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User Manual RemoteAccess Monitor for DOS Monitoring & control for RemoteAccess based BBS's (c) Copyright 1996, Envy Technologies. Contents Part 1 Introduction Introduction to RA-Monitor Licence agreement Revision history Requirements Setting up RA-Monitor Part 2 Using RA-Monitor The environment Status window Control window Node Information window BBS Information window RAStatus Appendixes Frequently asked questions Contacting Envy Technologies Future enhancements Credits & acknowledgements Introduction Introduction to RA-Monitor RemoteAccess Monitor (or RA-Monitor), is a monitoring & control program for the popular bulletin-board package, RemoteAccess. RA-Monitor allows you to monitor the status of your BBS, see who is logged in, and what they are currently doing. In addition, you can send online messages to nodes, log them off or display detailed information about their current login. All of this functionality is provided in a full DOS windowed environment allowing you to have multiple windows open with resizing & movement while retaining the familiar interface of the RemoteAccess tools such as RAMGR or RACONFIG. RA-Monitor is also extremely easy to setup. It will run straight from the package without configuration, reading necessary information such as display settings and number of nodes. The included configuration program can be used to fine-tune settings for some features. Licence agreement The RA-Monitor package consists of all files contained within the distribution archive. Before running RA-Monitor, you must read and agree to the following conditions. If you do not or can not agree to and accept the following conditions, you are prohibited from using this package. o RA-Monitor is copyrighted Damien Guard/Envy Technologies and may only be used in accordance with the conditions set forth in this license agreement. o RA-Monitor is distributed as a FREEWARE program for this release. This means that the software may be freely distributed and used but Envy Technologies retains all copyrights on this package. This licensing agreement does not apply to any future releases which may be packaged with an alternative licensing agreement. o Permission is granted to any individual or institution to use, copy, or redistribute RA-Monitor free of charge as long as the distribution package is not modified, nor sold for profit. o RA-Monitor may be used free of charge in both private and commercial systems. o RA-Monitor may not be licenced or sub-licenced to any third party without written permission of Envy Technologies. o This licence agreement may not be modified nor supplemented without written permission of Envy Technologies. o Neither Damien Guard nor Envy Technologies are obligated to provide new versions or support for existing versions of RA-Monitor. o Although care has been taken to write and test a program that does what this document states, the program is provided as is, without warranty or guarantee of any kind, either expressed or implied, as to the quality or performance of this program, except that RA-Monitor will occupy disk space. o Neither the author of RA-Monitor, Damien Guard, nor the publisher, Envy Technologies are responsible for any (direct or indirect) damage or costs, including, but not limited to, lost savings, lost profits and loss of data, which may result from the use or the inability to use RA-Monitor. o The RA-Monitor package may not be distributed in a modified form with the exception of other archive formats. This applies to adverts which may not be included as either a file, nor as a modification to an existing .DIZ informational file. o Any BBS/distribution adverts of any kind may only be included in the archive banner. o RA-Monitor may be included on shareware CD's and floppy disks providing that any charge levied is for the compilation and not expressly for RA-Monitor. o If you use this program, you will constitute your agreement to this disclaimer/license. o All rights reserved worldwide. In simple terms: It's free, but it is *ours*. Revision history v1.00 24/4/96 Minor path bug fixed Added DOS generic timeslicing (should work under NT okay) Minor cosmetics + documentation changes v1.10 14/5/96 Minor fix to correct send note and log off problems on some configurations. Mixing keyboard and mouse movements syncronised. UserDoes.n support included - must be in RA semaphore dir! v1.20 13/10/96 Incorrect year field on Node Information screen fixed. More than 32768 calls negative figure fixed. New DateFormat option in RAMSETUP to choose between DD/MM/YY and MM/DD/YY formats. RAMSETUP now asks you if you wish to save settings. RASTATUS tool from the Monitor/RA Windows-95 project now included to allow custom status information. New installation program. Requirements To use RA-Monitor you require: o An IBM-compatible personal computer with a 286, 386, 486 or Pentium processor. o A storage device with approximately 200k free. o Approximately 300kb of conventional memory. o A copy of RemoteAccess 2.01, 2.02 or 2.50 Shareware, Hobby or Professional configured & working. o A DOS session (either MS-DOS/PC-DOS or a VDM provided by Windows, 95, NT or IBM OS/2) A mouse with standard DOS support is highly recommended. Setting up RA-Monitor Unpack or copy the RA-Monitor files contained within this package to a directory on your system. There is no need to place these files in your main RA directory nor to be part of your path. Once you have copied the files, RA-Monitor can be run by typing RAMON. This will load the RA-Monitor software with it's preset defaults, described in a moment. You can change these settings by using the included RAMSETUP program. The settings are: Refresh Interval (Default: 2 seconds) This setting determines how often RA-Monitor refreshes the screen. On systems with either a large number of nodes or a slow network, you may need to lower this setting to 3-4 to ensure that RA-Monitor runs smoothly. On systems with less nodes (typically less than 20) you can change this setting to 1 second to make RA-Monitor more responsive with it's status information. Node Template (Default: '\NODE*N') This determines where RA-Monitor can find node-specific information about your BBS. This template is appended to the main RA directory name. These directories will be the directory you "CD" into in your batch file before running RA with the -N<node> parameter. If you are not running a multi-line system and you CD into the RA directory running RA without the -N<node> paramter, then you will need to ensure this field is blank. The *N in this field will expand to the node number in plain decimal with no padding. e.g. The default "\NODE^N" parameter if RA was set to "C:\RA" would become C:\RA\NODE1 for node 1, C:\RA\NODE255 for node 255. *N does not have to be the last two characters of this field, templates such as \*NLINE would give C:\RA\1LINE for node 1 and C:\RA\255LINE for node 255. Exit Error Level (Default: 0) This setting tells RA-Monitor what your normal error-level is for exiting RemoteAccess. If you use the -E<level> parameter to launch RemoteAccess then you should enter that error-level here. If you do not use the -E parameter with RemoteAccess then this field should be left to it's default of 0. Mouse Support (Default: FULL) It is recommended that you use a mouse with RA-Monitor to allow movement & resizing of the windows it supports. Unless you are having problems with RA-Monitor then leave this parameter on "FULL". "PARTIAL" will make mouse-movements fake keystrokes providing only a basic interface with none of the windowing control support and "NONE" will prevent any mouse functions from being detected or used. UserDoes Support (Default: IGNORE) If you set this option to "SHOW" then RA-Monitor will display the ASCII contents of the file USERDOES.n (n=node) from the RA semaphore directory on the node information screen. UserDoes files are extended "Node status" files which are used by a number of utilities. They can be created like: echo Playing Red Dragon > C:\RA\SEMA\USERDOES.%1 which you may want to put in a batch file when launching doors etc. If you have no need for this support, just select "IGNORE" (the default anyway) and RA-Monitor will behave as if they do not exist. Date Format (Default: English) This will allow you to choose between two common date formats to be used when displaying the date in the Node Information Window within RA-Monitor. The choices are English (DD/MM/YY) and American (MM/DD/YY). We realise that other countries use these formats too but have chosen these names for clarity. RA-Monitor also supports special screen handling which is automatically read from the RemoteAccess configuration files. These are: Screen writes Direct/BIOS Colour mode Colour/Mono Snow checking On/Off Multitasker Note: Only "AUTO", "Windows", "OS/2" and "DESQview" settings are utilised by RA-Monitor. All other settings will disable multitasking. If you wish to change these settings then use RACONFIG. To change for *just* RA-Monitor, copy the CONFIG.RA file from RemoteAccess into your RA-Monitor directory then "CD" to the RA-Monitor directory and run RACONFIG as you would do for individual node settings. Using RA-Monitor The environment RA-Monitor uses a full text-windowing environment to allow the screen to be positioned and resized to suit your requirements. These functions require full mouse support and are controlled as follows: To move a window: Position the cursor to the top bar of a window and drag it to the required position using the left mouse button. To close a window: Some windows have a yellow square block at the top left-hand side of the window. Clicking this with the left mouse button will close that window. To resize a window: Clicking the bottom-right corner of a window will allow you to resize it to a more convenient size. Simply hold down the left mouse button and the window will resize as you move the mouse. To scroll a window: If the contents of the window exceed the size of the frame in which it is contained, arrows will appear in the windows frame which allow you to scroll the viewable area over it's contents. When you load RA-Monitor, it should display a window on the screen displaying the current node status of your screens. Status window This will be automatically centered and auto-size to display as many of your nodes as possible. If you have more nodes than RA-Monitor can fit into the display, scroll arrows will appear in the left hand side of the windows frame allowing you to scroll the area. The window will have the title "Status" in the top-right corner of the frame. An simple example is shown here: RemoteAccess MONITOR 1.20 13:22:19 +--------------------------------------------------------------- Status + ▌ Node User BPS Location Status ▌ ▌ 1 Damien Guard 0 Black Ice HQ Browsing ▌ ▌ 2 [Ready] 0 InterMail Ready ▌ ▌ 3 --- Offline --- 0 ▌ +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ The selection highlight can be moved with either the cursor keys, by selecting with the mouse or by pressing numbers 1-9 to jump to a specific node (for the first nine nodes only). By pressing either the mouse button or return you can bring up the control window, described in a moment, which can perform operations on the selected node. As this tools if for use by a sysop, hidden callers are displayed in this list. The fields shown on this screen are: Node BBS node or line for which this information pertains to. User Name of the user currently online or may contain status information if nobody is currently logged into this node. BPS User's login speed or BPS. This is sometimes incorrectly referred to as baud. Location User's location, or may contain the words 'RemoteAccess' if RA is currently waiting without a user. Status Current activity of the user. May contain standard entries such as Browsing or File transfer, but can also contain custom entries for doors using the *A option. Control window The control window will allow you to view & control your RemoteAccess system in conjunction with the node information screen. The options on this menu are: Node info Displays detailed node information for the current node using the Node Information window described below. Send note Sends an "Online Note" to the user much the same was as RemoteAccess's menu type xx. Log off Logs the user off BBS, exiting RemoteAccess at the error level specified in RAMSETUP. BBS info Displays some information about your BBS using the BBS Information window described below. About Displays credits & version number for RA-Monitor. Quit Exit RA-Monitor and return to DOS. The options can be selected by either the mouse, the cursor keys & return or by pressing the first letter of the option. Note: You can press the first letter of the option from the Node Information window even if the Control window is not visible/open. The Node info & BBS info options toggle whether their relative window is displayed allowing you to display & remove the windows from the keyboard. Node Information window The Node Information window displays information about the currently selected node. Note, you can display this window and still move through the Status window and it will update to reflect the currently selected node in the Status window. The details are as follows: Node number Node for which this information pertains to. User name Name of the user currently using this node. User handle Handle of the user currently using this node. Location Location of the user currently using this node. BPS Connect BPS speed of the caller using this node. Note: 0 indicates this call is a LOCAL login. User call Number of times this user has logged into your BBS. Currently User's current activity on this node. Hidden user Whether this user is currently hidden to other callers. Paged sysop Whether this user has paged the sysop using this session. No disturb Whether this user has the "do not disturb" flag set to ignore online notes from other users. Exit pending Whether this node has already been sent a "Log off" code from RA-Monitor and is waiting for RemoteAccess to process it. Note pending Whether this node has been sent a "Online Note" either via RA-Monitor or RemoteAccess that has not yet been read. Logged in at Time and date this user logged in. Previous call Time and date of the most recent logoff of this node. Do not confuse with the users previous call. User does If you have UserDoes support enabled in RAMSETUP and there is a valid UserDoes status information for this node, the first 80 characters will be displayed here. NOTE: Both exit & notes pending will normally occur when the user is in a door as RemoteAccess is unable to process them until control has returned to RemoteAccess itself. BBS Information window The BBS Information window displays some simple information about your BBS. This information is: Total nodes Number of nodes that RA-Monitor has detected. Total calls Total number of calls your BBS has received in total. Calls today Number of calls your BBS has received today. Last caller Name of the last caller to log off your system. RAStatus RAStatus is an additional DOS based tool included in this package which allows you to modify the RemoteAccess status information which is shown both on RA-Monitor and the "Who's Online" function in RemoteAccess. The syntax for this tool is: RASTATUS /N<node> [options] Where <node> is the node number you wish to modify. The options are: /U<user name> Change 'user name' to this text. /H<handle> Change 'user handle' to this text. /B<bps> Change 'BPS rate' to this speed. (Use 0 for local, no commas!) /L<location> Change 'users location' to this text. /S<status> Change 'currently doing' to this text. (RemoteAccess limitation of 10 characters) /C<call> Change 'times-called' to this value. /D<text> Write this text to this nodes userdoes. /X Clear this node's information. Due to the way DOS works, if you require a name/location etc to have a space in it, please use the underscore character '_' - RAStatus will convert this to spaces as it updates the status information. Please note that changing these options only affects the online status lists and does not modify the users record (for example specifying RASTATUS /N1 /LNot_here will only adjust the online list - the user's own Location will remain whatever it is set to in RemoteAccess' user database). Appendixes Frequently asked questions Q: The settings in RemoteAccess for screen & multitasking settings are correct for my BBS but I use RA-Monitor on a different machine. How can I change them? A: Copy CONFIG.RA from your RA system directory to RA-Monitor's directory. CD into RA-Monitor's directory and run RACONFIG. Adjust the settings in this copy of CONFIG.RA. RA-Monitor will first use the current directory's CONFIG.RA before searching the RA main directory. Q: RA-Monitor hangs on my system. A: Try disabling mouse support in RAMSETUP. If this fails use the above answer to create a CONFIG.RA in RA-Monitor's directory and try setting the multitasker to AT BIOS. If neither of these solutions help, fill in PROBLEM.DOC enclosed in this package and send it to Envy Technologies (contact details in the following section). Q: RA-Monitor has several "--- Offline ---" lines at the end of the status display list. A: Delete your USERON.BBS file from RemoteAccess and log-in to the highest node number your BBS has. This will rebuild the USERON.BBS file to the correct size so that RA-Monitor can calculate how many nodes your system is capable of running. Contacting Envy Technologies There are several ways of contacting Envy Technologies. They are: FidoNet: 2:255/78 or 2:255/119 (Damien Guard) BBS (UK): (01481) 727140/727141 (28k8) BBS (Internat.): +44-1481-727140/727141 (28k8) Internet: envy@guernsey.net To recieve the latest versions of Envy Technologies releases: FidoNet: FREQ from 2:255/89 or 2:255/119 RAMON for latest version of RA-Monitor ENVY for list of releases to dates + future releases BBS: Log onto our BBS (numbers listed above) as user GUEST. Go into the file menu, select group Official Distribution then file area [Distrib] Envy Technologies. Internet: http://www.guernsey.net/~envy Future enhancements Other projects are currently taking priority over RA-Monitor and thefore no next release has currently been set. Credits & acknowledgements Thanks to Gary Smith at FlightPath for his invaluable RA support, Lake View Software for supplying the source code to their DOS windowing libraries, Steve Streeting (also part of Envy Technologies) for his help in answering many a question on 'C', to Steve Lajoie for providing more WWW/FTP space for us at GuernseyNet and to Mike Elhert at PC Micro for his information on UserDoes support. Original interface style by JoHo - author of FrontDoor. This product was developed using another Envy Technologies product, the "RemoteAccess 'C' Developer Toolkit" which contains the RA 2.50 structs in 'C' along with Pascal<>C string copy & conversion macros, CRC-32 routines, examples and information. This package can be FREQ'ed from our FidoNet sites using the magic name RACDK, or found at our WWW site. Development tools: Borland C++ v4.52 / v3.10 RemoteAccess 'C' Developer Toolkit v0.3 LVS Windowing Classes Software used: PC-DOS, Windows 95, RemoteAccess 2.02/sw, RemoteAccess 2.02/Pro, RemoteAccess 2.50, Windows Write, X00, Windows NT Server 3.51, DoorWay 2.2, 4-DOS v5.5. Thank-you for using RA-Monitor, [)amien Damien Guard - Envy Technologies - Sunday 10th October, 1996.