Subj : Re: Future-proofing DOS BBSs
To   : akacastor
From : j0HNNY a1PHA
Date : Fri Feb 16 2024 15:19:07

 > Running Microsoft Network Client for DOS, a network drive is mapped to
 > D: inside the DOS session.  SHARE.EXE is loaded in config.sys and is
 > working.

Ah, OK. Have you used EtherDFS? Don't know how reliable it is, but it's a
lot easier setup than MSFT setup (at least when using FreeDOS).

 > Currently I have four DOSBox-X instances, each running a node of
 > Maximus.  Two nodes are connected to USRobotics V.Everything modems
 > using 'directserial' in DOSBox-X.  The other two nodes listen for
 > telnet connections using 'modem' in DOSBox-X.  Each node has the same
 > network drive mapped to D: and this shared drive is used for storing
 > message and file bases, and communication between BBS nodes.

totaly makes sense. I wired up 3 FreeDOS 1.3 virtual machines in prox
mox, and created serial port connections between them. 

 > At the time I started searching, DOSBox-X seemed to have the best
 > support for applications and non-game use.  I have been using DOSBox-X
 > quite a lot (daily for months) and it has been working well, running
 > MS-DOS 6.22 and QEMM memory manager and even DESQview for multitasking
 > within a single DOSBox-X instance. (I don't run the BBS in DESQview,
 > because separate DOSBox instances makes it easier to manage memory
 > constraints.)

Good to know -- I wasn't sure which would be better for BBSs -- DOSBox-X
or Staging. Sounds like X is the way to go.

 > I am now running a version of DOSBox-X with patches to the telnet
 > emulation, so binary transfers work properly in both directions.  I
 > also added a 'callerid' feature so that the IP address of callers is
 > passed to the BBS software in the same format as caller ID from a
 > USRobotics modem.

Is this something that can be shared or downloaded from a BBS? I bet the
BBS Community would love to have a build like this (with instructions,
etc.).

 > Because each node of my BBS is in its own DOSBox session and each
 > "virtual modem" in DOSBox binds to its own port, I have a setup with
 > node 1 on port 2301, node 2 on port 2302, node 3 on port 2303, etc. 
 > To provide one port that can accept connections and pass them to the
 > next open node, I wrote a small "Telnet Ringdown server".  The
 > Ringdown server listens on port 23 and attempts to connect to a list
 > of BBS ports.  I am starting to work on some bot and scanner detection
 > for the Ringdown server, to reduce the number of wasted connections to
 > BBS nodes.  (yesterday I counted 527 connections in 18 hours from IP
 > scanners.)  The Telnet Ringdown server project is at
 > https://github.com/akacastor/ringdown

This was the missing piece for me. Fantastic, I'm going to check it out.
This could be a fantastic package to get multinode DOS BBSs up easier and
more securely.

I'd like to try this with FreeDOS v1.3 proxmox and avoid DOSBox
altogether, but that may be a different problem to solve :)

Thanks for this info!



|08.|05j|13A|08.


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 * Origin: R3tr0/X BBS :: retrox.us:1992 (21:4/158)

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