======================================================================= Notes on using Harmony BBS with Squish This file has been included to ease the integration of the popular program Squish (tm) by Scott Dudley with Harmony BBS. You should have a full understanding of both programs before hand! ======================================================================= With the new verison of Harmony BBS (v1.1), came the arrival of a new format for all the message bases and the post office. This format was originally writtem by Scott Dudley for the Maximus BBS program, but has become widely accepted throughout the BBS community because of it flexibility and speed. Anyway, enough small talk, lets get to it ... =================== Step 1 : Make sure that you have defined all of the message bases that you would like on Harmony BBS. More can be added later, but it will take a lot more text editing. Step 2 : Load up HMC from version 1.1 of Harmony BBS, and move to the message base section. Now go to the menu choice called SQUISH and run it. HMC will scan through your message bases and create a text file called AREAS.SQU in your main Harmony BBS directory. Step 3 : Exit HMC, and with your favorite text editor, load up your SQUISH.CFG file. The first thing you have to configure is the post office section of your BBS. Go to the message areas section within your squish.cfg file, and change your NETMAIL area to read : NetArea NETMAIL C:\HM\SYSTEM\NETMAIL -$m300 -$d365 -p{net_addr} The directory (c:\hm\system\netmail) should point to Harmony BBS's system directory, and MUSY have the word NETMAIL attached to the end of it. The -p{net_addr} parameter is optional, and should only be there if you are running a networked BBS. For more information on the -p parameter, refer you the Squish documentation. Another important note should be made here. If you are running a front end mailer that expects your net mail to be in the classic Fidonet *.MSG format (such as Front Door), you should NOT define you net mail directory in the way just described. If you do, your mailer will never be able to find your netmail and will become fairly useless. Instead, you are going to have to create 2 separate mail areas. One for Harmony BBS, and another for your mailer. Example : NetArea NETMAIL d:\hm\mail -p{net_addr} EchoArea HMMAIL d:\hm\system\netmail -$m300 -$d365 -p{net_addr} Notice the Harmony BBS's mail is no longer recognized as a netmail area, rather an EchoArea. This setup just seemed to work better for this type of configuration, but you can try setting up both as a NetArea. The $m300 and $d365 tells squish to only allow 300 private messages within Harmony's post office, and keep them for a maximum of 365 days. This is what Harmony BBS expects to see also, so those numbers should not be changed. Step 4 : Now simply merge the AREAS.SQU file that HMC has created into the rest of the areas section in squish. There are only 2 things which you may have to change in each of these lines. Here is an example line from within the AREAS.SQU file : EchoArea FIRESIDE C:\TELE\MSGS\Fireside -$m40 -$d14 -p1:260/445 IF you have not defined a NETNAME from within Harmony BBS during each message bases creation, the second word (FIRESIDE) will not be present. But since Squish looks for this name, you must add one. If the message base is a networked message base, it MUST match the area name expected by the network. If the message base is a local message base to your system only, this line MUST still be in the squish.cfg file, otherwise, no houework will ever be done to it. Simply create an artificial area name, and place it there. The only other thing that may have to be changed in each line is the -p{net_addr} parameter. If you are not running a networked BBS at all, simply erase that parameter from the line. If you are running it, make sure the that net_addr coincides with the address required for that message base. Finally, if you are hosting that message base for any other systems, you will have to add those addresses manually to each area. DO NOT change the 3rd parameter on this line of text. It points to the EXACT directory and file of each message base. It is used from both within Squish and Harmony BBS. =================== Finally, some notes on maintaining you message bases. First, and most importantly -- Whenever mail is IMPORTED into your message bases, or whenver SQPACK is executed, HMHOUSE -M should be run immediately afterwards. Doing so lets Harmony BBS know of any new changes to all the message bases. For those of you who were running Harmony BBS v1.0, you will be pleased to see the amount of time HMHOUSE -M now takes! Secondly, it is propably a good idea to run SQPACK at least once a day. For those not familiar with it, you would run it is sort of like this : SQPACK c:\hm\msgs\*.sqd You should also run it on your post office squish file as much as possible also : SQPACK c:\hm\system\netmail.sqd SQPACK should ALWAYS be run after a user has deleted a message from within a message base. How do you know when this is done you ask? Ahhh.. whenever someone deleted a message, Harmony BBS will create a semaphore file called DELETED.MSG in its home directory. Your batch file should look for the existance of this file, and call SQPACK if it it is found. Make sure your batch file also deletes DELETED.MSG otherwise it will be called constantly after each user logs off (not that this is a bad thing, but it will cause a lot of excess house work to be done). Also be sure to run HMHOUSE -M after SQPACK. ================================ Well, thats pretty much the long and short of it. It isn't really difficult at all to do, just make sure you know the concepts before doing the work. It makes life a lot easier.