1 Citadel/UX Utilities Manual
2 See copyright.doc for copyright information
7 The following utilities will be discussed in this document:
8 aidepost Post standard input to the Aide> room. NOTE: called by chat.c
9 whobbs Who is on the system (connected to the server, actually.)
10 stats Print the calling statistics & graph.
11 msgform Format a binary message to the screen (stdin or in a file)
12 userlist Print the userlist.
13 readlog Read the caller log
14 useradmin Full-screen user account editor. NOTE: requires the "curses" lib
15 sysoputil Various and sundry sysop utilities.
17 It is up to you to decide which utilities should be made accessible only
18 to sysops. It is important that you set the file permissions correctly. All
19 utilities should have access to the BBS data files, whether through ownership
20 or set-user-id. In addition, aidepost should be accessible by the chat program,
21 and userlist & whobbs should be accessible by citadel. I will attempt to
22 address each program individually.
27 The nature of this program is rather simple. Standard input (stdin) is
28 converted into a message, filed in the main message file (msgmain), and posted
29 in the Aide> room. This is useful for keeping transcripts of system activity
30 that has to do with the BBS. You may also wish to have a really BIG msgmain
31 file, and have all of your normal system logs go in there also.
36 This program is similar to the "who" command. It lists all of the users
37 who are currently connected to your BBS server, either locally or across a
38 network. Unless you're running a standalone system, "who" and "whobbs" will
39 probably not have a one-to-one correspondence (unlike earlier versions of the
42 One thing to keep in mind is that the "whobbs" utility actually opens a
43 connection to the server. If the server is maxed out, whobbs will still be
44 able to provide a listing, because it doesn't need to log in to execute the
45 RWHO command. Note that whobbs does not list its own session.
47 Running the <W>ho is online command from the client does *not* call this
48 utility. It has this functionality built in.
53 (NOTE: this program no longer uses the "curses" library.) It prints
54 various statistics on the screen based on the calllog file, such as number
55 of connects, number of logins, number of logouts, number of disconnects,
56 bad password attempts, etc. All statistics are provided in three figures:
57 times per call, times per day, and total times.
58 After this screen appears, you may press return for the next screen. This
59 is a graphic representation of system usage, broken down into 20 minute
60 segments of the day. This will show you when your peak usage is.
61 Press return again and the stats program will list your system's top
63 The final screen lists the twenty users with the highest post per call
64 ratios. Unline the other screens, this statistic is extracted from the user
65 file itself rather than the call log.
67 stats may be called with the "-b" option to run in batch mode. In this case,
68 it skips all the prompts and just prints everything out in one bulk output.
69 Or it may be called with the "-p" option to only print the Post-to-Call
70 ratios and nothing else.
75 On occasion, I have had messages in Citadel/UX binary format that I have
76 wanted to view. Or needed a way to view a network spool file. Or wanted to
77 directly examine parts of msgmain. This program is a simple message formatter.
78 msgform reads standard input, scanning for binary messages, starting
79 with an <FF> byte and ending after the final NULL, and print as many as it
80 finds until it encounters EOF.
81 You could use this utility along with netproc to provide printouts or
82 archives of certain rooms.
87 This is a program to print the userlist. There are two flags that may be
88 set when running this program. When called without any arguments, userlist
89 will display all users (except those who have chosen to be unlisted), their
90 user numbers, times called, messages posted, screen width, and date of their
93 userlist is simply the same user listing code that is in the client, made
94 into a standalone utility for convenience.
99 Called without any arguments, readlog dumps the contents of the calllog
100 file. This file records all times the Citadel/UX program has been started, and
101 at what baud rate, as well as logins, proper logouts, loss of carrier (SIGHUP),
102 bad password attempts, and new user logins.
107 Useradmin is a full-screen program to view and edit any user's account.
108 The program will prompt for a user name. After you enter the name, various
109 parameters of the user's account will appear on the screen. To change one
110 of the parameters, simply enter its number.
112 1. User name - you may change a user's name at any time. If you do this,
113 the hash table to the user file will be rewritten when you exit useradmin.
114 2. User number - if you change a user's number, keep in mind that the user's
115 account will no longer be attached to any other records which are indexed by
116 user number, such as registration, room aide assignments, etc. These must be
118 3. UID attachment - if you wish to attach a BBS account to an /etc/passwd
119 account, simply make the uid's the same. Likewise, if a user is to no longer
120 have an account in /etc/passwd, simply set this to the same as BBSUID. Note
121 that the user's "full name" in /etc/passwd MUST be the same as their BBS login
122 name, otherwise a new (and probably unwanted) account will be created.
123 4. Password - these four fields are self explanatory.
127 8. Last call - Date and time of last call. If you select this,
128 it will not prompt for a new time, but set it to the current time.
129 9. Access Level - choose from the standard access levels:
130 0 = Marked for deletion
131 1 = New unvalidated user
133 3 = Validated user without network privileges
134 4 = Validated user with network privileges
138 The rest are boolean flags. Selecting them will toggle the options.
139 10. Permanent user (do not scroll off)
140 11. Print last old message on new message request
141 12. Expert mode (supress automatic hints)
142 13. Do not list in .RU command
143 14. Prompting after each message
144 15. Registered in the registration file
145 16. Pause after each screenful of text
147 In addition, if the user is registered, you can type -1 to make the
148 corresponding record in the registration file appear on the screen.
149 When you are finished examining or editing an account, type 0 to exit. It
150 will ask you if you wish to save the changes.
155 This program handles some of the sysop functions of the system. It can
156 be called three ways: sysoputil by itself brings up the menu. Also:
157 sysoputil -u Execute option 7 (user purge) and exit
158 sysoputil -r Execute option 1 (room purge) and exit
160 The menu choices are as follows:
162 1. Purge old rooms. This will delete any rooms which have not been written
163 to (posted in) in two weeks. Notification of purged rooms is posted in the
164 Aide> room (using the aidepost utility).
165 7. Purge old users. This will delete any users which have not called in
166 two months. Notification of purged users is posted in the Aide> room (using
167 the aidepost utility).
171 That should cover all of the included utilities. Comments, suggestions,
172 etc. may be sent to ajc@uncnsrd.mt-kisco.ny.us or call UNCENSORED! BBS at
173 (914) 244-3252 (modem) or uncnsrd.mt-kisco.ny.us (Internet).