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Text File | 1988-04-17 | 20.1 KB | 421 lines

LIVEMON Ver 2.1 (4-17-88) A Live Program Execution Monitor for Wildcat! Ver 1.10 and 1.11 (c) 1988 Stephen L. Cox Livemon was developed by me to meet a specific need on my own Wildcat! system. As I got into the development I found myself adding this and that because I was having so much fun coding it. What I ended up with is a functional shell for a complete door monitor similar to (better than) that used in RBBS systems. This second version is mostly invisible to the users as they only see 1 or 2 of about 6 different lines of output. It was setting up the port to send these few lines of output that led to the plan to expand livemon into a full blown door monitor. The routines for handling carrier and two way communications with the serial ports were the most difficult parts of livemon but their creation makes it as easy to send a thousand lines out the port as 1. I have written LIVEMON in 'C' so that it is fast, compact, flexible and easy for me to maintain and enhance. THE PRELIMINARIES: [[[ Limited License ]]] This software is copyrighted but a limited license is granted and you are free to use and share it under the following conditions: 1. LIVEMON is not distributed in modified form 2. No fee or other consideration is charged for LIVEMON itself 3. Reference to the copyright and author is retained. 4. If your Callers Like this program, or if you want updates sent to you, or if you need support or immediate answers to problems Then please send a contribution of $10.00 to $15.00 to: Steve Cox Flite-Line BBS 6740 Deerwood Dr. Lincoln, Ne. 68516 With a donation you receive: Program support Registration to LIVEMON I will try to make personal modifications for you if possible. [[[ Warranty ]]] LIVEMON is provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for any purpose. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of this program is with the user and should the program prove defective, the user and not the author will assume all responsiblity with correcting all information. The author does not warrant that this program will function in the desired mode or will meet any users requirements or that the operation of the program will be error free. But, You are certainly entitled to complain about Bugs you find in this program and paying Users should have a bugfree program. This program is written in MicroSoft 'C' vr. 5.0. WHAT DOES LIVEMON DO: LIVEMON stands between Wildcat! and the door or live program your user is going to run. It adds several useful features to Wildcats slim support of doors. Here are the features of Verson 1.0: *** 1. Livemon gives you the ability with a single parameter on the command line that invokes it to control the amount of time the user may spend in a door. The time specified is independent of but cannot be greater than the users daily allowed BBS time or the Global door time which you specify. Allows door time controls by percentage of total board time. Reward higher level users with more live program time. *** 2. LIVEMON provides door locking based on Wildcat security levels. You may specify the minimum security level required to run the door on the command line. If security levels are not high enough, the user is not permitted to enter the door. *** 3. LIVEMON provides door locking based on sysop controlled file up/download ratios. Doors can be locked if the user has exeeded the sysop set ratio in the LIVEMON.CFG file. Use of this feature is optional. *** 4. LIVEMON will automatically create the PCBOARD.SYS file for you if the door you wish to use is a PCB door. You tell LIVEMON about it with a a single command line switch. *** 5. Support for Wildcat specific doors is also automatic. The Wildcat version of PCBOARD.SYS is CALLINFO.BBS. In the case of a Wildcat door, no file conversion is necessary but the CALLINFO.BBS file must be altered to pass the proper time parameters to the door. The file generated is in Wildcat version 1.11 format. **FEATURES IN DEPTH** TIME MONITOR: The real reason LIVEMON was developed was to control time usage on my extremely active Wildcat system. I currently run 15 to 20 doors and have found it to be a problem because of the addictive nature of the games, especially those of the calibur of Trade Wars 500. I wanted to encourage users to spend at least part of their daily time participating in other sections of the BBS besides the games. I had dozens of users logging in and playing out their entire daily time allotment in the doors and never doing anything else. My reasoning is that if a user is limited to a certain amount of time that is something less than their daily board time, they might, just might, spend their remaining time doing other things. My feeling is that this has been a success. The time monitor feature allows you to set the maximum amount of time a user may spend in live programs each day. Additionally each individual door may have a time limit for each access by the user. These time limits are independent of the daily Wildcat time limit controlled by the users security level. You may not however set the door time or global times to a number that is higher than the maximum board time. I'll use my board as an example; I have all level 20 users set for a daily board time limit of 60 minutes. All level 25 users have a board time limit of 90 minutes. Since I want them to have some time left for other things after playing their favorite game, I have set the GLOBAL DOOR time limit to 67% of their daily BBS time. Upon entering a live program the first time on a given day the allowed live program time will be calculated from the security level time values specified in the Wildcat! CONFIGWC.BBS file and stored in the user record. LIVEMON keeps a running record of each user entering the doors on a daily basis so it always knows how much time they have remaining for doors activity. There is an alternative to the above approach. You may disable the percent feature and give each user a FLAT time limit for doors regardless of their daily board time. This is done by setting a flag in the LIVEMON.CFG file which I will explain later. Each DOOR has a maximum session time that is set before the door is run. You can effectively say: The user has 40 minutes today they can use for doors but they can only spend 20 minutes per session in this particular door. They can enter the doors as many times as they want in a given day until their global door time expires. If their door time has been used, LIVEMON will simply inform the user of the fact and immediately return them to Wildcat!. There are 2 time control parameters in the LIVEMON.CFG file. Line 4 is an integer that is interpreted by a control flag in line 6 of the CFG file. If line 6 is the number 1, then the number in line 4 will be interpreted as a PERCENTAGE of the users daily board time. If line 6 is a 0 (zero) then the number in line 4 will be a flat time limit applied to ALL users regardless of their user level. What this means is that if you have multiple levels of security implemented in Wildcat with different daily time limits for them and you set line 4 to 65 and line 6 to 1 then each user will get 65% of their daily board time allowed for live programs. If you set line 4 to 40 and line 6 to a 0 (zero) then ALL users would get 40 minutes live program time regardless of their board time limit. All of that might need a bit simpler explaination so here goes. When a user enters a door for the first time on a given day, the Wildcat! CONFIGWC.BBS is read and the users security level is checked to see what their daily maximum board time limit is. This is set by you when you run Makewild!. If you have enabled PERCENTAGE calculations, then the max door time is calculated from the time values found in the CONFIGWC. This ensures that the user will get the proper amount of door time each day because it is not dependent on the time he/she had left when they entered doors. If however the user has been on the board for some period of time and their board time remaining has gone below what WOULD have been their max door time then they are given whatever board time remains for doors. By using this percentage method a user will NEVER get more door time than the percentage you specify but they will always get what is coming to them. Here is practical example of what I mean: 1. A user on your board has security level 50 which gives them 90 minutes per day on the board. 2. You set Livemon to calculate door time at 67% of daily board time. (that actually works out to 60 minutes of live program time per day for this user) 3. The user logs on and spends 10 minutes downloading files. His board time remaining is now 80 minutes. 4. The user now runs a live program for the first time. 5. Since they still have 80 minutes of board time left, and they had 90 to start, the calculation of 60 minutes live program time is still valid so they get 60 minutes today for doors.. If they had downloaded for 45 minutes, leaving them only 45 minutes of board time remaining, they would have been given 45 minutes for doors instead of 60. (geez I'm confusing myself) It may sound a little complex but believe me it works! You DO have the option to use LIVEMON with only a few select doors rather than all of them. If you do not wish to charge the users time bank for the use of a door, then just don't run livemon for it. An example of why you might do this is Card Guppies. Guppies requires only a very short period of time to run, 2 to 4 minutes is typical. Guppies itself will not allow a player to enter it twice in one day. It's use doesn't really congest the board so I don't charge the users time bank for it's use. Things like Trade Wars and Bay Street Bulls are quite a different matter. I have some users that would spend 24 hours a day in them if they could. SECURITY MONITOR: My BBS is a semi-closed board. That is users must be verified before they are given full access to the board. I don't want new users getting into the big games and clobbering things before I knew who they were. But at the same time I want to be able to allow them controlled access to a few of the doors to whet their appetite. I needed a way to allow doors to run that was tied to a users security level. This lets me display the FULL Live program menu to all users, but permit only limited access to individual doors based on Wildcat security levels. UP/DOWNLOAD RATIO MONITOR (UDR): Use of this feature is optional and is controlled by a parameter in the LIVEMON.CFG file. Some sysops have asked for this feature so it has been included for your use. You may set on LINE #5 of the LIVEMON.CFG a number that will be used to determine the users current up/download ratio. This may be any number you wish. If you do not wish to use the UDR monitor simply put a 0 on line 5 of the CFG file and this feature will be disabled. CAUTION, this feature is all or nothing, it cannot be set to different ratios for different classes of users. PCBOARD.SYS and CALLINFO.BBS CONVERSIONS: Most of the doors we have available today were designed to run under either the PCBoard system or RBBS-PC. At present there are very few Wildcat specific doors available. Due primarily to the efforts of people like Mike Cleverly, Sysop of Acheron in Bountiful Utah, I'm sure that the number of Wildcat doors will grow quite rapidly. In the meantime we have to be content running the PCBoard and RBBS versions of everything. If you've been running doors you already know that getting PCB doors to run under Wildcat requires some gyrations that I wish we could do without. To run a PCBoard door under Wildcat, a file called CALLINFO.BBS must be converted to a form that the PCB door can understand. The primary file needed by PCB doors is PCBOARD.SYS. This file contains all of the user information required by the door for proper execution. It is built each time a door is used and is unique to each user. There are 1 or 2 other files that are sometimes required by a PCB door, such as PCBOARD.DAT but these files need only be created once and are not changed. By using a single character switch on the the command line you can tell LIVEMON that it will be executing a PCBoard door, or a Wildcat door. The conversion and construction of all the required dynamic files required by the door is automatic. This means that if you are running LIVEMON, you can discontinue the use of all other programs or utilities that create the pcboard.sys file. INSTALLING AND USING LIVEMON: Getting LIVEMON to work with your system is really quite easy but you MUST do it right. The ARC package you downloaded should contain the following files: LIVEMON.EXE -----> The Live Program Monitor LIVEUSER.DAT ----> Daily users file MUST BE PRESENT LIVEMON.CFG -----> Example configuration file LIVEMON.DOC ----> This file SAMPLE.BAT ------> Sample LIVEx.BAT using LIVEMON LIVEUSER.DAT, LIVEMON.CFG and LIVEMON.EXE must be in the Wildcat directory, not the sub-directory from which the door will run. If any of the above files are missing, Call Flite-Line BBS, 402-421-2434 for the latest complete version. The first order of business is to either create a new LIVEMON.CFG file or modify the example .CFG included. The sample LIVEMON.CFG file reads like this: Flite-Line <--1-- Your BBS name (35 chars max) Steve <--2-- Sysop first name (15 chars max) Cox <--3-- Sysop last name (25 chars max) 40 <--4-- GLOBAL time limit for daily doors activity 10 <--5-- Upload/Download ratio (10:1) Enter 0 to disable feature 0 <--6-- Interpret line 4 as FLAT time In the above example ALL users would get 40 minutes of live program time per day because percentage calculation is turned off in line #6. Doors will be locked if the users up/down load ratio is not within 10 to 1. EXAMPLE #2 Flite-Line <--1-- Your BBS name (35 chars max) Steve <--2-- Sysop first name (15 chars max) Cox <--3-- Sysop last name (25 chars max) 65 <--4-- GLOBAL time limit for daily doors activity 0 <--5-- Upload/Download ratio checking OFF because it's 0 1 <--6-- Interpret line #4 as a PERCENTAGE instead of FLAT time. In this example the users live program time is variable because of their security levels. Because line #6 is 1, line #4 (65) is interpreted as a percentage of their daily board time. Simply means that each user will get 65% of their remaining daily BBS time for live programs when they enter live programs for the first time. Also in this example Upload/Download ratio checking is turned off because line #5 is zero. The LIVEMON.CFG file ** MUST ** be present and in the Wildcat directory along with LIVEMON.EXE and LIVEUSER.DAT. It should NOT be in the subdirectory from which the door will be run. LIVEMON should be included in EACH LIVEx.BAT file whose execution you want to be time and security controlled. The following is an example listing of a batch file to run Trade Wars 500 on my system. You do not need to run LIVEMON if you do not want to charge the users time bank for use. If you do not use LIVEMON then you must still run either PCB2WC or MAKEPCB if the door is a PCBoard door. * Assumes you are running the PCBoard version of TW 500. LINE# 1 cls 2 echo off 3 LIVEMON START P 25 30 1 4 IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO END 5 CD \WILDCAT\TW500 6 TW2 TW2.CFG 7 CD \WILDCAT 8 LIVEMON EXIT P 9 :END 10 CAT EXPLAINATION: Lines 1 & 2 clear the screen and turn off echo 3 LIVEMON START P 25 30 1 Run LIVEMON with the following parameters START .. Setup the user for entry to a door P .. May be P or W for PCBoard or Wildcat door. 25 .. Maximum time user may spend in this door. Overridden if board time is less or if the user has less door time left than this number. 30 .. Minumum security level user must have to run this door is 30 (may be any valid Wildcat security level). 1 .. Comport system is using. May be 1 or 2 4 IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO END If livemon will not permit the user to enter the door because of insufficient time remaining or security is to low it will exit with an errorcode of 1. This line simply tells the batch file to reload Wildcat! if the user can't run the door. 5 & 6 TW2 TW2.CFG Change to the Tradewars directory and execute the game. 7 CD \WILDCAT Change back to the Wildcat directory 8 LIVEMON EXIT P EXIT .. Door execution is complete, update users time record. P .. Door run was a PCBoard door so exit noramlly. If parameter is W, delete dummy CALLINFO.BBS and restore original. 9 :END The target label for an error exit. 10 CAT Restart Wildcat! Thats all there is to it. Just remember that LIVEx.BAT files that use LIVEMON should have the session time parameter (25 in the example) set to a value that is less than or equal to the global time limit set in the LIVEMON.CFG file. If you have problems getting LIVEMON to run, give me a call on Flite-Line at 402-421-2434, 24hrs 7days at 300/1200/2400/9600 USR and I will assist you in getting it running. If you need to talk to me voice, you can call 402-421-3065 after 7:00pm Central time and I will be glad to help you out. Again if you are going to continue using LIVEMON, please fill out the form below and mail it to me so I can make sure you get notified of an update. Your suggestions for improvement and your bugs reports will be appreciated. Steve Cox Flite-Line BBS 6740 Deerwood Dr. Lincoln, Ne. 68516 DATA 402-421-2434 300/1200/2400/9600 USR VOICE 402-421-3065 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ LIVEMON 2.1 REGISTRATI0N NAME: ________________________________ ADDRESS: __________________________ CITY: ___________________ STATE: ___ ZIP: ________ PHONE: _____________ VERSION OF LIVEMON YOU ARE USING: _________ VERSION # OF WILDCAT: _________ COMMENTS: ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ CONTRIBUTION OF: $_________ Enclosed. Give me support and upgrades! MAIL TO: Steve Cox Flite-Line BBS 6740 Deerwood Dr. Lincoln, Ne. 68516 ______________________________________________________________________________