From kragen@dnaco.net Thu Jul 23 16:13:49 1998 -0400
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 16:13:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: Kragen <kragen@dnaco.net>
To: systalk@ml.org
Subject: Re: [ST] BBS kind of thing
In-Reply-To: <199807231956.WAA01198@soviet.dominet.fi>
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On Thu, 23 Jul 1998, d wrote:
> As you might have noticed from some of my previous posts I'm quite
> inexperienced when it comes to BBS's and such, but now I have a potential
> project that'll require me to have someone dial *in* to my machine. I've
> done this once or twice in Windows 95, but never in Linux. Somehow I get
> the feeling it'll be quite alot easier in Linux,

Don't count on it :)

> as one won't have to
> skim through a pretencious GUI :> [that's right, hte box with the modem
> doesn't have X, either]. I don't want to do anything fancy, just let 1
> username dial in to my modem and serve a certain dir with files in it to
> the user, nothing else, nothing more :>

So among things you *don't* want to do are:
- let other users dial in to your modem
- let that user get a shell
- let that user run other programs on your machine

Right?

> I seem to have some recollection of something called mgetty, is this what
> I'm looking for? 

mgetty would probably be the easiest thing to set up, but mgetty would
do all of the above things that you don't want to do, right?

If those things are OK, just run mgetty or agetty (or, heck, getty)
from /etc/inittab connected to your modem line.  I think you have to do
some kind of hackage to get the modem to answer the phone, which should
be documented in the man page for whatever getty you use.

It sounds like what you want is a small program that answers the phone,
does user authentication, lists files, sends requested files, hangs up,
and repeats -- not a gateway for crackers to enter your system by.
Right?

> If so, and even if not, where could I grab some
> documentation (a mini-HOWTO, perhaps? or something short preferrably) on
> how to set up such a thing.

Dunno.

Kragen