bbs-revival

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18 discussions

Plans for #36C3 / Status Report
by Harald Welte 25 Oct '19

25 Oct '19

Dear all, sorry for the long absence. I've been distracted during the past year by too much work (both dayjob, as well as many FOSS projects) and by tons of renovation related work in my house. In any case, I finally found sime time to work on at least some of the TODO items in thsi project. I'll spare you the details (some are in the wiki and related tickets). The high level goals remain: Have a portable setup consisting of: * a PBX and reasonable numer of both analog and ISDN ports * a Livingston PM3 RAS to avoid tons of individual modems and multiport serial boards on the BBS side * set up at least a few BBSs that users can explore * a collection of physical modems, ISDN TA, and all related accessories (phone line cables, RS232 cables, adapters, etc.) that users can borrow The idea then is that at the event (36C3 will be at least the first one) people can come to the "retro BBS assembly" or whatever it will be called, and connect using terminal programs and modems/TAs which they can borrow on-site, or of course bring any old equipment they may still have. My status is as follows: * physical PBX setup (wiring, etc) is complete (16x analog,8x S0,8x Up0) * PBX configuration is complete * Livingston PM3 is configured * Synchronet BBS (one of the few BBS packages that are both FOSS and actively maintained) has been set up in a lxc container ** telnet access works ** modem access via mgetty works ** modem access via SEXPOTS works In parallel, a crew around the old BIONIC BBS has been reviving Zerberus from the dead. I'm not up to speed in terms of their detailed status, but at the very least, there's a Zerberus VM Image based on FreeDOS which works, even with real analog modems handed into the VM (I just tested it this weekend). My current work areas are: * Linux SoftPBX with multiple E1 interfaces (probably FreeSWITCH with one or two QuadE1 boards, as LCR doesn't support DAHDI boards, and HFC-E1 boards mostly only have one port per PCI slot). This SoftPBX is going to be the switch between the Portmaster and the Auerswald PBX, as well as possibly more other PBXs in the future * Get my Synchronet BBS connected to at least DOVE-Net, maybe even FidoNet to populate Message Arease with Echomail before 36C3 * Test PM3->telnet->SynchroNet * If there's time, play with other current Linux BBS software such as Mystic BBS If anyone wants to join this setup at 36C3, by all means, please do so. I could envision at least the following forms of contribution: 1) Run your own BBS. If you want to set up another BBS (or revive and old one from a backup), by all means! I can hook you up either via analog lines or S0-busses, or even only via telnet/rlogin from the Portmaster. 2) Bring client-side systems. That could be anything from a serial terminal [which we can hook up to a modem], or some vintage computer (any flavor) with terminal software [which we can hook up to a modem]. 3) Help on-site e.g. build-up and teardown, but also during the event to give support to users who show up and want to set up their Laptop with a terminal program and one of the modems and log onto the BBSs Crazy future goals (beyond 36C3): * I actually bought four STM-1 add/drop multiplexers with 16 E1 ports each. This would allow us to build a more distributed setup with PBXs at different sites and fiber connections between them. Why not have a SDH backbone at future CCC events :) * Get back to the idea of improving the FOSS VoIP-Softmodem situation to enable more people to use dial-up without any actual hardware requirement. Looking forward to any feedback. Regards, Harald -- - Harald Welte <laforge(a)gnumonks.org> http://laforge.gnumonks.org/ ============================================================================ "Privacy in residential applications is a desirable marketing option." (ETSI EN 300 175-7 Ch. A6)

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Current size of Fidonet in Region 24
by Ingo Jürgensmann 01 Apr '19

01 Apr '19

Hi! Still someone alive here and interested in BBS and Fidonet? Old style communication? Here’s an uptodate list/count of how many nodes are still active in Germany (Region24): TB> Sysops Netz 2:240 = 18 TB> Sysops Netz 2:246 = 3 TB> Sysops Netz 2:2432 = 1 TB> Sysops Netz 2:2443 = 0 TB> Sysops Netz 2:2448 = 6 TB> Sysops Netz 2:2449 = 1 TB> Sysops Netz 2:2452 = 4 TB> Sysops Netz 2:2454 = 1 TB> Sysops Netz 2:2490 = 3 TB> -+—————————— TB> Summe = 37 So, it’s a good moment to join Fidonet. There is everything available to run Fido on a Linux/Unix box as well as on PC, like binkd, Husky, OpenXP for Points, GoldEd+, etc… If you like, you can also still use old modems to poll or use HotDogEd on Android. -- Ciao... // http://blog.windfluechter.net Ingo \X/ XMPP: ij(a)jabber.windfluechter.net gpg pubkey: http://www.juergensmann.de/ij_public_key.asc

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FOSS Softmodems with Asterisk integration
by Christian Berger 17 Feb '18

17 Feb '18

Servus, There are actually multiple FOSS Softmodems. This one, for example, is based on spandsp: https://github.com/proquar/asterisk-Softmodem This one was written by myself and handles the data-link protocoll of BTX for error-free communications: https://github.com/Casandro/btx_modem It's also just 527 lines of code with the only external dependency being Asterisk. Then there's also IAXModem, but that's mainly aimed at Faxes. There's actually a big advantage of using software based modems over hardware based ones. With IP-Telephony it is vital to have proper clocks. Unfortunately many bad ATAs have really bad clocks. So your sender might send out its voice with 8010 Hz sampling rate, while the receiver might run at 7090 Hz That means that eventually you will have buffers running over and samples being thrown away. This is very bad for modems and one of the reasons why T.38 was invented. However with a software based modem you can just send a packet of data for every packet you get, so essentially, if it isn't converted to TDM in the middle, you'll adapt to the speed of the ATA. (The obvious sane solution to that would of course be to simply use NTP to determine the frequency error of your system and then adjust your sample rate so it'll be precisely 8kHz on average. However sane people usually don't work in that field because of SIP) Servus Christian

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Modern Wardialer and Linmodem with VoIP
by Fabio Pietrosanti - Lists 15 Feb '18

15 Feb '18

Hello, i read about this project that i found quite exciting in it's goals: http://lists.osmocom.org/pipermail/bbs-revival/2018-January/000003.html With a friend during the (very limited) spare time we're developing a pure python modern based SIP/RTP/G711 wardialer, to let younger generation get having fun with old school phreaking stuff. Because of the DSP modem related complexities, we've decided to focus only on: - Fast signaling scanning of phone prefixes to find existing phone numbers - Fast scanning on existing phone numbers by recording some 10-15s of audio, then processing it It will be something like: ./wardial.py -h sip-hostname -p port -u username -p password -c parallel channel -r range-XX-XXX (or --input numberlist) -o logfile --fast (fast scan to check which number exists without looking for carriers) --wait-between-calls --timeout However the final goal would be also to hook a software modem to make an handshake with the remote modem, grab the banner but also provide a virtual serial interface to let play with the remote system using minicom or whatever terminal emulation software. But there's no softmodem and easy to be hooked piece of code to do it, until now, as i saw this lovely project recovering linmodem. I wanted to share our goals as will be keeping an eye on the project where the linmodem/voip/virtualserial integration could be a really nice companion to complete a modern wardialing kit for 2018 :-) -naif

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State of the BBS
by "Ola Ekström" 07 Feb '18

07 Feb '18

Hi there! I just stumbled on this list, it seems like the project just started, yes? I was a frequent BBS user in the 90's and still "call" (by telnet) BBS' from time to time, most frequently a BBS in Finland (it's on a VPS these days so I'm not sure it's actually hosted _in_ Finland anymore) called Haciend El Bananas. I recommend it, it's focused on ANSI art and bullshit-chat and there might be some files to download also but I'm not so interested in that anymore so I don't keep track. I use Syncterm to call those boards that use MS-DOS character graphics, it works pretty well. Regular *nix shell telnet can connect too but the ANSI will look like vomit. Fidonet isn't the only BBS echo active out there, on the top of my head I can remember Agoranet, Retronet and Zeronet (for the elite! ;)). I didn't have access to internet when Usenet was still a thing so I'd also be interested in some Usenet/UUCP revival. I check som NNTP news from time to time but the traffic is real low nowadays if you go outside the binary groups. Outside household python scripting I can't code but I can contribute something else eventually I hope. Cheers, Ola

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Docker Images
by Ingo Jürgensmann 06 Feb '18

06 Feb '18

Hi! Although personally not a big friend of Docker images I came across the following posts on planet.debian.org, which might be of interest for this list: http://changelog.complete.org/archives/9836-an-old-dos-bbs-in-a-docker-cont… -- Ciao... // http://blog.windfluechter.net Ingo \X/ XMPP: ij(a)jabber.windfluechter.net gpg pubkey: http://www.juergensmann.de/ij_public_key.asc

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Hi!
by Ingo Jürgensmann 04 Jan '18

04 Jan '18

Hi! Just wanted to say hello! I’m also reachable at 2:2452/413 ;) -- Ciao... // http://blog.windfluechter.net Ingo \X/ XMPP: ij(a)jabber.windfluechter.net gpg pubkey: http://www.juergensmann.de/ij_public_key.asc

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Another Hi
by Florian Lohoff 02 Jan '18

02 Jan '18

Another Hi, used to run 2:2449/845 on the Amiga with CNet and Trapdoor. Stopped operating the BBS somewhere around '94 or something. Used to be an A3000T040 with 3 MFCIII with a bunch of Courier V.Everything. Started with Linux because it got an IP Stack which was a lot more stable than the AmiTCP stuff. So i started polling "real email" via UUCP to a Linux box - then via UUCP over IP on a local Arcnet to the Amiga via UUCP over IP to connect all BBS users to "real email". Still using UUCP (over SSL) for most of my email. Fido used to be a PITA with CNet as it got the implementation of zone gates wrong so mails to a different zone didnt work out of the box. I remember binary patching the CNet binaries. Memory is pretty vague - Its a long time ago and uucp map files, fido nodelists are long gone - My V.Everythings still exist though. Flo -- Florian Lohoff f(a)zz.de UTF-8 Test: The 🐈 ran after a 🐁, but the 🐁 ran away

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