These are items that are needed for proper functionality. NOTE The installer will halt and ask you to address these if they are not found
| Package | Comments |
|---|---|
| sudo | to allow more controlled access to root-owned tools |
| zip/unzip | needed for system setup, and really any BBS should have it |
| ncurses (libncurses5 and libncursesw5 ) | Needed for CLI tools GUI display (libncurses5/libncursesw5 is the debian version) |
| zlib1g | Needed for SSH (called zlib on centos) |
| awk, grep, sed | core OS tools for line parsing (these are really basic) |
These are items that are not needed for proper functionality of a basic BBS, but will make things a lot easier (and potentially necessary for certain advanced configurations).
NOTE The installer will warn you about these, but will continue.
| Package | Comments | |
|---|---|---|
| dosemu | to run dos | based doors and utilities |
| dos2unix/unix2dos | for converting file types |
These are the steps for installing WWIV. You should do this step to setup a base system, even if you plan on compiling the binaries from source to use.
DO NOT RUN WWIV AS ROOT.
This will cause many problems, please run it
as a user account, and ideally a UNIX account that is not used by any
user for interactive use. The standard install name is wwiv with
a group of wwiv and without the ability to login on it’s own. This
means that you login as a normal user, then use su or sudo to
execute commands as the wwiv user.
The root account is the linux equivalent of SYSOP. Also, don’t run WWIV as your own user. Anything your user can do, the BBS can do. The best option is to create a dedicated user to run the BBS.
Luckily, we have an installer script that will take care of most of the details for you.
sudo mkdir -p /opt/wwiv && sudo chown "$(id -u):$(id -g)" /opt/wwiv
Extract wwiv-????.tar.gz into your wwiv directory.
(please note that the filename will be different)
tar zxvf wwiv-linux-debian10-5.6.0-1234.tar.gz
If you plan on using binaries you compiled yourself, please follow the
instructions on the WWIV readme.md file on GitHub
and then return here before running the next step.
From the wwiv directory (i.e. /opt/wwiv), run sudo ./install.sh and
follow the prompts.
There are many options available for install.sh,
please run sudo ./install.sh --help for the full list of options.
By default the script expects the username and groupname to both be
wwiv and not yet exist.
You must run this as root.
The script performs the following tasks
for you:
* creating the WWIV user and group
* setting up sudo access for a standard user
* installing the systemd service file.
Now, you may log into the new wwiv user (e.g, sudo -u wwiv -s) and run ./wwivconfig
to configure the BBS.
(If that first sudo command doesn’t work on your system, try
sudo su - wwiv -s /bin/bash)
If you have any issues, check the install_date_time.log file that was created during the install.
If you still can’t tell what happened, come and find us in IRC or post a message in one of the wwiv support subs.
Please follow the instructions on the WWIV readme.md file on GitHub after you installed the base system as described above (making sure to have completed all of the steps.)
If you’ve gotten this far, Your BBS should be up and running. Everything below this point is details about more in-depth configuration (DOORs, WWIVnet, etc) and some of the current warts that linux has that you need to be aware of. If you come across anything that is not detailed here, please let us know.
In addition to the settings configured using wwivconfig, there are also several INI files that manage details about your install. The main ones are:
It is possible to let your “regular” user write and create files in the WWIV directory though clever use of permissions, based off this solution.
These instructions assume that your installation is in /opt/wwiv; adjust paths appropriately.
sudo usermod -a -G wwiv USERNAME
sudo chown -R wwiv:wwiv /opt/wwiv
sudo chmod 2775 /opt/wwivThe chmod values are: 2=set group id, 7=rwx for owner (wwiv), 7=rwx for group (wwiv), 5=rx for world. Setting group ID (SETGID) bit (2) causes the group (wwiv) to be copied to all new files/folders created in that folder.
find to do the same process for all subdirectories:sudo find /opt/wwiv -type d -exec chmod 2775 {} +
sudo find /opt/wwiv -type f -perm 664 -exec chmod 0664 {} +
sudo find /opt/wwiv -type f -perm 644 -exec chmod 0664 {} +
sudo find /opt/wwiv -type f -perm 646 -exec chmod 0664 {} +
sudo find /opt/wwiv -type f -perm 666 -exec chmod 0664 {} +
umask 0002
dosemu is used for a number of things that can’t be handled natively in linux (ie, DOS binaries). Here are some config details:
See WWIVnet for details on configuring WWIVnet and subscribing to subboards (aka message areas).
WWIV expects UTF-8 character encoding for local IO on all platforms. Please make sure your terminal is set for UTF-8 and not CP437.
The Curses library being used for wwivconfig gets confused on some terminal settings, and results in a borked display on exit. You may have to type a “reset” command to get it to behave normally again. In general, it appears that using a TERM setting in the xterm family works best (xterm, xterm-color, etc).