Making a new BBS, can someone provide me with some help?
reddit / bbs

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Terrariola · 2019-05-13 18:39

So, I'm making a BBS, but I have some issues that need to be resolved:

1: ~~I'm having issues compiling Synchronet~~ Already fixed, had to
install `patch`
2: I can't telnet in.
3: How do I change the command shell?

Any help?
The BBS software I'm using is Synchronet, and I'm running it on a
Debian system.

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SqualorTrawler · 2019-05-13 22:14

Is the system hosted on your local network or is it hosted remotely,
like on a VPS or otherwise?

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Terrariola · 2019-05-14 06:04

On a VPS.

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SqualorTrawler · 2019-05-14 09:00

Have you portscanned it from outside?  I only ever use one VPS service
(Digital Ocean) and their droplets are deployed without firewalls so
this is not normally the issuem but I wonder if all do.  A portscan on
port 23 would be where I'd start just to see what state the port is
in.

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Terrariola · 2019-05-14 18:49

My VPS provider (Linode) is supposed to have all the ports open by
default.

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SqualorTrawler · 2019-05-20 04:31

Howdy, sorry for the delay of a couple of days.  I set up a Linode
instance and have Synchronet accepting telnet requests.

There is nothing special I needed to do to allow that to happen.

My first question, then:

ssh into your Linode instance and try:

telnet localhost

See if you can connect to it while logged into the same machine.

Let me know what happens.

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Terrariola · 2019-05-20 08:22

While Synchronet is running or without Synchronet running?

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SqualorTrawler · 2019-05-20 08:49

While synchronet is running.

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Terrariola · 2019-05-20 11:06

Connection refused.

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SqualorTrawler · 2019-05-20 11:25

That suggests that sbbs is not actually running.  Or at least, that is
the only way I can replicate the situation:

    root@bbs /etc/rsyslog.d : telnet localhost
    Trying ::1...
    Trying 127.0.0.1...
    telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused

The other possibility is that - and I can't imagine why this is the
case as it comes configured out-of-the-box to accept telnet
connections - there are no nodes configured.

What does the following show:

    ps -aux | grep sbbs

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Terrariola · 2019-05-20 20:10

[https://imgur.com/a/NRyL2I7](https://imgur.com/a/NRyL2I7)

​

Yeah, Synchronet is definitely running. It's either a configuration
mistake on my end, or a weird synchronet bug. (probably the former)

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SqualorTrawler · 2019-05-20 20:24

I found this based on the screenshot you showed of the BBS output; all
of those binding errors:

> Error 13 means “access denied”. This error upon binding usually
means that you're running Synchronet as non-privileged user account
(e.g. not 'root') and the operating system you're running does not
allow processes run under non-privileged user accounts to bind to low
(TCP or UDP) port numbers (usually less than 1024). You can either use
higher TCP port numbers in your configuration or have Synchronet
switch to a non-privileged user *after* binding the TCP ports (see nix
for details).

Try running sbbs as root and try to telnet to localhost again once
you've done that.  You obviously don't want to run it permanently that
way but it will at least tell you something if it works; that it is
some kind of permission thing.

Note: I am using Linode now (your problem gave me an excuse to try
it), and I created a user normally using adduser, chowned/chgrp'd
everything in /sbbs to that user, and telnet runs fine on port 23 for
me.

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Terrariola · 2019-05-21 05:48

[https://imgur.com/a/CspVXi4](https://imgur.com/a/CspVXi4)
By the way, I'm Terrariola#5785 on Discord, if you want to DM me
instead of continuing this long string of messages on Reddit.

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chrononoob · 2019-05-26 18:31

You can't bind ports lower than 1024 without being root on Unix
systems.

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Terrariola · 2019-05-27 08:22

I ran it as root that time, though.