1 Citadel/UX Networking Documentation
2 (A brief overview on setup)
3 Written by Steve Williams (Patriot @ pixel)
6 Having come this far, you're ready to set up your networked rooms. In
7 and of itself it's not too difficult. I would suggest telnetting to
8 another Citadel/UX and checking out what they offer. Currently,
9 uncnsrd.mt-kisco.ny.us and dogpound2.citadel.org and pixel.citadel.org
12 Below is a list of the networked rooms (most of them) that PixelBBS
13 carries. Note the ) after each room name. This designates that room as a
16 Rooms with no new messages on Networked Rooms:
17 A/V Talk) Creation/Evolution) babylon 5) Jokes) Networking)
18 Astronomy) Books: Sci-Fi) Food) MP3 Universe) TrekNet) PaganNet)
19 net.Religion) Music) Programming) Uncensored Magic) Politica) Movies)
20 Video Games) Star Wars) Linux) Pets) Swagazine) Global Address Book)
21 Sports) Slimies 2000) Science Fiction) Sysop Stuff) Raising Kids)
22 Unix) Hot Pink Amoebas) Dreams) Buy/Sell) Tech Area) Citadel
23 Development) Linux Today) Citadel/UX) Gay/Lesbian) Of the Weird)
24 Magic-The Gathering) The Local Net) Books) Netlinks) Software
25 Questions) SCA) Abortion) NASA News) Misheard Lyrics) Snausages)
26 Macintosh) Gateway) Microsoft Bashing) IGnet Unlimited) BBS Ads)
31 Basically networking your citadel is a very good idea, because not only do
32 you have your own userbase to add to your rooms, you also have input from
33 every other networked Citadel/UX and some other varieties of Citadel as
34 well (Citadel-86, Cit:K2NE, etc), which dramatically increases the
35 topical posting. So now you're saying, "Ok, I know what it is now, how do
36 I set the damned thing up?" Good question. There are several steps to
37 take. Actually setting up the networked rooms is simple so we'll do that
38 last. The first thing you need to do is to find another network node to
39 share with. The best way to do this (at this time) is to send mail to
40 smw@pixel.citadel.org. For the time being I'll share my rooms with just
41 about anyone as I have the bandwidth currently to accomplish this. Now,
45 1. Determine from the list above (I have most of the networked rooms
46 listed, however I have no idea or way of knowing how often new rooms
47 will be added) or from another networked citadel, which networked rooms
50 2. Contact me, or the sysop on another networked citadel (login to the
51 bbs and send mail to recipient Sysop), asking to share those rooms with
54 3. From your Citadel/UX home directory (eg. /home/citux/citadel) run the
55 program ./dnetsetup. Here it gets a little confusing so I'll paste
56 in the actual menus where possible:
59 **********************************************************************
60 * Citadel/UX Network Setup *
62 * ****************************************************************** *
63 * * EDIT View or change a network node * *
64 * * ADD Add a new network node * *
65 * * DELETE Delete a network node * *
66 * * EXIT Exit from Network Setup * *
67 * ****************************************************************** *
69 **********************************************************************
71 **********************************************************************
73 **********************************************************************
79 As you can see above the menu choices are fairly clear. Lets go
80 through the steps to actually setting this up.
82 First, you'll need to add your network node. A node is the other Citadel/UX
83 that is going to share rooms with you.
85 Select A, then type in the name of your remote node, EXACTLY as that node's
86 administrator has given it to you. In the case of PixelBBS that would be:
90 Note that the standard Citadel/UX convention is to use all lowercase. Using
91 uppercase in the set up of your Citadel/UX has a tendency to do weird things
92 like broadcast your net messages in triplicate, for example.
94 Once you've added your network node, tab down to 'ok' and dnetsetup will
95 take you back to the main screen. From here you need to edit your
96 network node. Select option "E"dit and you should only have one node
99 Select the node you wish to edit
100 ***********************************************
102 ***********************************************
104 ***********************************************
106 ***********************************************
109 Hit ok, at this point. You'll be given another list of options:
113 ************************************************
114 * LIST List currently shared rooms *
115 * SHARE Add a shared room *
116 * UNSHARE Stop sharing a room *
117 * EXIT Return to main menu *
118 ************************************************
121 This list is fairly self evident, but I'll explain it anyhow:
123 LIST shows you all the rooms you've setup to network with
125 SHARE allows you to ADD a networked room to network with this
127 UNSHARE Stops networking specified rooms with this node.
130 Simple enough, right? Ok, let's add a room. Remember that list of
131 networked rooms? It's a good idea to have printed that out at this
132 point. Here's where the fun begins. I'm only going to show how to add
133 one room, all the rest you can do yourself.
137 Enter name of room to share:
138 ********************************************
140 ********************************************
143 ********************************************
145 ********************************************
147 Select ok, and bang, you've setup up the first portion of networking.
148 Special note: The case of the rooms must be EXACT, so watch your
152 When you're all finished adding the networked rooms that you'd like to
153 share, jump out to the main menu and exit. You've finished (almost) with
154 the networking part. Now we have to create the new rooms on the bbs
158 4. Login to your BBS and type .er (. Enter a new Room).
159 We'll assume for sake of argument that you are creating a publicly
160 accessible, non directory, networked room:
162 Lobby> . Enter a new Room
163 Name for new room? House of Pork (again, watch your case!)
168 <4>Invitation-only room
170 "House of Pork", a public room.
171 Install it? (y/n) : Yes
175 Ok great. We've created it. Now, let's make it a networked room. Note
176 that at the end of the roomname we've got a > instead of a ).
177 When editing a room all options in [] are defaults, and you can simply
178 hit enter to accept them.
180 . Aide Edit this room
181 Room name [House of Pork]:
183 Preferred users only [No]?
186 Permanent room [No]? Yes
187 (note that directory and networked rooms are ALWAYS
188 permanent, by default, however just to be safe,
190 Network shared room [No]? Yes
191 Automatically make all messages anonymous [No]?
192 Ask users whether to make messages anonymous [No]?
193 (note: This assumes that the networked rooms you're
194 creating is NOT an anon room)
195 Room aide (or 'none') [none]:
196 Up to you, on this one.
197 Save changes (y/n)? Yes
200 There. You've created and edited a network room. You'll note that the
201 name's changed from: House of Pork> to House of Pork). Once you see the
206 There ya go. You've now successfully shared and created a node and a
207 network rooms. All set.
209 Well no. Firstly you need to make sure that you've been shared on the
210 other node. Make sure and check on it, before going any farther. We'll
211 assume for sake of argument that everything's set up on your remote node
212 and you're all ready to go.
214 There are two commands that are ABSOLUTELY vital for processing your
215 networked messages. These are:
220 Netproc simply takes any messages that you've placed in a networked room
221 on your BBS and spools them to an outbound queue:
223 ~bbs/network/spoolout
225 netpoll is the command that actually goes out to your remote network node
226 and snags new messages. Once it has them it brings them back into Citadel/UX
227 and parses them out to their proper rooms. Simple enough.
229 The command netproc runs by itself, no flags needed. To run netpoll,
230 you need to know a little bit about your remote node.
232 What port is Citadel/UX running on? (Normally 504, but there are some strange
234 What is the networking password?
236 Once you have those, polling for your messages is easy, provided
237 everything's been set up properly. Syntax for netpoll:
239 netpoll bbs.address.org Citadel/UX port # networking password
241 Eg: netpoll pixel.citadel.org 504 netpswd
243 (No the above is NOT my password. We'll get into that later.)
245 Once you run netpoll as stated above this should happen:
246 200 pixel Citadel/UX server ready.
247 Connected to: pixel (PixelBBS) Christiana, DE
248 200 authenticated as network node 'yournodename'
253 What this says is that you've connected to the pixel server
254 and that you've gotten the right password.
255 483 is the byte count of the messages that are coming down to you.
256 The rest is stating that your messages have been uploaded and that
257 you've terminated connection with the server. At this point you
258 should check your networked rooms on the BBS and see what new messages
260 You might want to automate this procedure by running it as a cron task.
264 # Citadel/UX netprocessing tool
265 0,15,30,45 * * * * /home/citux/citadel/netproc > /dev/null 2>&1
266 # Citadel/UX network message sender/receiver
267 5 * * * * /home/citux/citadel/netpoll dogpound2.citadel.org 504 netpswd > /dev/null 2>&1
269 I hate having messages pop up everytime netproc/netpoll runs so I
270 redirect the output to /dev/null.
271 Every 15 minutes netproc runs and processes outbound messages.
272 At 5 minutes after each hour netpoll sends all messages and imports new
275 At this point we're all done. Oh I admit that you might run into
276 some problems, and if you do you can feel free to mail
277 smw@pixel.citadel.org with the subject Citadel Problems.
280 Visit PixelBBS at:pixel.citadel.org, login as bbs.
281 Or, if you prefer: http://pixel.citadel.org:2000
283 -Steve Williams (Patriot)