Q: Is there any documentation for ifgate and ifcico? A: No, sorry. Only README files and example configuration file. And this FAQ list, of course. Q: Will ifcico work in multiline environment? A: Hopefully yes, though the mechanism of skipping locked files is not well tested. Q: How do I create a nodelist? A: You need not. Take a fresh nodelist from a nearby FidoNet node. Q: How do I compile the nodelist? A: With ifindex program. You also need to keep the original nodelists. Q: How do I compile a nodediff? A: With nlpatch program. Q: The diffs to getty_ps do not fit, and besides that, ifcico cannot originate call while uugetty is active on the dialin line. Any ideas? A: Take getty_ps version later than 2.0.7c, versions prior to 2.0.7b are unusable. Q: When I start ifcico without parameters, it displays banner and does noting. Ctrl-C, Ctrl-\ etc. do not help. What's on? A: This is correct behavior in slave mode. To make outgoing calls, start it with "-r1" parameter. If you unintentionally started it in slave mode, just wait several minutes, and it will finish. Q: Do directories in config file need ending "/" ? A: No. But it won't do any harm. Q: How do I create an alias in the database? A: You need not. It is created automatically as mail goes from Internet to FidoNet. Q: In fact, I think I did not understood at all what alias (ifdbm) is for. When do you built it ? When do you use it ? A: When a message from "jsmith@some.where.net (John Smith)" passes from Internet to Fidonet, fidonetters see the message from "John Smith of your:fido/addr". When fidonetters make replies, their replies go to "John Smith of your:fido/addr". To forward the message to the correct Internet address, ifmail needs to remember that "John Smith" is actually "jsmith@some.where.net". That's why the database is needed. When messages pass from Internet to Fidonet, it is filled, and when replies come from Fidonet, it is used to forward them to Internet. Q: How do I monitor as the things happen? A: tail -f or if you use syslog logging, direct log_local0 to a virtual screen (see man 5 syslog.conf) Q: How do I tell ifcico to poll a node? A: Either create an empty .flo or start ifcico with the node address in the command line. Q: How do I arrange a coninious poll of a node until a successfull session occurs? A: #!/bin/sh while : do if /usr/lib/ifmail/ifcico f123.n456 then exit 0 fi sleep 30 done Q: How do I send a message with just this specific AKA in the From:? A: Either modify your config file to make it primary address, or forge customized "From:" header in the RFC-822 message before feeding it to MTA (or ifmail). Q: When I run ifunpack (iftoss) packets disapper but nothing is passed to sendmail/rnews. What's on? A: You probably specified -N. Your mail/newsbatches are now in /tmp/ifmail directory. Q: Why doesn't ifmail accept addresses in fido-format (2:283/315.38) ? A: Because. Q: Why do I get a warning about the out-of-date nodelist index so often? A: The warning is issued when any of the source nodelists *OR* any of the config files is younger than the index. Q: When ifcico receives a file request, does it perform a subdirectory seach? A: No. But remember that in UN*X files may have more than one link. Q: How do I create a file request? A: Make an FTS-0006 compatible file in the outbound directory with the name XXXXYYYY.req, where XXXX is a hexadecimal net number, and YYYY is a hexadecimal node number. In the simplest case, it would contain just file names (one at a line). Q: How do I create a file attach? A: Either send a mail with the header "X-FTN-FLAGS: ATT" and the file name in the subject (path starting from the `public' directory, and it should be on its place until sent), or put the file name (full path, starting from `/') into the file XXXXYYYY.flo in the outbound directory, where XXXX is a hexadecimal net number, and YYYY is a hexadecimal node number. Q: How do I specify the "To:" field in the news article to be passed to FidoNet? A: Use "X-Comment-To:" header (or simply "Comment-To:") Q: How do I get rid of the RFC headers converted to that silly kludges in the FidoNet messages? A: You cannot. The author insists on *always* keeping the header information. There is a Good Reason to keep them, trust me! The root idea of ifmail gateway is that the gateway has no right to drop information that it does not understand. If you like, think of it as of my religious views. I am pretty convinced that the best thing you can do with someone other's information that you agreed to carry is to pass it untouched. If a guy chose to put his telephone number into X-Phone: header, he has a right to have it delivered to the readers, no difference if they are on "this" or "that" side of the gateway. Of course, there are many and many cases when this requirement is not met. For example, in the former Soviet Union the KGB thought that it had a right to prelustrate mail (real "paper" mail), and decide if the particular letter should be delivered or not. That was common practice for international mail. But you should agree that this is unfair practice. Another example: open the cowling of your car (or case of your VCR) and remove details which function you do not understand. Q: But the other sysops are complaing about the unnecessary (for them) load, they will simply kick me out of Fido! A: They have no right to do it. You do not violate any standarts. You do not violate policy. So, there is no legal reason for punishment. If they take action against you, complain to the superior coordinator, and you have a good chance to win. Q: How do I achieve default FidoNet routing - either "direct" or "host", "hub", "zonegate" routing? A: Generally, this is MTA's responcibility. ifroute program, that can be used as a "queryprogram" in Smail, is under development (and very well may stay in this state forever). Q: When I link ifcico, I get an unresolved reference: yy???.o. Any hints? A: Try adding "-ll" (or "-lfl" if you are using flex) to the LIBS in the CONFIG file. Q: All articles I receive from my FidoNet uplink are routed back (as I see in the cnews log, and in the cnews "togo" file). Why? A: Because in the cnews "sys" you specified the site name in a format other than recommended "fNNN.nMMM" (or "pLLL.fNNN.nMMM"). Q: Is it possible to to have FidoNet correspondents look like internettes in Internet, i.e. have "From: User.Name@Inter.net.domain" instead of "From: User.Name@pNN.fMM.nLL.zX.something.org"? A: In many cases this can be done with the "domtrans" configuration verb. Q: After calling a Fido node I find these lines in iflog: "tcsetattr(0,TCSADRAIN,clocal) return -1 \n\terrno=5 : I/O error" Should I be worried about these errors? A: No. On some systems, kernel does not allow any tty I/O after hangup, thus preventing ifcico from resetting the modem after call. Q: On SCO UNIX, ifcico cannot obtain device for dialout. What's on? A: Probably this is a permission problem creating a LCK file: either make /usr/spool/uucp world-writable or make uucico owned by uucp. Q: The first name and surname of the netmail recipients are always starting with lower case although I enter them with upper case. What's wrong? A: Ifmail does not change the case of the recipients name. Probably it is your MTA. In case of sendmail this can be changed by adding the 'u' flag to the flag list (F=....) in the definiton of your fido mailer specs (in sendmail.cf). Q: My fidonet neighbours are complaining about the format on ^aMSGID kludge in my messages. They ask me to put my FTN address there. Should I do it, and if yes, how? A: Probably you should not. If you do, a single message of Internet origin will get _different_ ^aMDGID's when gatewayed to Fidonet at different gateways, which is incorrect. Also, the FTS standart says that the ^aMSGID should contain the address of the originating network, which won't be true if the gateway's address is substituted. Q: When I poll a node, even though the session is competely correct, ifcico considers the call as failed (apparently, there is a problem with a SIGHUP coming too early...). A: Some fidonet mailers do not finish Zmodem session cleanly, with ZFIN. If they don't, there is *no* way to distinguish accidental hangup from the session completion. Ifcico prefers to be suspitions and interpret unclear situation as failure. Q. I just found a bug in ifmail: when there is only a *.req file in outb, ifcico won't call the destination node. A. This is not a bug, this is a feature :-) If you need to poll the node to get a file, create an empty .flo together with a .req. If you get thru to the node, but it says that it does not support freqs at the moment, the .req file stays in the queue (so you don't need to create it again next time), but the .flo file is deleted (as the session was successfull), so ifcico does not continiously poll the node (which would be annoying). Q: First I want to say that I read FAQ and know about tty_put status error message :) But... Who can explain me why sometimes ifcico continues writing to the log file during the night and in the morning one can find out that the size of log file is over 300 Mb? A: This happens when ifcico does not catch SIGHUP. That may happen if you have wrong modem setup (AT&C0), or wrong cable (with CD signal always ON), or wrong device management (e.g. old-style getty keeping the serial line open while ifcico tries to use it). Q: On my Linux XXX, I cannot compile with HAS_NDBM_H because ndbm.h appears to be missing. Where can I get it? A: It seems that some linux distribution has ndbm.h file missing. Just install it in /usr/include (it can be taken from any gdbm distribution). Also note that if some distributions ndbm.h is either broken or is from BSD DB rather than gdbm. You need gdbm, or you should specify -DHAS_BSD_DB and compile with bsd db library. Q: Will ifmail ever run on MS/DOS? A: No.