1 Citadel/UX Networking Documentation
2 (A brief overview on setup)
3 Written by Steve Williams (Patriot @ splash)
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.citadelia.org are most likely your
10 best Internet bets, and splash.citadelia.org (login as test) is up, but
11 still in development. Login to one of the above BBS and type 'k'. Note
12 the roomnames with a ) after them. Here's a list of the Splash BBS rooms:
15 Lobby> Mail> General Babble> The Pet Corner> NonSeq> Bugs>
16 Sports> Not A Sport> Citadel> The Massage Parlor>
17 Vacation Ideas> Bed & Breakfast> The Elite> Random Features> Network Test)
18 X-files) Unix) Tech Area) Science Fiction) Netlinks) Linux) IBM) Food)
19 Citanews) Buy/Sell) A/V Talk) Anime/Comics) Citadel/UX) Craggy Island)
20 Gateway) IGnet Unlimited) Microsoft Bashing) Networking) Sysop Stuff)
21 TrekNet) Video Games) Dante's Inferno> Patriot Is A Twit> Hug Me Dammit!>
22 Movies) The House of Pork)
25 As noted above you'll see that several (in fact most) of the rooms on
26 my bbs are networked rooms. Basically networking your citadel is a very
27 good idea, because not only do you have your own userbase to add to your
28 rooms, you also have input from every other networked Citadel/UX and some
29 other varieties of Citadel as well (Citadel-86, Cit:K2NE, etc), which
30 dramatically increases the topical posting. So now you're saying, "Ok, I
31 know what it is now, how do I set the damned thing up?" Good question.
32 There are several steps to take. Actually setting up the networked rooms
33 is simple so we'll do that last. The first thing you need to do is to
34 find another network node to share with. The best way to do this (at this
35 time) is to send mail to smw@splash.citadelia.org. For the time being
36 I'll share my rooms with just about anyone as I have the bandwidth
37 currently to accomplish this. Now, for the step by step:
40 1. Determine from the list above (I have most of the networked rooms
41 listed, however I have no idea or way of knowing how often new rooms
42 will be added) or from another networked citadel, which networked rooms
45 2. Contact me, or the sysop on another networked citadel (login to the
46 bbs and send mail to recipient Sysop), asking to share those rooms with
49 3. From your Citadel/UX home directory (eg. /home/citux/citadel) run the
50 program ./dnetsetup. Here it gets a little confusing so I'll paste
51 in the actual menus where possible:
54 **********************************************************************
55 * Citadel/UX Network Setup *
57 * ****************************************************************** *
58 * * EDIT View or change a network node * *
59 * * ADD Add a new network node * *
60 * * DELETE Delete a network node * *
61 * * EXIT Exit from Network Setup * *
62 * ****************************************************************** *
64 **********************************************************************
66 **********************************************************************
68 **********************************************************************
74 As you can see above the menu choices are fairly clear. Lets go
75 through the steps to actually setting this up.
77 First, you'll need to add your network node. A node is the other Citadel/UX
78 that is going to share rooms with you.
80 Select A, then type in the name of your remote node, EXACTLY as that node's
81 administrator has given it to you. In the case of SplashBBS that would be:
85 Note that the standard Citadel/UX convention is to use all lowercase. Using
86 uppercase in the set up of your Citadel/UX has a tendency to do weird things
87 like broadcast your net messages in triplicate, for example.
89 Once you've added your network node, tab down to 'ok' and dnetsetup will
90 take you back to the main screen. From here you need to edit your
91 network node. Select option "E"dit and you should only have one node
94 Select the node you wish to edit
95 ***********************************************
97 ***********************************************
99 ***********************************************
101 ***********************************************
104 Hit ok, at this point. You'll be given another list of options:
108 ************************************************
109 * LIST List currently shared rooms *
110 * SHARE Add a shared room *
111 * UNSHARE Stop sharing a room *
112 * EXIT Return to main menu *
113 ************************************************
116 This list is fairly self evident, but I'll explain it anyhow:
118 LIST shows you all the rooms you've setup to network with
120 SHARE allows you to ADD a networked room to network with this
122 UNSHARE Stops networking specified rooms with this node.
125 Simple enough, right? Ok, let's add a room. Remember that list of
126 networked rooms? It's a good idea to have printed that out at this
127 point. Here's where the fun begins. I'm only going to show how to add
128 one room, all the rest you can do yourself.
132 Enter name of room to share:
133 ********************************************
135 ********************************************
138 ********************************************
140 ********************************************
142 Select ok, and bang, you've setup up the first portion of networking.
143 Special note: The case of the rooms must be EXACT, so watch your
147 When you're all finished adding the networked rooms that you'd like to
148 share, jump out to the main menu and exit. You've finished (almost) with
149 the networking part. Now we have to create the new rooms on the bbs
153 4. Login to your BBS and type .er (. Enter a new Room).
154 We'll assume for sake of argument that you are creating a publicly
155 accessible, non directory, networked room:
157 Lobby> . Enter a new Room
158 Name for new room? House of Pork (again, watch your case!)
163 <4>Invitation-only room
165 "House of Pork", a public room.
166 Install it? (y/n) : Yes
170 Ok great. We've created it. Now, let's make it a networked room. Note
171 that at the end of the roomname we've got a > instead of a ).
172 When editing a room all options in [] are defaults, and you can simply
173 hit enter to accept them.
175 . Aide Edit this room
176 Room name [House of Pork]:
178 Preferred users only [No]?
181 Permanent room [No]? Yes
182 (note that directory and networked rooms are ALWAYS
183 permanent, by default, however just to be safe,
185 Network shared room [No]? Yes
186 Automatically make all messages anonymous [No]?
187 Ask users whether to make messages anonymous [No]?
188 (note: This assumes that the networked rooms you're
189 creating is NOT an anon room)
190 Room aide (or 'none') [none]:
191 Up to you, on this one.
192 Save changes (y/n)? Yes
195 There. You've created and edited a network room. You'll note that the
196 name's changed from: House of Pork> to House of Pork). Once you see the
201 There ya go. You've now successfully shared and created a node and a
202 network rooms. All set.
204 Well no. Firstly you need to make sure that you've been shared on the
205 other node. Make sure and check on it, before going any farther. We'll
206 assume for sake of argument that everything's set up on your remote node
207 and you're all ready to go.
209 There are two commands that are ABSOLUTELY vital for processing your
210 networked messages. These are:
215 Netproc simply takes any messages that you've placed in a networked room
216 on your BBS and spools them to an outbound queue:
218 ~bbs/network/spoolout
220 netpoll is the command that actually goes out to your remote network node
221 and snags new messages. Once it has them it brings them back into Citadel/UX
222 and parses them out to their proper rooms. Simple enough.
224 The command netproc runs by itself, no flags needed. To run netpoll,
225 you need to know a little bit about your remote node.
227 What port is Citadel/UX running on? (Normally 504, but there are some strange
229 What is the networking password?
231 Once you have those, polling for your messages is easy, provided
232 everything's been set up properly. Syntax for netpoll:
234 netpoll bbs.address.org Citadel/UX port # networking password
236 Eg: netpoll splash.citadelia.org 504 netpswd
238 (No the above is NOT my password. We'll get into that later.)
240 Once you run netpoll as stated above this should happen:
241 200 splash Citadel/UX server ready.
242 Connected to: splash (Splash BBS) Indianapolis, IN
243 200 authenticated as network node 'yournodename'
248 What this says is that you've connected to the splash server
249 and that you've gotten the right password.
250 483 is the byte count of the messages that are coming down to you.
251 The rest is stating that your messages have been uploaded and that
252 you've terminated connection with the server. At this point you
253 should check your networked rooms on the BBS and see what new messages
255 You might want to automate this procedure by running it as a cron task.
259 # Citadel/UX netprocessing tool
260 0,15,30,45 * * * * /home/citux/citadel/netproc > /dev/null 2>&1
261 # Citadel/UX network message sender/receiver
262 5 * * * * /home/citux/citadel/netpoll dogpound2.citadelia.org 504 netpswd > /dev/null 2>&1
264 I hate having messages pop up everytime netproc/netpoll runs so I
265 redirect the output to /dev/null.
266 Every 15 minutes netproc runs and processes outbound messages.
267 At 5 minutes after each hour netpoll sends all messages and imports new
270 At this point we're all done. Oh I admit that you might run into
271 some problems, and if you do you can feel free to mail
272 smw@splash.citadelia.org with the subject Citadel Problems.
275 Visit splash's Citadel/UX system at:splash.citadelia.org, login as test.
277 -Steve Williams (Patriot)