Mon Nov 16 2020 18:09:21 MST from Otto Roboto Subject: Update!

Oh, and the last version of Asgard86 was 1.49q released sometime in 1996.

Awesome info here! I believe Asgard86 was the last thing I ran The Sanitarium/Amiga Archives on, before I shut it down - probably around 87-88... maybe as late as 89. By that time, Citadel traffic was already starting to die down to the point where I was getting maybe a few calls per week. I may have run it longer than that though. It was a long time ago and I'm a bit hazy on what was going on around that time. I don't think I kept it up into the 90's, though. 

Citadel traffic didn't really start dying down until 1994 ish.  Hotel-86 (the Sacramento Citadel message hub) was still exchanging messages with Hue, Jr's system thru 1995 until their hard drive crashed and they chose not to rebuild it.

Tue Nov 17 2020 12:31:46 MST from Otto Roboto

Citadel traffic didn't really start dying down until 1994 ish.  Hotel-86 (the Sacramento Citadel message hub) was still exchanging messages with Hue, Jr's system thru 1995 until their hard drive crashed and they chose not to rebuild it.

Yeah - but by about 88, 89, I had rebuilt a little bit of my self-confidence and was getting back into the Land Park/Greenhaven "popular cliques" scenes - doing some drinking at keggers, and chasing skirts again... 

Which, honestly, was more attractive at that point that hanging out in pizza parlors talking about modems, memory expansion and OS preferences...  :) 

So, I just sort of decreased my time online. Cy (Jason), Huey (James), Al and Pat all drifted away, especially after Cy left for college. The Cit Brat Pack was what attracted most of the traffic to my BBS I think... the mainstream Cits were still active... but all the younger Citadelphians... their lives were just getting busy. 

It would be years until I started encountering folks from the Sacramento Citadel scene online again. Generally once they arrived at Facebook, unless I ran into them professionally in our blooming IT careers. 

Tue Nov 17 2020 04:08:22 PM MST from ParanoidDelusions

 

Tue Nov 17 2020 12:31:46 MST from Otto Roboto

Citadel traffic didn't really start dying down until 1994 ish.  Hotel-86 (the Sacramento Citadel message hub) was still exchanging messages with Hue, Jr's system thru 1995 until their hard drive crashed and they chose not to rebuild it.

Yeah - but by about 88, 89, I had rebuilt a little bit of my self-confidence and was getting back into the Land Park/Greenhaven "popular cliques" scenes - doing some drinking at keggers, and chasing skirts again... 

Which, honestly, was more attractive at that point that hanging out in pizza parlors talking about modems, memory expansion and OS preferences...  :) 

So, I just sort of decreased my time online. Cy (Jason), Huey (James), Al and Pat all drifted away, especially after Cy left for college. The Cit Brat Pack was what attracted most of the traffic to my BBS I think... the mainstream Cits were still active... but all the younger Citadelphians... their lives were just getting busy. 

It would be years until I started encountering folks from the Sacramento Citadel scene online again. Generally once they arrived at Facebook, unless I ran into them professionally in our blooming IT careers. 

 

Funny, I had not thought about Cy (Jason) in years.  Still in touch with him?

Wed Nov 18 2020 18:47:41 MSTfrom Otto Rob

Funny, I had not thought about Cy (Jason) in years.  Still in touch with him?

Nah, I'm pretty sure the LAST time I saw him Allen Hollinger (who won't be my friend anymore because I'm a White Nationalist Nazi Blah Blah Blah...) and I went to a concert at the Oakland Coliseum with him - he and I got absolutely blasted in the parking lot, and then somehow we lost him in the show. It was a Metallica concert. Maybe it was at Candlestick. I remember a plane flew over the stadium after the show and tipped its wings. 

Anyhow... So... we were freaking out... and I had a CB radio in my Datsun 510... the yellow BMW looking thing I used to drive. He found some trucker, had convinced him to let him use his CB... and we had been going by the handle "Mud duck..." and I turn on the car and suddenly over the speaker, "Mud duck!! Mud duck! This is Cy. JASON! Don't leave me, dude!" 

I guess I went with him and this girl I knew named Shoshonna Zingerman. She was fussy and frumpy and had curly long hair and freckles and was kinda cool, loved ALL the rocker boys, but was a little too uptight and not exactly super attractive. She was kind of a "one of the guys," guy... but she was like the Morrie from Goodfellas. She was always stressing out over shit like, way beyond her years. So... Jason came along, she had a cherry RX7 convertible, white with red interior... and Jason broke off one of the doors. She wouldn't let it drop. He offered to pay, and she was like, "oh, you're going to pay..." and it was just uncomfortable. That might have been the last time. He went away to college, we never talked again. 

I've always had a friend since then who reminded me of Jason though - like... you know how they re-use NPCs with slight modifications in computer FRPs but eventually you realize, "This is the same guy from Yew, but he is a fighter instead of a thief..." 

Like that. Right now my Jason/Cy is this brilliant guy who worked for me in Ohio named Joshua. Same kind of "reserved when sober / rowdy AF when drunk," attitude.

I'm pretty sure reality is a simulation - and if this isn't multiplayer - all the rest of you are NPCs. Sorry about that. 

It'll be interesting to see how long we can glory day about the old times until some other faces come and create some more conversation... if it doesn't happen sooner or later, the Sanitarium is going to be a very quiet place sooner rather than later. 

People have to convince friends to show up - or this won't be a very long experiment. 

Facebook is like heroin. Trying to convince people to give it up for anything else is a tall order. 

For the optimal old school experience, visit The Sanitarium at telnet.wallofhate.com

Just playing around with some designs for branding

Hey!, does the telnet interface give you the old ascii color codes?  I miss those from the old Citadel screens.  ;)

It should if your terminal program supports it. On Windows, try "Putty". You'll get all the rooms and floors in technicolor. 


SSH to cit@wallofhate.com and use password "cit" without the quotes, and it'll take you right in. 

Mon Dec 07 2020 19:05:00 MST from Otto Roboto

Hey!, does the telnet interface give you the old ascii color codes?  I miss those from the old Citadel screens.  ;)

I just fixed that today. It *should* take you right into the Terminal without a password if you connect to bbs@wallofhate.com - but I haven't figured out how to make that work in SSH with Debian. 

I'm also trying to make the default view when you log in to the web client display that "Welcome To The Sanitarium" page - but I haven't been able to figure out how to make that happen - and I'm likely to eff the entire BBS up trying to get it to work. I *have* a test machine - but I can't get it to work there, either. 

I'm doing things like watching the syslog live as I connect and run commands and change things to try and get it to work, but no luck yet. I made some changes to try and get a work-around to work here, and it didn't really work consistently - and when I changed things back, *everything* was fubar for a few minutes. Required a whole reboot to get things running again. Gotta stop messing around with the actual BBS. 

I tried using Putty, but when I enter my account as "Otto Roboto" and use my password that works on the web interface, it denies my log in.

ssh to the address cit@wallofhate.com on port 22. Then enter cit for the password. It will bring up the Citadel, and then you log in with your Citadel account. 

Tue Dec 08 2020 20:48:34 MST from Otto Roboto

I tried using Putty, but when I enter my account as "Otto Roboto" and use my password that works on the web interface, it denies my log in.

That is something I'm trying to fix, too - so that you'll just ssh to cit@wallofhate.com and it will autolog in with the user account for Linux that launches citadel, and you'll never even know it happened. 

I've made some progress there - but there are some Debian/Linux things that are a bit beyond me. 


If you're on Facebook - if you would let everyone know there are some cert errors that are making the BBS sometimes seem to hang - but it is up and running - just be patient and it will respond - I'd appreciate it.

Deleted and updated the SSL certs in the wrong folder - well, not the wrong folder, but only in one of them, and it wasn't the Webcit folder. Just realized there are two sets of certs, one for Citadel, the executable "engine," and one for WebCit - the client that publishes the citadel server on the web. Getting my head around all the different pieces. 

Just deleted those certs - and set it to reboot when all users are idle - so... there may be a short period of inaccessibility while it shuts down and restarts. 

Still working on some cert issues. Changing domain names and I'm considering getting a signed cert with the correct DN from one of the free sites. They're kind of a hassle - but it might be worth it. 

In the meantime, the changes I made *seem* to have had an affect on the overall slow performance the last few days - but there aren't enough rooms with traffic for me to verify for sure that this is the case. 

But I may have made some headway. We'll see. 

30 seconds from the landing page until the login window. That is why no one is logging in. You all think it is down. You're not waiting long enough for it to connect. 

Once you get it - it is snappier. But getting in - it is taking a long time for the BBS to connect. 

So, something happened to the DNS settings on the server. They weren't pointed at the right place. That was causing some of the slowness. Also - openssh is still failing for some reason. I don't know why. 

But, I'm making some progress. 

Oh yeah. DNS was absolutely part of the problem. 

SSL is still iffy. But it may just be that they're self signed certs. I think RSS feeds are probably working again, too. 

Fhhhixed It! 

Thu Dec 10 2020 23:34:24 MST from ParanoidDelusions

 I think RSS feeds are probably working again, too.