n0ary-bbs

A FreeBSD port of the venerable N0ARY packet radio BBS, which was originally written for SunOS.

Prerequisites

To compile N0ARY in its current form you will need GNU Make (gmake) version 3.11 or later.

Configuration

Before compiling the BBS you will need to edit src/include/site_config.mk to specify two important options: the target operating system and the BBS install directory.

Operating System

You must edit src/include/site_config.mk to tell the build system which operating system you are running. There are two choices: FreeBSD or SunOS.

1. FreeBSD

   To compile for FreeBSD, make your site_config.mk read:

    FREEBSD=1
   

2. SunOS

   To compile for SunOS it is first assumed that you will be cross-compiling for SunOS, because there is no way you'd be able to get modern GMake to run on SunOS. (If you do, let me know!).

   To cross compile for SunOS, make your site_config.mk first read:

    SUNOS=1
   

   Further cross-compilation instructions to be written

BBS Installation Directory

The BBS requires its own dedicated directory on the host filesystem and to correctly install it, the final "make install" rules need to know where this directory is. To set it up, edit src/include/site_config.mk and set the BBS_DIR variable:

BBS_DIR=<bbs-home-directory>

One example would be /usr/home/bbs

Compilation

To compile the BBS:

cd src/
gmake

Installation

To install the BBS you'll need to run the make install rule, you'll need to set up a user ID for the bbs to run under, and finally you'll need to edit the BBS configuration file, <bbs-dir>/etc/Config

Make install

cd src/
gmake install

BBS user ID

Create a user for the BBS to run under. Perhaps use bbs.

BBS Configuration

The BBS has many options to configure. To begin, you should probably copy <bbs-dir>/etc/Config.sample to <bbs-dir>/etc/Config and then edit it. There are many comments inside the sample configuration file for setting things up.

Startup

The BBS comes with an etc/rc.d style BSD startup script which will automatically start up the BBS when the system starts up, provided you setup /etc/rc.conf to do so. To simply enable BBS startup set:

n0ary_bbs_enable=YES

Some additional variables you can set are:

• n0ary_bbs_dir=

  n0ary_bbs_dir tells the startup scripts where the BBS home directory is, but it generally needn't be set unless you move the BBS to a different directory than the one you set in site_config.mk at build time.

• n0ary_bbs_user=

  The BBS is a federation of several daemons that run in the background. For system security, these daemons should run as an unpriviledged user. The startup script will arrange for the daemons to run under the user id of the username you provide here. The default is bbs, which you should have set up previously during the installation step.

Forwarding and other tasks

Once your BBS is configured and running, you will likely need to begin forwarding messages and traffic to other BBSes. The international BBS routing system is too complicated to describe here in detail, but the basics are to setup <bbs-dir>/etc/Systems and <bbs-dir>/etc/Route to describe the nearest neighbors to your BBS and how to reach them.

After you've set up the systems and routes you must then set up the message forwarding cycles by using cron to launch the BBS in an appropriate forwarding mode and on the schedules you desire. Here's an ancient, unchecked example from the original SunOS setup instructions. This example assumes that the BBS home directory is /nbbs.

0,20,40 * * * * /nbbs/bin/b_bbs -t6 -vTNC1
20 * * * * /nbbs/bin/b_bbs -t6 -vTNC0
3,13,23,33,43,53 * * * * /nbbs/bin/b_bbs -t6 -vSMTP
7,17,27,37,47,57 * * * * /nbbs/bin/b_bbs -t6 -vTCP
1,11,21,31,41,51 * * * * /nbbs/bin/b_process