Online Amateur Radio Community Wiki

Or “What I have learnt on my journey”…

First you will need to edit your Config File either on the UI or within a terminal to enable LinMail, add a mail user name and password and allocate an application, shown in red text below:

• Enable LinMail by inserting ‘LINMAIL’ either before the first port, or after the last port but before 'APPLICATIONS'
• Add the BBS ‘APPLICATION’. This takes the form;
  • APPLICATION n,CMD,New Command,Call,Alias,Quality,L2Alias
    • See https://www.cantab.net/users/john.wiseman/Documents/BPQCFGFile.html
• Add a BBS username and password
  • <example required>

Once done, save your edit and restart BPQ

<sudo systemctl restart bpq>

You should now see an extended top menu on the main page. Including links for ‘MailMgmt’ and ‘WebMail’

Many boxes to complete and lots of checks to get right. Let's try to take these one at a time.

• BBS Call: Your node callsign
• SYSOP Call: Your callsign.
• H Route: Your node's 'address'; the # indicates the county, followed by country and continent codes a.. separated by a dot.
• Redirect msgs to BBS Call to SYSOP Call: Self explanatory (I think)
• BBS APPL No: The SSID of your BBS; by convention usually 1
• Streams: Maximum number of simultaneous contacts. 32 is good enough

Mostly self explnanatory but beware of the double negatives

WP Destinations is where you would list stations you wish to receive any WP Updates generated by your node Housekeeping (more of which later)

TBH - not really sure of these. We need an edit…

Initial description which can be fully completed at a later date

Example of a node and a BBS - descriptions as required

Screensnip & description

The complex bit - lots of work here

The only problem to be solved in forwarding is where you should forward a message to next. If the message goes to the next-best BBS then it is assumed that BBS will pass it on correctly. Each BBS doing it's part correctly forms the network magic. All you need to do is work out one step.

A whole hierarical address (HA) would be something like MM0UHR@MM0UHR.#77.gbr.euro.ww

The part before the @ is the TO. The part after the @ is the AT. TO@AT.

In the AT part of the HA, the parts go from the most general at the right to the most specific at the left, separated by dots.

“WW” stands for World Wide. This will become important if we colonise Mars, but for the time being mail addresses usually leave it off and the software assumes it. It is still used when setting up routing rules in your BBS though.

“Euro” is the continent.

“GBR” is the country.

“#77” is the region.

Different parts of the world agree on the continent codes and within that they agree their own country codes. Each country organises their own region codes.

When a message needs to be forwarded, every BBS you can forward a message to is scored to see how specifically it matches the HA of the message.

For a personal message, the message is forwareded on the single node that best matches the address. If more than one node is equally good, the one first alphabetically is used.

For a bulletin, the message is forwareded to all the nodes that best match the address. If more than one node is equally good, they all get a copy.

An HA for a message has to match all the parts that are specified in the forwarding rules. Rules that match more parts score more highly than rules that match fewer parts, but rules that specify something that isn't in the HA score nothing at all.

Here is an example for a personal message to MM0UHR@MM0UHR.#77.gbr.euro

In this case the message would be passed to GM7RYR because it matches the most parts of the HA address.

A message to GM0CQV@GM0CQV.#75.gbr.euro would fail to match GM7RYR because #77 does not equal #75. In this case the message would fall back to MM3NDH as matching the implied WW.

The software has some rules baked into it. This is mostly only important for bulletins, but they count everywhere.

A message to MM0UHR@MM0UHR.#77.gbr.euro is assumed to be MM0UHR@MM0UHR.#77.gbr.euro.ww to help match BBS forwarding rules to WW.

A message to @EURO is assumed to be @EURO.WW.

A message to @GBR is assumed to be @GBR.EURO.WW.

A message to @#77 is too specific. The software only has implied rules for countries and continents and won't assume GBR on the end of a bare #77 route.

Most messages are sent with HA addresses because they don't need you to know everything, you just have to send the message to the next-best BBS you know about yourself and everyone doing that will get the message where it needs to go, but there are other options.

If the forwarding BBS has a value in the TO field, any message with that whole value before the @ in an address will go to that BBS. There is no special intelligence here. Any string that matches will do. Put “Bob” in the to field for a BBS and a message to bob@not-a-real-node will forward to that BBS. It might not get processed correctly from there, but that is network magic.

In the same way, if the part after the @ matches the whole line of an AT rule the message will go that way.

In Scotland this is used to provide an @SCOT bulliten service. Every node in Scotland puts SCOT in the AT box of every neighbour within Scotland and bullitens to ALL@SCOT will be forwared to every node in Scotland. (this may be a work in progress)

SCOT is not a valid HA destination so this is entirely done with non-HA addresses and works well.

The problem of @#77 being too specific for the software to understand could be fixed by creating a #77 AT rule for your forwarding partners, but they would then have the same problem of not recognising it. Every node in your region would need to agree to make the short rule work. That's not to say it can't be done, but it requires more coordinatation than relying on the existing HA rules.

There are several scenarios that could be true. Pick the one that best matches your install right now and it should tell you how to set up forwarding rules.

You are the only BBS you can see. There may be other packet stations around but you are in a little network island of your own.

Set yourself up as a user in mail and configure the account as a BBS. Everyone else will create and read mail on your node. It won't go anywhere so no forwarding rules are required.

This scenario is missing from the table below because no mail is forwarded.

Most likely if you have just set up. You can see one BBS that's already running and doing network magic, you just want in. This is also the case if there are several BBSs but you only care about one Big BBS that can do all the collation and distribution.

In the network map, this could be MM3NDH or 2M0IIG.

Create a user for the other BBS. Set them up as a BBS in their settings. In the forwarding table set “WW” as the only rule for floods and personals.

They do the same for you and all mail specifically for you is delivered via an implicit AT match.

Several people have set up in your region. There may be a gateway to the wider network, but that's not you.

In the network map this would be MM0UHR.

Create a user for every BBS you can see directly. Set them up as a BBS in their settings.

Set WW as the only rule for floods for all your neighbour BBSs. Mail to any one of them specifically will be picked up as an implicit AT rule for that BBS and go there directly.

If there is a hidden BBS you can't see but you know exists, add the full HA for that BBS to the personals rules for next best BBS you can see. This means knowing the BBSs in your area and how best to reach them.

If there is a gateway node, set them up with a WW rule in personals. Anything not explicitly or implicitly handled above means it goes to the wider world. If you can't see the gateway, add the WW rule to the next-best BBS you can see.

Your region is self contained except for one node that can see out of your region and that node is you.

In the network map this is meant to me GM0BKS.

The node outside your region gets WW in floods and personal.

The nodes inside your region get set up with your region address [e.g. #77.gbr.euro] in floods. Personals are handled by implicit or explicit rules as in the section above.

You can only see nodes inside your region but you can see a node others can't. You also divide the network in two but don't have the convenience of it being on a region boundary.

In the network map this would be GM7RYR.

The same situation of making BBS users for each BBS you can see and adding explicit rules for personals in case there are nodes you can't see behind nodes you can.

Flood rules work region wide automatically because whichever side they come in on, they should go out the other.

Your region has two or more links to other regions and they are managed by different nodes.

Set yourself up as the next best scenario above. Then add the other known regions to the next-best node you can see. This can be tricky because it might be the next city over or it might be the next continent over. This is expert level stuff and may be expanded on later.

Mostly self explanatory