The Arcade BBS/arcadebbs.zip/arcadebbs/bbstools/WWIV Mods/WWCPBETA.ZIP/TROUBLE.DOC

Text File | 1993-05-14 | 10.7 KB | 234 lines

        A Comedy of Errors: Things you should NOT do with WWCP!
                              by
                Bryan Lockwood ([e-mail])

Here are a few mistakes made by a greenhorn in trying to get WWCP to work
properly:


1: THE ERRONEOUS FOSSIL COMMAND

PROBLEM: To start with, I had a hell of a time getting my system to make a
WWIV connect. In fact, it didn't even seem to be getting through to the
modem! Hmmm...

SOLUTION: The fifth line in the WWSTAT file is where you tell your FOSSIL
driver which port to use. But the fellows who write FOSSIL drivers have a
wierd sense of programmer's humor, which is lost on us mere mortals. They
always start counting at zero, instead of at one like any normal person
would. So, when you want COM1, you actually tell the FOSSIL to use port 0.
When you want COM2, you tell the FOSSIL to use port 1. And so on.

So, I fixed this little booboo, and moved on to:

2: THE MYSTERIOUS BRACKETS

PROBLEM: Well now I knew that WWCP was getting through to the modem. But the
modem would call my WWIV connect, make it through the network logon
procedure, and then drop carrier!

SOLUTION: At this point I asked Tony for help, and he generously added
some code which allowed WWCICO to post lots of interesting stuff to the wwcp
errorlog (found in /waffle/admin). Basically, this let me watch the entire
login sequence and see what the heck was happening.

 ***BIG hint***: if you are having trouble getting WWCICO to make a connect,
  edit the WWCICO line in your WWPOLL.BAT file to read  "WWCICO -dx"; this
  lets you see what is being sent and received by WWCICO, and it saves all
  this info to the wwcp errorlog in /waffle/admin. Now you can relax with a
  printout of the errorlog along with your modem, FOSSIL, ZMODEM, and wwcp
  docs and try to sort things out, instead of just grinding your teeth and
  pulling your hair.

 -Subhint:  If a WWIV site is having trouble connecting to you, change the
  line in WWSHELL.BAT to "WWCICO -rx", which invokes the same greatly
  expanded modem reporting scheme.

 -Sub-subhint: Remove the x flag once everything starts running smoothly.
  Otherwise your wwcp errorlog will eventually grow to gargantuan size.

Anyhow, I continued having the same problem. I pored over the WWSTAT file
time and time again, reread my ZMODEM docs, and bother the author
incessantly. Finally I found the problem:

Tony ships the programs with a sample WWSTAT file. Naturally, to save a
little work, I just edited it and used the edited copy in my /waffle/system
directory. About the 65th time I re-read the file, I noticed that I had
forgotten to remove the brackets from the sample receive and  transmit
(or upload and download,  whatever you prefer)lines! I removed these
offensive brackets, and now I knew *that* was solved. Or so I thought:


3: THE MISNAMED DOWNLOAD FILE

You probably won't have this problem. When Tony started this thing,
there was some controversy over what our node numbers would be. I think I
had had three different node numbers by the time the dust settled.

PROBLEM: Anyway, I was finally making connect, and sending as well as
receiving packets. The problem was that WWSMAIL didn't seem to want to
actually open my new packet and start posting the mail and news messages.
Again I contacted Tony... and he reminded me of the-

SOLUTION: Check my  receive and transmit lines in WWSTAT!!

Say you use DSZ to download your packet. The line should like sort of like
this:

                  dsz port 2 rz s501.net

Well, that last little bit ("s501.net" in my case) is the name of the file
you are downloading, no matter what it was called at the sending (WWIV
connect) end. So do please type it correctly. Otherwise it will download
just fine but WWRMAIL won't know what it is and will just ignore it! (I had
forgotten to change this to my latest node number).

Also, note that in *this* case, "port" really means port number in normal
terms. Start counting at 1. So if your FOSSIL port number is set at 0, this
time you set the port at 1. Confusing? Yes. Just remember that in this case
you use the actual COM port number, NOT the FOSSIL port number!

MORAL of the story: those receive and send lines are vitally important. Get
them right and then leave them alone!


5: THE BOBBLED PATHNAMES

I didn't make this mistake, but it wouldn't be hard to do:

PROBLEM:  If NOTHING WORKS RIGHT, double check the pathnames!

SOLUTION: There are a couple of places where it pays to pay attention to
pathnames:

In your newly-created /waffle/system/wwiv file, make sure the path points to
the proper directory for your WWIVnet subs. But then you knew this, right?

WWSTAT itself has one at the very end, which tells WWCP where all of your
packets and mail should be found. Remember to specify the drive letter and
leave a trailing backslash at the end of this path. Also, don't forget to
actually CREATE this path, as well as the \PACKETS and \MAIL directories
which must reside at the end of this path!

6: THE ASCENDING ERRORLEVELS

PROBLEM: Then one day my WWIV connect decided to call me for a change. But
his board could not log in... even though he had the correct password and
nodename. At the point where his end expected a WWIVnet response, it did not
get one. Here's what happened:

SOLUTION: Tony advises you to make a few changes to your Waffle's
RUN.BAT file, which allow Waffle to find WWCP when it needs to.  Your changed
file will look something like this:

(note: I am not gonna quote the whole thing)

        IF ERRORLEVEL == 80 GOTO END
        IF ERRORLEVEL == 60 GOTO POLL
        IF ERRORLEVEL == 40 GOTO UU
        IF ERRORLEVEL == 20 GOTO CRON
        IF ERRORLEVEL == 10 GOTO WW

Notice how the ERRORLEVEL numbers go from greater to smaller on each
successive line? This turns out to be VERY IMPORTANT!   If we had the last
line on top, the batch file would never be able to find it, since the lowest
errorlevel must be listed last.

So if you are going to follow Tony's advice and use the line
"IF ERRORLEVEL == 70 GOTO WW", put it between the GOTO END and GOTO POLL
lines. Otherwise any WWIV systems that try to call you will NOT be able to
login.... Waffle will treat them as if they were uucp sites. In my case I had
an errorlevel of 70 located after an errorlevel of 20. My WWIVnet connect was
being treated as though he were a uucp connect.

7: THE MUNGED ADDRESS

PROBLEM: After I had all of the above figured out and was making successful
connects to my WWIVnet host, I found out that no one could (A)utoreply  to
my posts. Why? because I had gotten fancy and edited my /system/static file!

SOLUTION: Basically, Waffle defaults the NETNEWS and NETMAIL headers to the
following scheme, even if you don't name them at all in your static file:

netmail: %A@%n (%W)    <this  translates to  USER@NODENAME (USERNAME)>
netnews: %A@%n (%W)    <example:  "gengap@coldbox (Generation Gap)>

I had switched it around so that my USERNAME would come first, with
(USER@NODENAME) afterwards. This was a no-no. Either stay with the default,
or read Tony's docs carefully before you go munging about with your
NETMAIL and NETNEWS variables.

8. MORE MUNGED NAMES

PROBLEM: I tried some munging just for fun, and again found out about my
incurable ignorance. When sending mail, don't try anything foolish like
adding bangpaths after the @ separator.

You *can't* send mail to: "1-1111@bang!your!dead!wwiv"
                           (^^this is a fictional wwiv address)

SOLUTION: You *can* send mail to:     "bang!your!dead!wwiv!1-1111"

The above routing would make your message travel from your box to site
"bang", from there to site "your", from there to site "dead", and then from
"dead" into the WWIV connect, which would route the message to the proper
user and node number.  *If* you got the node number and user right, that is.

Good advice for those new to uucp addressing schemes: Re-read Tony's
docs, the sections on how to address mail. Then read those sections again.

9. YET ANOTHER MAIL BOOBOO

PROBLEM: WWIV sysops are trying to send you email but it never gets through:

SOLUTION: If you didn't send a mail message from your primary account your
Waffle system (whichever one you use most often, probably SYSTEM or ROOT)
immediately after getting it all running, you may have a problem.

Waffle uses account NAMES, but WWIV uses account NUMBERS to route mail. And
all WWIV sysops have account #1 on their systems. Thus, they assume they will
be able to send email to a node sysop by sending it to account number one at
that node number.

Well, Tony figured a way to make sure WWIV users wouldn't have to
remember our different uucp way of naming ourselves. He set up WWSMAIL to
build a database that assigns every user on your Waffle system a mailbox
number the first time they send out any netmail. Now this database assigns
mailbox numbers in sequential order: that is, the first person to send WWIV
netmail gets mailbox number one, the second user gets number two, and so on.

Now since the WWIVnet guys are going to be sending you nifty stuff at mailbox
number one on your system, it behooves you to be the first one to send WWIV
netmail *from* your system, in order to get that all-important mailbox number
one. Have I belabored this point enough?

If you missed this in the docs and failed to be the first one to send WWIV
netmail from your system, do not despair. Simply remove the WWALPHA  and
WWNUM files from your \waffle\system directory. This resets the database
(well, actually it removes it) and WWSMAIL will start a new one the next
time mail is sent.


ENDNOTE:

I figure there are other little problems a person could run into as he/she
becomes acquainted with the WWCP package.  I'm incredibly thumb-fingered when
it comes to stuff like this, but I got lucky this time and only stumbled over
a few rough spots. Tony was very helpful in solving my little problems,
and for this I thank him. If you should happen to have a new and interesting
way of making this fine set of programs misbehave, and want to share it, let
either him or I know. If your problem is tough and still unsolved, I
recommend you contact Tony. We'll publish the problem and solution
(without your name, of course) in a doc like this one to help out other users.
His address is in the WWCP.DOC, and you can get me at  the following
addresses:

WWIVnet:    55@9702   or   1-501@wwiv
   (but then if your WWCP ain't working, how ya gonna do that?)

uucp:  [e-mail]

Both of us should be available on the WWCP Support Sub, which is being hosted
by node 502, known in uucpland as "fredbox". You should be subscribing to
this sub anyway.