Last update 10-Aug-1999

# Introduction to MBSE BBS.

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HISTORY

At the end of 1997 I was looking for several BBS systems that could run on Linux and it must be capable to run Fidonet mail. After reviewing almost all packages that were available at that time I found that there were no packages that suited my needs. Some had the plain user interfaces that my bbs users were used to but no Fidonet capabilities, others looked awfull or were difficult to use by normal bbs users without Unix experience. I also didn't want to run shareware anymore, one day you pay for some program, and the next day support is over because the writer of that program decided to stop development or simply dissapears from the Fidonet stage. With all Y2K problems ahead the solution should be Open Software so that you have the sources in case something goes wrong. One package was very interesting and had the look and feel of RemoteAcces, that package was RapidBBS. There was only one problem, it had no Fidonet capabilities. I rewrote the data structures and created a deamon that should control all bbs acivities. In march 1998 I started writing the mbfido program that should handle all Fidonet mail and .tic files. In june 1998 the final message base format became JAM using the LoraBBS sources as a guide to create the JAM libraries. The original JAMapi was not stable enough to do all the work that needed to be done.

In Juli 1998 the first version of MBSE BBS was installed on the bbs I have, on the second line. The first line was running McMail, GEcho and RA on a Novell client while on the Linux box the mars_nwe emulator from Martin Stower was running. In november 1998 mbcico was created from ifcico from Eugene M. Crosser. In Januari 1999 it did also compile and run on a Sun Sparcstation 2 system.

In April 1999 the motherboard of the Linux server died, I replaced it with the MOBO of one of the client machines. From that day on, MBSE BBS became the only bbs running on my system, because I was short on serial port boards at that time. McMail and RA became history and MBSE BBS was on its own. From that day on, updates were almost daily, all users and up and downlinks showed that there were plenty of bugs to solve. One month later most problems were solved.

In juli 1999 Jan van de Werken started beta testing MBSE BBS on his system. In September 1999 MBSE BBS was public released for the first time.

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IS IT Y2K READY

As far as I can tell, yes, it is Y2K ready. MBSE BBS is tested to pass 31-Dec to 1-Jan-2000 and the period 28-Feb-2000 upto 1-Mar-2000. Everything worked normal, this includes handling of mail. Due to the internal date format, this program should run until 2038, just as long as Unix/Linux and the internet will function without changing the date format.

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FUTURE PLANS

Plans are to complete integrate news, email, www and chat into MBSE BBS. It should work for browsers about the same as with ANSI character terminals.

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