Unix multi-user board

spartic

Hi!,

At present I am setting up a linux box on a LAN for people to connect to. I have setup a menu driven shell for each user and have many functions at present for them to use such as shell games a library etc.... There are 2functions that i would like to offer but have not yet been able to implement yet.
I would like to have a bulliten tacking system a way for users to leave and respond to messages, I would also like a chat room for any amount of users to chat and private message each other.
I have setup the menu shell for the very basic of users and it is mainly accessed threw a java telnet applet from a web browser so I really kinda need user-friendly open source programs, any suggestions???
Regards,
Spartic

Red Alert

Okay i'm assuming you're using PC's running some version of Windows to access the Linux box:

To be honest, you're probably better off running Apache web server (GPL licence) on the Linux Box, and running YaBB (bulletin board) or YaWPS (portal - includes bulletin board) on the web server. Both are available at sourceforge.net:

www.apache.org
yawps.sourceforge.net
yabb.sourceforge.net

They're pretty good programs and you'll save youself the hassle of coding the lot yourself. Apache web server is included in almost all linux distributions but it's probably not installed by default. If you want to use YaBB, you'll need to install MySQL which again is included in almost all distributions (tho not installed by default).

As you can see, they're a web-based interface so all the machines on the network should have no hassle interfacing to them.

As for the chat, i'd recommend an open-source IRC server and use IRC clients on each computer. - I've got absolutely no experience in running an IRC server so i don't really know an awful lot about doing it but there really shouldn't be a problem.

Both of these solutions are probably a lot easier than coding these apps yourself or putting them through the shell.

spartic

No! no! no!

What I am doing is creating a unix board for ppl to connect to threw a telnet client straight into the unix shell from the unix shell with the menu script that i have on top ppl browse the system selecting different shell programs to use, what i need is a chat program and message tacking program to run on a unix shell eg. bash
Spartic...

rob1891

netsoc in UCD have a "flash" menu driven telnet thingy

"flash 0.9.4 Copyright 1997 Stephen Fegan under the GPL"

it's kinda neat, for newsgroups they use Tin, you could set up a local news server that would work as your bulletin board and for irc they use:

"Client: ircII EPIC4pre2.200"

Again you could run a local irc server for users to connect to. Perhaps you should get in touch with them ... help@netsoc.ucd.ie would be the one I guess.

davej

Try ytalk, it's basically a talk which links multiple TTYs together. It might already be included in your linux distro.

As for the BB hmm. Try here, you should be able to find a suitable app.

http://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/bbs/!INDEX.html

davej

leeroybrown

threw a telnet client

Aaaaggghhh ... not Telnet!!!

MMmmm S S H

Gavin

Use a news server for your bulletin system.

Have a look at redbrick.dcu.ie, they run the same type of system you are after. As do most college netsocs I'd say.

Using ssh is probably a good idea as well, as mentioned above.

Gav