Limping Ninja wrote to All <=-

I currently use NetSerial, but recently was looking at Net2BBS and
NetFoss as an entry point to my board, mainly due to the really nice IP filtering setup and detection for portscans.

When using NetFoss by itself from the command prompt it fails silently,
I believe this is because it is attempting to use the DLL in the
NetFoss folder.

Unless you're using NetFoss as a FOSSIL driver to real (or virtual) serial port hardware, there's nothing for NetFoss to do from a command prompt. See below for how NetFoss and Net2BBS work together.

When I get a telnet, Net2BBS picks it up, shells appropriately to the NF.BAT and then I get the following:

netfoss.com
------------
In terminal:
Net2BBS is Resolving your IP Address... BBSName
NetFoss - Revision 5 FOSSIL - Com Eng v1.25 - (c) 2001-2021 pcmicro.com
In shell (Netcom loads and says): NetFoss not found

This is expected. NetFoss (32 bit) won't work on a 64 bit OS.

netfos64.com
In terminal:
Same as above
In shell:
BBS loads but cannot init the modem. I am running KBBS and I can choose Standard COM 1-4, Non-standard port (ADDR/IRQ required), Standard
FOSSIL driver, and some OS/2 and digiboard options. I chose FOSSIL and
the node 1 has FOSSIL:0, and the nodes go consecutively up.

The fact that you're getting this far almost certainly indicates NetFoss64 is installed correctly. It's likely the command line parameters for the BBS simply need to be adjusted.

The BBS won't ever init the modem because it won't ever 'answer' a call. Your BBS software must be able to load and function with a call already connected. I'm not at all familiar with KBBS so I can't tell you the correct command line parameters to do this. Check the manuals for instructions on using the software with front-end mailer software. Or just look at the command line parameter reference, it should be fairly obvious which to use.

When
setting it the software says 0=COM1, 1=COM2 -- but from what I
understood from the doc it shouldn't matter.

Correct, as long as the BBS software is set to use a FOSSIL driver it will not matter which port you choose. But it must use the FOSSIL. If you're going to stick with Net2BBS you might as well use the same COM port for every single node. This will make your life easier later on.

Is there something special I need to be doing here?

Did you ever set up a BBS with a front-end mailer? The bulletin board software never answers the phone, the mailer does. A caller calls, the mailer software answers and completes the connection, the mailer exits and drops control to a batch file, and the batch file then loads the BBS software.

You'll be doing the same with Net2BBS and NetFoss. Net2BBS answers the incoming telnet connection. It then runs an instance of NF64.BAT, which in turn loads NetFoss and NetCom. NetCom in turn loads the BBS software. When the user logs off, the BBS software exits and the instance of NF64.BAT ends.

I'm going to create a hypothetical example. Assume KBBS is started with KBBS.EXE, is run from C:\KBBS\, and uses the following command line parameters (won't likely be correct):

KBBS.EXE -N<Node # to run> -B<Valid baud rate, assumes call is already connected> -E (exits after call)

Start by changing two lines in NET2BBS.INI:

StartPath=C:\KBBS
Command=c:\netfoss\nf64.bat /n*N /h*H *N

Next, edit NF64.BAT and change the NetCom.EXE command. Or better yet, REM out the existing one and write a new one:

REM c:\netfoss\netcom.exe %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
c:\netfoss\netcom.exe %1 %2 KBBS.EXE -N%3 -B115200 -E

When Net2BBS gets a legit connection, it calles NF64.BAT with the parameters:

NF64.BAT /n<node #> /h<Socket handle> <node #>

This in turn causes NetCom to load up KBBS with the command line:

KBBS.EXE -N<node #> -B115200 -E

After KBBS.EXE exits, so does NetCom. The NF64.BAT file then completes the remaining commands, ends, the window is closed, and that particular node number is then available for the next call.

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* Origin: The Basement Theory - Sciotoville, Ohio USA (21:2/121)