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               LoraBBS Professional Edition - Version 2.99.18
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                         Preliminary Documentation
                              Version 2.99.18

        Coyright (c) 1996 by Marco Maccaferri. All rights reserved.


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                                Installation
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Lora will ship with a ready-to-run configuration that allows you to plug in
your modem and start you BBS system in a matter of minutes, with minimal
configuration changes (someone may call this Plug-and-Play).

To install Lora, simply unpack the original distribution package on an
empty directory and type install. You must use an empty directory, even if
you are upgrading from Lora 2.4x, since the data files are all changed but
someone may have the same name, if you install the new program over a
previous installation you may overwrite some files and you will not be able
to import your existing configuration to the new version.

If this is a new installation, you need to change some default values to
your needs, before starting your BBS. You should change the 'Global / Site
informations' dialog and, if necessary, the 'Modem / Hardware' and 'Modem /
Command Strings' dialogs. The default configuration is designed to run on
the COM2 serial port at a speed of 19200 bps and with the simple ATZ
initialisation command. Change this values to reflect your hardware
requirements.

If you are upgrading from a previous beta release, you must run the upd.exe
program before starting Lora. If you don't find this program in the
distribution file, then it is not required (it isn't a bug, just no data
files upgrade are required).

You can start exploring your new BBS by issuing the 'System / Local login'
command. As a new user you are assigned the levels defined with the 'BBS /
New users' dialog. If these levels are too low for you (as a sysop you may
want to have an higher access level), just log off and go to the 'Manager /
User editor' dialog. Your name should be the first displayed on screen.
Change the 'Security' dialog and the 'Limits' field to reflect your needs.


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                           Notes for Linux users
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The installation program will be extracted with not execution permission.
You should manually change that with the following command:

chmod a+e INSTALL

After the installation program unpacks all the required files, you should
manually change the execution permissions for the executable files, in
order to run the program.

The following commands should be issued from the command line:

chmod a+e lc
chmod a+e lora
chmod a+e lfile
chmod a+e lmsg
chmod a+e luser
chmod a+e comm.dll
chmod a+e lora_api.dll
chmod a+e msgbase.dll
chmod a+e bbs.dll

As you have noticed there are some .dll files. These files are shared
libraries (other systems calls these files Dynamic Link Libraries, so the
extension of .dll). In order for Lora to find these libraries you should
add the directory that contains these files to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH
environment variabile.

My suggestion is to create a symbolic link in the /sbin directory for the
executable files (lora, lc, lmsg, luser and lfile) and a symbolic link in
the /lib directory for the .dll files (comm.dll, lora_api.dll, msgbase.dll
and bbs.dll).