSON) Data #3: (614) 366-6588 v32b (SYSOP or DOUG WILSON) Or the slowest method: Compuserve: 72677,502 (Chip Morrow) Please send any Netmail directly to us, not through your net host. No sense in having EVERYONE pay long distance charges for personal messages. --------------------------------------------------------- Please see Appendix C regarding a special username/password combination that you can use to log onto our system without the registration hassles. If you really need to drop us a quick note, and can't be instantly verified, that's the way to do it. Other ways to find us: RIME's RBBS and RBBSQWK conferences, followed by Doug Wilson. FIDO-NET's RBBS-PC and OFFLINE conferences, followed by both of us. RBBS-NET's MMGR conference, followed by both of us. (This conference was originally tagged as MAILMAN but will be renamed MMGR shortly upon release of this verson). We're sorry, but we simply do not have the time or resources to make individual voice calls to help with debugging your individual Mail Manager setup. On the other hand, we'd like to see you in any of the above echo conferences, where you can get help from others as well as ourselves, and where questions/answers/reports/release notices get a much wider audience, and can benefit more people. APPENDIX C - HOW TO GET THE LATEST VERSION Page 79 ------------------------------------------ You can download the latest version of both Mail Manager (the FREE version), and Mail Manager +Plus+ (the Shareware version) on your first call by logging onto any of our three BBS nodes with the following username/password combination: FIRST name: MAILMGR LAST name: LATEST Password: VERSION You'll have 20 minutes of online time, so after the preliminary curiosity, do this from the main menu: Go to the F)iles section. ; F Select the P)ersonal files option. ; P From the P)ersonal menu, list the available files, and download the file of your choice. You have unlimited time to download anything listed, but only from that menu! Since this logon method will create no record identifying you, we would very much appreciate it if you would leave a short C)omment to Sysop telling us who you are and where you are calling from, or (better yet) J)oin the MMGR conference, and drop a public note in there. That way your fellow Mail Managers <grin> will see that they weren't the only ones. Not to mention that we'd like to keep the MMGR conference updated and informative! Node #1 is (614) 366-4392 (300-9600 HST) Public Node #2 is (614) 366-3494 (300-14400 v.32bis) Private Node #3 is (614) 366-6588 (300-14400 v.32bis) Public Node 2 is private, but will still let MAILMGR LATEST in. If you have trouble getting in at 14.4 via v.32bis on nodes 2 or 3, try forcing a 9600 or 12,000 bps connection. The phone lines out this way leave a little (well, ok... a LOT) to be desired. As MAILMGR LATEST, you can also open the MAIL door on our own system, and have a glance at what the very latest version (probably in beta test) looks like. For those of you who desire to access our board under your own name: You can only download Mail Manager versions after you have been verified. You can either use the VERIFY door to accomplish this in one call, or you can follow the instructions in bulletin #5 to be verified manually. APPENDIX D - ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Page 80 ----------------------------- Microsoft, Crescent Software, DSZ, PKZIP, LHARC, ARJ, LZEXE, PKLITE, Jimmer, TQM, LANtastic, DESQview, BNU, X00, RBBSMAIL, MSGTOSS, OVERMAIL, PDQ, PDQCOMM, QuickBASIC, RBBS-PC, SLMR, JABBER, OFFLINE, OLX, and SHROOM (did we miss any?) are all trademarks or copyrighted in some way by somebody, and are mentioned throughout our documentation for clarity only. Special thanks to: The 10 people who thought enough of Mail Manager v1.3x to pre- register this shareware effort. We honestly hope that you have not been disappointed. The trio of Rod Bowman, Don Smith, and Joe Tailleur who beta tested the first versions to support FIDO *.MSG's and helped solve a lot of early problems before this program hit the streets. And thanks to everyone else who commented & offered suggestions, help, and beta testing. We honestly cannot remember all of the names, and do apologize for that! We are frankly astounded at Mail Manager's quick success and wide distribution (we've had file requests from Nova Scotia to Taiwan), and hope that this shareware effort reflects our continuing effort to provide everyone with a truly useful piece of software for your RBBS-PC. Chip Morrow and Doug Wilson APPENDIX E - FOR TRULY CURIOUS-TYPES ONLY! Page 81 ------------------------------------------ The Mail Manager +Plus+ source code is not available. We will, however, continue to listen to suggestions, and work on improving the program, as time permits. For the few who have been curious enough to ask, Mail Manager +Plus+ is a multiple-module, modern-dialect BASIC program, compiled & linked using Microsoft's QuickBASIC, and Crescent Software's commercial PDQ and PDQComm libraries. (We speculate that Mail Manager +Plus+ may have the world's record for the largest PDQ/PDQComm-specific program to date...) DEVELOPMENT SITE: Newark Connection RBBS-PC - 4 nodes running under: - A LANtastic network (2mbps cards), - DOS SHARE, - MS-DOS 5.0 (all nodes) - One HST and two Zoom v.32bis modems (all locked at 19.2 via BNU) - Binkley-Term 2.50, - RBBS-PC 17.4 (as of this writing), - Node 1 (286-8) - RBBSMail, Qmail - Node 2 (286-16) - RBBSMail, Qmail - Node 3 (286-10) - RBBSMail, Qmail - Node 4 (286-12) - Local Workstation (no modem). SIDE NOTE REGARDING COMPRESSED EXECUTABLES: -------------------------------------------------------------- We're distributing the executables in non-compressed format. You'll find that our .EXE's will compress quite nicely with utilities like PKLITE and LZEXE. We leave it up to you to use the compression utility of your choice, or run as-is. -------------------------------------------------------------- APPENDIX F - MAIL MANAGER'S FILE FORMATS Page 82 ---------------------------------------- Just in case someone out there has an inkling to write a utility program or two for use with their Mail Manager +Plus+ setup, here are the formats for the Mail Manager +Plus+ v2.02 binary system files, MAILMGR.CFG and MAILMGR.USR. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | MAILMGR.USR - Mail Manager's internal users file. | | One 570-byte record per user. Each 570-byte record is | | broken down as follows: | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Start Stop Length Record Type Description | |=========================================================================| | 1 31 31 STRING The user's name, in upper case, | | left-justified, padded with ASCII 32s| |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 32 531 500 STRING Bit-mapped conference flags for each | | user, 1 byte per conference. | | Currently used: 0 = conf active | | 1 = accept default | | 2 = personal msg only| |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 532 532 1 STRING User's QWK preference. Either "Q" | | or "T". (QWK or TEXT). | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 533 533 1 STRING User's flag for whether or not to | | update last message read in the RBBS | | user files (after downloading pkts). | | ASCII 1 for true, 255 for false. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 534 534 1 STRING Letter of the user's default file | | protocol choice, in upper case. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 535 535 1 STRING Messages addressed to "ALL" marked | | as personal in QWK packet? ASCII 1 | | for true, 255 for false. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 536 536 1 STRING Xpert toggle on or off (ASCII 1, 255)| |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 537 537 1 STRING Bit flag byte for other user options.| | Currently used: 0 = Send own msgs | | 1 = Send bullets | | 2 = Send newfiles | | 3 = Abort if no msgs| | 4 = Ask before send | | 5 = Only pers mail | | 6 = Turbokey toggle | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 538 540 3 STRING User's choice of archiver (ZIP, ARC, | | etc.) | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 541 546 6 STRING "YYMMDD" that user last used the | | door. ("911223" = 23 Dec 91) | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 547 570 24 STRING Reserved for future use. | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ APPENDIX F - MAIL MANAGER'S FILE FORMATS Page 83 ---------------------------------------- +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | MAILMGR.CFG - Mail Manager's configuration file. | | Consists of one 556-byte header, followed by a number of | | 384-byte conference configuration records. | | | | HEADER RECORD: | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Start Stop Length Record Type Description | |=========================================================================| | 1 35 35 STRING Name of the BBS (in proper case). | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 36 66 31 STRING Remote logon name of the sysop (left-| | justified, in upper case, padded with| | ASCII 32 blanks). | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 67 81 15 STRING Sysop's public first name. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 82 96 15 STRING Sysop's public last name. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 97 98 2 INTEGER Security level to read ALL messages. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 99 100 2 INTEGER Security level to use in local mode. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 101 102 2 INTEGER Local sysop's graphic preference. | | 2 = ANSI, 1 = ASCII, 0 = None. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 103 163 61 STRING Default tagline for all conferences. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 164 165 2 INTEGER Number of 334-byte conference | | configuration records that follow | | this header record. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 166 173 8 STRING First 8 characters of extract file | | name to use (this is the "*" of | | *.QWK, *.REP, *.ZIP, etc.). | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 174 176 3 STRING 3 upper case characters designating | | the default file compression type | | (ZIP, ARC, ARJ, or LZH) | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 177 216 40 STRING Full path/filename of the NEWS file. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 217 256 40 STRING Full path/filename of the list of | | bulletins (MAILMGR.BUL). | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 257 257 1 STRING Network type to use in local mode. | | D)os, N)etbios, desQ)view. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 258 258 1 STRING Handshake method to use, upper case. | | R)ts, X)on, N)one, or F)ossil. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| APPENDIX F - MAIL MANAGER'S FILE FORMATS Page 84 ---------------------------------------- | 259 260 2 INTEGER Version number (2.02 = 202). | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 261 300 40 STRING Path/filename of MAILMGR.PRO | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 301 340 40 STRING Path/filename of FMS directory. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 341 380 40 STRING Path/name of list of archivers. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 381 395 15 STRING Name of environment variable to check| | path/name of XFER-x.DEF log file. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 396 396 1 STRING Modify uploaded messages date & time | | stamp to the current system time? | | (Y or N) | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 397 427 31 STRING City/State where BBS is located. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 428 439 12 STRING Phone number of BBS. "xxx-xxx-xxxx" | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 440 440 1 STRING SmartText ID character | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 441 480 40 STRING Default path to *M.DEF conferences. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 481 520 40 STRING Path/name of echo toss log. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 521 525 5 STRING Start of timelock (HH:MM). | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 526 530 5 STRING End of timelock (HH:MM) - 24 hour | | format for both of these. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 531 556 26 STRING Reserved for future use. | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | CONFERENCE CONFIGURATION RECORD: | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Start Stop Length Record Type Description | |=========================================================================| | 1 7 7 STRING Name of the conference, upper case. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 8 25 18 STRING Reserved for future use (eventual | | long conference names) | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 26 105 80 STRING Path/name to USERS file. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 106 185 80 STRING Path/name to MESSAGES file. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 186 186 1 STRING Allow ANSI in REPs? "Y" or "N". | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 187 187 1 STRING Allow high/low ASCII in REPs? Y, N. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 188 189 2 INTEGER Security level needed to join. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 190 191 2 INTEGER Security level needed to post. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| APPENDIX F - MAIL MANAGER'S FILE FORMATS Page 85 ---------------------------------------- | 192 252 61 STRING Tagline for this conference. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 253 253 1 STRING Fido-style tearlines? ("Y" or "N"). | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 254 254 1 STRING Type of message base? (Y, N, F). | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 255 255 1 STRING Allow join within door? (Y, N). | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 256 335 80 STRING Path/Name of conf alias file. | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 336 337 2 INTEGER Zone ID (for FIDO areas) | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 338 339 2 INTEGER Net ID (for FIDO areas) | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 340 341 2 INTEGER Node ID (for FIDO areas) | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 342 342 1 STRING Netmail area? (Y, N). | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 343 343 1 STRING Add tear/tag to end of FIDO msg?(Y/N)| |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 344 358 15 STRING Symbolic area name for this FIDO | | conference. (Optional) | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 359 359 1 STRING Allow uploaded messages to be marked | | as private in this conf? (Y/N). | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 360 384 25 STRING Reserved for future use. | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ APPENDIX G - ABOUT THIS DOCUMENT Page 86 -------------------------------- Programmers have long been known to be terrible about writing documentation to cover their own software, and I'm sorry to say that I am not much of an exception to this rule. This document was written using the same editor that Mail Manager +Plus+ itself was co-written with... Norton's Editor. This means that there is no fancy formatting, just me sitting here at the keyboard long into many, many nights with my favorite text editor, attempting to put this thing into some type of readable and printable format for you. All I can guarantee you about this document are two things: - It SHOULD print out just fine on standard tractor-fed 8 1/2 x 11 paper on your garden-variety dot-matrix printer, and - It is guaranteed to contain spelling and grammar errors. Perhaps, one of these days, I will take the time to sit myself down in front of a bona-fide word processor, complete with spell checker, and attempt to port this document into it. Until that day, what you see is what you get. Best, Chip Morrow