SETUP HELP: BBS Telnet Server on Pi accessible from WIN98 PC reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Qiao-ke · 2019-12-02 12:02 I've posted asking for help on this topic before so apologies, but I have spent hours upon hours trying to set this up and I'm completely new to BBSs (born in 98) and only barely acquainted with linux and networking... I want to have a BBS(preferably mysticBBS) server running on a raspberry pi accessible by a windows98 PC using telnet via an ethernet network switch. (This is entirely LAN, so I'm not concerned with connecting it to the wider world, just this closed network) I've tried a lot and learnt a lot but I still feel completely lost. If anyone would be kind enough to go out of their way to basically step by step me through the process that would be IMMENSELY appreciated as I'm running out of time to do this. (Its for a project) From what I've pieced together I need to; assign a static ip on the pi setup a telnet server on the pi setup mysticbbs on the pi start the bbs server on the pi install telnet terminal software on the WIN98 PC access the BBS using the assigned IP. ???PROFIT? Thanks in advance to anyone that can give advice, I know I'm asking a lot so just any tips to piece together this bizarre setup would be greatly appreciated. SPECS: Pi 3 B+ TP-LINK LS108G Windows 98SE PC ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Qiao-ke · 2019-12-02 12:09 Oh and if I'm doing something abhorrently wrong and making life hard for myself please tell me. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- namstor · 2019-12-02 12:47 Mystic has its own telnet server so don’t set up a separate one. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- namstor · 2019-12-02 12:51 https://youtube.com/watch?v=rOgt4gnUR9k ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Qiao-ke · 2019-12-02 12:53 right and thats done simply by running './mis server' with telnet enabled in the server config? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- namstor · 2019-12-02 13:03 Sounds right ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Qiao-ke · 2019-12-02 13:27 when starting the server with './mis server' it says 'TELNET Unable to open IPV4 port: Error -1 (13)' then the same for ipv6 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- namstor · 2019-12-02 13:30 sudo ./mis server If that works it’s because only root can bind to low ports by default ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Qiao-ke · 2019-12-02 13:42 yep that was it, didnt think of that, it says its listening now but also says starting 0 events and I can't connect to it from the other PC (when pinging the IP it says destination host unreachable) edit: i feel like my dhcpcd.conf might be setup wrong because following tutorials they assume the use of a router which I'm not using and so .conf ended up looking like this; interface eth0 static ip_address=0.0.0.10 static routers=0.0.0.0 static domain_name_servers=192.168.0.1 That being said thats the only way I managed to get MIS to open the port ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mholger · 2019-12-02 18:01 >(when pinging the IP it says destination host unreachable) That's an indication that there's a routing problem. I realize you say you don't have a router, which is fine for a small LAN - but all of the nodes need to be on the same network, within the same IP range, and have routing rules setup to know which interface to send traffic to for a given subnet. There are some rules about network numbers and sizes which come into play, so it's not as simple as just giving completely arbitrary addresses to nodes if they're expecting to communicate with each other. Given that information, I suspect your PC and your Pi have different IP/subnet configurations -- I'd start by changing your eth0 IP address to something in the [192.168.0.0](https://192.168.0.0) range - and verify that range is also what's being used by your PC. The 192.168 range is assumed to be class C subnets, with a netmask of [255.255.255.0](https://255.255.255.0) (or /24, depending on what notation is being used), so if you use [192.168.25.0](https://192.168.25.0) all of your nodes would need to start with "192.168.25" -- similarly, if you choose [192.168.0.0](https://192.168.0.0), all of your nodes would need to start with "192.168.0". In your dhcpcd.conf, you want to use that "/" notation for your address to tell it what the subnet size is, so you'd put in something like "[192.168.0.10/24](https://192.168.0.10/24)". Then, the Pi will know that all traffic for 192.168.0 addresses belongs to that interface; the "static routers" field will be the address that any non-192.168.0 traffic gets sent to for further processing. *tl;dr: your ip\_address most likely needs to be changed to match your PC's address range, and include the appropriate subnet mask.* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Qiao-ke · 2019-12-03 21:22 alright I have done the things you suggested and I can ping the Pi from computers in the LAN, but when I "sudo ./mis server" I get "Telnet Unable to open ipv4 port: Error -1 (98)" Any idea what that could be? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mholger · 2019-12-03 22:10 I would guess, most likely, that either something is already listening on that port, or that you changed the IPv4 adapter address in Mystic's config. Go into Mystic's config, under Servers > Configure Servers > Telnet, and make sure the "IPV4 Adapter" is set to "0.0.0.0" (which basically means "all available IPv4 interfaces"), and that the "Port" is set to something appropriate (23 is the default telnet port; some other common ports for BBSes are 2023 and 2223). Generally speaking, ports 1-1024 are reserved for system ("root") services, and >1024 are available for user services. To see if something is already using the port you're trying to bind to, you can use the `lsof` tool (which you might have to install...), and run it, as root, with the proper port (ie: `lsof -i :23`). If something is using that port, it'll give you some process information back and you can chase it down. If the port's available, it'll return nothing... Hopefully that's helpful and not too rambling! Cheers, and good luck :) _quick edit to add: lsof will need root, so `sudo` as necessary..._