* EleBBS Support List

> Most people run events via the Windows scheduler... So if you
> got mail  to be packed from elebbs it's a good idea to run maybe
> every hour or  whatever you think is necessary...

I agree... but it is a bit of an annoyance that EleServe ignores
events currently.  Perhaps that would be a good feature request to
ask of Scott or anyone else willing to work on it.

If a Sysop has to shut down all nodes at a certain time, currently
one could define an event in Elconfig > Manager > Events
and when a user logs on the first time (per node) any time after
the event is reached, they will immediatly be logged off and
normally the batch file that runs ELEBBS.EXE looks at the
errorlevel and figures out that its an event generated errorlevel.
BUT, since eleserv does not run a batch file, when it spawns
elebbs.exe in telnet mode, there is no way to "catch" the event.

This results in EleBBS thinking the event was already completed
successfully for that node, so if the user calls right back on the
same node, he will get right in. Once the event is cleared, it does
not the event will not be run again until the next scheduled day.

So... to fully support events in EleBBS, It seems it would be
better if EleServe was changed to spawn a RUNELE.BAT
instead of spawning elebbs.exe directly.
... Does anyone know of any drawbacks to doing this?

If ELEBBS.EXE was spawned from a batch file, it would be
easy to allow that batch file to check for the errorlevel that
matches the maintenance event, and force it down at the time
of the event, (or the next time a user logs on after the event
time has ben reached).

So if you created an event that uses Errorlevel 20 for
Maintenance for example, your batch file could look like this:

c:\ele\elebbs.exe -N%1 -H%2 -XT -B65529 -E10
If ERRORLEVEL 20 goto Wait
If ERRORLEVEL 10 goto Exit
rem * Error level is less then 10 , so most likley user
rem * entered netmail or echo mail. Tell Fastecho to
rem * scan for any new messages to export
\ele\fastecho\fastecho.exe scan
rem You could use Fmail instead of Fastecho
goto Exit
Wait:
rem * This Node will be held in a loop by the batch file until
rem * the semaphore file ELEDOWN.SEM no longer exists
c:\delay.exe 2
If exist c:\ele\sem\ELEDOWN.SEM goto Wait
Exit:

Then you could have a seperate batch file that does
the actual maintenance.. which you could spawn from
the Windows scheduler as zomorf suggested. The first
thing this would do is create the semephore file:

echo>c:\ele\sem\ELEDOWN.SEM
rem Semaphore file now created.
( do maintenance stuff here)
erase c:\ele\sem\ELEDOWN.SEM
rem Semaphore file now deleted.


There are other ways of forcing active EleBBS
nodes down besides events.. Like you could create
files in the Semaphore directory using the name(s):
RAXITn.e

where n= a node number to take down
and    e= the errorlevel that EleBBS will return
                to the batch file as it exits.

I used a batch file enhancer called delay.exe, which
waits for the number of seconds you tell it on its
command line, or until a key is pressed. This is used
to keep 0% CPU usage as its in a loop waiting for
the semaphore file to be removed. Its available from
http://pcmicro.com/elebbs/batdelay.zip

Regards,  Mike


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