Hello There,

In recent weeks I have been contemplating makings some changes. Now, I am not one to make drastic changes without due consideration. I have been a rather consistent user of Ubuntu Linux for some years now. And BBBS has been running on Ubuntu the whole time except for a short time
on Windows Server when I first installed BBBS. As I have mentioned I have been
cutting back on FTN participation's recently even though I still 8 PC's available running either running a 64b flavor of Linux or a 64b version of Windows. This isn't including several laptops and tablets.

I usually am a type of the "If it ain't broke, don't screw it up!". So, I have
resisted upgrading Ubuntu Linux on the BBBS machine which currently runs Ubuntu 16.10. I have recently to upgrade the OS on the BBBS to possibly a NON-Ubuntu flavor of Linux. I have Debian, CentOS, and Linux Mint recently
as well as some rather specialized versions of Linux. But haven't decided on a
flavor yet. I am doing a backup of the 450,000 files in the BBBS home directory as I type. :-)

Anyone with any thoughts? I am mainly interested in stability as I have plenty of PC's to use to experiment on.

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-3
* Origin: Fidoneet: The Ouija Board - Anoka, MN -bbs.ouijabrd.ne\ (1:282/1031)

Hello Jeff!

Friday September 21 2018 19:54, you wrote to All:

So, I have resisted upgrading Ubuntu Linux on the BBBS machine which currently runs Ubuntu 16.10. I have recently to upgrade the OS on the
BBBS to possibly a NON-Ubuntu flavor of Linux. I have Debian, CentOS,
and Linux Mint recently as well as some rather specialized versions of Linux. But haven't decided on a flavor yet. I am doing a backup of
the 450,000 files in the BBBS home directory as I type. :-)

Anyone with any thoughts? I am mainly interested in stability as I
have plenty of PC's to use to experiment on.

Test one's that have a LTS policy and releases.
The other in the main have a tendancy of upgrading every 6 - months which is a right royal pain to deal with as 9 times out of 10 upgrades do not work out as planned (the disto people or users).

Ubuntu is one but CentOS may be another and no doubt there are others.

The LTS distros are supported for a five year cycle with a upgrade facility for
the next version of the LTS so should work well BUT do not upgrade for a few months after release - let other work the bugs out.

Vince

--- Mageia Linux v6 X64/Mbse v1.0.7.9/GoldED+/LNX 1.1.501-b20150715
* Origin: Air Applewood, The Linux Gateway to the UK & Eire (2:250/1)

Hello Vince,

So, I have resisted upgrading Ubuntu Linux on the BBBS machine which
currently runs Ubuntu 16.10.

Test one's that have a LTS policy and releases.

That was my thought also. Whatever my choice it would a Linux flavor with extended support.

The other in the main have a tendancy of upgrading every 6 - months which is a >right royal pain to deal with as 9 times out of 10 upgrades do not work out as >planned (the disto people or users).

True... And then they sometimes offer changes (Improvements?) that one sees as downgrade.

Ubuntu is one but CentOS may be another and no doubt there are others.
The LTS distros are supported for a five year cycle with a upgrade facility for the next version of the LTS so should work well BUT do not upgrade for
a few months after release - let other work the bugs out.

Right now I am either looking at staying with (Actually upgrading to the current LTS version of Ubuntu) or installing CentOS on a spare PC of similar hardware and testing it prior to running/restoring BBBS onto t he machine.

At the moment I use Linux Mint on the PC that I do my daily desktop PC'ing.


Jeff

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-3
* Origin: Fidoneet: The Ouija Board - Anoka, MN -bbs.ouijabrd.ne\ (1:282/1031)

Re: Contemplations?
By: Jeff Smith to Vince Coen on Sun Sep 23 2018 15:43:54

Right now I am either looking at staying with (Actually upgrading to the current LTS version of Ubuntu) or installing CentOS on a spare PC of similar hardware and testing it prior to running/restoring BBBS onto t he machine.

i just spun up a brand new Ubuntu Server 18.04 and installed this latest sbbs CVS code on it so i could get back operational after losing my OS/2 system... i wish i had had time in the past to play with other BBS packages... i might have gone with something else but i think the FOSS aspect of synchronet is a big factor... that and i understood some of its operation better...

good luck with your situation :)

)\/(ark
--- SBBSecho 3.06-Linux
* Origin: SouthEast Star Mail HUB - SESTAR (1:3634/12)

Hello Jeff!

Sunday September 23 2018 15:43, you wrote to me:

Hello Vince,

So, I have resisted upgrading Ubuntu Linux on the BBBS machine
which currently runs Ubuntu 16.10.

Test one's that have a LTS policy and releases.

That was my thought also. Whatever my choice it would a Linux flavor
with extended support.

The other in the main have a tendancy of upgrading every 6 - months
which is a right royal pain to deal with as 9 times out of 10
upgrades do not work out as planned (the disto people or users).

True... And then they sometimes offer changes (Improvements?) that one
sees as downgrade.

Ubuntu is one but CentOS may be another and no doubt there are
others. The LTS distros are supported for a five year cycle with a
upgrade facility for the next version of the LTS so should work well
BUT do not upgrade for a few months after release - let other work
the bugs out.

Right now I am either looking at staying with (Actually upgrading to
the current LTS version of Ubuntu) or installing CentOS on a spare PC
of similar hardware and testing it prior to running/restoring BBBS
onto t he machine.

At the moment I use Linux Mint on the PC that I do my daily desktop
PC'ing.

My main system has a SSD of 250GB -ish so have a number of partitions set up as
a gpt group.

Here I run (very some times) other distros over my current Mageia v6 such as cetos PCLinux and some other that I have forgotten but all cause me grief so apart for trying a update for each and a quick test to see of mbse etc works before moving to the next one in the list I stick to the MGA one.

Hmm, reminds me that I did do a reboot after the third kernel upgrade (no didn't bother with the others) but was going on a 2 week holiday to Canada so gave the system a early birthday treat a few days before going - JIC.

Yes it stayed up the whole period but then I did not expect anything else.

My BBS system and all other user s/w is installed at /home/abc instead of say /opt (mbse) that way I can swap to another distro with the minimum of issues having made sure that all distros use the same guds for all users. Mind you that seems to be the standard these days that all user created accounts start from 1000 (as against 500),so easy to do.

Needless to say all VM's are recreated on an upgrade as needed as each server user get a fresh VM during their call/poll/link whatever and the VMs get updated during the course of a day as needed if new files come in. It is quick enough using the SSD. Just have to ensure that fstrim is run afterwards.


Vince

--- Mageia Linux v6 X64/Mbse v1.0.7.9/GoldED+/LNX 1.1.501-b20150715
* Origin: Air Applewood, The Linux Gateway to the UK & Eire (2:250/1)

*** Quoting Mark Lewis from a message to Jeff Smith ***

CVS code on it so i could get back operational after losing my OS/2 sy

How did you lose it?

--- Telegard/2 v3.09.g2-sp4/mL
* Origin: Omicron Theta/2 * Southaven, MS * os2bbs.org:2300 (1:261/20)

Anyone with any thoughts? I am mainly interested in stability as I
have plenty of PC's to use to experiment on.

Ubuntu is one but CentOS may be another and no doubt there are others.

CentOS is pretty much updated every time its upstream comes out with an update and IMHO is quite a stable distro. Then again, I believe Fedora is as well.

--- BBBS/2 v4.10 Toy-3
* Origin: Omicron Theta/2 (1:261/20)

Re: Re: Contemplations?
By: Robert Wolfe to Mark Lewis on Tue Sep 25 2018 19:28:44

CVS code on it so i could get back operational after losing my OS/2 sy

How did you lose it?

the HD's won't initialize... they spin but that's it...

)\/(ark
--- SBBSecho 3.06-Linux
* Origin: SouthEast Star Mail HUB - SESTAR (1:3634/12)

Re: Re: Contemplations?
By: Robert Wolfe to Mark Lewis on Tue Sep 25 2018 19:28:44

CVS code on it so i could get back operational after losing my OS/2 sy >>

How did you lose it?

the HD's won't initialize... they spin but that's it...

When my OS/2 system 'died', it was the HD controller that bought it. That was the night I went to Linux.. I still remember that pain, darn it... after a while I realized how similar OS/2 and Linux were at least on some levels <grin>.

I'd been reading about bbbs, had a few how-to's I'd collected for it...so that night when that controller died, I used Ron's system to grab an archive of BBBS/Li, and at least got the BBS running. I used BinkD with BBBS until I could figure out the mailer :) Yeah, that night my system died and I switched to Linux/bbbs was an 'all-nighter' :)

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-3
* Origin: Prism bbs (1:261/38)

Hello Vince,

Ubuntu is one but CentOS may be another and no doubt there are others.
The LTS distros are supported for a five year cycle with a upgrade facility >> for the next version of the LTS so should work well BUT do not upgrade for >> a few months after release - let other work the bugs out.

Right now I am either looking at staying with (Actually upgrading to the current LTS version of Ubuntu) or installing CentOS on a spare PC of similar hardware and testing it prior to running/restoring BBBS onto t he machine.
At the moment I use Linux Mint on the PC that I do my daily desktop PC'ing.

Looks like I might need to find another test machine to install CentOS-7 on. As CentOS 7 has both HD selection issues and installation issues using a one year old Gigabyte motherboard. Sadly, Gigabyte doesn't look to have much support for Linux flavored OS's. And I am not about to involve the BBBS machine until sufficient testing is completed.

I should note that Ubuntu Linux v14 -> v16 installed on the same PC just fine.
:-) (Did I just whisper in my own ear?)

Jeff

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-3
* Origin: Fidoneet: The Ouija Board - Anoka, MN -bbs.ouijabrd.ne\ (1:282/1031)

Hello Vince,

So, I have resisted upgrading Ubuntu Linux on the BBBS machine
which currently runs Ubuntu 16.10.

Test one's that have a LTS policy and releases.

That was my thought also. Whatever my choice it would a Linux flavor
with extended support.

Right now I am either looking at staying with (Actually upgrading to
the current LTS version of Ubuntu) or installing CentOS on a spare PC
of similar hardware and testing it prior to running/restoring BBBS
onto t he machine.

At the moment I use Linux Mint on the PC that I do my daily desktop
PC'ing.

My main system has a SSD of 250GB -ish so have a number of partitions set up as a gpt group.

On the PC that I am planning on using I have a 250GB SSD as my boot drive and two 2TB SATA's mounted as my /home and /file partitions

Here I run (very some times) other distros over my current Mageia v6 such as cetos PCLinux and some other that I have forgotten but all cause me grief so apart for trying a update for each and a quick test to see of mbse etc works before moving to the next one in the list I stick to the MGA one.

Oddly, CentOS wouldn't install on the PC in question for a couple apparent reasons. One is that the install process couldn't delete the existing logical volumes on the existing HD's. And the second was that CentOS didn't look to have the needed integrated video drivers. But I could install Debian 9, Linux Mint 19.1, or Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS without any problems. At the moment Mint is running on it.

My BBS system and all other user s/w is installed at /home/abc instead of say /opt (mbse) that way I can swap to another distro with the minimum of issues having made sure that all distros use the same guds for all users. Mind you that seems to be the standard these days that all user created accounts start from 1000 (as against 500),so easy to do.

Yeah... Some years ago I started keeping as much as possible in /home/<user> and keep the /home directory on a separate HD. Then just mount the HD's during distro installation. I haven't gotten to the point of moving BBBS over as of yet.

Jeff


--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-3
* Origin: Fidoneet: The Ouija Board - Anoka, MN -bbs.ouijabrd.ne\ (1:282/1031)

Hello Janis,

When my OS/2 system 'died', it was the HD controller that bought it. That was
the night I went to Linux.. I still remember that pain, darn it... after a while I realized how similar OS/2 and Linux were at least on some levels.

After DOS and Desqview. I tried OS/2 for a time. Up until I seen some pending development limitations pending. Then switched over to Slackware and MBSE. Eventually changing over to Ubuntu and BBBS.

I'd been reading about bbbs, had a few how-to's I'd collected for it...so that
night when that controller died, I used Ron's system to grab an archive of BBBS/Li, and at least got the BBS running. I used BinkD with BBBS until I
could figure out the mailer :) Yeah, that night my system died and I switched
to Linux/bbbs was an 'all-nighter' :)

Done the 'all-nighter' thing a number of times. Including setting up BBBS for the first time. I guess I am one of those types that once I start a task I don't like stopping till it's running and I am satisfied.

Jeff


--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-3
* Origin: Fidoneet: The Ouija Board - Anoka, MN -bbs.ouijabrd.ne\ (1:282/1031)

Hello Jeff!

Sunday September 23 2018 21:23, you wrote to me:

Hello Vince,

Ubuntu is one but CentOS may be another and no doubt there are
others. The LTS distros are supported for a five year cycle with a
upgrade facility for the next version of the LTS so should work
well BUT do not upgrade for a few months after release - let other
work the bugs out.

Right now I am either looking at staying with (Actually upgrading to
the current LTS version of Ubuntu) or installing CentOS on a spare
PC of similar hardware and testing it prior to running/restoring
BBBS onto t he machine. At the moment I use Linux Mint on the PC
that I do my daily desktop PC'ing.

Looks like I might need to find another test machine to install
CentOS-7 on. As CentOS 7 has both HD selection issues and
installation issues using a one year old Gigabyte motherboard. Sadly, Gigabyte doesn't look to have much support for Linux flavored OS's.
And I am not about to involve the BBBS machine until sufficient
testing is completed.

Are you saying that the install of Centos does NOT allow you to be selective on
where you install it by partition and/or use existing ones including updating previous install ?

Although it has been a while since I installed it I do not remember having that
as an issue - BUT it might have been installed on a freshly loaded SSD where I creating the various partition using another distro but, again other distros was already installed so some control of the centos install must have existed.

Note that the SSD was set up as a gpt set.

Needless to say I did/do have other issues with Centos :)
So I do not use it.

Vince

--- Mageia Linux v6 X64/Mbse v1.0.7.9/GoldED+/LNX 1.1.501-b20150715
* Origin: Air Applewood, The Linux Gateway to the UK & Eire (2:250/1)

Hello Jeff!

Friday September 28 2018 10:42, you wrote to me:

Yeah... Some years ago I started keeping as much as possible in
/home/<user> and keep the /home directory on a separate HD. Then just
mount the HD's during distro installation. I haven't gotten to the
point of moving BBBS over as of yet.

I have never tried bbbs as it is paid for software and as I am retired do not have funds to spend on such when there are more than enough FOC products.

Also all s/w in my system are available in source so I can pass the code through vetting s/w to check that it is safe (e.g., no back doors or passing information to other without my consent etc).

I do not often do this as most of my running apps I can control exactly what resources each has and that include external one's how ever the nature of BBS system is that they by nature communicate via the internet and I must be sure that they do exactly what I expect of them so the need force source is kind of important but one can (if needed) is run them inside a hard VM. [Limited resource access or control]

The one issue is for bbbs or for that matter any s/w is, can you select exactly
where to install it ?

If so then it should work - subject to testing of course.



Vince

--- Mageia Linux v6 X64/Mbse v1.0.7.9/GoldED+/LNX 1.1.501-b20150715
* Origin: Air Applewood, The Linux Gateway to the UK & Eire (2:250/1)

Hi Vince,

mount the HD's during distro installation. I haven't gotten to the
point of moving BBBS over as of yet.

I have never tried bbbs as it is paid for software and as I am retired do not have funds to spend on such when there are more than enough FOC products.

It's not that expensive, and you only pay for the number of nodes you want to run... I think I mentioned this before as well, when I first started using BBBS, I just ran the free trial nodes until I determined it would do
everything I needed... after that I registered 5 nodes IIRC, then eventually bumped it up to 15. It is a great system IMO, including essentially everything
you might need.

Also all s/w in my system are available in source so I can pass the code through vetting s/w to check that it is safe (e.g., no back doors or passing information to other without my consent etc).

Eh.. BBBS is safe :) But I understand what you mean there.

The one issue is for bbbs or for that matter any s/w is, can you select exactly
where to install it ?

You can install BBBS anywhere you like and as many times as you like. I usually have multiple installs here when I need to test something, etc.

Take care,
Janis

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-3
* Origin: Prism bbs (1:261/38)

Hello Vince,

I have never tried bbbs as it is paid for software and as I am retired do not have funds to spend on such when there are more than enough FOC products.

I am starting to think similarly as I have gotten on in years. I have tried most if not all of the (Then or Now) available BBS software. Both the paid for types like Wildcat/WinServer and BBBS to the other 'Free' BBS packages that would run on my selected OS platforms of DOS, Windows, Linux, OS/2.

The one issue is for bbbs or for that matter any s/w is, can you select exactly where to install it ?
If so then it should work - subject to testing of course.

I have run into both aspects of that issue with BBS software. With BBBS one can
specify the install location. For me I use /home/bbbs as the install location.
Other BBS's like Mystic need to to create the BBS install directory and it can
not preexist. Although I have found a workaround for the Linux version of Mystic.

Currently my preferred BBS software is BBBS, Mystic, and Synchronet as they are
all multi-platform packages.

Jeff

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-3
* Origin: Fidoneet: The Ouija Board - Anoka, MN -bbs.ouijabrd.ne\ (1:282/1031)

Hello Jeff!

Sunday September 30 2018 22:09, you wrote to me:

I am starting to think similarly as I have gotten on in years. I have
tried most if not all of the (Then or Now) available BBS software.
Both the paid for types like Wildcat/WinServer and BBBS to the other
'Free' BBS packages that would run on my selected OS platforms of DOS, Windows, Linux, OS/2.

Currently my preferred BBS software is BBBS, Mystic, and Synchronet as
they are all multi-platform packages.

IF you need too, try mbse and yes you can control where it is installed via configure --prefix= command.

How ever that said as you have paid the big bucks to use bbbs I guess you will stick to it :)


Vince

--- Mageia Linux v6 X64/Mbse v1.0.7.9/GoldED+/LNX 1.1.501-b20150715
* Origin: Air Applewood, The Linux Gateway to the UK & Eire (2:250/1)

Hello Vince,

Both the paid for types like Wildcat/WinServer and BBBS to the other
'Free' BBS packages that would run on my selected OS platforms of DOS,
Windows, Linux, OS/2.
Currently my preferred BBS software is BBBS, Mystic, and Synchronet as
they are all multi-platform packages.

IF you need too, try mbse and yes you can control where it is installed via configure --prefix= command.

Actually, back when I first installed Slackware MBSE was the first BBS that I installed on Linux. Since then I have installed BBBS, SBBS, and Mystic.

I think the reason that I didn't stick with MBSE longer than I did wasn't a fault of MBSE. It was at the time a lack of understanding of Linux's functionality. Everything was in odd and/or unknown places in Linux. As opposed
to Windows of the day. Hech, now I prefer Linux over Windows. :-)

How ever that said as you have paid the big bucks to use bbbs I guess you will
stick to it :)

While I probably will maintain a BBBS presence...

I try to always make sure that I have a few spare Linux PC's including a few Pi3's sitting around to try/test things on. I must confess my lack of looking at MBSE recently but will acquire the current MBSE package and investigate. :-)

Jeff

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-3
* Origin: Fidoneet: The Ouija Board - Anoka, MN -bbs.ouijabrd.ne\ (1:282/1031)

I have never tried bbbs as it is paid for software and as I am retired do not have funds to spend on such when there are more than enough FOC products.

Yeah, you know that the two node version of BBBS is available, right? The only
limitations to it that I know of are a 2 node max and a 30 minute hard time limit for users.

The one issue is for bbbs or for that matter any s/w is, can you select exactly
where to install it ?

By default, IIRC, it unzips to 'bbbs' in whatever directory you unzip it to. So
if you unzip it in /home/myhome, the directory it creates is /home/myhome/bbbs/. I am sure that with some tweaking that can be changed once the files are unpacked.

--- BBBS/2 v4.10 Toy-3
* Origin: Omicron Theta (BBBS/2) * Southaven MS USA (1:261/20)

I have never tried bbbs as it is paid for software and as I am retired do not >> have funds to spend on such when there are more than enough FOC products.

It's not that expensive, and you only pay for the number of nodes you want to run... I think I mentioned this before as well, when I first started using BBBS, I just ran the free trial nodes until I determined it would do everything I needed... after that I registered 5 nodes IIRC, then eventually
bumped it up to 15. It is a great system IMO, including essentially everythin
you might need.

I agree. I started with the 8 node version first, I believe, then upgraded to a 27-node license that I use today.

--- BBBS/2 v4.10 Toy-3
* Origin: Omicron Theta (BBBS/2) * Southaven MS USA (1:261/20)

I am starting to think similarly as I have gotten on in years. I have tried
most if not all of the (Then or Now) available BBS software. Both the paid for
types like Wildcat/WinServer and BBBS to the other 'Free' BBS packages that would run on my selected OS platforms of DOS, Windows, Linux, OS/2.

I run WINServer 7 as my main system, BBBS/2 on of of my 2 ArcaOS VMs and Telegard/2 with Internet Rex/OS2 and FastEcho/2 for my main mail system.

--- BBBS/2 v4.10 Toy-3
* Origin: Omicron Theta (BBBS/2) * Southaven MS USA (1:261/20)

Hello Robert,

The one issue is for bbbs or for that matter any s/w is, can you select
exactly
where to install it ?

By default, IIRC, it unzips to 'bbbs' in whatever directory you unzip it to. S
if you unzip it in /home/myhome, the directory it creates is
/home/myhome/bbbs/. I am sure that with some tweaking that can be changed onc
the files are unpacked.

Since I have a preference that BBBS runs out of the user directory as in /home/bbbs I installed BBBS to use and install to that directory and
created the user "bbbs" and told Linux to use the pre-existing bbbs home directory.

A number of programs default to installing to a /home/<user>/<program> while others are hard coded to install to a predetermined directory and refuse to install IF the install directory already exists.

Jeff

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-3
* Origin: Fidoneet: The Ouija Board - Anoka, MN -bbs.ouijabrd.ne\ (1:282/1031)

Since I have a preference that BBBS runs out of the user directory as in /home/bbbs I installed BBBS to use and install to that directory and
created the user "bbbs" and told Linux to use the pre-existing bbbs home directory.

Oh and this is a good preference to have. I have Mystic for Linux set up on that VM in very much the same way. I just have the mystic user having sudo privs so that the servers that require privileged ports can use those.

--- BBBS/2 v4.10 Toy-3
* Origin: Omicron Theta (BBBS/2) * Southaven MS USA (1:261/20)

Hello Robert!

Wednesday October 17 2018 18:38, you wrote to me:

I have never tried bbbs as it is paid for software and as I am
retired do not have funds to spend on such when there are more than
enough FOC products.

Yeah, you know that the two node version of BBBS is available, right?
The only limitations to it that I know of are a 2 node max and a 30
minute hard time limit for users.

The minimum service as you say is two nodes although I do not run any modems is still a paid
for function.

Even with internet based connections with mbse/web/ftp services I often can have 5 - 10
connections at the same time although rare and 2 - 4 is more likely.

Mbse has a max of two but that is to help with nodes downloading as my upload speed is only
18Mb and helps to minimise time connection times.

The Web or ftp connections is mostly robots and these are only connected for a max of 10
seconds.

So a 2 port bbbs is not practical on a cost or function basis.

How ever that said the main gain for mbse is that the sources are freely available so minir
fixes are done by the users (experienced in C) since the programmer quit the scene.

The only feature missing that I could make use of is a file description editor for the entries
that have poor comments or too many non textual comments anyway.
Here the only way around using a internal database for each function is to convert it to say
MySQL to allow better record updating. Then I could just use the code of another bbs editor to
work with mbse but my current time is spent on updating a publishing my Cobol tools and
applications on SF.



Vince

--- Mageia Linux v6 X64/Mbse v1.0.7.9/GoldED+/LNX 1.1.501-b20150715
* Origin: Air Applewood, The Linux Gateway to the UK & Eire (2:250/1)