Server Help

[Grelminar]

Wow, lots of stuff to reply to. Let's go in order:

Chat channel number/names: Ok, I wasn't too clear about this. What I meant was: if the field looks like a number (starts with a digit), interpret it as a channel number. If not, interpret it as a channel name. This implicitly disallows channel names that start with a digit, which is fine with me (are there any channels in use with numeric names?).

What I didn't write down anywhere was my ulterior motive for specifying it this way: I want to move to a system where all communication uses chat names, instead of numbers, and the numbers become a client-side only thing, for clients that want to use them. The best way to do that seemed to build the server and biller with support for both systems, then change the clients to work with names only, then drop support for chat numbers in the server and biller.

Of course, the chances of this happening as planned within five years are sort of slim, so I'm open to reconsidering.

Server listening ports: If only it were that simple :) asss can listen on multiple ports per server process, and it can listen on different ports for vie, continuum, and tcp chat clients. So which port, or ports, should it report to the biller, and how?

Zone reset/shutdown: I see no reason why the biller should have that kind of functionality. It's not a remote administration for zones, it's a user database.

PBAD rtext not getting reported to chatnet clients: This was a bug, now fixed.

POK rtext not getting reported to any clients: rtext for POK isn't currently used at all. It's just a theoretical possibility. Don't use it for anything important. PENTERARENA is the correct thing to use.

WANTREG for cont clients: I think it should work for both ss and cont. I haven't tested it, though. The format is specified as a hex-encoded string, but the contents aren't. I assume cont sends the same big packet that ss did. I think the layout is somewhere in the mervbot source.

Colons in field data: Yeah, this is sort of annoying. First, that time/date data should be in unix time format, not that messy string. Second, there should be some standard escaping for colons in data that shouldn't contain colons. I was trying to avoid this, but maybe I can't.

[ExplodyThingy]

Might I suggest creating a convention for if a billing network decides to add custom protocol? If a network were to mandate the support of a shutdown packet, or a stats packet or something? This would prevent overlapping protocols in the future. I see this on many merv plugins out there, there is no standardized !help and sometimes two or more plugins use the same commands (ie, !start, !stop, !add, !lag, etc.)

Something like "EXT:ExtName:ExtType:Fields" such as "EXT:SSIRefit:SHUTDOWN:NOW"

This way, if say SSN were to enact a SHUTDOWN on their own, it would be clarified. This may never become a problem as a server should never connect to more than one network at a time anyway, but it may be applicable in other areas.


Catid has the datagram as the biller recieves it via the VIE Billing Protocol

Code: Show/Hide    /* -Field Title-   -Offset-   -Length-   -Comments-     * UserID         1         4         Zone ID     * Name            5         32     * Email         37         64         Twice as long as Name     * City            101         32     * State         133         24         Odd length     * Sex            157         1         'M' / 'F'     * Age            158         1     * Home            159         1         1(TRUE) / 0(FALSE)     * Work            160         1         1(TRUE) / 0(FALSE)     * School         161         1         1(TRUE) / 0(FALSE)     * Processor      162         2         ie. 586     * Unknown         164         6         WTF are these for?     * Hostname         170         80         Should this be used in HID?     */

And thus as MERVBot generates it when sending a reg form packet:

Code: Show/Hide    /*   Field   Length   Description       0      1      Type byte       1      32      Real name       33      64      Email       97      32      City       129      24      State       153      1      Sex('M'/'F')       154      1      Age    Connecting from...       155      1      Home       156      1      Work       157      1      School    System information       158      4      Processor type (586)       162      2      ?       164      2      ?    Windows registration information (SSC RegName ban)       166      40      Real name       206      40      Organization    Windows NT-based OS's do not send any hardware information (DreamSpec HardwareID ban)       246      40      System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Display\0000       286      40      System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Monitor\0000       326      40      System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Modem\0000       366      40      System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Modem\0001       406      40      System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Mouse\0000       446      40      System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Net\0000       486      40      System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Net\0001       526      40      System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Printer\0000       566      40      System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\MEDIA\0000       606      40      System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\MEDIA\0001       646      40      System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\MEDIA\0002       686      40      System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\MEDIA\0003       726      40      System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\MEDIA\0004    */

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