Hey there, once again looking for HUDSON message base tools. My message base suddenly finds itself back at 0 messages despite being the right size. I do have a new clue though, on running a check, I now have

Illegal messagenumber 0 in record 1-6804

So every message in there appears to be 0 thus deleted or something. There seems to be a bug in the FEUTIL purge or pack routines. Unclear what actually triggers it though.

Spec

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/03/18 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

So every message in there appears to be 0 thus deleted or something. There seems to be a bug in the FEUTIL purge or pack routines. Unclear what actually triggers it though.

I doubt if that's an FE bug, it's a limitation of the hudson format.

JAM is plenty retro, I would use JAM bases if you can.

There is also GOLDBASE. I don't know much about it. D'Bridge has a goldbase version that might work better although I have no experience with it.

JAM works well with FE so if your BBS can do JAM that's what I'd do.

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-4
* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)

I doubt if that's an FE bug, it's a limitation of the hudson format.

You appear to be right there. I've only had trouble with the physical size of the message base files in the past. To be honest I didn't know there was an actual message number limit as well.

I've got message base stats being sent to myself each maintenance now, so I'll be able to keep a closer eye on whats going on, going forward.


The only possibilities I have in Super, is Hudson and then Squish... I've never
used squish though.

Spec


--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: < Scrawled in blood at The Lower Planes > (21:3/101)

I doubt if that's an FE bug, it's a limitation of the hudson format.

You appear to be right there. I've only had trouble with the physical size of
the message base files in the past. To be honest I didn't know there was an actual message number limit as well.

I don't remember either. I remember butting heads with all that and had to change to a different format, jam in my case.

A hudson base is really fast to access and works great as long as you stay away
from those limitations.. :)

The only possibilities I have in Super, is Hudson and then Squish... I've neve
used squish though.

Squish is older than Jam, I forget when it became available but it proceeded jam by a few years at least.

Squish is my default message format when available. There are limitations there
too but they never bothered me. Messages can have no more than 9 (I think) links to messages or threads. You don't need to pack a message base if you delete messages. New messages will use the message space used by deleted messages if they can fit. Packing will remove dead space also.

You can get a lot of files in a directory with squish bases. My squish bases use 3 files per base and some squish utilities may use others also. When I was running jam bases (4 files per area) with RA on DOS a new message scan took a long time. I solved that by using more than 1 directory, fido1, fido2, fido3 and so on. I think in DOS the magic number is 250 but I limited each directory to about 100.. just to be sure.. ;)

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-4
* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)

I don't remember either. I remember butting heads with all that and had to change to a different format, jam in my case.

I didn't have this much drama, even when I was feeding comp.sys.apple2 hierarchy into it back in 93-4? I couldn't keep more than 2 days messages.. I remember that.. Squish was new in SBBS 1.17 I'm reasonably sure. But it appeared to be pretty experimental and buggy at that stage from memory.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/101)

I didn't have this much drama, even when I was feeding comp.sys.apple2
hierarchy into it back in 93-4? I couldn't keep more than 2 days messages.. I
remember that.. Squish was new in SBBS 1.17 I'm reasonably sure. But it appeared to be pretty experimental and buggy at that stage from memory.

The squish format is a good and reliable option as long as SuperBBS has a good implementation of it. I've never had eyes on SuperBBS so I don't know.

If that's not the case I wonder if SuperBBS went the goldbase route at all. That might be something to try if you can find a goldbase tosser, like D'Bridge.

If that's not a go your going to have to keep within the HMB specs.. somehow.

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-4
* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)

The squish format is a good and reliable option as long as SuperBBS
has a good implementation of it. I've never had eyes on SuperBBS
so I don't know.

Well this was the last version 1.17.3 was the last versiom, and I seem to recall, the only one with squish in it. As I say I never tried it, but half the issue at the time I seem to recall being tossers.. Anyway it doesn't really
matter to much, I don't know that I'm terribly worried about squish, I'll have
to try and make sure with some of the better info being produced for the message base it remains within its limitations.

If that's not the case I wonder if SuperBBS went the goldbase route
at all. That might be something to try if you can find a goldbase
tosser, like D'Bridge.

There was nothing else after this, no jam no gold, no nothing :)

Spec


--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: < Scrawled in blood at The Lower Planes > (21:3/101)