Room Sharing in Citadel/UX -------------------------- One way to "keep the conversation going" on your Citadel system is to share rooms with other Citadel systems. This process has been streamlined in recent versions and is now very easy. In a shared room, a message posted to the room is automatically propagated to every system on the network. It's kind of like a UseNet newsgroup, but without the spam. Obviously, the first thing you have to do is find another Citadel to share rooms with, and make arrangements with them. The following Citadels are a good place to start: The Dog Pound II dogpound2.citadel.org UNCENSORED! uncensored.citadel.org PixelBBS pixel.citadel.org You don't have to be a part of the citadel.org domain to participate in the Citadel network, but the DNS service is provided free of charge by the Citadel community if you wish to do this. Before we get into the technical nitty gritty, there are two points of etiquette to keep in mind. The first thing to keep in mind is that the operator of any particular Citadel may not be willing to share some of his/her rooms. Some sites are proud to offer exclusive content in certain areas. Chances are, if a room is already being shared on the network, it's available for anyone to share; if not, it can't hurt to ask -- but take care not to demand it of them. Ask if you may share the room instead of telling them that you wish to share the room. When looking at a nown rooms list, network rooms are the ones ending in parentheses instead of angle brackets. For example, "Gateway)" would be a network room, "Lobby>" would not. The other point of etiquette to remember is that you should be making the arrangements in advance, and then set it up. It is extremely rude to simply begin networking with another Citadel without first obtaining permission from its operator. Always ask first. Most Citadel operators are more than happy to network with you. Also, if later on you decide to take your system down, please take the time to notify the operators of any other Citadels you network with, so they can unconfigure their end. Ok, first things first. On a Citadel room sharing network, the first thing you need to know is your own system's node name. Presumably you set this up during installation, but if you want to change it you can do so using the <.A>ide ysconfig eneral command: Lobby> . Aide System configuration General Node name [uncnsrd]: Fully qualified domain name [uncensored.citadel.org]: Human readable node name [Uncensored]: The "node name" is important, it's how the network identifies messages coming from your system. The "human readable node name" is simply a label; it shows up in messages coming from your system. "Fully qualified domain name" is your DNS name; it's used for routing messages on the Internet. In the above example, the node name is "uncnsrd". The next thing you need to do is configure your neighbor node(s). You need to do this for each node you network with. Let's say you wanted to talk to a Citadel system called "frobozz". Use the <.A>ide ysconfig etwork command: Lobby> . Aide System configuration Network ### Node Secret Host or IP Port# --- ---------------- ---------------- -------------------------------- ----- dd elete ave uit -> Add Enter node name : frobozz Enter shared secret: frotz Enter host or IP : frobozz.magick.org Enter port number : [504]: 504 ### Node Secret Host or IP Port# --- ---------------- ---------------- -------------------------------- ----- 1 frobozz frotz frobozz.magick.org 504 dd elete ave uit -> Save Lobby> As you can see in the above example, you have to enter the Citadel node name, the DNS name or IP address of the server, and the port number the Citadel service is running on. The "shared secret" is a password to allow the two Citadel nodes to connect to each other to exchange network data. The password must be *identical* on both ends of the connection -- when the operator of the other Citadel node sets up the connection with your system, he/she must use the same password. Now you're ready to share rooms. You have to do this for each room you want to share, and you have to do it from BOTH ENDS -- again, when you share a room with another Citadel, they must share it with you as well. Let's say you have a room called "Quiche Recipes>" and you want to share it with the node you set up above. First, edit the room and flag it as a network room: Quiche Recipes> . Aide Edit this room Room name [Quiche Recipes]: Private room [No]: No Preferred users only [No]: No Read-only room [No]: No Directory room [No]: No Permanent room [No]: No Network shared room [No]: Yes Automatically make all messages anonymous [No]: No Ask users whether to make messages anonymous [No]: No Listing order [64]: Room aide (or 'none') [none]: Message expire policy (? for list) [0]: Save changes (y/n)? Yes Ok Quiche Recipes) Notice how the prompt changed? It was > before, but it's ) now. That means it's a network room. Now you can tell Citadel that you want to share the room with frobozz. Enter this command: Quiche Recipes) . Aide Network room sharing Your text editor will pop up (you *did* configure Citadel to use your favorite text editor, right?) with a screen that looks like this: # Configuration for room: Quiche Recipes # Nodes with which we share this room # Specify one per line. All you have to do is enter the name of the other Citadel node (i.e. "frobozz" in our example) on a line by itself. As usual, lines starting with a "#" are comments. Just go to the end of the file, type "frobozz" (without the quotes), save the file... and you're done! At this point, you just sit back and enjoy. Your Citadel and the other one will begin polling each other at regular intervals (once per hour by default) and sharing messages. If once/hour is not acceptable you can change the default of one hour polling. Type .asg (.Aide System-configuration General) and find the line: How often to run network jobs (in seconds) [3600]: And change it to whatever you like. For example, 15 minutes is 900 seconds. So if you changed the default value to 900, you'd poll out every 15 minutes.