Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!uwvax!oddjob!mimsy!aplcen!osiris!mjr
From: mjr@osiris.UUCP (Marcus J. Ranum)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: a bbs proposal -- use unix instead of writing a bbs
Message-ID: <1571@osiris.UUCP>
Date: 22 Mar 88 14:29:36 GMT
References: <708@oberlin.UUCP>
Reply-To: mjr@osiris.UUCP (Marcus J. Ranum)
Organization: Institute For Felinographical Studies
Lines: 30
Keywords: mail bbs

In article <708@oberlin.UUCP> cjs@oberlin.UUCP (chris seline) writes:
>I'm confused over the need for propriety BBSes.  To me  a unix system
>is the best bbs one can have...just  give your  users a  limited # of
>commands --write your own shell....then your users can use umodem and
>xmodem, and the files can be stored on your system just file any file
>(i.e.  we use /usr/local/src....)  and they can use mail and news and
>real editors like emacs -- all with a minimum of programming.  

	If anyone is interested in going this route, I have a very solid
trapped shell. It supports a complete environment, some command line
variable substitution, and table driven permissions on a per user/group
basis:

	Running a bbs would be as easy as making someone's login shell 
sush, with 
user mjr: /usr/local/bin/rn, /bin/ls, etc....
group other: blah, blah, blah....

	sush supports command line logging, does *NOT* allow I/O
redirection, makes your SHELL environment variable /dev/null and
bunches of other stuff. It has code to execute a login file, etc.
It's also a fairly small executable.
	
	It was posted in comp.sources.unix, if anyone is interested,
or I can get you a copy.

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