External Message Networks

Ami-Express 5.3.0 brings the capability to connect your BBS to external message networks using the QWK and FTN connectors provided in the UTILS folder.

Setting up your message base(s) for external messaging

By default new messages in message base are saved locally and only users of your BBS can see them. External message networks allow messages to be routed between BBS's. Incoming messages will be downloaded from a remote server and converted into the standard Ami-Express mail format and saved locally where they will be picked up by the users logging on to the BBS in the usual way. Outgoing messages are saved outside of the usual message base and are picked up by the QWK or FTN connector and converted into the relevant format and passed over to the remote server to be transmitted across the network.

Message networks are often broken down into many areas. In order to facilitate this without having to create many conferences in Ami-Express we have introduced the new capability of having multiple-message bases per conference. The default will still be to have a single message base in the MsgBase folder within the conference. You can now specify the names and locations of multiple message bases in the MSGBASES.INFO (or .cfg) and you can set them as external message bases in the same config file using the EXTSEND.n tooltype.

Running the QWK or FTN connectors

These two connectors are provided as external tools to the main Ami-Express system. You will need to decide the best way to run these tools. Both of the connectors work in the same way that they will pull down any new incoming messages and post out any outgoing messages and then shut down. The recommended way of running these is using a cron type tool. CTask 1.1 available on the Aminet is my choice.

Both messaging network types will require some additional upstream setup to provide you with a server to connect to that act as your gateway to and from the network.

Connecting to a QWK message network

QWK messaging is probably the simpler to set up and there are a large number of BBS's out there that provide QWK connectivity to a number of different QWK networks. The Ami-Express QWK connector requires you to specify an external command to connect to the server, so the recommended setup is to use a QWK server that supports ftp access and you can use CURL to connect (needs to be installed separately). It should also be possible to use HTTP but I have not attempted this.

The qwk.cfg file below shows an example of how you would connect to your gatway server. You should only change the parts of the commands you need to otherwise it is easy to break the function of the application. The main things that will need to be changed would be the bbs name, location, sysop name, ftp username, password and address and make sure the qwk and rep names are correct.

The confs section of the config file maps the QWK message areas with the message bases within your bbs. In this example I am using the freeway bbs to access the retro net message network:

  [MAIN]
  MODE=OUT
  BBSNAME=mybbs
  BBSLOCATION=UK
  BBSNUMBER=XXX-XXX-XXXX 
  BBSID=FREEWAY
  SYSOPNAME=sysop
  USERNAME=username
  GETCMD=curl -o t:qwk.zip ftp://username:password@freeway.apana.org/freeway.qwk
  PUTCMD=curl -T t:{bbsid}.rep ftp://username:password@freeway.apana.org/freeway.rep
  UNPACKCMD=unzip t:qwk.zip MESSAGES.DAT -d t:
  PACKCMD=zip t:{bbsid}.rep t:{bbsid}.MSG t:CONTROL.DAT
  PACKEDTEMP=t:qwk.zip
  MSGTEMP=t:MESSAGES.DAT
  CONTROLTEMP=t:CONTROL.DAT
  MSGFILE=t:{bbsid}.MSG
  REPFILE=t:{bbsid}.rep
  [CONFS]
  11001
  RTN COMMOD
  bbs:Conf05/MsgBase.1/
  11002
  RTN AMIGA
  bbs:Conf05/MsgBase.2/
  11003
  RTN COL AD
  bbs:Conf05/MsgBas
  11004
  RTN ATARIP
  bbs:Conf05/MsgBase.4/
  11005
  RTN BBSADS
  bbs:Conf05/MsgBase.5/
  11006
  RTN GENERA
  bbs:Conf05/MsgBase.6/
  11007
  RTN BUY SE
  bbs:Conf05/MsgBase.7/
  11008
  RTN TEST
  bbs:Conf05/MsgBase.8/
  11009
  RTN PC ALL
  bbs:Conf05/MsgBase.9/
  11010
  RTN CONSOL
  bbs:Conf05/MsgBase.10/
  11011
  RTN ADM
  bbs:Conf05/MsgBase.11/
  11012
  RTN SUGGES
  bbs:Conf05/MsgBase.12/
  11013
  RTN EMULAT
  bbs:Conf05/MsgBase.13/
  11014
  RTN SINCLA
  bbs:Conf05/MsgBase.14/
  11015
  RTN MSDOS
  bbs:Conf05/MsgBase.15/
  11016
  RTN APPLE
  bbs:Conf05/MsgBase.16/
  11017
  RTN RETROP
  bbs:Conf05/MsgBase.17/
  11018
  RTN MAINFR
  bbs:Conf05/MsgBase.18/
  11019
  RTN MYSTIC
  bbs:Conf05/MsgBase.19/
  11020
  RTN SYNC
  bbs:Conf05/MsgBase.20/
  11021
  RTN TI
  bbs:Conf05/MsgBase.21/
  11022
  RTN CNET
  bbs:Conf05/MsgBase.22/