Version 0.95b notes: -------------------- I fixed that problem with the forwarding - where it would forward the request, get a reply, and start a cycle of messages that said "Invalid password" back and forth. Version 0.94b notes: -------------------- (Sorry this didn't get added for v0.94b!) I chopped my main function into smaller functions and made the code neater, used CodePRobe on it, and found a possible un-ending loop - fixed it. Looks good so far. Hope you're all happy with it so far! Version 0.93b notes: -------------------- Basicly, this is a new feature update. I've refined it a little, and added: - FORWARDING of echo requests to systems of your choice. This is the main reason for this update. It's in testing, so I won't be surprised if there's bugs! Version 0.92b notes: -------------------- - Stopped putting comments after AREA lines, because Paragon didn't like it. , , they looked so nice, too. I moved them to the line before, which should work OK. - Added SEARCH keyword in AreaFix.CFG file, so instead of searching for the correct NetMail base, you tell ME where it is. Saves some trouble of scanning thru all your bases to find it numbered 128 or something. Updated this doc to show how it's used too. - Fixed Re-Scan requests, they used to cause a re-scan of the wrong base. Thanx to Gert Pedersen. - Fixed message header size... Lattice was padding the structure to make it end on a long-word I guess. Thanx again Gert Pedersen! - Made AreaFix check each of your AREA lines to make sure it is a valid echomail area. It will remove any that aren't. Even more automates the process, as now you don't even have to remove areas from this list, it will take them out if the areatag or the message base name is less than 2 characters, if the type is not EchoMail, or if the access level is above 15. Paragon AreaFix v0.95b by Russel Miranda ---------------------------------------- All standard disclaimers apply.... I am not responsible for any distruction or havoc this program may cause on your otherwise perfect computer system. Although, I will feel sincerely sorry, and attempt to rectify the bug that caused said failure. I don't guarantee it to do anything, except (if left in original un-altered form) take up space on your floppy or hard disk drive. This program is freely distributable, so upload it to any and every BBS you can afford to send it to, give it to your friend, or give it to your users group's BBS sysop. ==================================== What is this program SUPPOSED to do? ==================================== Glad you asked... Paragon AreaFix is a work-almost-alike to AreaFix of the IBM and compatible world. What it does, is automate the connection and disconnection of nodes to your AREAS.CTL file, thus making it possible for other nodes that you feed to add/subtract echo message areas without your intervention. It is basicly a time and frusteration saving device, very useful for those who have the masochistic desire to become a net or regional Echo Coordinator or hub. Paragon AreaFix (known from here on in this documentation as AreaFix) will save you the trouble of finding the area number that matches with the correct area tag, adding an address to the list, or subtracting one, every time the system you feed wants the new GEE_WHIZ echo... ;^) ================= How does it work? ================= Simple. If a node you feed would like to add or remove an echo base, he/she simply sends your AreaFix a NetMail (Matrix) message. On the subject line of that message should be a password, plus any of the optional commands that are described below. AreaFix will detect a message addressed to it, and act accordingly by modifying your AREAS.CTL file. A reply will be generated to the system from which the message originated, and everyone will be (hopefully) happy. ===================== What do I need to do? ===================== I. The Config File - OK.... Included somewhere in the archive you obtained should be a sample configuration file. This file is VERY important! So you can modify this file, I have included a discription of each of the keyword lines that are recognized. They are: A. Passwords - You must place a password for EACH AND EVERY system you wish to allow AreaFix sessions. The syntax of a password line is as follows: PASS "PASS" alerts AreaFix that a password line follows. is the address of the system to which this line applies. is the password, maximum of nine characters, and is NOT case sensitive. is the level of security you wish to grant this system, more about this is explained in the PROTECT statement's description. If a PASS line is not found for a system, AreaFix will claim "Invalid Password" and refuse to process the system's message. B. Aliases - AreaFix will automaticly process messages addressed to "Areafix" if their destination is your system. You can also get it to respond to other names by placing them on ALIAS lines. The syntax for an alias line is: ALIAS Where is the alias to which it should respond. You may have an unlimited amount of alias lines, within the limits of available memory, but it should be noted that having a large number of them slows down the config file parsing, and the command message parsing. C. Protection lines - Every message area not "protected" is assumed to have a minimum security level of 0. Protecting a message area prevents systems with low security levels from accessing it. To add an echo base with a security level of 10, a system must have a security level of 10 or above. Security levels can range from -32768 thru 32767. If a system requests a "Query" of available areas, the reply message will only show echo bases that are available to his security level. Protection lines have the following syntax: PROTECT Where is the tag of the echomail base, and security level is the lowest security level that is allowed to add this area. D. Input and Output - It is possible to have Paragon AreaFix operate on other files than your AREAS.CTL. If for testing or other purposes it this becomes necessary, you may change the input and output files via the "INPUT" and "OUTPUT" keywords. Their syntax is: INPUT OUTPUT Where and are the alternate input and output files respectivly. The default is, of course, Areas.CTL in the BBS's default path. F. Your NetMail area - AreaFix needs to know what message base to search for the messages addressed to it that it is to process. This message base must have an access level lower than 16, must have the areatag MATRIX, and must be of type "NetMail." To tell areafix what area to search, use the "SEARCH" keyword. It MUST appear in the configuration file, or AreaFix will abort. The syntax for the "SEARCH" keyword is: SEARCH where is the number of the message base. G. Forwarding protection - If left un-set, any system can request an echo from you and if you are not linked to it, but can get it from another system, AreaFix will send an AreaFix message to that system. When the first message is received in that echo, an entry will be created for it and each system it is to be connected to. To prevent a system from accessing the automatic forwarding, you can set the protection of the forwarding higher than the clearance of the individual system. The syntax for a forwarding protection is: FORWARD where is the minimum security level that may access the auto-forwarding. H. Misc. notes about the config file - Comments may be indicated by a semi-colon (;) character, which makes the config file parser ignore the rest of the line. Keywords should be the first non-whitespace characters on the line. Not all syntax errors are "fatal", the program may continue after skipping the incorrect line. II. The Areas.CTL file - The Areas.CTL file should be as defined by the Paragon BBS documentation. In summary, the file has two types of lines: A. Area lines - The first non-comment line should be an AREA line. An area line signals the start of a block of addresses, all recieving the echo this Area represents. They should have the following syntax: AREA Where is the message base number of an EchoMail base. B. Address lines - Lines following the AREA lines should be address lines, listing the systems that are connected to each EchoMail base. The syntax should be: Where is the address of the system. The first address listed after an AREA line is considered to be the "feed" of that echo, and that system will be notified of such whenever it receives a list of the areas to which it is connected. C. Comments - AreaFix will wipe out any comments put in the Areas.CTL file. At the top of the new Areas.CTL file, AreaFix will place a small header, and on every line before each AREA line it places a comment indicating the areatag for the message base. These comments are simply to make the file more readable to humans, and may be deleted if the sysop so desires. III. AreaFix.HPT - To keep track of the last message processed, AreaFix creates a "HighPoint" or "High Water Mark" file. To cause AreaFix to re- scan the entire MATRIX base, you can delete this file. WARNING: Doing so will cause AreaFix to re-process all of the messages addressed to it, and is NOT recommended at this time. In future versions, AreaFix will mark messages that it has processed as "received" or optionally delete them, but it does NOT at this time. IV. AreaFix.LOG AreaFix keeps a log of all sessions in AreaFix.LOG. This file lists times AreaFix was run, indicates what messages were processed, what their origin was, and what changes were made while processing the message. AreaFix creates the log in a manner to make it easy to see the beginning of each session, and the processing of each message. It creates a bracket that starts at the beginning of each session, and runs down to the end of the session. A second bracket indicates the processing of each message, and any errors that occur. Error marks appear anywhere AreaFix encountered an error. The mark indicates the severity of the error. An "E" indicates a fatal error, one that AreaFix was forced to abort after. A "<" symbol indicates an error that AreaFix was able to work around, usually a syntax error in a config file, or another mild error. A ":" is a special error symbol indicating an invalid password in a message it was attempting to process. V. EchoReq.LST This is the list of echos you can get from other systems. It is used for forwarding of requests for echos you don't have. This file has two different types of lines. A. System lines. These lines alert AreaFix to which system you are going to begin a list of echos for. The format for a system line is: #SYSTEM Where is the address of the system (in the normal Net/Node format. is the AreaFix session password you have set up with the sysop of this system. B. Echo tag lines. These lines are what make up the list of echo conferences you can get from the system. The format for an echo tag line is: Where is the echo conference tag. VI. AreaFix.QUE This is where AreaFix will put the list of requests that are waiting to be filled. When a request for an echo comes in, and it is forwarded, AreaFix puts the name of the echo, plus the addresses of all systems that are to be connected to this echo when it comes in. AreaFix will scan this list, and then compare the list with the area tags that Paragon has in memory. If it finds a match, it creates an entry in AREAS.CTL and adds all the systems listed. The line is then deleted. You can trick AreaFix into adding a bunch of systems for you by entering lines into this file by yourself. The format of each line is: .... Where, as usual, is the echo conference tag, and the 's are the addresses of all the systems that are to be connected to that echo. It will NOT add any system that is already connected to the echo, and it will not create duplicate AREA lines in AREAS.CTL if the area already exists. ======================================== What is the format of a command message? ======================================== I. The message header - These are all parts of the header of the message: A. The TO: line - The message must be addressed to "Areafix" or another alias as configured in the AreaFix.CFG file. B. The Subject line - The subject line has the following format: [-cmd] [-cmd] [-cmd] 1. - is the password set up for the system that sent this message. Passwords can be set in the AreaFix.CFG file, see there for more details. 2. Subject line commands - These options are all available by placing them on the subject line of the command message, after the password, separated by at least one space. a. Query - A system may request a list of all available areas by attaching a query request onto the subject line. The syntax is simply "-q". The system will see only a list of areas that are available to it, with areas that are currently active marked with an asterisk (*). b. List request - This command will attempt to send (converted to a message) the file AvailAreas.TXT. The intention of this function was to provide a list of areas each system can request, but it could be used for other purposes as well. The syntax is "-l". c. Re-scan request When this command is present, it causes the "High message sent via net" pointer to be set at the lowest message number in the each message area listed in the message body. The syntax of this is "-r". II. The message body - The message body is simply a list of areatags. If the areatag is preceded by a minus sign (-), the system sending the message is removed from the list of systems getting that EchoMail base. If nothing precedes the areatag, it is added (and/or rescanned, see previous section I-B-2-c). The list should be terminated by a "tear line", which is simply three minus signs (-) in a row (---). Paragon AreaFix will ignore any text in a line following a semi- colon (;), allowing comments to be sent along with the message. III. A sample message - Here follows a sample message: Header: | |From: Sysop |To : AreaFix |Dest: 268/106 |Subj: password -q -l -r ====================================================== Body: |AMIGA |-AMIGA_PROG |AMY_POINT |PARAGON |--- | This message would have the effect of: Requesting a query list, requesting an available areas list, and adding and/or re-scanning the AMIGA echo, removing the source system from the AMIGA_PROG echo, adding and/or rescanning the AMY_POINT echo, and adding and/or rescanning the PARAGON echo. ============================= What's this forwarding stuff? ============================= Well, you may not get all the echos in the world, because no one wants them from you, and you don't read them. But, if a system that you feed decides he wants to connect to one, it would be a real pain to have to do all the adding by yourself, so AreaFix can help out. You just provide it with a list of echos, where it can get them from, and what AREAFIX session password to use when sending a command message. If a request comes in to your system asking for connection to one of these echos, AreaFix will reply "Forwarded Request" and it will do just that. It will send out an AreaFix message to the system you have indicated, requesting connection to that echo. When the first message comes is imported for that conference, Paragon MailProc will create the appropriate message base. The next time AreaFix is run, it will notice the echo is available, and correctly modify the AREAS.CTL file to connect the echo to your feed, and the system that requested it. Quite useful. This is still in development, but should work fine. If you find any problems with this, PLEASE report them immediately. ==================================== What's in store for Paragon AreaFix? ==================================== ************* Note: I just added this, it SHOULD work. See above! Well, there are a lot of things I plan to do with it. First and foremost is to have it handle forwarding of requests... This way, if one of the systems you feed requests an EchoMail area that you do not currently recieve, and they have a sufficient access, it will scan a list and find out which of your feeds (if any) DOES have this echo, then generate a message to that system's AreaFix (or equivalent) requesting connection. Once the area is connected, and messages start comming in, it will connect the system that originally requested this echo. As I said, this is a future plan, I've got a lot of things to work out before this is done. ************* Other ideas include addition of some form of automatic message/file sending to systems, as in a "Robot" mail program. This is even further on the horizon. ================================= What do I owe for this program?!? ================================= Nothing! You owe absolutely NOTHING. On the other hand, I won't exactly stop you from showering me or my BBS with Public Domain or ShareWare software. ============================== Can I get the source for this? ============================== You CAN, but only by request, and I don't want it freely distributed. Paragon AreaFix was written completely in C, and compiled with what I think is currently the BEST compiler for the Amiga, Lattice C 5.04. If you are thinking of writing some utilities for Paragon, the source may be of use to you. Simply call up my BBS (listed below) and leave me a message. I will probably reply immediately, and attach the file to the reply. On your next call, you will (probably!) be able to download it. I only wish to keep track of where the source is going, and what it's being used for. I do ask something in return, though... that you upload to me the finished product if you write a PD, ShareWare or FreeWare utility. I am kind of greedy, and I want all the latest and greatest Paragon BBS utilities that I can get my hands on! ================================================ Where do I send the salutations and suggestions? ================================================ All suggestions/compliments/constructive criticism can usually get to me by: My BBS: (currently:) The Enterprise BBS Fido Address (1:268/106) Bushkill, Pa. (717) 588-7636 or, leave a message to me on: The Inner Circle, Paragon support BBS: (508) 393-3875 GOOD LUCK!