I've been running my board on a old iMac running Linux Mint. (The monitor's
so ruined that part of it is dead and I *have* to VNC into the damn thing, thinking of getting a used school desktop or something and putting mint on that.)

A few choices hee. Partly will depend on where you put your BBS. If it's in /mystic, then there's no real point having a separate /home.

As for running mystic from root, I'm not too keen on it, given I always have
to sudo when doing stuff. Thankfully you can do most of the changes to the
BBS from within NetRunner and the SysOp menu. I mainly run Windows myself,
but I know enough about Linux to make my way around unless I need to read man pages or look up instructions.

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

On 24 Sep 2019 at 06:30p, Black Panther pondered and said...

My first questions... What version of Debian are you looking at installing? Also, did you get the release that includes the non-free software?

Well I pulled down the netinst image for USB of Debian 10.1
Booted from that stick and stuck to a quick test install last night.
Hit a issue on first boot after the install, seems X wont run and the boot sequence stalls. The PC came with some Radeon? card installed and I suspect there are driver issues, there are no native graphics it seems on the mobo
for the first of two boxes I have so far played with.

I ran into issues while trying to install Debian Buster without the non-free software. It wouldn't recognize my network card for starters...

Perhaps I need another installer?

The website seems full of download links.

When I started with Linux, I was just using one partition for everything. After I was playing around with other distros, I ran into a bit of
trouble with that setup, so I started making three partitions. The first partition, usually around 150GB, is for the OS. One is for the swap partition, which I've heard really isn't needed anymore, but I use it.
The swap is about 20GB. The rest of the HD space is partitioned for my /home directory.

when you say for the OS which directory/partition is that?

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

Thanks to everyone who took the time to reply to me. Appreciated. I have read all the posts and apologise if I don't reply to each one individually.

It seems most consensus if around the lack of need to set up multiple partitions and some favoring a few partitions and some not. Same for LVM with
a few for it, and others saying just pass on it for now etc.

My plan with the BBS box is to run the Usenet server I currently have on a standalone Debian machine (set up a few years ago so my memory is now much on what I did) on the same box as the BBS. Trying to reduce the hardware footprint.

Now I did set that one up using Jessie? and I did have it partitioned which seemed to work well for the NNTP stuff I needed to install.

That system has a root account, an account I login with, and also a news user account for the NNTP stuff.

So I am wondering about the need to set up separate partitions given all of that.

As for the BBS software it looks like I could install it under my /home directory or as a root directory. I kind of like the idea of from the root space (not user) as a lot of my windows software is c:\softwarea c:\softwareb not username/softwarea or username\softwareb

But if I do the root path option I guess I need to chmod all the dirs I setup to the ownership of the default non priv user as I am aware just running it
all logged in as root user is bad bad bad...

tonight I'm trying to get the one machine i did a usb booted debian install
to run on first, now third or fourth boot, it craps out during the boot sequence I think X is failing to start because of a graphics card in the machine. Humm...

Anywho that's the latest. I may try installing on the other system using the same USB to see if I can have joy with that on first attempt.

Best, Paul

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

On 09-24-19 18:34, Black Panther wrote to Vk3jed <=-

On 24 Sep 2019, Vk3jed said the following...

A few choices hee. Partly will depend on where you put your BBS. If
it's in /mystic, then there's no real point having a separate /home. I normally partition and assign mountpoints manually - decide what parts
of the filesystem I want on what partition, create the partitions and
then setup the mounts. GUI installers should allow that level of manual intervention.

Good point. I should have mentioned that I have everything installed in the /home directory. It makes the paths a bit longer, but I think it's more manageable.

In which case, the larger /home does make sense.


... If a train station is where the train stops, what is a work station?
=== MultiMail/Win v0.51
--- SBBSecho 3.03-Linux
* Origin: Freeway BBS Bendigo,Australia freeway.apana.org.au (21:1/109)

Hello jeff!

On 24 Sep 2019, jeff said the following...

Well, Zip, despite my best efforts to avoid it, I've learned something today. Thanks for that.

You're very welcome! ;)

Best regards
Zip

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden (21:1/202)

On 25 Sep 2019, Avon said the following...

On 24 Sep 2019 at 06:30p, Black Panther pondered and said...

My first questions... What version of Debian are you looking at installing? Also, did you get the release that includes the non-free software?

Well I pulled down the netinst image for USB of Debian 10.1
Booted from that stick and stuck to a quick test install last night.
Hit a issue on first boot after the install, seems X wont run and the
boot sequence stalls. The PC came with some Radeon? card installed and I suspect there are driver issues, there are no native graphics it seems
on the mobo for the first of two boxes I have so far played with.

I ran into issues while trying to install Debian Buster without the non-free software. It wouldn't recognize my network card for starters

Perhaps I need another installer?

The website seems full of download links.

Yes, I mentioned this in my first post to you on this topic. I apologize for not offering the suggestion with greater emphasis. We need to get you off the ground before the frustration sets in and you do something terrible like installing ewboontew.

Okay we're already up to 10.1, which means that Bullseye has diverged from
the Buster that you are attempting to install, and I apologize again for not taking the time to lookup and post the 10.1 images but it's really no big
deal, just run:

# apt-get -y update # or apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
# apt-get -y -V upgrade
# apt-get -y dist-upgrade

AFTER you complete the install and you'll be current. you can do that anytime you like to update your system moving forward ;)

Before you can do that, however, you'll need these two images which you can burn to your USB sticks:

https://bit.ly/2l1iXHf - I think that's only about 375MBytes. Install with
it. This includes the non-free firmware that will should get your NIC going
to complete the install.

https://bit.ly/2n8Os2M This will get your video going after you finish the installation. I'm going to show you a different way to do it so you won't
have to mount that second CD though... ;)

I actually do recommend that you do not install GNOME or Xfce during the install, but if you do, you're video will bork on you so just Left_CTRL+Left-ALT+F2 or F3 (Try without the control key first to see if
you get the console).

X-Windows is actually running on console F1 and you are in Linux console F2
or F3, whichever one you chose. Anyway, you now have your Linux console - because X is actually running, you just don't have the installed firrmware yet,then use the second iso with just the firmware and you should be good to
go with video:) You may have some issues with LibreOffice and have to get a more recent version but that's another topic.

Now, I want you to cat your /etc/apt/sources.list and make sure that you've
got conrib and non-free enabled in your repos. Those lines should look something like this.

deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian buster main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ buster/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ buster/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-updates main contrib non-free
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-backports main contrib non-free
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-backports main contrib non-free

If those contrib and non-free entries aren't there, then add them using vi (Vim). If you're not familiar with Vim you're still lucky coz you can simply do a nano /etc/apt/sources.list and Ctrl+x and then y to save.

Now run this:and note the missing firmware errors on the right hand of the screen:

# update-initramfs -u -k all

Now, do something like this, depnding on what you saw as far as missing
modules from the previous commands. YMMV, because it's dependent upon your actual hardware, but it will look something like this:

# apt install firmware-linux firmware-linux-nonfree libdrm-amdgpu1 xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu


Of course, you would have needed to do all of this as root ;)

I hope that helps, and I'll be up for another couple of hours in case you
need me. If so, I'll be in #tallship on freenode for a while. If you need me I'll stay with you until this is all sussed out and you're rockin' it :)

Kindest regards,

Bradley

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Vger.Cloud - NOMAD Internetwork (21:2/104)

A few choices hee. Partly will depend on where you put your BBS. If it's in /mystic, then there's no real point having a separate /home.
I normally partition and assign mountpoints manually - decide

And thats one of the reason I use my small hd's as system drives. I could probably just use entire drive, by still go and make a manual partition table of 1 primary. And mount any other drives you have anywhere you want :)

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/105)

Now I did set that one up using Jessie? and I did have it partitioned which seemed to work well for the NNTP stuff I needed to install.

You're going to have to get used to SystemD instead of the better SysV init scripts. i.e., 'systemctl start|stop|restart|status daemon.service' instead
of /etc/init.d/.....

It's no big deal, except that SystemD sucks, but there's little we can do
about it other than to run Devuan instead of Debian (don't do that). I'm a contributor with the Devuan team but you should know that's really what you want to do instead of just getting on with SystemD (which you do).

That system has a root account, an account I login with, and also a news user account for the NNTP stuff.

So I am wondering about the need to set up separate partitions given all of that.

Just /boot, /, and swap partition. Do it with or without LVM it really isn't going to matter to you, and stick with Ext4 FS.

As for the BBS software it looks like I could install it under my /home directory or as a root directory. I kind of like the idea of from the
root space (not user) as a lot of my windows software is c:\softwarea c:\softwareb not username/softwarea or username\softwareb

But if I do the root path option I guess I need to chmod all the dirs I setup to the ownership of the default non priv user as I am aware just running it all logged in as root user is bad bad bad...

I recommend creating root and a 'paul' user during install, then doing an 'adduser mysticuser' which will run Mystic from their home directory, but you already know how to do it both ways and either are valid. Zip also offered
the suggestion of creating a big partition for a /mystic mount point, which
is also valid, but whatever you do, this is UNIX so do try to get away from thinking like a windows user ;)

tonight I'm trying to get the one machine i did a usb booted debian install to run on first, now third or fourth boot, it craps out during
the boot sequence I think X is failing to start because of a graphics
card in the machine. Humm...

Your system is starting up just fine. You're missing some firmware, which
I've covered the solution for in my previous post a few minutes ago :)

Anywho that's the latest. I may try installing on the other system using the same USB to see if I can have joy with that on first attempt.

That prolly won't make any difference, and the amd64 images won't (I believe) boot on i3 and below, you'll prolly need 32bit versions to do that. your new
i5 will run 64bit Linux just fine.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Vger.Cloud - NOMAD Internetwork (21:2/104)

you off the ground before the frustration sets in and you do
something terrible like installing ewboontew.

Yer just jealoous... if it was bonto he'd be done and dusted already. but you might be ironing out foibles for a while to come. :P

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/105)

On 25 Sep 2019, Spectre said the following...

you off the ground before the frustration sets in and you do something terrible like installing ewboontew.

Yer just jealoous... if it was bonto he'd be done and dusted already.
but you might be ironing out foibles for a while to come. :P

:)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Vger.Cloud - NOMAD Internetwork (21:2/104)

Re: Linux
By: Spectre to tallship on Wed Sep 25 2019 09:28 pm

Yer just jealoous... if it was bonto he'd be done and dusted already. but

you might

be
ironing out foibles for a while to come. :P

Spec

You know, my fist contact with Linux was Ubuntu Karmic Koala. It was so bug ridden that I nearly gave up on Linux totally. It gave the impression that Canonical was focused on making the distribution user-friendly at the expense of quality, which is a bad thing, because bugs are not user-friendly. Glad I moved on and tried new things.

Anyway I have heard Ubuntu is not so crashy/buggy nowadays, which is good if true.
--- SBBSecho 3.10-Linux
* Origin: Vertrauen - [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net (21:1/183)

Now I did set that one up using Jessie? and I did have it partitioned which seemed to work well for the NNTP stuff I needed to install.

Unless you are carrying the binary newsgroups there is no need to push them
to separate partition.

|15frank |08// |15netsurge
|07disksh0p|08!|07bbs |08% |07bbs.diskshop.ca |08% |07mystic goodness |11SciNet |03ftn hq |08% |07https://diskshop.ca/scinet

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: % disksh0p!bbs % bbs.diskshop.ca % SciNet ftn hq % (21:4/154)

That prolly won't make any difference, and the amd64 images won't (I believe) boot on i3 and below, you'll prolly need 32bit versions

I gotta ask why? You know I'm playing with boonies, but I've got 64 running on core2's even atoms.... whats debbie got against i3's?

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/105)

You know, my fist contact with Linux was Ubuntu Karmic Koala. It was
so bug ridden that I nearly gave up on Linux totally. It gave the impression that Canonical was focused on making the distribution user-friendly at the expense of quality, which is a bad thing,
because bugs are not user-friendly. Glad I moved on and tried new
things.

I s'pose it also depends what you use it for. Linux for me has always been server material, but not my desktop. I think the first time I used buntu might
have been around Jaunty... but if it works, I am always about 500 years out of
date before I try to upgrade, so I usually just start again, and think it was 12.04LTS 14.04LTS was about to be released. At the time it was the least painful installs. My iso history shows 9 and 11, but I don't recall using them,
might have been transients for something like the EEEPC at one stage...

Spec


--- --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: <Shoot'n the breeze on The Lower Planes> (21:3/105)

On 25 Sep 2019, Nodoka Hanamura said the following...

As for running mystic from root, I'm not too keen on it, given I always have to sudo when doing stuff. Thankfully you can do most of the changes to the BBS from within NetRunner and the SysOp menu. I mainly run

I actually found a way around that. I have the router set to forward port 23 inbound to port 2323 on the BBS system. That way, I don't have to run as root.

g00r00 was adding a bunch of things that could be done remotely, so you don't really need access to the computer. :)


---

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)

On 25 Sep 2019, Avon said the following...

Well I pulled down the netinst image for USB of Debian 10.1
Booted from that stick and stuck to a quick test install last night.
Hit a issue on first boot after the install, seems X wont run and the
boot sequence stalls. The PC came with some Radeon? card installed and I suspect there are driver issues, there are no native graphics it seems
on the mobo for the first of two boxes I have so far played with.

Take a look at: https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images-including-firmware

Wow, that barely fit on that line... :)

On that page, you can take a look at the 10.1.0+nonfree/ or 10.1.0-live+nonfree. It depends if you want the ability to live boot from
your flash drive.

Perhaps I need another installer?

I would give the link above a look. It's not an "official" image, but it
ended up working much better for my systems.

trouble with that setup, so I started making three partitions. The fi partition, usually around 150GB, is for the OS. One is for the swap

when you say for the OS which directory/partition is that?

Basically, everything other than /home and /swap... :) I refer to it as the
OS, but that's where Debian is installed, and anything that gets installed
via APT, along with all the drivers, source code, etc.


---

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)

Oh here we go...
I have a bunch of n00b questions to entertain and delight you all with.
First up I am having a dummy run installing Debian on a 500 gig HDD
Using a USB boot installer.
I'm being asked about partitioning and if I want to use the entire disk, the entire disk with LVM, and then the same again but also with encrypted LVM What does this mean?

LVM stands for Logical Volume Management. It is a system of
managing logical volumes, or filesystems, that is much more advanced and flexible than the traditional method of partitioning a disk into one or more segments and formatting that partition with a filesystem. You can think of LVM
as dynamic partitions. For example, if you are running out of disk space on your server, you can just add another disk and extend the logical volume on the fly. You could for example have 2, 3, 4, Etc. HDD's and with LVM Linux could use the HDD's as a single partition

But with more abilities the trade off is speed. Tests seem to indicate that performance can drop off between 15% to 45% with LVM, compared to when not using it. Some have found an even bigger drop when two physical partitions are
used within one LVM setup. A LVM depending on one's needs can be more complex
to setup. In a recent CentOS Linux install I tried to use LVM to manage the three SATA HD's totaling 5 TB's. But I had problems getting the Linux boot loader "GRUB" to install correctly. I opted for a traditional partition arrangement. That also allowed me to use the first 1TB HD as the boot / drive and the second 2TB HD as my /home directory (All user files) and the third 2TB
HD as /files directory. HD's ('Cept boot HD) can be mounted pretty much anywhere. For example the third HD could be mounted as:
/files or /home/mystic/files. Linux is very flexible where you
can or choose to mount drives. I could then later add another HDD and simply setup Linux to mount it wherever I needed or
wanted it.

Hoping I am making some sense. :-)

Jeff

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-4
* Origin: FSXNET: The Ouija Board - bbs.ouijabrd.net (21:1/128)

On 25 Sep 2019, Arelor said the following...

You know, my fist contact with Linux was Ubuntu Karmic Koala. It was so bug ridden that I nearly gave up on Linux totally. It gave the
impression that Canonical was focused on making the distribution user-friendly at the expense of quality, which is a bad thing, because bugs are not user-friendly. Glad I moved on and tried new things.

My favorite bit of Cannonical software is "Shopping Lens", especially because of Shuttleworth's attitude that people (n00bs) that don't have the first idea of how to install packages in the first place can simply remove that
*malware* (RMS's words, not mine) if they don't want it.

But all sillyness aside, I have, when not given a choice, suppoted Ubuntu servers already in production, but I've always adamantly refused to, and
never have, installed Ubuntu. It's like, second on my hit list right below Microsoft servers. As a FOSS zealot, and former MCSE (Yes at one time I did
kis the Borg ring of Bill gates to feed my daughter), I can't find a single
use case where anything can't be done better with OpenLDAP and a SAMBA server.

I use windows workstations to remain relevant (and a little bit of lazyness)
on some of my machines, but truthfully, the only real reason someone would *need* to use Windows is to take advantage of just a few pieces of software that aren't supported under one of the Unices. Namely:

Quicken/Quickbooks

Adobe products

vCenter (and there's a SLES appliance for that, but HTTP based and not as pretty)

And maybe a couple of kewl editors/IDEs.

I do feel from my experience, that Ubuntu server is a viable and stable product, but my prejudices are like still waters. And sometimes they get the best of me. For example,it was only recently that I was accidentally forced
to be exposed to Byobu, and while not actually a Cannonical product, it's association with Ubuntu led me to completely disregard its worth. Boy was I wrong. I've fallen in love with it especially knowing that it's now based
over tmux instead of the old rickety, patched up screen.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Vger.Cloud - NOMAD Internetwork (21:2/104)

On 26 Sep 2019, Spectre said the following...

That prolly won't make any difference, and the amd64 images won't (I believe) boot on i3 and below, you'll prolly need 32bit versions

I gotta ask why? You know I'm playing with boonies, but I've got 64 running on core2's even atoms.... whats debbie got against i3's?

Like I was careful to preface my statement with, I'm not sure, but it seemed
to me that I had to use 32bit images with some machines below i5. Bear in
mind, most off my modern experience is eithr on my own personal machines or
in Clusters/Hosts/VMs running in datacenters - which hand the OS whatever it needs to run, so I'm spoiled lolz.

For example, I never have to worry about free/non-free distinctions where firmware is concerned working with Xen, KVM, or VMware.but on local lappys
and towers it's kind of a requirement - especially with nvidia stuffs.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Vger.Cloud - NOMAD Internetwork (21:2/104)

On 25 Sep 2019, Black Panther said the following...

https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images-including-fir

Wow, that barely fit on that line... :)

ROFLMAO!

That's why I ran it through bit.ly first lolz.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Vger.Cloud - NOMAD Internetwork (21:2/104)

On 25 Sep 2019, tallship said the following...

https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images-includin

Wow, that barely fit on that line... :)

ROFLMAO!

That's why I ran it through bit.ly first lolz.

I've really gotta start doing that. I think it's one of those trying to teach an old dog new tricks... ;)


---

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)

On 25 Sep 2019, Arelor said the following...

You know, my fist contact with Linux was Ubuntu Karmic Koala. It was bug ridden that I nearly gave up on Linux totally. It gave the

My first experience with Linux was with WUBI, that old do-it-yourself-linux-installer for windows that Canonical used to give out
back around 2007 or so. I was on a Dell laptop and somehow, my around 11-year-old self was able to fuck over the Bootloader on Windows just by
using it.

I never knew why it happened at the time, but I know one thing for certain - WUBI was a piece of crap, haha.

I use windows workstations to remain relevant (and a little bit of lazyness) on some of my machines, but truthfully, the only real reason someone would *need* to use Windows is to take advantage of just a few pieces of software that aren't supported under one of the Unices. Namely:

I'm kinda the same with my main system, except I dual boot Windows 10 and
Linux Mint. I'd *love* to use Mint more often, but a lot of the programs I
use on a regular basis require it, namely games that I play. I am happy that ValVe are pushing to get Linux compatibility with Windows applications via Proton/WINE. Of course, there's stuff like my VR Headset that *requires* Windows because it interacts with the Kernel for stuff like accessing the GPU to draw images to the onboard displays and stuff like that. My kingdom for a world where Linux was the OS everyone used, and Windows went the way of OS/2.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/32)
* Origin: NeoCincinnati BBS (21:1/999)

Hello Black Panther!

On 25 Sep 2019, Black Panther said the following...

g00r00 was adding a bunch of things that could be done remotely, so you don't really need access to the computer. :)

One thing I'm missing is a way to make Mystic end the call (all calls) and
exit the MIS daemon (and having systemd auto-restart it, that part I can fix myself), e.g. to activate changes to events or similar from remote.

Perhaps I should add a cron job which monitors a semaphore file and restarts the MIS service to achieve the same thing... haven't done it yet, though.

Best regards
Zip

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden (21:1/202)

On 25 Sep 2019 at 07:25a, Arelor pondered and said...

You know, my fist contact with Linux was Ubuntu Karmic Koala. It was so bug ridden that I nearly gave up on Linux totally. It gave the

Mine was an early version of Debian? I think from around 2000-2002 .. trying
to install it on a PC at the time... I think I got X working but that was
about it. At the time Windows 98 was still my main OS I think... I say I
think also in this reply. I think.

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

On 25 Sep 2019 at 11:04a, Netsurge pondered and said...

Unless you are carrying the binary newsgroups there is no need to push them to separate partition.

No I don't. I just filter and carry text. I agree re space, it was a lot less after 12-24 months than I thought I'd need and had provisioned for on the current system.

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

On 25 Sep 2019 at 06:32p, Black Panther pondered and said...

Take a look at: https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images-including-fir

Wow, that barely fit on that line... :)

you made it :)

Yep this is where I ended up before I read your reply.
I pulled down a file from

[your url] non-free/cd-including-firmware/current/amd64/iso-dvd/

Just trying to install that on the other PC with a DVD drive

trouble with that setup, so I started making three partitions. T partition, usually around 150GB, is for the OS. One is for the s

when you say for the OS which directory/partition is that?

Basically, everything other than /home and /swap... :) I refer to it as the OS, but that's where Debian is installed, and anything that gets installed via APT, along with all the drivers, source code, etc.

OK thanks. I'm not sure if I try to install the NNTP stuff first if I will
come a cropper by not having all the same partitions as last time as the installer may expect those. I can't recall.

I'll get some intelligence on how I set up the running debian system and
report back.

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

On 24 Sep 2019 at 04:08p, Jeff Smith pondered and said...

Hoping I am making some sense. :-)

You are thanks :)

Yes in my BBS / NNTP system I am thinking of running just on 1TB drive and trying to set up perhaps three partitions..

a /home
a /swap
a / (for the OS files I think)

.. dunno... head hurts, too many choices..

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

Anyway I have heard Ubuntu is not so crashy/buggy nowadays, which is
good if true.

This is accurate. I actually use 18.04 for my servers. I used to use Debian
but the fact that major versions are /so/ different (because of their
extremely slow package update cadence) I got sick of dealing with upgrade related problems. Ubuntu nowadays feels, for me, like a happy medium between the Debian methods and a rolling release distro. Plus, I get upgraded
packages more frequently, and so far haven't had any issues.

For home computing I prefer Arch.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: monterey bbs (21:1/168)

As for running mystic from root, I'm not too keen on it, given I alwa have to sudo when doing stuff. Thankfully you can do most of the chan to the BBS from within NetRunner and the SysOp menu. I mainly run

I actually found a way around that. I have the router set to forward
port 23 inbound to port 2323 on the BBS system. That way, I don't have
to run as root.

I also don't like the idea of running as root, even if mystic allegedly
changes users on launch after binding to the ports. I'm skeptical it does
this correctly, and trying to troubleshoot why dos doors weren't working
leads me to believe my suspicions weren't completely unfounded.

There are ways to unblock these ports for a specific user, or for a specific binary. I gave 'mis' permission to bind to low ports and now I don't have to deal with forwarding or anything. Not to say one way is better than the
other, but I like to keep my iptables and such as simple as possible.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: monterey bbs (21:1/168)

On 25 Sep 2019 at 06:32p, Black Panther pondered and said...

Take a look at: https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images-including-fir

Wow, that barely fit on that line... :)

Hmm I did the whole install thing on the other system and after a reboot it stalled after

[OK] Started GNOME Display Manager.

Like they said in the Movie Airplane aka Flying High ... what a pisser.

Thats 90 mins I can't get back...

May leave it for tonight now.

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

On 25 Sep 2019 at 04:30a, tallship pondered and said...

That system has a root account, an account I login with, and also a n user account for the NNTP stuff.

So I am wondering about the need to set up separate partitions given of that.

Just /boot, /, and swap partition. Do it with or without LVM it really isn't going to matter to you, and stick with Ext4 FS.

But won't this bork the installer for the NNTP software when I come to run
some scripts and look at all the places and paths it currently expects to see not being there? Or am I missing something. I know the config files have lots of differing directories like /urs/lib/news and /var/www or /etc/news so they would all sit in / - is that right?

I recommend creating root and a 'paul' user during install, then doing an 'adduser mysticuser' which will run Mystic from their home directory,

I think from memory I may have done something similar on the last Debian box,
a root, a paul and then added news..

..and this will create the user and assign some space? for them under their
own sub dir in /home?

but you already know how to do it both ways and either are valid. Zip
also offered the suggestion of creating a big partition for a /mystic mount point, which is also valid, but whatever you do, this is UNIX so
do try to get away from thinking like a windows user ;)

I struggle with too much at once in this headspace, so mount points vs the
next thing is a bit boggling.

Your system is starting up just fine. You're missing some firmware, which I've covered the solution for in my previous post a few minutes ago :)

I need to revisit this as the second PC did the same jolly thing after
spending 90 mins getting to that point, that's two for two..

Anywho that's the latest. I may try installing on the other system us the same USB to see if I can have joy with that on first attempt.

That prolly won't make any difference, and the amd64 images won't (I believe) boot on i3 and below, you'll prolly need 32bit versions to do that. your new i5 will run 64bit Linux just fine.

Yep both are i5 so seems to run some of it but both borked on the first
proper boot

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

On 25 Sep 2019 at 04:04a, tallship pondered and said...

Okay we're already up to 10.1, which means that Bullseye has diverged
from the Buster that you are attempting to install, and I apologize
again for not taking the time to lookup and post the 10.1 images but
it's really no big deal, just run:

I pulled down an burnt an iso of 10.1 firmware-10.1.0-amd64-DVD-1

# apt-get -y update # or apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
# apt-get -y -V upgrade
# apt-get -y dist-upgrade

so don't think I need this bit.

AFTER you complete the install and you'll be current. you can do that anytime you like to update your system moving forward ;)
Before you can do that, however, you'll need these two images which you can burn to your USB sticks:
https://bit.ly/2l1iXHf - I think that's only about 375MBytes. Install
with it. This includes the non-free firmware that will should get your
NIC going to complete the install.

https://bit.ly/2n8Os2M This will get your video going after you finish
the installation. I'm going to show you a different way to do it so you won't have to mount that second CD though... ;)

OK I will try this tomorrow night, it's getting late and I have work again in the morning. Oh the joys :)

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

All those directories will still be there with whatever space is available on the hard drive. What you gotta think is that ANY directory can be a point at which another partition is mounted.

so if you had 1 HD used in 1 Partition you have 100% of space available to any portion of the file system.

If you have 2 partitions for arguments sake 50% and 50% then the basic file system has access to 50% of your HD and the other 50% will appear wherever you mount that partition later be it /home or /www or anywhere else...

Spec

ps: did I just make that hardeR?


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/105)

On 26 Sep 2019, Zip said the following...

One thing I'm missing is a way to make Mystic end the call (all calls)
and exit the MIS daemon (and having systemd auto-restart it, that part I can fix myself), e.g. to activate changes to events or similar from remote.

That's one thing that I've been trying to find time to work on as well. I do have a working script file to restart MIS, if it's not running.


---

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)

On 26 Sep 2019, ryan said the following...

I also don't like the idea of running as root, even if mystic allegedly changes users on launch after binding to the ports. I'm skeptical it does this correctly, and trying to troubleshoot why dos doors weren't working leads me to believe my suspicions weren't completely unfounded.

I had also had a few issues with Mystic changing ownership of some files. The log files were the ones that caused the most issues...

There are ways to unblock these ports for a specific user, or for a specific binary. I gave 'mis' permission to bind to low ports and now I don't have to deal with forwarding or anything. Not to say one way is better than the other, but I like to keep my iptables and such as simple as possible.

I just figured it was easier to forward the port from my router. :)


---

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)

On 26 Sep 2019, Avon said the following...

Hmm I did the whole install thing on the other system and after a reboot it stalled after

[OK] Started GNOME Display Manager.

Hmmmm. I'm not sure on that one. I'm not running Gnome on either Debian systems... Hopefully someone will be able to jump in on this one.


---

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)

On 25 Sep 2019 at 04:04a, tallship pondered and said...

install, but if you do, you're video will bork on you so just Left_CTRL+Left-ALT+F2 or F3 (Try without the control key first to see if you get the console).

I did this using F2 and it worked :) Thanks!

I logged in as root and then followed the next steps

Now, I want you to cat your /etc/apt/sources.list and make sure that you've got conrib and non-free enabled in your repos. Those lines should look something like this.

deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian buster main contrib non-free

they were there, as I'd installed from a DVD using firmware-10.1.0-amd64-DVD-1

Now run this:and note the missing firmware errors on the right hand of
the screen:

# update-initramfs -u -k all

ran this and there were more errors than fitted on the screen, all radeon related I think.

# apt install firmware-linux firmware-linux-nonfree libdrm-amdgpu1 xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu
Of course, you would have needed to do all of this as root ;)

did this as root, rebooted, saw some errors but X started and I see a desktop
- yay! Thank you for this help.

I am going to try to do an install on the other box now... the one I'll use
for the BBS and NNTP server. I'm not sure I can boot from the USB using the BIOS on this Asus mobo so will likely start with the firmware-10.1.0-amd64-DVD-1 again.

I think I need to set up a swap, a /home and a / and am not quite sure how to allocate the 1TB I have on the drive. Will go back and review some earlier posts now.

Once I get to the stage where I have run the install DVD and hit the same
error with the other radeon card I will re-run the steps you gave me in this post.

Thank you I am learning new stuff and it's fun :)

Best, Paul

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

On 24 Sep 2019 at 08:16a, tallship pondered and said...

Of course, you must (or rather, should, have a separate partition of type Linux SWAP for /swap. That would total a primary partition for /boot, a second partition for SWAP, and a big other partition that you don't have to cut up and worry about everything borking if you run out of space in /var or something.

OK so for a 1TB drive what do you suggest for /swap and /boot and the rest I would just allocate to /

There's absolutely no downside for you to have /var and /home under /

Gotcha, tonight this makes more sense ... I needed to separate out partitions with where the assorted directories are located (mounted?).

Now.. These aren't partitions, and if you note, I've avoided referring to them as such. I've said mounted under partition or mount point or a partition for, because your partitions are things like /dev/sda1
/dev/sda2 /dev/sdb1, etc. I did say your SWAP partition, because the partition where swap is mounted is indeed a filesystem type of "Linux SWAP", the corollary is that your other partitions are going to be of
type Ext4.

Makes sense... thanks.

This is important to understand, and I urge you do to at least an experimental install w/o LVM so you can learn to understand all of this
by scrying your /etc/fsatab - it shows your mountpoints like / and /var and /tmp and swap and /home as they relate to your actual partitions
which are typically /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2,/dev/sda3 etc. (SCSI disk A partition 1,2,3) etc./dev/sdb5 would be SCSI disk B partition 5. Since drives nowadays are SATAS or SCSIs and not like in the old days where
some were /dev/hdb for the slave IDE drive ;)

Yep I get this and in the case of an older Ubuntu box I have x 2 HDD and one
is showing as a different /dev/ from the other but mounted as /music from memory... it's been a long time and I got help when it was set up. But I
think I am on the right page and understanding of what you're saying.

So separate partition for swap, and one big partition for the rest of
the HDD that includes your /var /home and /tmp mount points will make
your life much easier ;)

Hmm so what about /boot ? You mentioned that earlier also.

Thanks for the info :)

Best, Paul

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

There are ways to unblock these ports for a specific user, or for a specific binary. I gave 'mis' permission to bind to low ports and now don't have to deal with forwarding or anything. Not to say one way is better than the other, but I like to keep my iptables and such as sim as possible.

I just figured it was easier to forward the port from my router. :)

Haha yes, that's definitely the easiest option :) My BBS is on a DigitalOcean VM and is exposed completely to the open internet. The least amount of port hackery I need to do, the more secure things feel, but that's unique to using an external hosting service I suppose.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: monterey bbs (21:1/168)

On 09-26-19 01:36, ryan wrote to Black Panther <=-

I also don't like the idea of running as root, even if mystic allegedly changes users on launch after binding to the ports. I'm skeptical it
does this correctly, and trying to troubleshoot why dos doors weren't working leads me to believe my suspicions weren't completely unfounded.

I hadn't noticed any issues, though I don't run DOS doors, too much effort on a Pi. ;) But I still like to allow mis to bind low ports as a non root user, because it's easier to manage things like watchdogs and auto restart (not that it's need much these days).


... Is this some conspiracy to make me look paranoid?
=== MultiMail/Win v0.51
--- SBBSecho 3.03-Linux
* Origin: Freeway BBS Bendigo,Australia freeway.apana.org.au (21:1/109)

install, but if you do, you're video will bork on you so just Left_CTRL+Left-ALT+F2 or F3 (Try without the control key first to see

if

Woah that looks as bad as "Doing the Aunty". "You put elbow on your knee, you put your liver on your chest, you're put your finger in your ear, you gotta roll yourself around, and you're doing the Aunty, doing the Aunty, dooooing the
Aunty Jack."

And if you don't I'll come round and rip your bloody arm off!

Spec :)


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/105)

OK so for a 1TB drive what do you suggest for /swap and /boot and the rest

Depends on what you're looking allocate, I'd be inclined to / and swap and thats it :) KISS....

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/105)

On 27 Sep 2019 at 07:42p, Spectre pondered and said...

Woah that looks as bad as "Doing the Aunty". "You put elbow on your
knee, you put your liver on your chest, you're put your finger in your ear, you gotta roll yourself around, and you're doing the Aunty, doing
the Aunty, dooooing the Aunty Jack."

No I have the clap clap, bird dance song in my head... do you want a copy for the road trip?

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

On 27 Sep 2019 at 07:45p, Spectre pondered and said...

OK so for a 1TB drive what do you suggest for /swap and /boot and the

Depends on what you're looking allocate, I'd be inclined to / and swap
and thats it :) KISS....

Installer suggests 991.6GB for / and 8.6GB for swap... on a 1TB with 8GB of
ram in the machine.

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

On 09-27-19 02:29, ryan wrote to Black Panther <=-

Haha yes, that's definitely the easiest option :) My BBS is on a DigitalOcean VM and is exposed completely to the open internet. The
least amount of port hackery I need to do, the more secure things feel, but that's unique to using an external hosting service I suppose.

I don't run my BBSs behind a router either. :)


... A noisy exhaust to some almost amounts to a mating call.
=== MultiMail/Win v0.51
--- SBBSecho 3.03-Linux
* Origin: Freeway BBS Bendigo,Australia freeway.apana.org.au (21:1/109)

Installer suggests 991.6GB for / and 8.6GB for swap... on a 1TB with 8GB of ram in the machine.

The installer will match your ram and your swap. 8.6GB is probably overkill but
if you can afford the space (and it looks like you can) it won't hurt anything.

This box I am on now has 4GB ram and 4GB swap and none of the swap is being used.

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-4
* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:3/107)

On 27 Sep 2019 at 03:38a, Al pondered and said...

Installer suggests 991.6GB for / and 8.6GB for swap... on a 1TB with 8GB ram in the machine.

The installer will match your ram and your swap. 8.6GB is probably overkill but if you can afford the space (and it looks like you can) it won't hurt anything.

Thanks Al :)

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

On 26 Sep 2019, Avon said the following...

On 25 Sep 2019 at 04:30a, tallship pondered and said...

Just /boot, /, and swap partition. Do it with or without LVM it reall isn't going to matter to you, and stick with Ext4 FS.

But won't this bork the installer for the NNTP software when I come to
run some scripts and look at all the places and paths it currently
expects to see not being there? Or am I missing something. I know the config files have lots of differing directories like /urs/lib/news and /var/www or /etc/news so they would all sit in / - is that right?

yes /usr /usr/local /var /opt /tmp and /home are all under / it's all just a matter of whether you break one of those parts of the tree off to 'mount it'
on another partition, like /home - they still function all the same, but it *may* (or not) be more convenient for things like picking up a chunk like
/home and dropping it onto another machine later on.

For instance, you install mystic at /home/mystic and later you want to move that install to a new machine, all you really need to do is leave that
separate partition on the same disk on the same machine when you install a fresh OS, then under taht OS create a user named 'mystic', and make sure the ownership of /home/mystic from the old OS is owned by the user mystic on the new OS and you've got a running Mystic server - no installs or any configs or messy restores to worry about.

Zip alluded to this approach with the /mystic mountpoint on its own humungous partition. And you mentioned one of the only downsides of doing that, which
is that you would have to perform the trivial task of chowning and chmod'ing it. Functionally, it's the same as doing the way you've been doing it, but it would be on its own partition and (with LVM especially) pick it up and put it on any box.very easily.

I'm personally not a big fan of LVM though. Sometimes, but not usually. YOu
can still move entire partitions easily and I snapshot with Btrfs (you should prolly stick with Ext4 FS).

I recommend creating root and a 'paul' user during install, then doin 'adduser mysticuser' which will run Mystic from their home directory,

I think from memory I may have done something similar on the last Debian box, a root, a paul and then added news..

..and this will create the user and assign some space? for them under their own sub dir in /home?

Yes absolutely :)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Vger.Cloud - NOMAD Internetwork (21:2/104)

On 27 Sep 2019, Avon said the following...

On 25 Sep 2019 at 04:04a, tallship pondered and said...

install, but if you do, you're video will bork on you so just Left_CTRL+Left-ALT+F2 or F3 (Try without the control key first to see you get the console).

I did this using F2 and it worked :) Thanks!

Remember that one ;) you've;always got several local Linux consoles, for convenience :)

did this as root, rebooted, saw some errors but X started and I see a desktop - yay! Thank you for this help.

You're rounding third pace goin' for home!

I think I need to set up a swap, a /home and a / and am not quite sure
how to allocate the 1TB I have on the drive. Will go back and review
some earlier posts now.

Okay I think the biggest consideration as to allocation should be given to where you want to put the Mystic directory tree, or whatever it is that is going to be taking up the lion's share of space.

If, for example, /mystic, then most all of the space should probably be for /

But if you put it in /home/mystic, then a majority of the space to /home but still a respectable amount for the / because of all the other stuff on that partition.where / is mounted.

Thank you I am learning new stuff and it's fun :)

Awesome! the pleasure's mine :)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Vger.Cloud - NOMAD Internetwork (21:2/104)

Installer suggests 991.6GB for / and 8.6GB for swap... on a 1TB with 8GB of ram in the machine.

Although in todays day and age, most systems have more than enough memory to run happy, especially when it is a stripped down linux box.

Years ago, when memory was limited and expensive, someone came up with the
idea of creating a hard drive based memory system, or swap. When your
physical memory becomes exhausted, the system has a place to "swap" the stuff in physical memory in order to free some of it up.

The rule of thumb is that your swap partition should be at least equal to the amount of physical memory you have. So what the installer is suggesting is correct.

|15frank |08// |15netsurge
|07disksh0p|08!|07bbs |08% |07bbs.diskshop.ca |08% |07mystic goodness |11SciNet |03ftn hq |08% |07https://diskshop.ca/scinet

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: % disksh0p!bbs % bbs.diskshop.ca % SciNet ftn hq % (21:4/154)

On 27 Sep 2019, Avon said the following...

On 24 Sep 2019 at 08:16a, tallship pondered and said...

OK so for a 1TB drive what do you suggest for /swap and /boot and the
rest I would just allocate to /

The Isntaller recommended 8.6GBytes for the swap, so I'm figuring you've
got 16GBytes RAM. 8Gigs should be fine, and if for some uncommon reason you
do need more later on, you can always create a swap file (like a partition
but more along the lines off a Windows pagefile.sys). It's literally two
short commands - but you almost certainly will never need to.

I like to use a /boot even today to keep my kernel separate, and as you
update you can keep the old ones all nice and tidy there in case of rollback
or if you decide to experiment with choosing another. 2GB is fine but w/a
1TB drive 4GB wouldn't be noticed as missing from the rest of that big drive.

So separate partition for swap, and one big partition for the rest of the HDD that includes your /var /home and /tmp mount points will make your life much easier ;)

Hmm so what about /boot ? You mentioned that earlier also.

Like I mentioned above I do like to keep a separate /boot - especially if
there are major issues requiring restores from backups after catastrophes
among other reasons noted above. And because it is so static it's senseless
to continually include it as part of the nightly backups every single day.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Vger.Cloud - NOMAD Internetwork (21:2/104)

On 27 Sep 2019, Spectre said the following...

install, but if you do, you're video will bork on you so just Left_CTRL+Left-ALT+F2 or F3 (Try without the control key first t

if

Woah that looks as bad as "Doing the Aunty". "You put elbow on your
knee, you put your liver on your chest, you're put your finger in your

lolz!

Yes,my notiation is kinda ugly there :)

Linux traditionally uses the left keys for those commands, but not all
distros respect that.

Here's another one. Traditionally, Ctrl+ALT_BKSPC is *supposed to be like an eject lever that crashes the X-Server and returns you back to the Linux console, but not many distros respect that either nowadays (including Debian) and choose to error trap that - I guess coz they don't believe that's what ou really want if you do that lolz.

And to ad Aunty insult to Aunty injury, if you're running a VM in VirtualBox it's the Right hand control key that returns control to you outside of the
VM, so that can get weird if you're in a VM and working on something and do that accidentally. I usually remap that coz muscle memory has me using that
key for everyday commands lol.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Vger.Cloud - NOMAD Internetwork (21:2/104)

On 27 Sep 2019, Spectre said the following...

OK so for a 1TB drive what do you suggest for /swap and /boot and the

Depends on what you're looking allocate, I'd be inclined to / and swap
and thats it :) KISS....

That works just fine too. I do a lot of custom kernel compiles and such, so
it makes sense for me. The days when you actually needed to have a /boot have been gone since the EXT2 days.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Vger.Cloud - NOMAD Internetwork (21:2/104)

No I have the clap clap, bird dance song in my head... do you want
a copy for the road trip?

That'd be the chicken dance song?

Spec


--- --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: <Shoot'n the breeze on The Lower Planes> (21:3/105)

Installer suggests 991.6GB for / and 8.6GB for swap... on a 1TB with
8GB of ram in the machine.

Have to admit I tend to run without swap space at all these days. I wonder if the 8.6 is so you can swap the whole lot out to disk if the system is able to go sleep. Like the windoze theory.... I'd be inclined to allocate less, but I don't see a problem with it as stated..

Spec


--- --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: <Shoot'n the breeze on The Lower Planes> (21:3/105)

Hello Black Panther!

On 26 Sep 2019, Black Panther said the following...

That's one thing that I've been trying to find time to work on as well.
I do have a working script file to restart MIS, if it's not running.

I've created a crontab file now (/etc/cron.d/custom_mystic):

SHELL=/bin/bash

# check for restart.now semaphore to restart Mystic Internet Servers (MIS); allow (at least) 30 seconds for SysOp to logout
* * * * * root if [ -e /mnt/bbs/mystic/semaphore/restart.now ]; then rm -f /mnt/bbs/mystic/semaphore/restart.now; sleep 30; systemctl -q
try-restart mis.service > /dev/null 2>&1; fi; true

By entering the SysOp meny (/*), executing the Mystic-DOS Shell (D), changing to the semaphore directory (CD /mnt/bbs/mystic/semaphore) and copying a pre-existing (empty) semaphore file "example.semaphore" to "restart.now"
(COPY example.semaphore restart.now), then exiting (EXIT) and logging off within 30 seconds (/G), that should take care of the "problem". :-)

Best regards
Zip

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden (21:1/202)

Hello Al!

On 27 Sep 2019, Al said the following...

This box I am on now has 4GB ram and 4GB swap and none of the swap is being used.

Speaking of swap -- there are some knobs to turn in order to tell the memory management to use swap only when really necessary, and not to use up all
memory for applications but to leave some slack for the system; from my /etc/sysctl.d/local.conf:

# how aggressively the kernel will swap memory pages
# (lower values decrease aggressiveness)
# (a value of 0 instructs the kernel not to initiate swap until the amount of
# free and file-backed pages is less than the high water mark in a zone) vm.swappiness = 0

# virtual memory accounting mode
# (always check, never overcommit)
vm.overcommit_memory = 2

# a percentage by which memory can be overcommitted
# (for vm.overcommit_memory = 2: maximum % of physical RAM to be allocated
# to applications)
vm.overcommit_ratio = 75

There are other variants of vm.overcommit_memory, but the default I believe
is the most uncertain one, where some strange heuristics are used to calculate whether an application should get the amount of memory it asked for or not,
and then the Out of Memory (OOM) killer killing off things at random when memory usage gets too high...

Best regards
Zip

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden (21:1/202)

This box I am on now has 4GB ram and 4GB swap and none of the swap is
being used.

Speaking of swap -- there are some knobs to turn in order to tell the memory management to use swap only when really necessary, and not to use up all memory for applications but to leave some slack for the system; from my /etc/sysctl.d/local.conf:

At one time I used to build my own kernel because my NIC wasn't supported by the distrubution kernel. I had a roughly 50% success rate and often had to rebuild my kernel again to get things working.

You sure want to be carefull with the options you use when building your own kernel.. :)

ATM I'm on my desktop machine and it also has 4GB of ram. Yesterday I was ripping blueray's and running them through handbrake to squash them down in size and make them fit on a thumb drive to plug into my TV.

Looking at task manager I am using 12% of memory and 1% swap.. That's using the
kernel that ships with slackware, 4.4.190 currently. That works well for me and I haven't needed more memory for what I do on the computer.

I have a newish laptop that has 12GB installed. I don't think I need that much but I guess it depends on what you are doing. It's good to know I won't run out.. :)

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-4
* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:3/107)

As for the BBS software it looks like I could install it under my /home directory or as a root directory. I kind of like the idea of from the
root space (not user) as a lot of my windows software is c:\softwarea c:\softwareb not username/softwarea or username\softwareb

But if I do the root path option I guess I need to chmod all the dirs I setup to the ownership of the default non priv user as I am aware just running it all logged in as root user is bad bad bad...

I grappled with the same decision while configuring Mystic on Debian. I had originally created a standard user called bbs and installed Mystic in /home/bbs. This just saves you from having to set file ownership elsewhere.
In the end, I liked the simplicity of just "/mystic" and did a "chown -R bbs:bbs /mystic" to recursively set the ownership. Any time I copied files
over as root, I'd just have to remember to 'chown' it again.

I've had issues with a few things not liking non-root ownership of the mystic directory - namely multi relay chat. For some reason, it hangs unless the entire mystic directory is owned by root. Let me know if you have success
with this.

Cheers,
Mike

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: vswitchzero BBS (21:4/162)

On 25 Sep 2019 at 06:32p, Black Panther pondered and said...

Take a look at:
https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images-including-fi

r

Wow, that barely fit on that line... :)

you made it :)

Yep this is where I ended up before I read your reply.
I pulled down a file from

[your url] non-free/cd-including-firmware/current/amd64/iso-dvd/

Just trying to install that on the other PC with a DVD drive

trouble with that setup, so I started making three partitions.

T

partition, usually around 150GB, is for the OS. One is for the

s

when you say for the OS which directory/partition is that?

Basically, everything other than /home and /swap... :) I refer to it as
the OS, but that's where Debian is installed, and anything that gets
installed via APT, along with all the drivers, source code, etc.

OK thanks. I'm not sure if I try to install the NNTP stuff first if I
will
come a cropper by not having all the same partitions as last time as
the
installer may expect those. I can't recall.

I'll get some intelligence on how I set up the running debian system
and
report back.

What NNTP software are you going to use?


--- NiKom v2.5.0
* Origin: Delta City (deltacity.se, Vallentuna, Sweden) (21:2/130.0)

Hello Tallship,

Okay I think the biggest consideration as to allocation should be given to where you want to put the Mystic directory tree, or whatever it is that is going to be taking up the lion's share of space.
If, for example, /mystic, then most all of the space should probably be for / But if you put it in /home/mystic, then a majority of the space to /home but still a respectable amount for the / because of all the other stuff on that partition.where / is mounted.

Here I have a 1TB HDD for my boot drive that includes /boot and a second 2TB HDD for /home. It has seemed to be more convenient to keep things organized.

Jeff

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-4
* Origin: FSXNET: The Ouija Board - bbs.ouijabrd.net (21:1/128)

You know, my fist contact with Linux was Ubuntu Karmic Koala. It was
so bug ridden that I nearly gave up on Linux totally. It gave the impression that Canonical was focused on making the distribution user-friendly at the expense of quality, which is a bad thing,
because bugs are not user-friendly. Glad I moved on and tried new
things.

I s'pose it also depends what you use it for. Linux for me has always been server material, but not my desktop. I think the first time I used buntu might
have been around Jaunty... but if it works, I am always about 500 years out of
date before I try to upgrade, so I usually just start again, and think it was 12.04LTS 14.04LTS was about to be released. At the time it was the least painful installs. My iso history shows 9 and 11, but I don't recall using them,
might have been transients for something like the EEEPC at one stage...

Spec


--- --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: <Shoot'n the breeze on The Lower Planes> (21:3/105)

No I have the clap clap, bird dance song in my head... do you want
a copy for the road trip?

That'd be the chicken dance song?

Spec


--- --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: <Shoot'n the breeze on The Lower Planes> (21:3/105)

Installer suggests 991.6GB for / and 8.6GB for swap... on a 1TB with
8GB of ram in the machine.

Have to admit I tend to run without swap space at all these days. I wonder if the 8.6 is so you can swap the whole lot out to disk if the system is able to go sleep. Like the windoze theory.... I'd be inclined to allocate less, but I don't see a problem with it as stated..

Spec


--- --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: <Shoot'n the breeze on The Lower Planes> (21:3/105)