Last update 03-Jan-2006

How to setup Apache to work with MBSE BBS

Introduction

To let a webserver work with MBSE BBS you must organize a special file structure. Note that even if you don't setup a webserver you must still create a structure like this for the fidonet mailer, if you don't, mail and files will get lost! This description is written for Apache which is installed on most *nix and BSD distributions upon installation. For the directory structure, read the setup for the FTP server

 

Important settings in mbsetup

Screen 1.18: 

1.  Base path      /opt/mbse/ftp/pub
Screen 1.19: 
1.  Docs root      /srv/www/htdocs
2.  Link to ftp    files
3.  URL name       http://www.example.com

The base FTP path is the default which MBSE BBS sets up during installation. The Docs root for the apache httpd server is different on each distribution, in this example it is set for Slackware 15.0. Because the directory /var/www/htdocs has nothing to do with /opt/mbse/ftp/pub we make an alias link named files. For the URL name, you must fill in the URL where your BBS is using. If someone types this in, they must get the index.html from the directory /srv/www/htdocs, the docs root.

Now you can run the command mbfile index, this will create a main index in the directory /opt/mbse/ftp/pub and additional index.html files in all your download areas.

 

Change Apache server configuration.

As root, edit your httpd.conf file. Where that file is depends on your *nix distribution For this page we will use /srv/www/htdocs which is the default directory in Slackware 15.0.

In the section between <IfModule mod_alias.c> and </IfModule> insert the following lines:

    #
    # Alias for MBSE BBS download areas.
    #
    Alias /files "/opt/mbse/ftp/pub"
    <Directory "/opt/mbse/ftp/pub">
        Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>

    #
    # Alias to access the MBSE BBS documenatation
    #
    Alias /mbseman "/opt/mbse/html"
    <Directory "/opt/mbse/html">
        Options Indexes MultiViews
        AllowOverride None
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>
Then restart Apache with the command apachectl restart Now if you access your webserver with for example http://www.mybbs.com/files/ you must be able to browse the filelists. If you use http://www.mybbs.com/mbseman/ you must be able to browse this documentation online.

 

Counting downloads

If you want to increase the download counters when files are downloaded via www you must make sure that the web logs the downloads to a access_log file, for example /var/log/apache/access_log. This logfile must be readable by user mbse and must be in combined format. You can set this in your apache configuration file. Then in mbsetup menu 1.13.4 enter full filename and path to this logfile. The mball program will parse this file and increase the download counters for the files that are downloaded from the webserver.

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