I'm trying to run Mystic on a Linux VPS server, but it's not going so smooth, and if anyone has a tip they can share, please do.

Here's how I'm trying to do this:

1) Set up Mystic 64/Linux on my pc, then change the folders in mystic -cfg to match the folders on the server before uploading it.

2) Execute this in the bash terminal:
chmod 755 mis (otherwise it will alert a permissions issue)
./mis (to start mystic's wfc mode)

But then the terminal becomes unresponsive, and I do a force-quit.

The sever is a VPS at Dreamhost, running Apache.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Raspberry Pi/32)
* Origin: Alcoholiday / Est. 1995 / alco.bbs.io (21:1/113)

2) Execute this in the bash terminal:
chmod 755 mis (otherwise it will alert a permissions issue)
./mis (to start mystic's wfc mode)

But then the terminal becomes unresponsive, and I do a force-quit.

Running ./mis doesn't do anything but show a help screen.

It sounds like you have permissions issues in all areas, not just with mis (which is usually the case). Where do you have Mystic installed? We need
some way to see the permissions like an -ls -la dump or something of Mystic.

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

It sounds like you have permissions issues in all areas, not just with

I appreciate your reply. I don't know how to get a dump of the permissions,
but I manually set everything in the mystic folder to 755, and had more success.

I have Mystic installed on the VPS. I ran ./mystic and it appeared to be loading; it showed the Mystic copyright info, but then the client I was using (WinSCP for Windows being ran through Wine on my linux pc) became
unresponsive and I closed it.

Trying to run Mystic on a VPS server seems like it might be too complicated
for my skill level. Does it seem like I'm close, or not really?

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Raspberry Pi/32)
* Origin: Alcoholiday / Est. 1995 / alco.bbs.io (21:1/113)

I appreciate your reply. I don't know how to get a dump of the permissions, but I manually set everything in the mystic folder to
755, and had more success.

You can redirect the output of the ls command to a file like this..

ls -la >somefile.txt

The above will overwrite somefile.txt if it exists, use >>somefile.txt if
you want to append to an existing file.

I have Mystic installed on the VPS. I ran ./mystic and it appeared
to be loading; it showed the Mystic copyright info, but then the
client I was using (WinSCP for Windows being ran through Wine on my
linux pc) became unresponsive and I closed it.

Trying to run Mystic on a VPS server seems like it might be too complicated for my skill level. Does it seem like I'm close, or not really?

If you've installed Mystic in a vps I think you have plenty of skills to
run your BBS there. Running a BBS is a learning experience in itself and
linux can seem that way if your new to it.. but just carry on, there are
plenty of folks here abouts that would be happy to help you with things
your not familiar with (yet).

Ttyl :-),
Al

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

Trying to run Mystic on a VPS server seems like it might be too complicated for my skill level. Does it seem like I'm close, or not really?

I run Mystic 44a on Ubuntu Linux 64 VPS (actually, it's a VM - on Google Compute Engine).

Moved over from a Pi after having some home network and
firewall issues that frustrated the heck out of me. Plus, I wanted a
top-level domain name which I couldn't get on my home network.

It's running really great--totally possible, and there are tons of great resources out there. Happy to assist if I can, but to be honest -- I probably installed, configured, wiped the OS, re-installed more than 5-6 times in the process of learning.

Alpha

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/02/04 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Card & Claw BBS | Analog Gaming: Board Games, RPGs (21:4/158)

ls -la >somefile.txt

Thanks. I swear I googled it, but didn't google it right or something. Now I have the permissions list.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Raspberry Pi/32)
* Origin: Alcoholiday / Est. 1995 / alco.bbs.io (21:1/113)

resources out there. Happy to assist if I can, but to be honest -- I

Thanks. If you have any url that will point me in the direction of running it on a VPS, please share.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Raspberry Pi/32)
* Origin: Alcoholiday / Est. 1995 / alco.bbs.io (21:1/113)

I have Mystic installed on the VPS. I ran ./mystic and it appeared to be loading; it showed the Mystic copyright info, but then the client I was using (WinSCP for Windows being ran through Wine on my linux pc) became unresponsive and I closed it.

WinSCP I don't believe has a SSH terminal it just does SSH-based file transfers (although I could be wrong). I would try something designed for a BBS or Putty if you want to use a non-BBS client.

Trying to run Mystic on a VPS server seems like it might be too complicated for my skill level. Does it seem like I'm close, or not really?

Learning the Linux security stuff can be a bit confusing, but hopefully we
can sort it out. I don't know where you have Mystic installed but first I would try to make sure you have ownership of the files. So for example if
your login ID is "me" and you have Mystic installed in /mystic, I would try something like this:

sudo chown -R me:me /mystic

And then when you want to start MIS (the Mystic server) try starting it like: sudo ./mis server

After that, you should get the WFC screen and the message window in there
will hopefully show that the servers have started successfully and you can
use a client to connect.

Now if you just want to log in locally you can just type ./mystic and that should log you in (but make sure you do that chown command first at least
once to make sure you have ownership of the files)

Its hard to give you specific stuff for your server without knowing some more details but that is the basic stuff. And there are some better probably more complex ways to set things up too as some others are discussing in a
different thread here.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/02/04 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

sudo chown -R me:me /mystic

Thanks a lot for all this info. I tried the above command like this:
sudo chown -R dh_k9694x:dh_k9694x /mystic
and it said this:
dh_k9694 is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.

However, I continued on and tried this:

sudo ./mis server

and the Mystic server started; the WFC screen loaded, but with these errors: TELNET: Unable to open IPV4 port: Error -1 (13)
TELNET: Unable to open IPV6 port: Error -1 (9)
MANAGER: Cryptlib not detected; SSL/SSH capabilities disabled

I'm not sure if these issues are due to me not completing that chown -R
command first, or something else like my VPS configuration?

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Raspberry Pi/32)
* Origin: Alcoholiday / Est. 1995 / alco.bbs.io (21:1/113)

Thanks a lot for all this info. I tried the above command like this:
sudo chown -R dh_k9694x:dh_k9694x /mystic
and it said this:
dh_k9694 is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.

Try another way:
sudo su (become root)
chown -R dh_xxx:dh_xxx /mystic (though I'd suspect you probably have it as /home/mystic?)

sudo ./mis server

If you can't sudo, then running mis server will run as unprivileged.

Try to install mystic into you local directory or another user (make mystic
or bbs user) and install it to that user's directory.

For example:
useradd d/home/bbs -m mysticuser
Will create a directory /home/bbs and setup it up for a new user
"mysticuser"

Then sudo su mysticuser (mysticuser will not have a password)
Then install mystic into that directory, e.g. "/home/bbs/mystic"

Nice thing about a non-root user with no password is that god forbid a user gets to a shell from inside Mystic somehow (usually a sysop adds a way), they will not have root access.

To workon the bbs, you can then from you admin user "sudo su mysticuser".

There are many other configurations.

|20|15┌─|16|08┤ |08De|07ad|15be|07a|08tz b|07b|15s
|08└─┘├─┐ |08:>.|07A|08rk |0710|08:|07101|08/|0714|08.
|04■ |08└|20|15─|16|08┘ |08:>.|10A|02gn |1046|08:|101|08/|10123|08.
|04A|07n|15al|07o|08g |08:>.|12F|04sx |1221|08:|122|08/|12123|08. |15.|04p|07HENOM|15. |08:>.|15S|07ci |1577|08:|151|08/|15131|08. |04░▒░|08▒██▄▌|08:>.|11T|03qw |111337|08:|113|08/|1113|08.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/02/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: deadbeatz.org (21:2/123)

useradd d/home/bbs -m mysticuser

This should read:
useradd -d /home/bbs -m mysticuser -s /bin/bash (forgot shell)

|20|15┌─|16|08┤ |08De|07ad|15be|07a|08tz b|07b|15s
|08└─┘├─┐ |08:>.|07A|08rk |0710|08:|07101|08/|0714|08.
|04■ |08└|20|15─|16|08┘ |08:>.|10A|02gn |1046|08:|101|08/|10123|08.
|04A|07n|15al|07o|08g |08:>.|12F|04sx |1221|08:|122|08/|12123|08. |15.|04p|07HENOM|15. |08:>.|15S|07ci |1577|08:|151|08/|15131|08. |04░▒░|08▒██▄▌|08:>.|11T|03qw |111337|08:|113|08/|1113|08.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/02/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: deadbeatz.org (21:2/123)

However, I continued on and tried this:

sudo ./mis server

and the Mystic server started; the WFC screen loaded, but with these errors: TELNET: Unable to open IPV4 port: Error -1 (13)
TELNET: Unable to open IPV6 port: Error -1 (9)

Since you are not able to run as sudo, it will not be able to bind the traditional telnet port (23) without some other configuration changes to your OS. Linux restricts users from using ports less than 1024 without some configuration or tricks.

You could try to change the port to something like "2323" in the telnet server configuration to see if that allows you to connect. That would be the
easiest thing to do just to get you up and running.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/02/04 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)

Since you are not able to run as sudo, it will not be able to bind the traditional telnet port (23) without some other configuration changes to your OS. Linux restricts users from using ports less than 1024 without some configuration or tricks.

Hello depending on what distro he is running her could also install authbind

An alternative may be to use authbind.

Install authbind using your favorite package manager for your Linux Distribution.

Configure it to grant access to the relevant ports, e.g. to allow 80, 21, 23,25, 110, etc 443 from all users and groups:

sudo touch /etc/authbind/byport/80

sudo touch /etc/authbind/byport/443

and so forth for all ports you are using below 1025 ...

sudo chmod 777 /etc/authbind/byport/80

sudo chmod 777 /etc/authbind/byport/443

So on and so on.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/02/04 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Wicked BBS|wickedbbs.com:2333 (21:4/119.1)