Hi there.
Recently Al has an issue with his BBBS installation that he mentioned to the author of the software in the Fido BBBS Support echo.
The issue was that fsxNet packets coming in from 4/100 were showing up inside BBBS with strange SEEN-BY lines.
[snip]
@SEEN-BY: 1/1 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 @SEEN-BY: 0/116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 127 128 129 130 131 133
134
@SEEN-BY: 0/135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150
151
@SEEN-BY: 0/152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167
168
@SEEN-BY: 0/169 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 181 182 183 184 185 186
187
@SEEN-BY: 0/188 189 190 191 192 193 195 197 199 200 999 2/100 3/100 101 102
103
@SEEN-BY: 0/104 4/10 100 101 102 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 112 113 114 116 @SEEN-BY: 4/117
[snip]
As a follow up I did some checking of packets from 1/100 to 3/100 and on to 4/100 and also looked at packets going to Al from 4/100 and all seemed OK. I posted about this in the BBBS support echo in Fido if you want to take a look :)
Mark Lewis picked up something from my post and commented as follows
[snip]
@SEEN-BY: 169 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 181 182 183 184 185
186 187
@SEEN-BY: 188 189 190 191 192 193 195 197 199 200 999 2/100 3/100
4/100
well, there's the problem... there must be a net on the first address of each line... if they are all in net1, it should look like this:
@SEEN-BY: 1/1 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115
@SEEN-BY: 1/116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 127 128 129 130 131 133 134
@SEEN-BY: 1/135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151
[snip]
I then sought some further confirmation of this in FTSC documentation but
could not find much so posted to the FTSC public chat echo. Andrew kindly replied with the following.
[snip]
From: Andrew Leary
To: Paul Hayton
Subj: SEEN-BY
Date: 04/01/19 05:26
Base: FTSC Public Discussion
Hello Paul!
01 Apr 19 12:15, you wrote to all:
Mark is saying that Mystic SEEN-BY lines may be incorrect in that at
the start of each line he says there should be a reference to the NET
like this example he gave.
When James is back on deck I was going to feed this info back to him
but wanted to do due diligence first and find FTSC docs that explain
this requirement.
At the moment I can't find anything except in FTS-0004 where there's a section about SEEN-BY but no mention of the need to start each line
with a NET/NODE combo.
Can someone point me to where I can reference this need and provide
any commentary about this subject please?
http://ftsc.org/docs/fsc-0074.001 has this to say:
3. Seen-by Lines
Seen-by lines are the focus of EchoMail distribution control
information. They are used to determine which addresses
(systems) have received messages. There can be as many seen-
by lines as required to store the necessary information.
Seen-by lines consist of "SEEN-BY:<space>", followed by a list
of net/node numbers corresponding to the systems which have
received that message. The net/node number of each system to
which a message is exported is added to the seen-by lines at
the time of export.
There shall be exactly one set of seen-by lines in a message.
Seen-by lines:
- Shall follow the origin line.
- Shall begin with the nine character literal: _
SEEN-BY:<space>
- Shall contain a list of net/node numbers.
- Shall be no more than 80 characters long including the
required literal.
The complete lines might look like:
SEEN-BY: 104/1 501 132/101 113 136/601 1014/1
SEEN-BY: 1014/2 3
The list of net/node numbers:
- Shall identify at least one address. "Blank" seen-by
lines shall not be transmitted.
- Shall be sorted in ascending net/node order.
- Shall not contain repeated node numbers.
- Shall use only "2D" net/node notation.
- May use short form address notation where a net number is
listed once on any one line. These 2 lines are
equivalent:
SEEN-BY: 104/1 104/501 132/101 132/113 136/601
SEEN-BY: 104/1 501 132/101 113 136/601
Some implementations insert a Ctrl-A (0x01) immediately
preceding the SEEN-BY: literal (^ASEEN-BY:).
Six months after adoption of this document the ^ASEEN-BY:
format shall be processed equally with the SEEN-BY: format
when either occurs in received packets.
_
The critical phrase is: "May use short form address notation where a net number is listed once on any one line."
My interpretation is that the net number must be listed at least once on any one SEEN-BY line.
Regards,
Andrew
[snip]
So I'm just passing all of this info / feedback to you for your info and consideration. I'm wondering if you would update SEEN-BY in Mystic to ensure the NET was quoted at the start of each SEEN-BY line? On the face of it the request seems reasonable to me and might help with further interoperability between Mystic and other systems.
Al or Andrew may care to comment further :)
Best, Paul
--- E:
avon@bbs.nz ------ W:bbs.nz ---
--- K:keybase.io/avon --------------
--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)