Hi Sean, Andrew, whomever else...

Do you guys do support for MBSE on NixNet?

The Wanderer wrote to All:

Do you guys do support for MBSE on NixNet?

That is entirely up to Andrew.

-- Sean



--- MBSE BBS v1.1.7 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: Outpost BBS * Johnson City, TN (86:100/1)

Hello The!

09 Feb 26 19:15, you wrote to all:

Hi Sean, Andrew, whomever else...

Do you guys do support for MBSE on NixNet?

Support questions for any *nix BBS software are welcome in this echo.

Andrew

---
* Origin: Phoenix BBS * NixNet HQ * phoenix.bnbbbs.net (86:86/1)

Re: MBSE Support?
By: Andrew Leary to The Wanderer on Thu Feb 12 2026 11:27 am

Hi Andrew,

I was doing an install of MBSE from git sources a couple of days ago and found an issue with mbtask not fully paying attention to MBSE_ROOT. The home directory of the mbse user in /etc/passwd is, I suspect erroneously, just as important as the MBSE_ROOT environment variable.

I don't know where or how it's getting that detail from /etc/passwd, but an easy way to show the issue is to create an mbse user with a path of /home/mbse, grab the mbse code and use a prefix of /home/mbse/mbse, do the install, and try and fire up mbtask. mbtask continually looks for things under /home/mbse, not /home/mbse/mbse even though the env is set properly. Change the mbse user's home directory to /home/mbse/mbse in /etc/passwd, and voila, mbtask starts.

With this setup, when the user's home directory is /home/mbse, mbtask errors out with:

mbtask: No such file or directory
Can't create lockfile "/home/mbse/var/run/mbtask.tmp"

But change the user's home folder to /home/mbse/mbse, mbtask starts without issue.

I believe, based on my understanding from the docs, that this is unexpected behaviour?

The Wanderer wrote to Andrew Leary <=-

but an easy way to show the issue is to create an mbse user with a path
of /home/mbse, grab the mbse code and use a prefix of /home/mbse/mbse,

FYI, we do not support MBSE when it is installed in any directory than /opt/mbse.

From the manual under "MBSE BBS Basic Installation":

"MBSE BBS is default installed in /opt/mbse. It should be possible to install the bbs in a different location but this is not supported."

Hoever, if you want to try it, installing anywhere but /opt/mbse will require editing SETUP.sh manually.

-- Sean
--- MultiMail/Linux
* Origin: Outpost BBS * Johnson City, TN (86:100/1)

Re: Re: MBSE (mbtask) issue
By: Sean Dennis to The Wanderer on Thu Feb 12 2026 09:51 pm

FYI, we do not support MBSE when it is installed in any directory than /opt/mbse.
From the manual under "MBSE BBS Basic Installation":
"MBSE BBS is default installed in /opt/mbse. It should be possible to install the bbs in a different location but this is not supported."

Perhaps I alluded to requiring support when I started asking if this was a good place to discuss, so I apologise for potentially setting this thread off on the wrong track. If you look further in my message, I'm actually reporting an issue - I thought it was pretty clear that I could get it to run and I described the difference between not running and running.

On a second point, though, which manual are you referring to? The .odt and .pdf manual I've been going through in the repository at https://sourceforge.net/p/mbsebbs/code/ci/master/tree/docs/ does not say "but this is not supported." It lists what the default is and how it's laid out, great, but if we want to discuss the manual, it's also pretty good at conflating /opt/mbse, $MBSE_ROOT and a variety of home dir (~) paths.

Hoever, if you want to try it, installing anywhere but /opt/mbse will require editing SETUP.sh manually.

Or just running the steps manually. Again, I was hoping the message I sent was pretty clear that I could get things running, but with a custom $MBSE_ROOT being different from the user's home directory, things are inconsistent/fall apart, and I believe that's an issue. Not sure why the binaries are attempting to utilize the user's home directory at all when $MBSE_ROOT exists. To me it seems like possibly an old way of doing things that may not have been replaced entirely with a newer way of doing things. *shrug*