I updated the pre-alphas again. This is what I am calling a "release candidate" for A44, so if you are using the pre-alphas please upgrade when you can and let me know if you're experiencing any issues.

For now I am focusing my attention on getting my Pi going again so I can build A44 for the Pi peoples.

Also soliciting ideas or requests for A45 if anyone wants to nag me. I am not sure what I plan to do for A45 yet. The time away sort of made me forget my intentions.

One thing that will probably happen is the removal of the older index message reader in favor for the newer one that was added a while back. A44 fixes a few bugs in the new index reader, so hopefully its working pretty well now.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

Also soliciting ideas or requests for A45 if anyone wants to nag me. I
am not sure what I plan to do for A45 yet. The time away sort of made
me forget my intentions.

Hi g00r00, oh boy, opening the floodgates! :P

I have a couple of requests/ideas. None of these are large or lofty, just simple things to add a slight improvement (IMO).

1. Allow Sysop to globally set "Silent Login" to either yes, no, or ask. Just
a minor annoyance at each login when I want it to be "no" every time :)
2. Some sort of MPL boilerplate database creation/read/write for custom MPL doorgames.
3. Same as above but for MPY. I know it's simple enough to do manually with sqlite or something but if MPL and MPY have the same basic database code /through/ mystic, they can talk to the same databases.
4. Wrap telnet in TLS? Obviously would need a proper client (NetRunner?)
5. Create a "backup" event which locks all inbound traffic and responds "The BBS is undergoing nightly maintenance..." or something similar, while
executing a backup script.

Can't think of much else...but that's where I'd start. :) Thanks again and welcome back.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/16 (Linux/64)
* Origin: monterey bbs (21:1/168)

On 27 Jan 2020, ryan said the following...

Also soliciting ideas or requests for A45 if anyone wants to nag me. am not sure what I plan to do for A45 yet. The time away sort of mad me forget my intentions.

Hi g00r00, oh boy, opening the floodgates! :P

I have a couple of requests/ideas. None of these are large or lofty, just simple things to add a slight improvement (IMO).

1. Allow Sysop to globally set "Silent Login" to either yes, no, or ask. Just a minor annoyance at each login when I want it to be "no" every

You can probably do this with an MPL or MPY script. Actually, I can probably whip something up for you if g00r00 wants to focus on other stuff. Just send
me a reminder email to sysop@throwbackbbs.com with specifically what you'd
like it to do. I have Wednesday and Thursday off, I can do it one of those two days.

5. Create a "backup" event which locks all inbound traffic and responds "The BBS is undergoing nightly maintenance..." or something similar,
while executing a backup script.

There *was* something in Mystic's event editor that would do this a few years ago, if I remember right. I actually had it setup, but it didn't work exactly right.

Yeah, looking at my events, it's a BBS event. I have it set as a 5 minute warning, and to display a warning ansi to all nodes. Then I had another event right after that take down the BBS server, do the maint/backup, then run it again afterwards.

TBH though, I've found it doesn't matter if the BBS is online or offline, or
if anyone's on when it's running my backup script. Everything's backed up no problem, and I've been doing it for at least the last few years every week without any issues while it's been running.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: throwbackbbs.com -\- meriden, ct -\- (21:1/114)

Also soliciting ideas or requests for A45 if anyone wants to nag me. I
am not sure what I plan to do for A45 yet. The time away sort of made
me forget my intentions.

Awesome, here's some ideas, both mine and other peoples I have seen:
1. Allow Python/MPL prompts in the Menu Prompt. Allow passing of keys to the Mystic menu via an internal "bbs.hotkey('A')"
2. Allow passing arguments to scripts in prompts:
#Script.mpy ARG ARG ARG#
3. Batch queue support in MPY,
-bbs.queue(): dict with {key:Filename,value:NestedDict with all file attributes
-bbs.add_queue(/full/path/to/file) - Must exist in Mystic filebase?
-bbs.remove_queue(/full/path/to/file) - Must exist in Mystic filebase?
-bbs.clear_queue() or just delete bbs.queue()
4. Allow bbs.menucmd("GO", "menuname") to Go to new menu within Script by adding it to the next menu on the stack once the script exits. Seems like this isn't supported or I can't figure it out.
5. Support dynamic menu generation in MPY:
-menu = bbs.createmenu("name")
-menu.addcmd("MenuCmd", "args")
-menu.dispfile("text.ans")
-menu.prompt("prompt:")
-menu.acs("s20")
-menu.hotkey('q') or menu.hotkey('FIRSTCMD'), etc...
-menu.timer(5)
This would be completely volitile and only persist while the script is running.

7. Support Python 3.5+
8. Allow removal of OS type/node number from login node message on connect.
For privacy/security reasons.
9. Allow blocking of SSH users that don't have an account.
10. Support startup.MPY for python startup scripts.
11. Allow access to bbs.getcfg() before logging in in startup.MPY so as to allow for filebase/messagebase access. This would require some default user level to assume during login like "s1" or something. That way you could
provide front end access to certain areas without users logging in.
12. Biggie: Provide access to other nodes in MPY. For instance, creating a
new multinode chat engine without file/database sharing. Send node messages from within a script. Allow them to run a script to will catch node message:
node = bbs.nodeconnect(NodeNum)
node.sendmessage("This is a message") #sending only to a nodeconnect
node.sendusermessage("this is another message") #send to User's terminal
for message in node.checkmessages():
bbs.write(message)
13. Provide a way to get other node status in MPY: -bbs.getnodes()
-Returns dict with {key:nodenum,value:NodeProperties(online/offline/user#)

I'll just stop here :)

|19|15┌─|16|07┤ |08De|07ad|15be|07a|08tz b|07b|15s
|07└─┘├─┐ |08:>.|12F|04sx |1221|08:|122|08/|12123|08.
|11■ |07└|19|15─|16|07┘ |08:>.|10A|02gn |1046|08:|101|08/|10123|08.
|12≡|15A|07n|08al|07o|15g|12≡ |08:>.|13F|05dn |131|08:|13305|08/|132|08.
|08:>.|15S|08ci |1577|08:|151|08/|15131|08.
|08:>.|11T|03qw |111337|08:|113|08/|1113|08.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/24 (Linux/64)
* Origin: deadbeatz.org (21:2/123)

You can probably do this with an MPL or MPY script. Actually, I can probably whip something up for you if g00r00 wants to focus on other stuff. Just send me a reminder email to sysop@throwbackbbs.com with specifically what you'd like it to do. I have Wednesday and Thursday
off, I can do it one of those two days.

Email sent :)

Yeah, looking at my events, it's a BBS event. I have it set as a 5 minute warning, and to display a warning ansi to all nodes. Then I had another event right after that take down the BBS server, do the maint/backup,
then run it again afterwards.

I'm not a fan of this, personally. IMO it would be great to have the BBS
still listen for inbound connections and then spit out some kind of "we are doing maint" message. I also am not a fan of having ports open with nothing listening to do IP filtering and stuff, but I'm a security nerd. :P

TBH though, I've found it doesn't matter if the BBS is online or
offline, or if anyone's on when it's running my backup script. Everything's backed up no problem, and I've been doing it for at least
the last few years every week without any issues while it's been running.

Yeah...I know it seems like things work just fine, but the potential for bad stuff is there. And I don't expect many people are testing their backups. I'd prefer not doing a backup while files are actively being written to.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/16 (Linux/64)
* Origin: monterey bbs (21:1/168)

Hello g00r00!

On 27 Jan 2020, g00r00 said the following...

I updated the pre-alphas again. This is what I am calling a "release

Thanks a lot! :)

candidate" for A44, so if you are using the pre-alphas please upgrade
when you can and let me know if you're experiencing any issues.

If "Inherit ..." are set to <None> for a custom theme, Mystic won't find missing elements from the default theme despite "Fallback" being set to Yes.

Although not a biggie -- I have set all the "Inherit ..." to "default" for now...

By the way -- I'm not sure what those settings should be for the default theme itself -- should it have "Inherit ..." set to "<None>" and does "Fallback: Yes" actually mean something? Like that it will try or not try to read prompts from prompts.dat in the data directory? Just curious. :)

Again, thanks!

Best regards
Zip

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden (21:1/202)

Hello again g00r00!

On 27 Jan 2020, g00r00 said the following...

candidate" for A44, so if you are using the pre-alphas please upgrade
when you can and let me know if you're experiencing any issues.

Just noticed that in the Archive editor, the file extension for "LHA (via 7-ZIP)" is listed as "LHZ", not "LZH". Could that be a typo?

Also, 7z is available on Linux as well, so perhaps the OSID for "7-ZIP"
should default to "All" instead of "Windows"? (Unsure about the situation on MacOS, though.)

Best regards
Zip

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden (21:1/202)

Hello again g00r00!

On 27 Jan 2020, g00r00 said the following...

when you can and let me know if you're experiencing any issues.

I appears that I cannot get GE 14 /reload to work -- it just returns me to the (Account) menu without allowing me to select a theme at all.

In the node log I only get this (as usual when neither my theme nor the default theme has a prompts.txt, but fall back to use prompts.dat in the data directory):

2020.01.27 20:11:13 Cannot open: /mnt/bbs/mystic/themes/scbbs_en/prompts.txt 2020.01.27 20:11:13 Cannot open: /mnt/bbs/mystic/themes/default/prompts.txt

Best regards
Zip

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden (21:1/202)

On 27 Jan 2020, ryan said the following...

You can probably do this with an MPL or MPY script. Actually, I can probably whip something up for you if g00r00 wants to focus on other stuff. Just send me a reminder email to sysop@throwbackbbs.com with specifically what you'd like it to do. I have Wednesday and Thursday off, I can do it one of those two days.

Email sent :)

Got it, I'll work on it in the next couple days.

TBH though, I've found it doesn't matter if the BBS is online or offline, or if anyone's on when it's running my backup script. Everything's backed up no problem, and I've been doing it for at leas the last few years every week without any issues while it's been runn

Yeah...I know it seems like things work just fine, but the potential for bad stuff is there. And I don't expect many people are testing their backups. I'd prefer not doing a backup while files are actively being written to.

At least with Mystic, I can tell you I've had occasion to restore backups
once in a while, and they always work just fine. I think the "take the board down while I do maint" thing is a holdover from back in the DOS days, when
you kind of had to, what with netmail at off-peak hours, running a bunch of maint stuff that needed users to not be using doors and stuff. But now it
seems like it's not an issue.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: throwbackbbs.com -\- meriden, ct -\- (21:1/114)

1. Allow Sysop to globally set "Silent Login" to either yes, no, or ask.

I'll check into how this can be done.

time :) 2. Some sort of MPL boilerplate database creation/read/write for custom MPL doorgames.

3. Same as above but for MPY. I know it's simple enough to do manually with sqlite or something but if MPL and MPY have the same basic database code /through/ mystic, they can talk to the same databases.

This is a good idea, but I don't know how easy it'd be to do it. If you have any detailed ideas on how you'd like it to work let me know.

I agree that dealing with typed binary files in Python sucks, and dealing with SQL in MPL doesn't exist so yeah they def don't play well between each other.

MPL really just isn't as capable for modern things like SQL result sets.

4. Wrap telnet in TLS? Obviously would need a proper client (NetRunner?) 5. Create a "backup" event which locks all inbound traffic and responds "The BBS is undergoing nightly maintenance..." or something similar,
while executing a backup script.

Not sure about #4 to be honest. What do you think we would gain from doing
so? I don't think it'd be too difficult to do.

#5 is on the TODO list but its a tricky issue. Doing it for just the BBS itself would be easy but doing it for the other servers will be a challenge.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

1. Allow Python/MPL prompts in the Menu Prompt. Allow passing of keys to the Mystic menu via an internal "bbs.hotkey('A')"

There is already a "stuffkey" command in MPL and Python. But if I understand correctly you want to be able to replace a menu prompt with a MPL/MPY?

Have you ever tried to just execute one as the last command and use stuffkey?
I don't know the answer just curious if there is a way to do it now or not.

2. Allow passing arguments to scripts in prompts:
#Script.mpy ARG ARG ARG#

I didn't realize this didn't work. I'll look into this one for sure.

3. Batch queue support in MPY,
-bbs.queue(): dict with {key:Filename,value:NestedDict with all file attributes
-bbs.add_queue(/full/path/to/file) - Must exist in Mystic filebase?
-bbs.remove_queue(/full/path/to/file) - Must exist in Mystic
filebase? -bbs.clear_queue() or just delete bbs.queue()

On the TODO list!

The way it works now internally you need to know the file area index, the filename, the file size, and the date. My thoughts are that it'd be annoying to use if I exposed it the way it is now, what do you think?

(Back in the DOS days I was trying to get Mystic to run in 384-512kb of memory so lots of corners or tricks had to be done to save memory.)

I think ideally it'd work more like you mentioned where it'd just be a full path to a file and then an optional reference to the file area just for stat tracking, but its going to require a rewrite :(

4. Allow bbs.menucmd("GO", "menuname") to Go to new menu within Script by adding it to the next menu on the stack once the script exits. Seems
like this isn't supported or I can't figure it out.

I thought this did work, but that may only be in MPL. Or maybe it just
doesn't work :) I'll make a note to look at it!

5. Support dynamic menu generation in MPY:
-menu = bbs.createmenu("name")
-menu.addcmd("MenuCmd", "args")
-menu.dispfile("text.ans")
-menu.prompt("prompt:")
-menu.acs("s20")
-menu.hotkey('q') or menu.hotkey('FIRSTCMD'), etc...
-menu.timer(5)
This would be completely volitile and only persist while the script is running.

Cool idea and I can see its usefulness particularly with non-standard menus.
I think this one is going to be difficult to add in though, so I will note it as an idea but I don't know when I would get it done.

7. Support Python 3.5+

I have this as something to look into, but if I were to only go to 3.5 it would break all the 2.x Python stuff out there. I think to support 3.x I would
need to continue to support 2.x too, which means then I'd be maintaining
three scripting languages in Mystic (MPL, Py2, Py3). This sounds like a lot
of work :)

8. Allow removal of OS type/node number from login node message on connect. For privacy/security reasons.

I'll look into this.

10. Support startup.MPY for python startup scripts.

I'll look into this too. For now you might be able to do a startup.mpl that just runs startup.mpy! I know thats not ideal, but it might work!

11. Allow access to bbs.getcfg() before logging in in startup.MPY so as
to allow for filebase/messagebase access. This would require some
default user level to assume during login like "s1" or something. That

You'd need an entire user to be logged in to use BBS functions from the
script if you wanted them to be able to read and post messages. I'd have to think through this a bit more.

I seem to remember I had it so users could download files from a file area at the matrix menu in the past, but that might have been one of those Mystic 2.x concepts I did. Its been a long time I would have to try it.

13. Provide a way to get other node status in MPY: -bbs.getnodes()
-Returns dict with {key:nodenum,value:NodeProperties(online/offline/user#)

I'll add this to the list.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

If "Inherit ..." are set to <None> for a custom theme, Mystic won't find missing elements from the default theme despite "Fallback" being set to Yes.

I don't seem to be able to reproduce this. I just made a new theme with no inheritance and it looks identical to the default theme. I have only tested this in Windows though. Maybe there is another element I am missing from my test.

By the way -- I'm not sure what those settings should be for the default theme itself -- should it have "Inherit ..." set to "<None>" and does "Fallback: Yes" actually mean something? Like that it will try or not
try to read prompts from prompts.dat in the data directory? Just
curious. :)

I think when its looking to inherit it has code that sort of looks like:

If theme.fallback and theme.IsNotDefault then
try to get item from default theme

In other words, the "fallback to default" should mean nothing in the default theme. The inheritance would probably try to load from the default theme
twice though, but it shouldn't be noticable.

I guess in theory you could have the default theme inherit from something else. Mystic doesn't "chase" the inheritance though, it only allows one level of inheritance. I did that on purpose so people couldn't do circular inheritance that just sits there trying to load from each other forever.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

Just noticed that in the Archive editor, the file extension for "LHA (via 7-ZIP)" is listed as "LHZ", not "LZH". Could that be a typo?

Yeah thats probably a typo. I'll get that fixed up.

Also, 7z is available on Linux as well, so perhaps the OSID for "7-ZIP" should default to "All" instead of "Windows"? (Unsure about the
situation on MacOS, though.)

I would need to test it out first. Or have you tested the defaults in Linux
to see if they seem to work? I'll change it to All if someone can vouch that they work in Linux.

Thanks for the feedback!

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

I appears that I cannot get GE 14 /reload to work -- it just returns me
to the (Account) menu without allowing me to select a theme at all.

It sounds like its doing what its intended to do. It silently reloads your current theme prompts, like for example if you just made a bunch of edits in the prompt editor or in the prompts.txt directly and you want to reload the prompts quickly, you could make a "/reload" command to do it.

If you want to select a theme you just do "GE" and "14" and it should prompt you to select a theme.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

On 27 Jan 2020, g00r00 said the following...

Also soliciting ideas or requests for A45 if anyone wants to nag me. I
am not sure what I plan to do for A45 yet. The time away sort of made
me forget my intentions.

Now you're really asking for it <g>

I was thinking (always a bad idea) earlier about hashtags (tags, flags, whatever) and how they could be used in this instance.

My file areas are always a mess. Mostly that is just me but it would be nice
to have file areas use "tags" as well as directories. For instance, Murder Mansion is in my Mystic File area currently because it's an MPL. Would be
nice to also have it included in a games file area as well without
duplicating the file.

Just a thought. I'm definitely just an end user so don't know how difficult something like that would be to implement but I could see tags being used
like ACS flags for more than just users.

-=>Richard Miles<=-
-=>Captain Obvious<=-
-=>bbs.shadowscope.com<=-

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Shadowscope BBS | bbs.shadowscope.com | Temple, GA (21:1/157)

At least with Mystic, I can tell you I've had occasion to restore backups once in a while, and they always work just fine. I think the "take the board down while I do maint" thing is a holdover from back in the DOS days, when you kind of had to, what with netmail at off-peak hours, running a bunch of maint stuff that needed users to not be using doors
and stuff. But now it seems like it's not an issue.

I'm sure it's probably fine 95% of the time, but there's that 5% that scares
me :) Just because it hasn't been a problem /yet/ doesn't mean that it flat
out isn't a problem. Just my preference to do maintenance during an outage, I suppose, and I'd prefer to not force the mis process to end during that time
:)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/16 (Linux/64)
* Origin: monterey bbs (21:1/168)

g00r00,

Hey man thanks for looking in these things. I want you to know, first, we all love your free Mystic package and none of the things I'm suggesting is a real problem. Just some ideas of to overcome challenges I've faced along the way.

There is already a "stuffkey" command in MPL and Python. But if I g0>

understand correctly you want to be able to replace a menu prompt with a g0> MPL/MPY?

Yes you can run a script as the last cmd and stuffkey. It's really slow if you're doing fun longkey strokes. The idea was more to create a more fun
prompt engine that really tied into how the menu prompt works. Not a biggie.

I didn't realize this didn't work. I'll look into this one for sure.

I'm not sure how the script would know what were args in the prompt and what was just prompt text.

say prompt 138: #myscript |CL Hello This is prompt text
That would run the 'myscript', then after it exits, it would run the |CL Hello... portion. Not sure how to pass args, but I could be off here.

4. Allow bbs.menucmd("GO", "menuname") to Go to new menu within Scrip adding it to the next menu on the stack once the script exits. Seems

I thought this did work, but that may only be in MPL. Or maybe it just doesn't work :) I'll make a note to look at it!

I tried hard to make it work. It could be me, just sayin'!

7. Support Python 3.5+

I have this as something to look into, but if I were to only go to 3.5
it would break all the 2.x Python stuff out there. I think to support
3.x I would need to continue to support 2.x too, which means then I'd be maintaining three scripting languages in Mystic (MPL, Py2, Py3). This sounds like a lot of work :)

Yes, just that python 2.X is end of life. It's not too hard to make any 2.X stuff work in 3.X. In fact most things are much easier. So just like old MPL doesn't easily run in new Mystic, it's a little work to upgrade but nice to keep in line with current supported technologies.

10. Support startup.MPY for python startup scripts.

I'll look into this too. For now you might be able to do a startup.mpl that just runs startup.mpy! I know thats not ideal, but it might work!

Yes, this is what I do. It just feels 'nested' and as a software engineer I don't like bootstrapping this way. But it does work and I was just offering suggestions.

I seem to remember I had it so users could download files from a file
area at the matrix menu in the past, but that might have been one of
those Mystic 2.x concepts I did. Its been a long time I would have to
try it.

So you can offer a file, but what you can't do is getfbases() if I remember correctly. It's null or empty. It's more the getcfg() is not populated quite right until a user logs in. So I just read the filebase records manually.
I'll have to get back on what the issue was. I wanted to offer a few bases
for free on the startup page without user's logging in.

|19|15┌─|16|07┤ |08De|07ad|15be|07a|08tz b|07b|15s
|07└─┘├─┐ |08:>.|12F|04sx |1221|08:|122|08/|12123|08.
|11■ |07└|19|15─|16|07┘ |08:>.|10A|02gn |1046|08:|101|08/|10123|08.
|12≡|15A|07n|08al|07o|15g|12≡ |08:>.|13F|05dn |131|08:|13305|08/|132|08.
|08:>.|15S|08ci |1577|08:|151|08/|15131|08.
|08:>.|11T|03qw |111337|08:|113|08/|1113|08.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/24 (Linux/64)
* Origin: deadbeatz.org (21:2/123)

1. Allow Sysop to globally set "Silent Login" to either yes, no, or a

I'll check into how this can be done.

Optionally maskreet has volunteered to try to turn this into a mod so maybe
OBE :)

(thanks maskreet!)

time :) 2. Some sort of MPL boilerplate database creation/read/write custom MPL doorgames.
3. Same as above but for MPY. I know it's simple enough to do manuall

This is a good idea, but I don't know how easy it'd be to do it. If you have any detailed ideas on how you'd like it to work let me know.

Yeah, I have no idea how this could be done. :/ I can think of either leveraging sqlite and building a shim between it and mpy/mpl, or perhaps support CRUD operations on random data files in the /mystic/data dir that
don't belong to the core BBS?

4. Wrap telnet in TLS? Obviously would need a proper client (NetRunne

Not sure about #4 to be honest. What do you think we would gain from doing so? I don't think it'd be too difficult to do.

I'd personally prefer using telnet+TLS to wrap BBS comms up in a secure way than using SSH directly. Like, perhaps I only need to keep my telnet port
open and listened-to with mis, and then during login some sort of negotiation is attempted which either goes secure or remains non-secure..?

5. Create a "backup" event which locks all inbound traffic and respon "The BBS is undergoing nightly maintenance..." or something similar, while executing a backup script.

#5 is on the TODO list but its a tricky issue. Doing it for just the BBS itself would be easy but doing it for the other servers will be a challenge.

Gotcha. Yeah, I can see how something like bink would be tough here, but probably also be one of the more important services...tricky...

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/16 (Linux/64)
* Origin: monterey bbs (21:1/168)

I have this as something to look into, but if I were to only go to 3.5
it would break all the 2.x Python stuff out there. I think to support
3.x I would need to continue to support 2.x too, which means then I'd be maintaining three scripting languages in Mystic (MPL, Py2, Py3). This sounds like a lot of work :)

Chiming in from the cheap seats :) IMO maintaining mpl is cool but it seems a lot more valuable to focus on mpy. With mpy we can extend other libraries and do all sorts of cool stuff.

Perhaps you can EOL mpl at some point and the community can help one another rewrite all mpls as mpys? Having a functional mpe means you have the source
of the mpe (i.e., the mpl) to begin with. I agree decreasing the support
burden on you would be a net positive, and the best code is deleted code!

Likewise we could probably help one another migrate from python 2.x to 3.x without much heartache.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/16 (Linux/64)
* Origin: monterey bbs (21:1/168)

8. Allow removal of OS type/node number from login node message on connect. For privacy/security reasons.

I'll look into this.

Second this. I'm proud to run Mystic, and take steps to leave it on screen -- but I'm not interested in people seeing the OS/Node information without
logging in first.

-roovis

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/24 (Linux/64)
* Origin: w0pr.win (21:4/165)

I didn't realize this didn't work. I'll look into this one for sure.

say prompt 138: #myscript Hello This is prompt text
That would run the 'myscript', then after it exits, it would run the Hello... portion. Not sure how to pass args, but I could be off here.

Hey g00r00, I can confirm that replacing a prompt passes any trailing parameters as args. I was under the impression it ran the script first then
the remaining prompt. Take that one off the list! :)

|19|15┌─|16|07┤ |08De|07ad|15be|07a|08tz b|07b|15s
|07└─┘├─┐ |08:>.|12F|04sx |1221|08:|122|08/|12123|08.
|11■ |07└|19|15─|16|07┘ |08:>.|10A|02gn |1046|08:|101|08/|10123|08.
|12≡|15A|07n|08al|07o|15g|12≡ |08:>.|13F|05dn |131|08:|13305|08/|132|08.
|08:>.|15S|08ci |1577|08:|151|08/|15131|08.
|08:>.|11T|03qw |111337|08:|113|08/|1113|08.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/24 (Linux/64)
* Origin: deadbeatz.org (21:2/123)

Second this. I'm proud to run Mystic, and take steps to leave it on
screen -- but I'm not interested in people seeing the OS/Node
information without logging in first.

-roovis

I put it on my list just for you buddy! :)

|19|15┌─|16|07┤ |08De|07ad|15be|07a|08tz b|07b|15s
|07└─┘├─┐ |08:>.|12F|04sx |1221|08:|122|08/|12123|08.
|11■ |07└|19|15─|16|07┘ |08:>.|10A|02gn |1046|08:|101|08/|10123|08.
|12≡|15A|07n|08al|07o|15g|12≡ |08:>.|13F|05dn |131|08:|13305|08/|132|08.
|08:>.|15S|08ci |1577|08:|151|08/|15131|08.
|08:>.|11T|03qw |111337|08:|113|08/|1113|08.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/24 (Linux/64)
* Origin: deadbeatz.org (21:2/123)

At least with Mystic, I can tell you I've had occasion to restore backups once in a while, and they always work just fine. I think the "take the board down while I do maint" thing is a holdover from back in the DOS days, when you kind of had to, what with netmail at off-peak hours, running a bunch of maint stuff that needed users to not be using doors
and stuff. But now it seems like it's not an issue.

Its still possible that you could get stuck in a situation where you do a backup while Mystic is in the middle of writing something to a data file,
with the result being the data file is corrupted.

I think its just a lot harder to do now because our computers are so much faster that writing to files often happen in milliseconds.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

Would be nice to also have it included in a games file area as well without duplicating the file.

Thanks I'll consider how this could best be handled and make a note on the TODO list. The file areas in general could use a complete revamp to be honest.

They've been mostly unchanged since the 1990s besides adding in the index file area thing and archive viewer.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

Yes, just that python 2.X is end of life. It's not too hard to make any 2.X stuff work in 3.X. In fact most things are much easier. So just like old MPL doesn't easily run in new Mystic, it's a little work to upgrade but nice to keep in line with current supported technologies.

The reason 2.X was chosen was because it was feature locked. Python 3 didn't have its API locked down, and it was constantly changing at the time. I'm sure its more stable these days though.

More libraries were written for 2.X and most tutorials were written for 2.X syntax too. It was also the default for macOS and Ubuntu. I'm sure lots of that has changed now.

Hopefully supporting them side by side will be easy but I have no idea what
to expect at this point.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

1. Allow Sysop to globally set "Silent Login" to either yes, no,

I'll check into how this can be done.

Optionally maskreet has volunteered to try to turn this into a mod so maybe OBE :)

There is an "invisible ACS" so you can turn it Off or Ask even for specific users. But there is no "always on" so I need to figure out how to add that
in. Maybe a user flag that says "always login as invisible".

I don't want to step on his back if he makes a mod, but I do think it'd be a good feature to add directly into Mystic if possible.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

Chiming in from the cheap seats :) IMO maintaining mpl is cool but it seems a lot more valuable to focus on mpy. With mpy we can extend other libraries and do all sorts of cool stuff.

Yeah its really old. It was created in the 90s and it has had bandaid after bandaid applied to it. It was awesome for its time, but it obviously doesn't compare to something like Python.

I still think its nice to have because its reliable across different platforms and it doesn't require any additional steps like setting up Mystic Python does.

I could always scrap it for LUA which embeds very easily! ;)

Perhaps you can EOL mpl at some point and the community can help one another rewrite all mpls as mpys? Having a functional mpe means you have the source of the mpe (i.e., the mpl) to begin with. I agree decreasing the support burden on you would be a net positive, and the best code is deleted code!

I think I would probably keep it in for the foreseeable future and just do very minimal changes to it if I decided to go that route. There are a lot of cool MPL things that people have done over the years and I wouldn't want to turn my back on that.

Likewise we could probably help one another migrate from python 2.x to
3.x without much heartache.

I will look into this idea, I'm not against migrating to 3.x or trying to maintain both, especially if we can get 3.x running out of the box with most Linux distributions instead of forcing people to recompile Python. But I
want to be careful and get everyone's feedback before I make that sort of decision.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

On 27 Jan 2020, maskreet said the following...

At least with Mystic, I can tell you I've had occasion to restore backups once in a while, and they always work just fine. I think the "take the board down while I do maint" thing is a holdover from back in the DOS days, when you kind of had to, what with netmail at off-peak hours, running a bunch of maint stuff that needed users to not be using doors
and stuff. But now it seems like it's not an issue.

That depends on the OS. CRBBS, which is running on Linux, has a file locking issue somewhere. If I run an event to copy the log files into another
directory while MIS is still running, MIS keeps that log file locked in the
new directory. For example, I wrote a program that will copy all of the .log files into a directory based on the date, such as /mystic/logs/2020/01/27/.
MIS will continue adding to that log file until it reaches the max size specified in the mutil.ini file.

Not a huge issue, but still notable.


---

Black Panther(RCS)
Castle Rock BBS

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Castle Rock BBS - bbs.castlerockbbs.com (21:1/186)

Hey g00r00, I can confirm that replacing a prompt passes any trailing parameters as args. I was under the impression it ran the script first then the remaining prompt. Take that one off the list! :)

Awesome thanks for following up :)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

On 27 Jan 2020, g00r00 said the following...

2. Allow passing arguments to scripts in prompts:
#Script.mpy ARG ARG ARG#

I didn't realize this didn't work. I'll look into this one for sure.

I'm pretty sure this does work, but I'd have to check myself.

5. Support dynamic menu generation in MPY:
-menu = bbs.createmenu("name")
-menu.addcmd("MenuCmd", "args")
-menu.dispfile("text.ans")
-menu.prompt("prompt:")
-menu.acs("s20")
-menu.hotkey('q') or menu.hotkey('FIRSTCMD'), etc...
-menu.timer(5)
This would be completely volitile and only persist while the scrip running.

Cool idea and I can see its usefulness particularly with non-standard menus. I think this one is going to be difficult to add in though, so I will note it as an idea but I don't know when I would get it done.

I actually tossed this idea around a couple times, and I'm pretty sure it's doable as well.

I'm off the next couple days after tomorrow, so looks like I have stuff to
try out!

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: throwbackbbs.com -\- meriden, ct -\- (21:1/114)

On 27 Jan 2020, g00r00 said the following...

Its still possible that you could get stuck in a situation where you do a backup while Mystic is in the middle of writing something to a data file, with the result being the data file is corrupted.

I think its just a lot harder to do now because our computers are so much faster that writing to files often happen in milliseconds.

Yeah, I thought about that as well after I posted this, but if you're making regular backups it still shouldn't be much of an issue.

Whenever I had to restore a backup, it was generally one or two files, sometimes a directory. If it ever came down to it, having to go back to a another prior backup to get a different file for a potential corruption still shouldn't be too bad.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: throwbackbbs.com -\- meriden, ct -\- (21:1/114)

On 27 Jan 2020, g00r00 said the following...

Would be nice to also have it included in a games file area as well without duplicating the file.

Thanks I'll consider how this could best be handled and make a note on
the TODO list. The file areas in general could use a complete revamp to be honest.

They've been mostly unchanged since the 1990s besides adding in the
index file area thing and archive viewer.

Ooh! I wanted to ask if you could jot down in the TODO about finishing file attachments to messages. I see it was *kind of* setup, but it's
non-functional.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: throwbackbbs.com -\- meriden, ct -\- (21:1/114)

On 27 Jan 2020, g00r00 said the following...

1. Allow Sysop to globally set "Silent Login" to either yes

I'll check into how this can be done.

Optionally maskreet has volunteered to try to turn this into a mod so maybe OBE :)

There is an "invisible ACS" so you can turn it Off or Ask even for specific users. But there is no "always on" so I need to figure out how to add that in. Maybe a user flag that says "always login as invisible".

I don't want to step on his back if he makes a mod, but I do think it'd
be a good feature to add directly into Mystic if possible.

Yeah, no, step away, man. The only reason I do any piecemeal modding is to
fill gaps for features that aren't in the software yet. I'd be happy to have stuff replaced so that my mods could be retired. =)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: throwbackbbs.com -\- meriden, ct -\- (21:1/114)

Also soliciting ideas or requests for A45 if anyone wants to nag
me. I am not sure what I plan to do for A45 yet. The time away
sort of made me forget my intentions.

I have a couple for you that have been on my own todo list.. :)

File requesting. It would be nice to be able to request files from Mystic
nodes and also when running Mystic to serve them. I think I have this
working on my own node now but it may need more work yet.

There are some kind of FTSC specs for this I think but I haven't looked
at them myself.. ;)

In short, a node creates a *.req for a node in the outbound with a list
of files they would like to receive that gets sent to the node when the
node is polled and if the target node has the files it sends them to the requesting node along with any other mail or files to be picked up.

The .req can optionaly contain a password for password protected files if
need be, so a *.req might look like this..

files
waycoolstuff.zip password

Back in the day I used freqs quite extensively and there are still times
I think it would be usefull.

Another thing I have my eye on is secure binkp. I am doing this now with
one node using binkd. Mystic has the first implementation of this that I
ever saw and I think it is a good thing and would like to be able to do
this with Mystic nodes I connect with.

That could involve a bit of bumping around though before it can be used
between different mailers but I am ready to help test that and give
feedback on what works and what doesn't.


Ttyl :-),
Al

--- MagickaBBS v0.13alpha (Linux/x86_64)
* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)

Ooh! I wanted to ask if you could jot down in the TODO about finishing file attachments to messages. I see it was *kind of* setup, but it's non-functional.

The reason I haven't bothered with that is because no one uses local messages, and echomail doesn't allow file attachments.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/28 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

On 28 Jan 2020, g00r00 said the following...

Ooh! I wanted to ask if you could jot down in the TODO about finishin file attachments to messages. I see it was *kind of* setup, but it's non-functional.

The reason I haven't bothered with that is because no one uses local messages, and echomail doesn't allow file attachments.

No worries man, was just an idea! =)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: throwbackbbs.com -\- meriden, ct -\- (21:1/114)

On 27 Jan 2020, g00r00 said the following...

The file areas in general could use a complete revamp to be honest. They've been mostly unchanged since the 1990s besides adding in the
index file area thing and archive viewer.

I'd suggest a split window approach to the file lister if you decide to
revisit that, since the classic paging lister kind of gets overwhelmed on
file bases that can contain hundreds of entries with long descriptions.

For example you could have the file list on one side navigable by lightbar or type-ahead find while the currently selected file's description is on the
other side. That should make it more convenient to browse regardless of description length and give it a more similar feel to the existing indexed listers.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Subcarrier BBS (21:2/140)

On 27 Jan 2020, Al said the following...

Back in the day I used freqs quite extensively and there are still times
I think it would be usefull.

FREQing was really handy for getting files over the network without having to register as a full BBS user on half the nodelist.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Subcarrier BBS (21:2/140)

The file areas in general could use a complete revamp to be honest. They've been mostly unchanged since the 1990s besides adding in the index file area thing and archive viewer.

I'd suggest a split window approach to the file lister if you decide to revisit that, since the classic paging lister kind of gets overwhelmed on file bases that can contain hundreds of entries with long descriptions.

I've planned to do that for a while now once I get around to rebuilding everything. But Gryphon made a MPL that does exactly that and I didn't want to step on his toes.

For example you could have the file list on one side navigable by
lightbar or type-ahead find while the currently selected file's description is on the other side. That should make it more convenient to browse regardless of description length and give it a more similar feel
to the existing indexed listers.

Yep this was along the lines of what I wanted to do too. Although I may not have the "type to search" that I usually put in places throughout Mystic just because it requires a lot of memory for large bases.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/29 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

File requesting. It would be nice to be able to request files from Mystic nodes and also when running Mystic to serve them. I think I have this working on my own node now but it may need more work yet.

I do have this on the list, but I just haven't got around to it yet. I used to do it off and on back in the dialup days too, but I haven't really had the need for it these days. And I think that is why I've sort of slacked on it.

There are some kind of FTSC specs for this I think but I haven't looked
at them myself.. ;)

I think I used to have them saved but I am sure I've long since lost them!

Another thing I have my eye on is secure binkp. I am doing this now with one node using binkd. Mystic has the first implementation of this that I ever saw and I think it is a good thing and would like to be able to do this with Mystic nodes I connect with.

I don't think BinkD's secure mode is the same thing but I could be wrong. My copy of binkd is from 2011 so I haven't kept up.

But yeah I really need to sit down a sort out the opportunistic TLS. It works fine on my local setups here, but it was hit or miss when I used it with Avon's hub. It'd work half the time and the other half it'd struggle to authenticate. It seems super touchy when there is any latency in the data during the handshake.

Hopefully I can get that fixed up soon.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/29 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

On 29 Jan 2020 at 01:46a, g00r00 pondered and said...

But yeah I really need to sit down a sort out the opportunistic TLS. It works fine on my local setups here, but it was hit or miss when I used
it with Avon's hub. It'd work half the time and the other half it'd

More than happy to test and help develop this further... just let me know if/when you're ready to do so. :)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

I don't think BinkD's secure mode is the same thing but I could be
wrong. My copy of binkd is from 2011 so I haven't kept up.

Binkd doesn't have support for secure binkp although you can use options
on the node line to poll a node suppoting binkp over TLS. I use this to
poll a node supporting it..

node 1:153/757@fidonet -pipe "openssl s_client -quiet -alpn binkp
-connect *H:*I" trmb.ca:24553 - c

The above example is for my own binkd server. You (or anyone reading) can
feel free to poll my node over TLS if you'd like to do any testing.

I actually have a webserver listening on port 24553 and passing the
connection to binkd to do what it needs to do. Hopefully at some point
this can be done by binkd itself.

In the meantime Synchronet's BinkIT mailer also supports secure binkp
using implicit TLS (by default on port 24553).


Ttyl :-),
Al

--- MagickaBBS v0.13alpha (Linux/x86_64)
* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)

But yeah I really need to sit down a sort out the opportunistic
TLS. It works fine on my local setups here, but it was hit or
miss when I used it with Avon's hub. It'd work half the time
and the other half it'd

More than happy to test and help develop this further... just
let me know if/when you're ready to do so. :)

Meanwhile binkp over direct SSL and Tor (hidden service) runs rock stable for several weeks now ... Do you still want to add it to your binkd hub?

I hope I find the time to work on the QUIC proxy again.

--- Garbage v1.12💩A44
* Origin: 🦄 🌈 (21:1/151)

29 Jan 20 01:01, you wrote to g00r00:

I don't think BinkD's secure mode is the same thing but I could
be wrong. My copy of binkd is from 2011 so I haven't kept up.

Binkd doesn't have support for secure binkp although you can use
options on the node line to poll a node suppoting binkp over
TLS.

I think g00r00 was refering to BinkD's CRYPT mode, which works for connections with a session password.

When we talk about secure binkp or binkps (which I prefer) we mean direct TLS (like in https, imaps, ...).

Mystic uses opportunistic TLS (like STARTTLS in smtp).

and then we also have binkp over overlay networks (e.g. Tor hidden service)

and some nodes / networks use VPN for encrypting the traffic.

A future option would be binkp over QUIC.

Plenty of options, but none that is supported by all the major mailers.




--- Garbage v1.12💩A44
* Origin: 🦄 🌈 (21:1/151)

I think g00r00 was refering to BinkD's CRYPT mode, which works for connections with a session password.

Yep, your probably right. That CRYPT mode was ahead of it's time when it
was implimented, that was a long time ago.

When we talk about secure binkp or binkps (which I prefer) we mean
direct TLS (like in https, imaps, ...).

Mystic uses opportunistic TLS (like STARTTLS in smtp).

There seems to be some support for opportunist TLS in binkd circles but I prefer implicit myself. Where this will go remains to be seen.

and then we also have binkp over overlay networks (e.g. Tor hidden service)

and some nodes / networks use VPN for encrypting the traffic.

I have experimented with some of that but I don't see nodes using it
much. What I'd like to see is a simple and secure implemtation that nodes
can use without too much further ado.

A future option would be binkp over QUIC.

Plenty of options, but none that is supported by all the major
mailers.

I've heard of QUIC but I don't know what that is but I do know what TLS
is. TLS is available to everyone and probably a good solution for today. Security is a moving target so we need to be ready for change but I think
for now and some time to come.. TLS will do what we need.


Ttyl :-),
Al

--- MagickaBBS v0.13alpha (Linux/x86_64)
* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)

29 Jan 20 04:09, you wrote to me:

A future option would be binkp over QUIC.

I've heard of QUIC but I don't know what that is but I do know
what TLS is. TLS is available to everyone and probably a good
solution for today.

And in what way is QUIC less available to everyone?

TLS will do what we need.

TLS is baked into the QUIC protocol.

If we want to add better encryption to binkp, why not directly use the best protocol that is available?

--- Very Stable Genius v1.12 A44
* Origin: 🦄 🌈 (21:1/151)

I've heard of QUIC but I don't know what that is but I do know
what TLS is. TLS is available to everyone and probably a good
solution for today.

And in what way is QUIC less available to everyone?

I couldn't say, I don't know what it is.

TLS will do what we need.

TLS is baked into the QUIC protocol.

We have some support for TLS in fidoland. Synchronet supports it, Mystic supports it, and I am using it in binkd although I have glued it together
and hope my glue will hold (I think so).

I can't develop anything one way or the other. If the QUIC protocol would
be better for this purpose you need to bring that up with those who are developing the protocols we use in FTN.

We need some kind of standard to follow. I'm sure TLS would serve us
well. QUIC might also, but I just don't know what it is.


Ttyl :-),
Al

--- MagickaBBS v0.13alpha (Linux/x86_64)
* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)

Hello g00r00!

Thank you for your message!

On 27 Jan 2020, g00r00 said the following...

If "Inherit ..." are set to <None> for a custom theme, Mystic won't f missing elements from the default theme despite "Fallback" being set Yes.

I don't seem to be able to reproduce this. I just made a new theme with no inheritance and it looks identical to the default theme. I have only tested this in Windows though. Maybe there is another element I am missing from my test.

My custom theme's message.mnu fails to load mnewscan.mnu from the default
theme unless (at least) "Inherit Menus" is set to "default", despite
"Fallback" being set to "Yes". So when I press "N" from my custom theme's message menu, Mystic disconnects me unless I set "Inherit Menus" to "default".

(My custom theme does not contain a mnewscan.mnu.)

Not sure if that corresponds to your test? :)

Best regards
Zip

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden (21:1/202)

Hello g00r00!

Thank you for your message!

On 27 Jan 2020, g00r00 said the following...

Also, 7z is available on Linux as well, so perhaps the OSID for "7-ZI should default to "All" instead of "Windows"? (Unsure about the situation on MacOS, though.)

I would need to test it out first. Or have you tested the defaults in Linux to see if they seem to work? I'll change it to All if someone can vouch that they work in Linux.

After uploading (and automatic scanning with clamscan), the description prompt gets intermixed with some output from 7z extracting the archive's contents:

---8<--- cut ---8<---

el(R) Core(TM) i3-7100U CPU @ 2.40GHz (806E9),ASM,AES-NI)

Scanning the drive for archives:
1 file, 534 bytes (1 KiB)

Extracting archive: /mnt/bbs/mystic/files/local/uploads/b.7z
--
Enter Description. 99 Lines Max. Blank Line Ends.
:
Physical Size = 534
Headers Size = 122
Method = LZMA2:12
Solid = -
Blocks = 1


No files to process
Everything is Ok

Files: 0
Size: 0
Compressed: 534
None
---8<--- cut ---8<---

But perhaps that is just my terminal (SyncTerm 1.0), or the fact that 7z is
a bit chatty?

Also, when viewing the archive; I don't get any lightbar/ability to choose file, but just a plain listing:

---8<--- cut ---8<---
p7zip Version 16.02 (locale=en_US.UTF-8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,64 bits,4 CPUs Int
el(R) Core(TM) i3-7100U CPU @ 2.40GHz (806E9),ASM,AES-NI)

Scanning the drive for archives:
1 file, 534 bytes (1 KiB)

Listing archive: /mnt/bbs/mystic/files/local/uploads/b.7z

--
Path = /mnt/bbs/mystic/files/local/uploads/b.7z
Type = 7z
Physical Size = 534
Headers Size = 122
Method = LZMA2:12
Solid = -
Blocks = 1

Date Time Attr Size Compressed Name
------------------- ----- ------------ ------------ ------------------------ 2019-08-21 18:52:47 ....A 1886 412 scbbs.ans ------------------- ----- ------------ ------------ ------------------------ 2019-08-21 18:52:47 1886 412 1 files

[■] Archive View: (R)e-list, (V)iew File, (D)ownload File or (Q)uit:
---8<--- cut ---8<---

Chosing "V" and entering the filename ("scbbs.ans") works fine, though.

So, it appears to be working, kind of. :)

Best regards
Zip

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden (21:1/202)

Hello g00r00!

Thank you for your message!

On 27 Jan 2020, g00r00 said the following...

I appears that I cannot get GE 14 /reload to work -- it just returns to the (Account) menu without allowing me to select a theme at all.

It sounds like its doing what its intended to do. It silently reloads your current theme prompts, like for example if you just made a bunch of edits in the prompt editor or in the prompts.txt directly and you want

Ah, sorry -- I misunderstood the reload functionality! I thought it would
first allow me to choose a theme and then ensure that the selected theme
would be displayed right away (without exiting and re-entering the Account Settings menu).

Perhaps there is some other way to achieve that? I tried with an EVERY action on the Account Settings (account) menu, executing GE 14 /reload and
(re)drawing the menu, but it still wouldn't show the "custom" menu prompts
when changing ("K") from the default theme to my custom theme and vice versa.
I had to exit and re-enter the Account Settings menu to get the "correct" (theme-aware) prompts to show.

Best regards
Zip

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden (21:1/202)

My custom theme's message.mnu fails to load mnewscan.mnu from the default theme unless (at least) "Inherit Menus" is set to "default", despite "Fallback" being set to "Yes". So when I press "N" from my custom theme's message menu, Mystic disconnects me unless I set "Inherit Menus" to "default".

What do you have set for your default theme?

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: |08--[|15!|07dreamland BBS bbs.dreamlandbbs.org (21:1/163)

On 27 Jan 2020 at 03:57a, g00r00 pondered and said...

Also soliciting ideas or requests for A45 if anyone wants to nag me. I
am not sure what I plan to do for A45 yet. The time away sort of made
me forget my intentions.

A fidopoll that works more link BinkD in that it will poll multiple nodes at once to deliver packets. I must admit the speed of which BinkD can send stuff out and away to nodes is really impressive. Moving back to Fidopoll last
night felt very very slow in comparison. Is this something that Fidopoll
could be scaled to do or the polling functionality added to the current BinkP server?

As for other ideas... I have a wish list somewhere, but will need to it out.
:)

Best, Paul

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

Hello g00r00!

Thank you for your reply!

On 29 Jan 2020, g00r00 said the following...

"Fallback" being set to "Yes". So when I press "N" from my custom the message menu, Mystic disconnects me unless I set "Inherit Menus" to "default".

What do you have set for your default theme?

The default theme for new users ("Default Theme" under General Settings) is "scbbs_en" (my custom theme).

The settings for the stock (default, Default) theme look like this:

█▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ Theme: default ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▄
█ █
█ Description │ Default 1: Prompts █
▄▄ █ Author │ g00r00 2: Menus
█▓gj!
██▄█ Group │ Mystic BBS 3: Options ██▄▄
░███ Contact │ http://www.mysticbbs.com 4: Display Files
███▒■
▀ ▓██ │ 5: Templates
█████
▓ ▒▓█ Display Order │ 65000 6: Percent Bars █▓░
▓
▀ █░█ List ACS │ s255 7: Box Style 1 ██░
▓
░░▓██ │ 8: Box Style 2 █
▄▄█
▄▄■ █ Inherit Prompts │ <None> 9: Box Style 3 █
█░░
█ Inherit Text │ <None> 0: Box Style 4 █ ▀▄
█ Inherit Menus │ <None> █
█ Inherit Scripts │ <None> █
█ Fallback │ Yes █
█ █
▀▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄█

My custom theme looks like this:

█▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ Theme: scbbs_en ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▄
█ █
█ Description │ Star Collision BBS (English) 1: Prompts █
▄▄ █ Author │ Björn Wiberg (Zip) 2: Menus
█▓gj!
██▄█ Group │ Star Collision BBS 3: Options ██▄▄
░███ Contact │ https://scbbs.nsupdate.info/ 4: Display Files
███▒■
▀ ▓██ │ 5: Templates
█████
▓ ▒▓█ Display Order │ 1 6: Percent Bars █▓░
▓
▀ █░█ List ACS │ 7: Box Style 1 ██░
▓
░░▓██ │ 8: Box Style 2 █
▄▄█
▄▄■ █ Inherit Prompts │ default 9: Box Style 3 █
█░░
█ Inherit Text │ default 0: Box Style 4 █ ▀▄
█ Inherit Menus │ default █
█ Inherit Scripts │ default █
█ Fallback │ Yes █
█ █
▀▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄█

Best regards
Zip

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden (21:1/202)

After uploading (and automatic scanning with clamscan), the description prompt gets intermixed with some output from 7z extracting the archive's contents:

Yeah that stuff comes from 7z itself. If I were to set it up for Linux I
would probably redirect it to nul so the user wouldn't see any of the 7z text.

Also, when viewing the archive; I don't get any lightbar/ability to
choose file, but just a plain listing:

412 scbbs.ans ------------------- ----- ------------ ------------
412 1 files

[■] Archive View: (R)e-list, (V)iew File, (D)ownload File or (Q)uit:

Mystic has its own built in archive code that I had to specifically write in order to do that recursive lightbar archive browsing. It was quite a pain in the ass to do, and it only supports ZIP, RAR, LZH, and LHA files.

I do have it on my TODO list to try to do .ISO and .7z but if I remember when I looked at 7z specifically there were issues with encryption that made it challenging to do. I still want to revisit it someday, especially with 7z consistently gaining popularity it seems.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/29 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

Perhaps there is some other way to achieve that? I tried with an EVERY action on the Account Settings (account) menu, executing GE 14 /reload
and (re)drawing the menu, but it still wouldn't show the "custom" menu prompts when changing ("K") from the default theme to my custom theme
and vice versa. I had to exit and re-enter the Account Settings menu to get the "correct" (theme-aware) prompts to show.

Menus and prompts are different things, a menu is loaded when you go to it and thats it. If you make a change to message.mnu while you are within message.mnu then yes you'd have to quit and go back to the message menu to see the change. You can also View/simulate the menu in the editor while you're editing.

If you're just trying to get the ability to select a theme you just do:

Text: (C) Change Theme
Hot-key: C
Menu Command: GE
Data: 14

I think the default install has a theme selection option in the account settings that you can review.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/29 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

A fidopoll that works more link BinkD in that it will poll multiple
nodes at once to deliver packets. I must admit the speed of which BinkD can send stuff out and away to nodes is really impressive. Moving back
to Fidopoll last night felt very very slow in comparison. Is this something that Fidopoll could be scaled to do or the polling
functionality added to the current BinkP server?

Its fully thread safe and can scale up as demonstrated by those screen shots of you having like 30+ BINKP session going in MIS back in the day! (Its the identical code being used between fidopoll and mis)

The reason I haven't pushed for it yet is that I want to make sure there aren't other open issues, because I think it could just compound the problems and make it harder to track down a problem...

And if I'm being completely honest about it, the fact that I don't suffer from the same massive outbound queue like you do probably makes it easier for me to unintentionally forget about it. Out of sight out of mind kind of thing.

My thoughts are mostly centered on the fact that we need get to a point where the existing stuff is working well enough that you're comfortable using it reliably. With their being rumors of some transfer issues and possible FLO stuff, I think those need to be confidently addressed first.

Maybe I could make a fidopoll2 kind of thing like I did with MIS a couple of years ago?

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/29 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

The default theme for new users ("Default Theme" under General Settings) is "scbbs_en" (my custom theme).

If you set the default theme to your custom theme, then that means that "Fallback to default" will try to fallback to scbbs_en. In this case yes, you'd have to set it to fallback to default specifically.

So it sounds likes its working as intending, but maybe the options themselves are just a little confusing or could use some re-imaging.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/29 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

Hello g00r00!

Thank you for the 7z info!

On 29 Jan 2020, g00r00 said the following...

write in order to do that recursive lightbar archive browsing. It was quite a pain in the ass to do, and it only supports ZIP, RAR, LZH, and

I can imagine that!

Best regards
Zip

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden (21:1/202)

Hello g00r00!

On 29 Jan 2020, g00r00 said the following...

Menus and prompts are different things, a menu is loaded when you go to
it and thats it. If you make a change to message.mnu while you are
within message.mnu then yes you'd have to quit and go back to the
message menu to see the change. You can also View/simulate the menu in

OK! Thanks! Then things are working as intended. :)

Best regards
Zip

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden (21:1/202)

Hello g00r00!

Thank you for your message!

On 29 Jan 2020, g00r00 said the following...

If you set the default theme to your custom theme, then that means that "Fallback to default" will try to fallback to scbbs_en. In this case
yes, you'd have to set it to fallback to default specifically.

So it sounds likes its working as intending, but maybe the options themselves are just a little confusing or could use some re-imaging.

No problem! It sounds like things are working as they should then.
Thanks again!

Best regards
Zip

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden (21:1/202)

If you set the default theme to your custom theme, then that means th "Fallback to default" will try to fallback to scbbs_en. In this case yes, you'd have to set it to fallback to default specifically.

So it sounds likes its working as intending, but maybe the options themselves are just a little confusing or could use some re-imaging.

No problem! It sounds like things are working as they should then.
Thanks again!

They are, but just a bit confusing. What I did to help clarify this was at
the bottom when you highlight the "Fallback | Yes/No" stuff, it now prints
the actual theme name.

Thank you for bringing this up!

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/29 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

On 27 Jan 2020 at 07:35p, g00r00 pondered and said...

There is an "invisible ACS" so you can turn it Off or Ask even for specific users. But there is no "always on" so I need to figure out how to add that in. Maybe a user flag that says "always login as invisible".

I'd vote for this feature also. It would save having to respond to a yes/no prompt each time I login.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/29 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

Hello g00r00!

On 30 Jan 2020, g00r00 said the following...

They are, but just a bit confusing. What I did to help clarify this was at the bottom when you highlight the "Fallback | Yes/No" stuff, it now prints the actual theme name.

Sounds great! :)

Thank you for bringing this up!

You're very welcome! :)

Best regards
Zip

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/27 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden (21:1/202)

There is an "invisible ACS" so you can turn it Off or Ask even for specific users. But there is no "always on" so I need to figure out to add that in. Maybe a user flag that says "always login as invisib

I'd vote for this feature also. It would save having to respond to a yes/no prompt each time I login.

Well you can set the "Invisible" ACS to s999 or % if you never want to use
it. I will make sure a "Always login as invisible" flag is added to the TODO list.

I guess thats a more useful feature than I had anticipated :)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/29 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

Well you can set the "Invisible" ACS to s999 or % if you never want to
use it. I will make sure a "Always login as invisible" flag is added to the TODO list.

On the flip side, I use it to stop squashing the real callers in the last 10. Otherwise, I'd have the last 10 all Analog :)

|19|15┌─|16|07┤ |08De|07ad|15be|07a|08tz b|07b|15s
|07└─┘├─┐ |08:>.|12F|04sx |1221|08:|122|08/|12123|08.
|11■ |07└|19|15─|16|07┘ |08:>.|10A|02gn |1046|08:|101|08/|10123|08.
|12≡|15A|07n|08al|07o|15g|12≡ |08:>.|13F|05dn |131|08:|13305|08/|132|08.
|08:>.|15S|08ci |1577|08:|151|08/|15131|08.
|08:>.|11T|03qw |111337|08:|113|08/|1113|08.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/28 (Linux/64)
* Origin: deadbeatz.org (21:2/123)

Well you can set the "Invisible" ACS to s999 or % if you never want t use it. I will make sure a "Always login as invisible" flag is added the TODO list.

On the flip side, I use it to stop squashing the real callers in the
last 10. Otherwise, I'd have the last 10 all Analog :)

Well on that one I have you covered! :)

If you look in the "User Editor" there is a flag you can turn on called "No Call Stats" which will (should) prevent you from being added to the last caller information when you log in without being invisible.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/29 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

If you look in the "User Editor" there is a flag you can turn on called "No Call Stats" which will (should) prevent you from being added to the last caller information when you log in without being invisible.

Oh come on! You mean I've been pressing enter an extra time for 8 years?

Thanks for the pro-tip!

|19|15┌─|16|07┤ |08De|07ad|15be|07a|08tz b|07b|15s
|07└─┘├─┐ |08:>.|12F|04sx |1221|08:|122|08/|12123|08.
|11■ |07└|19|15─|16|07┘ |08:>.|10A|02gn |1046|08:|101|08/|10123|08.
|12≡|15A|07n|08al|07o|15g|12≡ |08:>.|13F|05dn |131|08:|13305|08/|132|08.
|08:>.|15S|08ci |1577|08:|151|08/|15131|08.
|08:>.|11T|03qw |111337|08:|113|08/|1113|08.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/01/28 (Linux/64)
* Origin: deadbeatz.org (21:2/123)

On 31 Jan 2020, Avon said the following...

On 27 Jan 2020 at 07:35p, g00r00 pondered and said...

There is an "invisible ACS" so you can turn it Off or Ask even for specific users. But there is no "always on" so I need to figure out to add that in. Maybe a user flag that says "always login as invisib

I'd vote for this feature also. It would save having to respond to a yes/no prompt each time I login.

+1 from me as well.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/02/23 (Raspberry Pi/32)
* Origin: Digital Wurmhole | digitalwurmhole.ddns.net:2323 (21:4/113)