Hi folks,

I've been toying with the idea of setting up a tilde for awhile. I think I'm finally getting about there.

Oddly, back in the day I ran what I always called a BBS: first with standard BBS
software under OS/2, and then giving people essentially dialup shell access to a
FreeBSD system, and eventually a Linux system running the WorldVU Atlantis BBS software, which was a thin menu atop Linux. All of those had Fidonet, and Usenet via UUCP once I could get it.

Anyhow, I don't need to bore you all with the details, other than I'd like to make something of a cross between a BBS and a shell server, as I ran into occasionally in the early 90s: A Unix system, usually menu-driven, offering access to programs like pine, tin, and gopher.

So.... some questions.

Does anybody have good new user registration code that is shared somewhere?

How does one go about getting listed on tildeverse.org?

I already run some Tilde-relevant services (Usenet and NNCP). Would somebody be
willing to peer with me with the tilde.* newsgroups? Could I get the NNCP service listed on tildeverse.org?

If I were to make a Fidonet-NNTP gateway available for people, would there be interest in others carrying Fidonet? That is, you wouldn't have to run a Fidonet stack on your end; just peer with my NNTP server to get the gatewayed hierarchy and route mail to the gateway in a certain way.

During the days that my BBS/shell server was running Unix, I used ifmail/ifcico to do exactly this. People read Fidonet groups using tin and exchanged Fidonet mail using pine. This software is still out there!

- John
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 2022-06-30, John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> wrote:

If I were to make a Fidonet-NNTP gateway available for people, would there be interest in others carrying Fidonet? That is, you wouldn't have to run a Fidonet stack on your end; just peer with my NNTP server to get the gatewayed hierarchy and route mail to the gateway in a certain way.

I would like to encourage you do do this. I find the idea appealing.
It would be nice to have some documentation on how to route mail in
that certain way.

-Ben
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 2022-06-30, bencollver@tilde.pink <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote:

On 2022-06-30, John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> wrote:

If I were to make a Fidonet-NNTP gateway available for people, would there be
interest in others carrying Fidonet? That is, you wouldn't have to run a
Fidonet stack on your end; just peer with my NNTP server to get the gatewayed
hierarchy and route mail to the gateway in a certain way.

I would like to encourage you do do this. I find the idea appealing.
It would be nice to have some documentation on how to route mail in
that certain way.

Sounds good. I'll keep you all updated!

- John
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

Does anybody have good new user registration code that is shared somewhere?

Most tildes post the code for their websites including signup scripts on github or tildegit. Like tilde.club has it on github (https://github.com/tildeclub/makeuser) and tildegit.

How does one go about getting listed on tildeverse.org?

You create a PR against https://tildegit.org/tildeverse/site/src/branch/master/members.json
Cant remember how long your tilde has to be around before being accepted in to tildeverse though.. think its 6 months or something. But I could be wrong.

I already run some Tilde-relevant services (Usenet and NNCP). Would somebody be
willing to peer with me with the tilde.* newsgroups? Could I get the NNCP service listed on tildeverse.org?

Not sure if peering is something we are looking to do on non-tilde services. But probably best to ask tomasino on irc or it might get noticed on here.

If I were to make a Fidonet-NNTP gateway available for people, would there be interest in others carrying Fidonet? That is, you wouldn't have to run a Fidonet stack on your end; just peer with my NNTP server to get the gatewayed hierarchy and route mail to the gateway in a certain way.

I've been looking for a way to properly utilize fidonet inside my tildes for a long time. I know NNTP is an option but wanted a more authentic way to handle it.. Haven't gotten anywhere though. Using the tilde NNTP feeds on my BBS is the only way I really have the two worlds combined. Also have a telnet client setup with connection info for my bbs on tilde.club.

~deepend

On 2022-07-03, Deepend <deepend@rdnetbbs.com.remove-2l8-this> wrote:

To: John Goerzen

Does anybody have good new user registration code that is shared somewhere?

Most tildes post the code for their websites including signup scripts on github
or tildegit. Like tilde.club has it on github (https://github.com/tildeclub/makeuser) and tildegit.

Thanks! I should have been more clear; I want something where a potential user could telnet or ssh to the system and get an account set up immediately. That is a bit more complex, but maybe I'll just write one.

How does one go about getting listed on tildeverse.org?

You create a PR against https://tildegit.org/tildeverse/site/src/branch/master/members.json
Cant remember how long your tilde has to be around before being accepted in to
tildeverse though.. think its 6 months or something. But I could be wrong.

Gotcha, thanks.

I already run some Tilde-relevant services (Usenet and NNCP). Would somebody
be
willing to peer with me with the tilde.* newsgroups? Could I get the NNCP >> service listed on tildeverse.org?

Not sure if peering is something we are looking to do on non-tilde services. But probably best to ask tomasino on irc or it might get noticed on here.

What differentiates a tilde from a non-tilde service? I guess I'm trying to get
NNCP recognized as a Tilde service here, and to do proper peering for the tilde.* newsgroups as well, as some of the other Tilde systems are doing.

If I were to make a Fidonet-NNTP gateway available for people, would there be
interest in others carrying Fidonet? That is, you wouldn't have to run a
Fidonet stack on your end; just peer with my NNTP server to get the gatewayed
hierarchy and route mail to the gateway in a certain way.

I've been looking for a way to properly utilize fidonet inside my tildes for a
long time. I know NNTP is an option but wanted a more authentic way to handle
it.. Haven't gotten anywhere though. Using the tilde NNTP feeds on my BBS is the only way I really have the two worlds combined. Also have a telnet client
setup with connection info for my bbs on tilde.club.

Back in the 90s, I ran a BBS for awhile under VBBS/OS2. When I migrated the board to FreeBSD and then to Linux, it became, at first, a system with dialup shell access, and then later it took on a more menufied interface using WorldVU Atlantis.

Both of those used the native Fidonet tools available in Linux; first Fidogate, and then I migrated to ifmail. I'd call it equally authentic; ifmail has been around a /long/ time. It is a different (and, IMHO, much better) interface to what I saw with the DOS-based BBSs. For instance, every BBS with a DOS heritage
I've connected to still has a "high water mark" message counter that can't really reflect whether individual posts have been read, while standard .newsrc can.

I've explained the difference like this:

Synchronet's NNTP support brings Unix-style stuff into the BBS. ifmail brings Fido-style stuff into Linux. That is, your native FTN message store is literally INN for echomail and maildir/mbox for netmail.

Back in the day, I offered people Pine to send email (both Internet via UUCP and
Fidonet via ifmail) and rtin for Fidonet echomail (and a very limited selection of the Usenet newsgroups I could afford to carry over the long-distance UUCP link).

So, Synchronet offers an NNTP interface to a BBS backend, while ifmail offers an
INN transport that uses Fido tech. (Basically you spool to a file that works in
a manner akin to UUCP or NNCP from inn)

Since I already operate a public NNTP peer with a full set of non-binary newsgroups, it is pretty easy for me to build upon this to simply use standard INN mechanisms to separate Fido feeds from others for peering purposes.

Synchronet doesn't actually do NNTP peering; it connects as a reader and downloads articles as a reader to its local database. I don't think the resource requirements would scale to 47,000 newsgroups and I'm also concerned, even if I could dedicate disk space to duplicating all that, if Synchronet would
actually be able to handle that amount natively, and the administrative hassle of keeping the newsgroup list in sync.

(The other benefit of proper NNTP peering is near-instant article propagation around the network, and ability to feed other sites efficiently.)

I think there's a lot of overlap between the BBS ethos and tilde, and I'm glad to see you participating here (and to whatever extent my opinion matters, I think a Synchronet BBS ought to be able to be considered a full tilde participant as much as anything else; it speaks all the common protocols, just with a different interface; though I'll note there's even a CLI for synchronet).
Unix-hosted BBSs were relatively rare, but they were certainly a thing; there were a handful of BBS programs for Unix even back then (with varying degrees of integration into *nix). WorldVU Atlantis that I ran used the Unix account and security system, etc., and was essentially a menu-driven shell atop it. I let people get to bash if they wanted, even when I ran WorldVU.

SDF is a prominent example I can think of. There was also a university-affiliated BBS near me that fit this also.

- John
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

El 30-06-22 a las 14:18, bencollver@tilde.pink escribió:

On 2022-06-30, John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> wrote:

If I were to make a Fidonet-NNTP gateway available for people, would there be
interest in others carrying Fidonet? That is, you wouldn't have to run a
Fidonet stack on your end; just peer with my NNTP server to get the gatewayed
hierarchy and route mail to the gateway in a certain way.

I would like to encourage you do do this. I find the idea appealing.
It would be nice to have some documentation on how to route mail in
that certain way.

-Ben

Me too. I installed qodem in my tilde so that people could access BBSs
and I myself use it to connect to some networks. Still, fidonet is from
an older age and I still don't understand pretty well how it works
because you have to send messages offline but I'm not sure if my
responses didn't get uploaded properly.

It'd be great to have an actual tutorial and wiki to learn how to
interact with fidonet, how to use multimail effectively, etc.

--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 6/29/22 23:40, John Goerzen wrote:

Hi folks,

I've been toying with the idea of setting up a tilde for awhile. I think I'm finally getting about there.

Will you post URIs here so I may go poke around? If you have a Usenet
server I'd like to see the conversation.

I'm also looking for a BBS with POP3/SMTP access for a secure email
account. BBS tends to have very secure email, but I don't want to log
into a terminal to read it. Do you know where I might find what I seek?

--

Tengri Temujin
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113