hehe...well done :-)

Still got it Karen...the adduser routine is not functioning, and I don't know how to do it on access...I'll e-mail Jeff and hopefully talk to Terry in the next couple of days, so keep your fingers crossed for the weekend...

Adduser works, you just have to find the right path to it. And the new users need to be manually put in the same group. Group creation is a bit of a mystery.

$ which adduser /usr/sbin/adduser $

okay, next time I'm at work, I'll see if'n I can set it all up...

Thanks, Heide and I would appreciate it muchly. Besides, our den mom Evelyn has returned and has said she's gonna holler out the window at you, Terry!! ;-D

It's done. User KarenR with the password you sent me now has telnet access. I even went ahead and set up your public_html directory...

Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!!!! But what do I do with a public_html directory?

whatever you want...

All kinds of fun things. Imagine the possibilities!

and then do 'em...

Argh!! Gimme a hint. What does it control?

control? As in world domination?

Hey, now, that's my speciality... If you know how to ftp, you can put your pictures for drool in there, or make your own home pages, etcetera...

FTP, is that like the limbo? No, I know what it is, but will have to figure out how to use it. Have one or two Dummy books checked out from the lib and will study the relevant sections.

Get a copy of WS-FTP from http://www.stroud.com and set it up for you public_html directory.

Thanks for setting Karen up for world domination. I'm sure she'll use her new powers for the betterment of mankind. In the meantime, still having trouble with the Feb 7, 2036 messages. I know they don't show up for everyone but they do for some on Topics 80, 97 and 98. How can I get in touch with Kaylene to send them out into limboland with the other messages?

Go to http://www.armidalesoftware.com and email her at kaylene@armidalesoftware.com

do you really want to kill messages just for the fact that they've got the wrong date on???

It's easy enough to run her program and it will automatically change these dates.

Well, I think I have blown up Drool and should resign from being host. OK, here's the problem. I attempted to post something to #68 and then it said the post was too large (an image link). I think it overwrote most of the topic and I attempted to get rid of it. Right now Topic 68 has a big gap from 1997 to 1998 and only 12 comments. I think this also affected Topic 67 which shrunk in size. Also, the Drool Conference Menu only shows up to Topic 40 something. Can anything be done to fix this? Like restore it from yesterday? Topics 67 and 68 had no activity lately, so if a previous version has been stored... *am sitting here, tears streaming down my cheeks, truly penitent*

*hugs*

*grin*

OK, so I'm a bit melodramatic.... Grinning????? Are we jealous of Drool? ;-D

BTW, need the FTP address to upload to? Help!!

Help Karen!! Come on, guys, we're a'beggin'. Topic 68 was just heating up again. And you know we can generate some heat. By the by, the February 7, 2036 problem has abated. Thanks to who(m)ever ran the program. Kaylene wrote me but I know I didn't do it.

ftp to www.spring.net and your program should take you to www.spring.net/usr/home/KarenR where you'll want to find your public_html directory to put stuff in you want to post on the web... your web address is http://www.spring.net/~KarenR so just add /nameoffile to anything you're gonna link to in there... everything you want to link to needs to be in your public_html directory... I'll see what I can see about the rest, but I got a feeling all of that is outside o' my realm of good guessing...

Thanks William for the instructions. Was attempting to use Voyager and no one could figure it out!! Terry, About the Drool problem: it extends to topics 53, 67 and 68 and maybe more??? And now we find out that if new messages are posted they don't show up as New. Can any of this be fixed (restoration of old messages and showing up as new) or should we just start new topics? We await w/baited breath...

It may be the result of running Kaylene's program. Email her with the specifics at kaylene@armidalesoftware.com and ask her if this could be the cause. We'll start doing more regular backups soon.

Are there any backup tapes? If so, from what date? The problem stemmed from me trying to link to an image at another site. It turned out to be huge (see message at top of Topic 68, which I think overlaid a lot of space, not only in 68, but in 67 and 53. Maybe others. Haven't checked. In the meantime, could Topics 53 and 68 be "Unretired" oh great wise, cdadmin?? Perhaps that would get them to show up as "new" when messages are posted.

Oh dear, not much activity here so I hope someone is reading. Things have been running so smoothly the past couple of weeks and then the dreaded February 7, 2036 dated topics started reappearing. I know they're in topics 80, 97, 112 and from the list of recent posters, I see the date is infecting other topics as well. Can we stop this dreaded menace? And once it's stopped, can the bad dates be changed again? I'm quite sure running Kaylene's program was not the cause of posts from topics 53 and 68 disappearing. Anxiously awaiting...Thank you.

I just ran the fixit program Kaylene wrote for us, I first noticed this when Tim's posts were reading the year 2036, and I knew he hasn't been a "Back to the Future Machine", or not that I know about.

Darling Terry, thank you, thank you. Everything is running perfectly agian. What can I do to thank you? You never cash my checks.

Is everything running perfectly? There were lots of posts at various Drool topics today, but none showed up as "new." Terry could you take a gander and see if some bizarro command has taken over.

Another alert, Terry. Sorry to be such a nag. I noticed Feb 7, 2036 popped up again today but it was quickly fixed. Thanks, but now I see the topics that were affected (the ones I checked were 97, 98 and 113) are not accepting new posts. Unless I've overstayed my welcome and it just won't accept me anymore. As you know, 97 especially has become very active. As far as "new" messages, I find it annoying so I forget to check if it's working.

Send an email about this to Kaylene@armidalesoftware.com and let her know. I did run the fix_bad_dates program she wrote last night as soon as I noticed the problem. If anyone sees 2036 dates, please email me right away terry@spring.net.

Kaylene's fix causes the "wrong" dates to be the date of the previous post, thereby causing some "new" responses to not show up as new until that topic has been re-read...

or responded to after the fix, in which case the corrected date responses do not show either, just the posts since the fix was run...you do sometimes have to back up a bit to catch what is currently going on...

Here's the script: $ cd /usr/bbs/bin $ ls bbs cfdelete date_sub.perl sum_update2 bbs.old cflistdelete fix_bad_dates webuser cfcreate cppart sum_update webuser.c $ cat fix_bad_dates #!/bin/csh # This script doesn't take any arguments # It determines which items have "bad dates" # in them (see date_sub.perl for definition of bad date) # and calls date_sub.perl to update the files to put in a # valid date. It then deletes and recreates the summary # of conferences that have been changed, and logs a # message to the error log that things have been changed # find the files to update set F = "/usr/bbs/baddate.files" set C = "/usr/bbs/baddate.confs" if ( -f $F ) then mv $F ${F}.bak endif if ( -f $C ) then mv $C ${C}.bak endif echo "Finding files to update ...." find /usr/bbs/confs -name '_*' -exec grep -l "^,D7C5" {} >> $F \; # update the files echo "Updating corrupted conference files" /usr/bbs/bin/date_sub.perl `cat $F` # update the conference-specific sum file if any files were changed # The find command returns info like /usr/bbs/confs/yapp/_1 # so the 5th field is the conference name echo "Creating list of conferences with updated files" cat $F | cut -d '/' -f 5 | sort | uniq > $C echo "Updating conference summary files" foreach conf ( `cat $C` ) echo "$conf" /usr/local/bin/bbs -u -x sum_update2 -j $conf set date=`date` echo "$date Updated $conf to remove bad dates" >> /usr/bbs/errorlog end

Terry, have tried posting to Topic 97 and doesn't accept anything.

Is acting like a topic that's been *retired*, but I checked and it that isn't the case. Perhaps if you do an *unretire* they may come back from the dead. Wouldn't hurt to try...or would it. Shoot and I had something funny to post at 97 (well, at least I thought so)

Topic 97 is working. I posted there earlier. When I ran the fix program I was logged in as root so it changed the ownership of this topic to root instead of cfadm. So I chowned it back to cfadm earlier today. Next time this happens email me to do this again.

I didn't understand a word you said ;-) but thanks, all that matters is that it works again. Guess this is why we have Thanksgiving!!

Oh heavens, Terry. February 7, 2036 is back. I'll e-mail you too but remember, change the ownership from root back to cfadmin. Thank you, dear.

I logged in as cfadm and ran /usr/bbs/bin/fix_bad_dates again. Thanks for emailing me, I got the message on my cellphone as I was cruising down Lamar Boulevard earlier this evening.

Well if you're cruising down Lamar Boulevard again, perhaps you'll get the message that the date is back again. It's been mighty persistent. Are you hinting that we can fix it with this program too? Duh!

?

? is right, tim!

Hmmm... nope. I don't get it either.

The Art of Hosting Good Conversations Online By Howard Rheingold http://www.rheingold.com/texts/artonlinehost.html

you know, I should probably get around to reading that...

So, when do you guys finally shiop me that host help-pack, hmh? Boy, that'll be cool! I can't wait for it, especially the car decals, the security-ID-style membership card and the tee shirt and mousepad to match! I bet your stuff is way cooler than the stuff from the Batman- or the Backstreet Boys-Fanclub!

if we had stuff, I would certainly hope so...

So, what's this topic all about? It says "Host Help-Pack" at the top, right? What's the problem, mate? TERRY! Tell them to send me those boxer shorts and beach towels with the Spring logo! NOW! I am a host! I MUST be pleased! And obeyed! (If that stuff is out, I'd be happy to receive a nice Leatherman tool!)

*lol*

Wolf, the boys let me down. What does a host do (besides mouthing off, etc.) and how? Is there a document?

http://www.spring.net/help/host.html

basically, alex, you run around blabbing to everyone until you get the help you need. (right, wer?) well, it worked for me. the yapp help thing didn't help me one bit and i still don't know what i'm doing-wer uploads any graphics backgrounds and stuff i come up with. (and i appreciate it so much, wer)

hey, i went to that website wer posted. cool, where was that when i signed on?

at armidale software...Terry has since mirrored it on here...

I still wished there were some manual and guidelines. Wer's link does tell me what to do, etc. but not how!

practice, practice, practice