Mail Archives: opendos/2004/01/16/23:57:15
On Fri, Jan 16, 2004 at 03:39:00PM -0500, Michele Marie Dalene wrote:
> RM> B'ichela!! It sure is a small Internet. Good to see you here! I've been
> RM> a part-time-lurker on this sleepy old list for a long time, and I don't
> RM> recall having seen you here before.
> I'm around here and there. mostly read usenet, helps when one
Ah, well at the time I wasn't aware of this list being gated to FIDO.
After all this time, here I am back on FIDO! :) Yes, I mostly read
Usenet as well, and a.o.l.slackware in particular.
> RM> your BBS run on DOS? Are you using dosemu for it? Hey, watch me wiggle
> RM> this message back on topic. ;)
> Not currently. I was debating and testing running Maximus 3.02
> under Dosemu with DR-DOS 7.03. Had bad karma with dosemu eating my
> nodelists.
Hmmm, not good. My kids are running DOS games on FreeDOS in dosemu.
Sometimes they work, sometimes not. The nifty thing is that you get
networking and access to your Unix filesystems (and commands!) right
there from a DOS prompt. Bless their hearts for giving me LS.EXE, else I
would never be able to list my files. :) And for no extra charge you get
an emulated Sound Blaster. :) (When I ran native DOS I didn't have sound
in games, so all these noises are new to me.)
How long ago did you try dosemu? They're up to an almost-1.2.0 release
now, under a new maintainer. I made an i686 package for Slackware 9.1,
which I could send you if you like. ("installpkg" it and go.)
> If I could find a Telnetd for Dos that works with a packet
> driver that emulates a modem (freeware please). I might just set up a
> few Dos boxen to handle a few telnet/dialup nodes.
This part I would not know how to do, but perhaps with a lot of work you
could port the GNU telnetd to DOS. This list certainly has some who
could accomplish that!
> Nothing Wrong with Synchronet but... I just don't like it very
I mostly used PCBoards back in the day. I never was a sysop. Back then I
didn't know enough about computing. Now I know too much ... LOL! ;)
> Of course how would I tell my linux firewall to try another
> dos bbs when the first is busy? You know like a hunt group, thus 3
> 386s/486s. one caller per machine. if Machine 3 is free send all
Originally I thought about round-robin DNS, but that's wrong. I think
you need a special (albeit not very complex) daemon to listen on 23 and
distribute the incoming connections among available nodes. I don't know
what keywords to try, but I'll bet if you looked around freshmeat long
enough you would find something to do this.
On further thought this entire thing might be possible in iptables and
shell scripts. Your firewall's first filter rule must be a state rule
for ESTABLISHED and RELATED. In nat PREROUTING it would be set to DNAT
the first incoming 23 to the first node. Next (this part I am not sure
how to do) a script is signalled to send the next connection to the next
node. It simply changes the DNAT rule to go to the next node, and above
that puts in a DNAT specific to the client IP to continue the DNAT to
the original node.
AHA! Use a ULOG rule just before the DNAT. That could be set to trigger
the change of the DNAT rule. I'm still a bit fuzzy on details, but I now
know that this can work. You just need something listening on the ULOG
socket, and have that run the script to change the DNAT.
Perhaps the nodes could be set to notify the firewall machine when they
become available again. Or, the /proc/net/ip_conntrack table could be
grep'ed for telnet connections to the node. That way if a node is still
in use the firewall knows not to put it in the rotation yet. (I'd think
the latter method would be the fastest.)
> telnets to that machine. Of course most of the time the 4 nodes I
> currently have are empty! Need users! Mostly get one call at a time.
Same problem BBS's had a long time ago. :) In some ways I miss the sense
of community that existed on BBS's, but the Internet has many advantages
too. And horror of horrors -- I find I actually *prefer* anarchic
newsgroups over well-ordered echomail conferences. I just tune out the
obnoxious self-appointed netcops, and I refuse to be bothered by any
rudeness or profanity. It works for me.
> Anyway, if you know me from the web ...
Well, technically speaking (and who is better qualified to speak
technically than a bunch of computer geeks? :) Usenet is not the Web.
Yes, I know you from a.o.l.s. This thread stuck in my memory because you
were on such hard times: (watch for word wrap)
http://groups.google.com/groups?&threadm=slrnae8u63.8nm.mdalene%40pinkrose.local.net
I've seen you posting since then, too, along with taking over Cnews and
...
> then you know I ran a bbs right? ;) its in my usenet signature.
... starting the BBS. Yes, I did know that, and yesterday I finally
looked in on you. :) I was amazed to see that so many of the old
echo networks are still around! But there's not a lot of activity.
Rob - /dev/rob0
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