Last update 31-Jul-1999

# MBSE BBS - Internet Gateway.

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Introduction.

Native internet gateway support is not build in MBSE BBS yet. To work around this problem you can use the ifmail package or the Fidogate package. I only have tested ifmail so I will try to describe the gateway with ifmail. It is not that Fidogate should not work, I simply don't know that.

There may be two reasons to create a gateway, one is to gate internet news and email to the Fidonet bbs users, another reason may be that you want to make echomail as news available on your system so that users can connect to your bbs with their favourite browser an get the mail and news using pop3 and nntp protocols. The setup is the same for both reasons so I will make one description for the whole setup.

Warning: this is the setup on my testsystem, this system is not connected to the internet, so if your system is connected somehow to the internet you have to figure out what to add to these examples to make it work for you. If someone has examples with internet connections, please mail them to me so I can include that information for other people.

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Necessary software packages.

Besides MBSE BBS you need the following software installed on your system: inn news for the internet news, sendmail configuration sourcefiles, ifmail for the gateway and suck if you want to exchange news with the internet. For testing you need a mail and news client on your system. If you want to exchange mail and news with the internet or want that users can dialin with ppp, you need ppp software installed on your system as well. Installing all these packages is beyond the scope of the MBSE BBS project, you must read the documentation in these packages about how to install it. The example configuration files work on the development system but they may or may not work at your system.

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Setup a gateway node.

You need to setup a special node which you use send and receive echomail and netmail with that will be gated. Name that system's sysop "mbse". Assign it a point number for the Fidonet echomail areas such as 2:2801/899.888 (if your main aka is 2:2801/899). If you want to make news available for bbs users it is a good idea to invent a separate network for this purpose. In my case I use 92:100/99 as aka for the bbs and 92:100/88 as aka for the gateway. In all examples I will use these addresses, you need to change that to your own setup of course. There are some settings for this node that are important: "Pack netmail - yes", "Send notify - no" and "Don't call - yes". In the mail setup set a session password for this node so that nobody can dial to your system with these aka's and set "Check PKT pwd" to no. This is because ifmail doesn't insert .pkt passwords. You need also to setup a areamgr password to be able to use the areamgr. In the mail groups, set all your Fidonet areas on, and for internet news use a separate group. You don't need to setup file areas. Later you can send e-mail via the gateway to connect all message areas to the gateway.

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Gateway configuration.

- Ifmail configuration
- INN news configuration
- Sendmail configuration

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Using Areamgr.

As user mbse you can e-mail Areamgr requests to connect the echomail to the newsgroups. In this example setup you must address the mail to Areamgr@f899.n2801.z2.fidonet.org or to Areamgr@f99.n100.z92.bibnet.org and in the subject line you must put the Areamgr password. In the body of the message you can write the Areamgr commands. It's just like a normal Fidonet style Areamgr message, it now only originates from your gateway. Be sure to keep the Areamgr passwd secret, because every user at the internet side of the gateway can write valid Areamgr requests, because the gateway uses known node addresses.

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