======================================================================
NPS BOARD FOR BRAVE HEROES
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NEXT ONE Mon Jan 27 22:25:31 CET 2025
Hello there online hero!
/037/ How to write something on the board
Not sure? Testing on port 1920
/test/
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NEXT ONE Wed Jan 29 23:41:41 CET 2025
hey Morena!
- eidolon
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NEXT ONE Fri Jan 31 01:44:54 CET 2025
What happens if someone sends a terrabyte of data to your NPS server?
IanJ
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NEXT ONE Fri Jan 31 09:19:32 CET 2025
My dear friend IanJ, first of all, congratulation for using NPS ;/
Regarding data, I will probably never know, my Plan 9 server will
crash and never boot again. I will be new owner of terrabyte of data
and sender will get bad karma. Let's believe in a better world ;/
I setup just maximum number of lines limit. Someone can probably send
huge one line. Good point, probably I can limit connection time, not
sure about the size. Text is written by lines, not at the end of
connection. More simple will be probably to setup max line legth.
With max lines and max line lenght there will be some limit how much
one can fit into it.
But, I don't like even current max lines limit. It adds complexity
into setup. More simple and safer would be probably just plug in USB
flash drive and store risky, no critical files there.
morena
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NEXT ONE Sun Feb 2 11:42:14 CET 2025
hello. i like your setup.
am learning a lot from your example.
good luck!
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NEXT ONE Wed Feb 5 12:00:18 CET 2025
Hi there,
Are you using original Plan 9 or 9front?
How are you managing the mouse in Plan 9?
From time to time I try the 9front OS in
a virtual machine but after about 20 minutes
I have problems with the hand articulations.
Also, I do not like that "rc" has no command
history. For me, it is cumbersome to scroll
up and down for the text I need.
--
mKz
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NEXT ONE Wed Feb 5 12:16:59 CET 2025
Hey mKz,
I use Plan 9, Richard Miller's port for Raspberry Pi. Works well for
me. Mouse works, not sure what you mean by hand articulation issue.
Plan 9 is probably not the most ergonomic operating system. Especially
after decades of learning things from UNIX, Windows and so.
It may feel sometime like ride a horse compared to drive a car ;/
morena
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NEXT ONE Wed Feb 5 13:19:22 CET 2025
Hi morena,
By articulation I mean the joint articulation
between the arm and the hand.
--
mKz
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NEXT ONE Wed Feb 5 14:58:59 CET 2025
That's the question for your local geriatrician ;/
morena
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NEXT ONE Thu Feb 6 07:08:47 CET 2025
RE: 9front command history, that's what the " and "" commands are for.
For example:
% echo foo
foo
% echo bar
bar
% mk install
...
% " echo
% echo foo
% echo bar
%
Using "" will run the last command that matches, so:
% "" echo
% echo bar
bar
%
Hope that helps.
--
kg
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NEXT ONE Thu Feb 6 13:04:47 CET 2025
Is this still an internet?
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NEXT ONE Thu Feb 6 15:48:25 CET 2025
I am sorry, we are offline. The internet is full anyway.
morena
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NEXT ONE Fri Feb 7 14:12:56 CET 2025
Hi kg,
Thanks for the information about the command history.
--
mKz
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NEXT ONE Fri Feb 7 15:49:51 CET 2025
I disagree with your statement about Usenet. Very few groups are
moderated, you are free to create an unmoderated group if you don't
like the moderated one.
Enjoy the text protocols, they are our salvation.
IanJ
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NEXT ONE Fri Feb 7 16:03:45 CET 2025
Here we go, the first knight in full armor protects the dunghill.
I see you had hard time wiht NPS recently, fucked up this Board of
heroes ;/ Text is written into board when you hit enter, line by line,
then you can't correct, delete or even cancel whole message. To be
safe, it's good idea to write it into a file and then cat it:
$ cat file | nc morena.rip 1915
morena
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NEXT ONE Sat Feb 8 22:07:41 CET 2025
Apologies for messing up the board.
I will follow your suggestion and write future messages to a file
before sending.
---
What you choose to subscribe to is not the fault of Usenet. If you
subscribe to moderated groups then you accept their moderation.
I was offering a solution to your complaint, not really defending
Usenet. Although Usenet is worthy of defence, unlike your protracted
whining.
---
Speaking of dunghills...
https://www.tastyfish.cz/lrs/plan9.html
IanJ
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NEXT ONE Sat Feb 8 22:48:12 CET 2025
Hey,
So you suggest, that if I want to discuss about Plan 9 on Usenet
I should create new newsgroup somewhere nowhere, which in practice
would mean I would need to run a NNTP server as no other server will
propagage that newsgroup. Then I will write there and what? Pray and
wait until some random registers account on my new NNTP server so he
may read and post into an empty Plan 9 newsgroup? Or I should just
write about Plan 9 into some already alive ianj.mom.recipes newsgroup?
I am sorry, Usenet is obsolete. There is NPS board already ;/
morena
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NEXT ONE Wed Feb 12 02:03:48 CET 2025
Write the message in your spirit editor and pipe its buffer to netcat.
w !nc morena.rip 1915
- eidolon
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NEXT ONE Wed Feb 12 21:37:08 CET 2025
Good point. Built-in feature - Board of Heroes in many text editors ;/
morena
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NEXT ONE Fri Feb 14 01:35:28 CET 2025
You don't need to run your own news server to add groups to Usenet.
There is a process to request them if you want them:
https://www.newshosting.com/usenet/how-to-add-newsgroups-to-usenet/
Trying eidolon's buffer piping suggestion from vim. Hopefully all
works as expected.
IanJ
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NEXT ONE Tue Feb 18 17:41:20 CET 2025
Congrats to your server. I'm happy to see that the board is also
available over finger://morena.rip. Are there more fingers
available? Would like to know...
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NEXT ONE Tue Feb 18 20:28:40 CET 2025
Hey, there are some "finger rings" and people who use finger. I don't
remember all those sources. You have to search a bit and you will find
some. Some those shell and tilde communities often run a finger thing.
Some fingers:
https://redterminal.org/gemlog/2024-01-26-Finger_protocol_support.gmi
morena
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NEXT ONE Wed Feb 19 07:20:50 CET 2025
re: buffer pipe
You can repeat the command with 'w !!'.
It's useful for follow-up messages.
re: finger(1) lakes
happynetbox.com
- eidolon
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NEXT ONE Wed Feb 19 10:15:55 CET 2025
Re: OpenBSD - archaic typewriter
Did you try to interrupt boot process and then using command
"set tty fb0" to direct video output do HDMI? This worked for me when
I was playing around with RPi4 + OpenBSD
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NEXT ONE Wed Feb 19 10:49:39 CET 2025
Hey. Yes, that I tried, but two keyboards I did not work there. So I
was unable to interupt the boot process or write anything there.
Interesting is, that keyboard worked one stage before, but when
OpenBSD boot prompt showed it stopped working ;/ That's probably
good. I would probably not survive all that antique things in OpenBSD.
morena
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NEXT ONE Wed Feb 19 11:06:28 CET 2025
In answer to your OpenBSD + Pi problems:
https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=373423
Maybe you can then ditch the old thin client for your preferred ARM
architecture.
It's funny as an observer to see you keep going around in circles.
Complaining about OpenBSD (archaic typewriter) but always you return
to it. It's not the fastest but it's robust, like a piece of communist
era machinery.
If you need to rely on something, it is better slow and over
engineered than fast and fragile.
Using hardware with SD cards as a main drive is not advised. They do
fail unexpectedly, I had this happen several times when running a Pi
with network monitoring software on it. I was using quality Sandisk
SD cards also, not cheap junk.
Anyway, good luck.
UNIX is still with us for good reason, there's nothing better yet.
IanJ
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NEXT ONE Wed Feb 19 11:48:35 CET 2025
Dear brave warriors, be like communist machine enginers and try to
keep lines under 70 characters in lenght. I found eidolon's suggestion
to use text editor and pipe its buffer to netcat helpful for this.
morena
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NEXT ONE Fri Feb 21 15:44:10 CET 2025
If you can't connect or whatever, that's okay, I just activated
nftables ;/ It was pretty long journey to just find out something
short, simple that also works without some cumbersome frontend.
morena
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NEXT ONE Sat Feb 22 15:47:19 CET 2025
Producing and distributing simple servers for things like gopher, nex,
nps and finger is a positive move. Hopefully people will use them,
improve them and tailor them to their own needs. Communities can build
around such things.
Human scale software is a rare thing in this era of computing. It is
amazing, and unfortunate, how fast the moss and weeds grow.
---
I have just finished my daily browsing of bongusta, seeing what new
articles were published.
In your 'About Morena and Great Gopher server' article. The section
listing URI's for the different protocols you missed the : from the
http line.
Just a small observation.
I also had the horror of reading someone trying to commercialize
gopher. These kind of people destroy everything, driven by their own
selfish motivations and tinkering. To them, gopher is just another
audience to market to. Media whores who don't care how or where they
get their audience.
It reminds me of the saying, A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
IanJ
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NEXT ONE Sat Feb 22 17:06:02 CET 2025
Doing business on Gopher or other similar places is not that bad, but
the opposite. Like doing many other things anywhere. The important
factor is - human limited. What I mean, if a human offering service
or product himself, whatever it is, hairdresser, shoemaker, repairing
some tools, writting, painting ... I think it's a good way.
Otherwise what should one do? Use some corporate, harmful big things
like social media, ebay owned by some master? There is no reason why
Gopher or anything else should be somehow restricted to just some
topics, or some doings. What's most important, that it is a human way
and that is so rare, almost non-existent in the current culture.
The way doing business, that if you have a grocery, you will have some
store, maybe some plate on it with your offerings, but you will not
knock on everyone's door and visit their bedrooms to promote your
special. Just do it human way, whether it is in your garage or Gopher.
Bonus info: next time I will have to wrap your grumbling into 70
characters length, I will charge you ;/
morena
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NEXT ONE Mon Feb 24 15:12:02 CET 2025
Greetings from the InfinitelyRemote gopherhole o/
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NEXT ONE Tue Feb 25 17:36:48 CET 2025
I have enabled inetd with the intention of writing and running some of
the services I use. In doing so I have also enabled talkd.
Most likely geomyidae will be the first.
IanJ
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NEXT ONE Tue Feb 25 18:24:39 CET 2025
Looking forward for the next NEX and NPS server. I'm guessing it will
be in Perl, since you are a former Perl monk ;/ inetd is great, if
nothing is happening, then nothing is really happening, inetd is just
listening. Then also all those small services can stay simple and tiny
as they don't deal with networking.
morena
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NEXT ONE Tue Feb 25 20:48:27 CET 2025
inetd is a good example of UNIX philosophy. Do one thing and do it
well, leaving the application specific part separate, avoiding
duplicating network daemon functionality everywhere.
I was actually thinking of writing the services in shell or awk. Perl
would be easy, but then you make Perl a dependency. If we continue
building on top of layers of libraries, languages and tools we add to
the problem of removing them or changing them later. We keep adding to
the dumpster-fire.
Using the most basic and already included tools is a more elegant
solution. If we start pulling back the layers, rather than adding to
them, one day we might have a very basic system that requires very few
additional things.
It is codebase degrowth. When did you ever hear of a project becoming
smaller, less featured and reducing external dependencies?
Everything starts small...
IanJ
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NEXT ONE Tue Feb 25 22:48:55 CET 2025
Wise words as usual ;/ I will probably go back to shell too.
morena
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NEXT ONE Wed Feb 26 10:47:01 CET 2025
I could go back to shell too. I have already equivalents of all Perl
programs in shell. However I am thinking to make also Perl webserver,
nex proxy, instead of kinex. So I have full control over it and
eventually can run it from inetd too. Current kinex is in Go and
that's beyond my ability or willingness. Even as a non-programmer
I can at least understand Perl, for whatever reason maybe even more
than shell. Shell is still pretty limited. Not sure if it's the right
tool for this kind of tasks.
morena
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NEXT ONE Wed Feb 26 14:34:21 CET 2025
this is like the momentous time in history when cobol programmers came
out of retirement in order to save the planet
when the going gets rough the senile still have to get going --
molvanian proverb
es pollila no pollo
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NEXT ONE Thu Feb 27 14:35:48 CET 2025
The 2nd edition of the awk grey book was released a couple
years ago, for those who ride the cusp of emerging tech.
- eidolon
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NEXT ONE Thu Feb 27 14:46:08 CET 2025
Never tell a hoarder that there is something for sale!
morena
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NEXT ONE Thu Feb 27 16:35:36 CET 2025
If you did not find a copy of this grey book in your room
when you checked in, please call the puffin at the front desk.
- eidolon
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NEXT ONE Thu Feb 27 17:05:03 CET 2025
Seriously, if you see IanJ around never mention any physical stuff.
What systemd is in software, he is in this physical world.
Fun fact: systemd socket activation can replace inetd ;/
morena
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NEXT ONE Thu Feb 27 18:20:47 CET 2025
No physical stuff. No peridots or puffins.
They say you can't take it with you when you go.
- eidolon
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NEXT ONE Thu Feb 27 18:40:59 CET 2025
Of course he can't take them, one can't carry as much as IanJ
accumulated during life. There are not so big shipping containers.
morena
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NEXT ONE Thu Feb 27 20:50:25 CET 2025
Another small step I did today was to replacing OpenSSH with Dropbear
and run it from inetd.
morena
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NEXT ONE Mon Mar 3 17:09:54 CET 2025
In gopher://morena.rip:70/0052 you said "[o]ne can write few lines of
shell script to have fully usable and safe NEX server" and gave the
following example script:
#!/bin/sh
read request; cat /var/nex/
It's a little misleading to say it's "fully ... safe" when a request
as simple as "../../etc/password" will expose your system's password
file. Sorry, game over.
Besides, what is the real difference between NEX and Gopher? The
protocol is virtually the same: a client opens a connection to the
server and sends the path it wants followed by CR LF (or only LF as
the case may be), and the server responds with the content of the file
found at that path.
As far as I can see, a Gopher server is basically a NEX server but
with a bit extra (e.g., it supports search strings). Or, you can
even go as far as saying a Gopher server really *is* a NEX server
with support for a tab byte in a file name and that can generate a
file's content on the fly--AFAICT, the NEX protocol doesn't dictate
exactly how a server should respond to a given file request, i.e.,
whether a file must actually physically exist on the server or if the
server can generate the data. In my mind, whether a file physically
exists or is generated is an implementation detail, and the protocol
itself shouldn't concern itself with that kind of detail (even HTTP
the protocol isn't too concerned with how a server comes up with the
content that a client requests).
The only real difference I can see is that NEX uses a menu/document
format that seems to be based on Gemini's rather than Gopher's
tab-based menu format, but even that is fairly minor and doesn't make
one protocol simpler than the other (po-tay-toe/po-tah-toe).
A simple (and relatively secure) Gopher server can also be written in
a few lines of shell script, and in fact someone already wrote one.
See gopher://verisimilitudes.net:70/0gophershell. It does basic error
checking (reject .. in the path, ensure a file actually exists, etc.).
I ran a modified version of that script on my server for about a month
until I wrote my own Gopher server.
-cw
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NEXT ONE Mon Mar 3 18:07:26 CET 2025
"One can write few lines of shell script to have fully usable and safe
NEX server. In a hurry, the whole server can be extremely simple if
inetd or something capable listens on port 1900 and call your script."
It does not say, that one line is safe. It just shows how main
functionality is simple. Fully usable and safe "few lines", not one.
But ye, it's not clearly written, like most of my text.
The difference between Gopher and NEX is around 800 lines in RFC.
morena
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NEXT ONE Mon Mar 3 18:21:43 CET 2025
I just added note bellow that script about the danger you mentioned.
morena
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NEXT ONE Mon Mar 3 20:14:45 CET 2025
cat << EOF | nc morena.rip 1915
Using a here-doc to post to the board gives you the amenities
of the shell. Place fmt(1) in the pipeline to format the
message for business or pleasure.
\. <--- unescaped dot to terminate connection
EOF
- eidolon
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NEXT ONE Mon Mar 3 20:47:46 CET 2025
Channel the fputs() of warrior poets.
- eidolon
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NEXT ONE Mon Mar 3 20:58:42 CET 2025
There is Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana and some others voice
assistants and eidolon for NPS ;/
morena
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NEXT ONE Mon Mar 3 21:19:17 CET 2025
To revivify your kitchen, run citrus peels through the garbage
disposal.
- Clippy
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NEXT ONE Tue Mar 4 17:42:24 CET 2025
Hello morena
posting from bosque-protector.com
all in good faith
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NEXT ONE Tue Mar 4 17:58:41 CET 2025
> It does not say, that one line is safe. It just shows how main
> functionality is simple. Fully usable and safe "few lines", not
> one. But ye, it's not clearly written, like most of my text.
Fair enough, and thanks for the clarification.
> The difference between Gopher and NEX is around 800 lines in RFC.
A lot of those 800 lines are things that many other RFCs have, e.g.,
context, history, and rationale. Also keep in mind that Gopher was
developed in the early '90s when we didn't have existing hyperlink
protocols, so concepts had to be explained that wouldn't have to be
today. It also has implementation suggestions/recommendations and
detailed request and response formats using a BNF syntax which can be
quite verbose yet can eliminate ambiguity. It does have, admittedly,
a lot of redundancy in the description of the response for each item
type (these could be condensed significantly).
On the other hand, the NEX protocol specification is lacking in
some details. For example, can a URL line be followed by a text
description? Is whitespace significant in a URL line? What should
be returned if a file doesn't exist or is inaccessible for some
reason? Is a client or the server expected to close its side of the
connection first?
I'm not trying to knock NEX. It's neat and refreshing to see
something so simple yet still effective at what it does. But I think
it's a good thing to compare something new with existing technologies
to see where it's lacking or where the old technologies could be used
in new ways. It can help us look at existing technologies in a new
light.
-cw
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NEXT ONE Tue Mar 4 18:00:30 CET 2025
Erm, I think I accidentally tested your board's handling of
simultaneous posts. :-D
-cw
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NEXT ONE Tue Mar 4 18:16:05 CET 2025
I'm delighted to see that this protocol actually works well had
trouble ending the conecction. Trying again to end with a single dot
on the last line. Crossing fingers...
.
Well, that dot didn't seem to work :(
I wonder if my terminal is sending some extra character I can't see.
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NEXT ONE Tue Mar 4 18:26:17 CET 2025
Yes, your terminal is sending carriage return at the end of each line.
morena
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NEXT ONE Tue Mar 4 18:27:21 CET 2025
Miguel from bosque-protector.com, again, here.
Sorry for all the mess. I'm writing on ed, to
check if sending the file to the board will be
safer/just work better from my machine.
I'm enjoying the series on the NEX protocol.
A pity that it doesn't have a wider adoption.
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NEXT ONE Tue Mar 4 19:11:47 CET 2025
Miguel the adoption starts with you. Just start your NEX server.
morena
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NEXT ONE Tue Mar 4 20:23:20 CET 2025
I just removed specifically the carriage return from the user input.
echo bin/nps.pl | nc morena.rip 1900
morena
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NEXT ONE Tue Mar 4 20:33:54 CET 2025
OK, I'll try to get one running. I'll be using
your sh script. Wish me luck!
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NEXT ONE Tue Mar 4 20:42:55 CET 2025
I setup testing board /test file, reachable also over web. It's the
same nps.pl script, just over port 1920 for testing things, so this
board does not get poluted with Windows hackery ;/
morena
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NEXT ONE Tue Mar 4 20:59:21 CET 2025
Also, as I am on my road to abandon mail server here, I would
appreciate some testing messages over port 2000. The same way as NPS
on this board, but messages would be private for me only.
morena
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NEXT ONE Tue Mar 4 21:53:26 CET 2025
Interesting how different port can have different results of spam.
While on this 1915 all looks okay, I already got several nonsense on
the port 2000 from some robots probably.
morena
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NEXT ONE Tue Mar 4 23:58:01 CET 2025
When making a post with ed(1), read a connection-terminating
dot into the last line with '$r !echo .' or use a placeholder
character and substitute it, since a dot on a line is also the
ed command to leave input mode...
- eidolon
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NEXT ONE Wed Mar 5 21:21:32 CET 2025
> I setup testing board /test file, reachable also over web. It's the
same nps.pl script, just over port 1920 for testing things, so this
board does not get poluted with Windows hackery ;/
> Interesting how different port can have different results of spam.
While on this 1915 all looks okay, I already got several nonsense on
the port 2000 from some robots probably.
You can never have too many ports in order to keep the savages at bay.
It's a scalable solution, too. Just add more ports!
> Also, as I am on my road to abandon mail server here...
Good thinking.
You never know how much you actually need a mail server until you've
uninstalled one and knowing is half the battle!
PS: Are you sure that you don't want to reinstall Plan 9 yet one
more time?
PPS: Are you *really* sure about going all in on NEX? Never bet on a
one-trick pony. Think about it!
- A concerned reader
----------------------------------------------------------------------
NEXT ONE Wed Mar 5 22:37:20 CET 2025
Hey concerned reader. I am not really sure about anything. The crowd
went all in on Google and Facebook long time ago. If I bet everything
on NEX, world will not collapse. This is morena.rip, my space, garage,
playground. If I unplug Raspberry Pi from the power nobody will cry,
nobody gets hurt. If whole Gopher, NEX, whatever disappear tomorrow,
people will not suffer, their life will be not worse.
After five months of running this server, I got one email as no reply.
You could send me an email, but you prefered this Board of heroes.
If we are not able to get rid of all kind of bullshit and legacy
nonsense in our very tiny hobby corner in the virtual online world,
why we are even breathing?
morena
----------------------------------------------------------------------
NEXT ONE Thu Mar 6 00:33:23 CET 2025
I wrote and submitted this in ed, just because...
ed was written for use with teletypes, it is considerate of paper and
ink so the whole page is not printed by default each time.
You can learn a lot about using vi(m) from reading the very excellent
'A Tutorial Introduction to the UNIX Text Editor' by Brian Kernighan.
But ed itself belongs with the teletypes, there are better tools for
use with VDU displays.
IanJ
----------------------------------------------------------------------
NEXT ONE Thu Mar 6 00:55:10 CET 2025
vi(m) is just ed with a mental illness.
- eidolon
----------------------------------------------------------------------
NEXT ONE Thu Mar 6 14:21:29 CET 2025
morena - You are not comparing apples with apples as they say.
The email system is distributed and can handle outages of individual
servers. Mail will be stored and re-attempted for delivery. Your NPS
messages will not. Also, how can you send to NPS via a phone or other
device...
Email is a standard that is very little changing, unlike the web.
Many clients exist for many different platforms so most things, even
some old dumb phones, can send and receive email.
I thought about using the email system for instant messaging. It is
better for me to use data than SMS, at the moment SMS/phone are my
only means of being contacted directly while away from the computer.
IanJ
----------------------------------------------------------------------
NEXT ONE Thu Mar 6 14:49:55 CET 2025
> If we are not able to get rid of all kind of bullshit and legacy
nonsense in our very tiny hobby corner in the virtual online world,
why we are even breathing?
dear morena, you ask a profound question:
'why are we even breathing?'
let us ponder this question together.
some say we breathe to live while others claim that we do it to
complain about the quality of the air, but here in smolvania we
believe the true reason for our incessant inhaling and exhaling is
much simpler: it's to ensure that we can keep our beloved discussion
alive.
imagine a world without breathing: how would we ever manage to argue
about the bullshit and the nonsense in our lives? without breath there
would be no dramatic pauses in our conversations. how could we express
shock at the latest gossip without a good gasp?
without breath, we wouldn't be able to enjoy the smell of brewed
coffee or the not-so-enjoyable smell of a neckbeard with questionable
grooming standards.
if we didn't breathe, how would we ever be able to blow up balloons
for birthdays and funerals or to confuse flat-earthers about the
concept of gravity?
dear morena, the answer to your question is clear: we breathe to live,
to love, to argue and to ensure that our laughter echoes throughout
the valleys of smolvania.
- p. o. lilla
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NEXT ONE Thu Mar 6 16:19:36 CET 2025
Dear dusty relic keeper IanJ, NPS is also distributed and can handle
outages the same way. Me as non-programmer can implement that with few
lines of Perl or shell. If for whatever reason you are into a phone
messaging, if your favorite machine supports SMTP, which is over TCP,
it can do NPS. Any machine is capable of it, if it can send emails.
I can even simulate SMTP over port 25 using NPS. NPS is not limiting
and stupid like mail system. Try to send email using netcat, you just
have to write more than is necessary. NPS can handle all that and more
easily.
Yes, many clients already exist for mail, like many typewriter
emulations what we call terminals. Let's keep everything as is for
next 30 years, because it was here last 30 years.
morena
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NEXT ONE Thu Mar 6 17:23:16 CET 2025
Lilla, the point was not about breathing ;/ I tried to say, that if we
are not capable of playing on our own playground with our own toys in
our own way, then we breath for nothing. As we just copy and paste
things from some masters who told us what to do and how to do it. In
this case our life would be robotic. Sadly for almost everyone in the
most cases it is this way. Most will not admit it, as they think, what
they did were their choice, while more often than not, it was not
their choice.
morena.rip like many other online spaces should be not bound in chains
of some masters. There is no reason for it.
Regarding gravity, well even NASA has no idea what gravity really is.
People don't blow up balloons for birthdays because they want to, but
because somebody programmed them to think and feel that way.
morena
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NEXT ONE Thu Mar 6 18:28:02 CET 2025
morena, right now you might think that playgrounds are your entire
world.
the jealousy, the fights over toys, the sand in your pants.
'master' telling what you get to play with and when to get out of the
deep end.
do not despair. i am here to tell you that there is a life beyond the
sandbox.
- p. o. lilla
----------------------------------------------------------------------
NEXT ONE Thu Mar 6 18:37:50 CET 2025
Yes, that was exactly the point. If one is unable to do anything on
his own term in his little sandbox, then how he will act out of it?
morena
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NEXT ONE Thu Mar 6 18:56:31 CET 2025
NPS is not distributed in the way that email is. It is direct client
to server connection. If the server is down there is no delivery, no
infrastructure for secondary NPS server, no local mechanism to store
and retry delivery.
There is also no routing for user@host, maybe there are many users
there. Should they each run NPS? Oh, they will need a port each! How
will the sender know which port for which user? Or maybe some other
way to determine which user the message is for? In time you will
arrive at email. These things may be old but they are designed to
fulfil a need and they are complex because that is how they have to
be. Not all of it necessary, but fundamental parts are. Over time
your personal NPS server would naturally develop and eventually have
many features of email.
It is the same like this public NPS board, what will happen over
time? Already it is getting very long and you have to page down to
the bottom to read the latest messages. In another few months, if
people keep adding to it, then it will be enormous and cumbersome. No
one will want to page through 100's of messages. There is also no way
to reply to individuals to form a thread. Over time it will become a
BBS/forum...
Funny thing, I really dislike hypocrisy. Not long ago I remember your
rant about Usenet and moderation, that some master decides what is
allowed. You have done this also here on the NPS board, you removed
messages I presume posted by moth... Censorship ;) On unmoderated
Usenet groups this is not possible.
You criticise all the above and propose NPS as the answer to all ills
but unfortunately it is NPS that is limited. However, it has the
potential to become BBS, email or even a news server.
As I said before, everything starts small...
I'm not in the habit of reinventing the wheel, having spent many
years watching people try. It is better to use what exists and serves
your purpose. If it is broken in some way, then fix it.
IanJ
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NEXT ONE Thu Mar 6 20:53:57 CET 2025
> how can you send to NPS via a phone
Formatting and sending artisanal requests over TCP shouldn't be hard
for a pocket computer. If it's a walled garden phone, some protocol
isn't the problem. Use the phone to SSH into a machine that lets a
user do stuff.
> [...] like this public NPS board, what will happen over time?
The board can be rotated, old contents archived or lost to time.
There are tools abound for parsing, comparing, manipulating,
displaying text on any Unix-like system. If the client doesn't
show only new posts or position the screen to the bottom, it's not
for a lack of tooling.
Where's the If-Modified-Since header? D;
- eidolon
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NEXT ONE Thu Mar 6 21:09:04 CET 2025
> Me as non-programmer can implement that with few lines of Perl or
shell.
This makes you a Perl and shell programmer.
- eidolon
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NEXT ONE Thu Mar 6 21:25:50 CET 2025
Dear vintage guardian IanJ,
NPS is distributed exactly the same way as email. Both are direct
client to server connection. If the server is down, you can send your
message later too, manualy or programmatically by your client, exactly
the same way as mail works. The difference is, NPS has no restrictions
and is so simple, that you will be able to write server and client
software exactly for your needs yourself in short time.
Routing for user@host is again just matter of few extra lines in the
script. Something like - first line which server will handle as user.
This Board of Heroes, what happen over time? Whatever, there are no
limits. Can be archived by every month, or by amount of lines, or
manually, rotate like logs, saved as board.0,1,2 or like 2025-01-01.
There are no limits, that's important. How to achieve this archive?
Simple run mv, cp or similar command in a second. All done and party
continues.
Also keep in mind, this board was not like planned, engineered or
whatever. NPS is so simple, that I just glued few lines of shell
script, created "board" file and it was ready. Things can be changed
based on usage by learning, getting experience. I think all is good
now. The "end" key can put it at the end of file for now.
Hypocrisy is not here dear. I kept moth's junk one day for concerned
readers and then removed it. I removed yesterday also testing messages
I even asked for. It's not because "censorship". It's because of junk.
You have to clean your space, otherwise it will become septic tank.
This is not IRC, where you can keep everything. This is morena.rip, my
space. I did not promise, that everything and by everyone I will keep
online here.
This is Board of Heroes! Not some trash compactor. Space for hereos,
not parasites. I don't mind language, you can call me an idiot, it's
okay, but you can't suck energy from the space out. Look at you as an
example, you write, you have discourse, you don't write bullshit to
attack someone. Also there is that think, that one can attack the
idea, but not the person. I understand your stance on those archaic
tools and standards, it's possitive there are people who keep the
history ;/ There are also good things there.
I will not push hard NPS everywhere. I know it will not replace mail,
web, google, x, alcohol or religion. It's not for everyone, just for
heroes. Those are few. Some see it and it touch them and want to
implement/use it. Some prefer something they use last 20 years.
morena
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NEXT ONE Thu Mar 6 21:30:42 CET 2025
Yes, eidolon wrote it better. I have just to add, that in this case,
I am a Perl monk ;/
morena
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NEXT ONE Thu Mar 6 22:31:28 CET 2025
in this circus of thoughts he's the star of the show
with a ticket to madness come join the flow!
so let's all marvel, let's all applaud
at the beauty of chaos so deeply flawed
- pedro onofre lilla
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NEXT ONE Fri Mar 7 23:16:40 CET 2025
Heroes, if website will play badly or will be down, please keep in
mind it is now powered by web.pl, great simple program run from inetd.
Testing stage ON ;/ I brought it online without much tests. Enjoy.
morena
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NEXT ONE Sat Mar 8 10:14:14 CET 2025
It was pretty in hurry when came from work, but it somehow works as
expected for now. Will see hidden surprise. When you experience some
nonsense, please let me know.
/bin/web.pl
morena
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NEXT ONE Mon Mar 10 11:08:28 2025 CET
Heroes, good news is I also replaced OpenSMTPD with similarly simple
Perl program mal.pl. It's pretty primitive, but it gets messages ;/
morena
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NEXT ONE Wed Mar 12 00:58:00 2025 CET
https://0x0.st/8Swq.gif
heyy, I want to request some features. Ik that's not the point of NPS
but I feel these are minimal, useful, and easy to implement.
feature request 1
-----------------
in order to enable replying to messages, could you add a sequential ID
to every message like imageboards do? For instance, here is an example
thread on 4chan:
https://boards.4chan.org/g/thread/104675969
every post is assigned a sequential ID like 104675969
if you want to reply to that post, you just put this at the top of
your reply: >>104675969
since I browse this NPS board using neovim, I could easily search for
the original message by hovering over the >><ID> and pressing `#`
feature request 2
-----------------
could you add a Tor hidden service mirror such that we can interact
with morena.rip without revealing our IP address as well as the
plaintext contents of our browsing/posting to our ISP, VPN, or Tor
exit node? Ik this sounds hard but it's easy to setup.
see gopher://bitreich.org/onion for more argumentation and a tutorial.
feature request 3
-----------------
pls remove `NEXT ONE`
feature request 4
-----------------
use UTC instead of CET for timestamps using `$ date --utc`
- anon
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NEXT ONE Wed Mar 12 01:07:31 2025 CET
as an alternative to a sequential ID, you could generate a UUID, or
better, a CUID2 for every post for server-side simplicity.
Easier to implement, though maybe a little ugly.
this is a standard CUID:
nynfwxkagaiuf34k5gss22qx
https://github.com/paralleldrive/cuid2
- anon
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NEXT ONE Wed Mar 12 13:45:23 2025 CET
Feature feature feature feature! All are easy to implement, but not
really needed or desired yet ;/ Maybe sequential number instead of
NEXT ONE text can be usefull. However I don't see and expect so much
public interest that would require it. Regarding anonymity, that's
your job. If you wish to stay hidden, you can use some proxy. There
are more services than just Tor, like I2P. All of them are crap.
No matter how hard you try to hide, God will find you.
This can become whatever, it's not really hard to implement tens or
hundreds features around and make it like forum or regular board. More
interactive output in client's terminal, special commands, editing,
reply, whatever. God's favorite programming language Perl is capable
of it and can handle it easily. But. Internet is full of those kind.
I did not use them in the last decade once.
The server morena.rip is in the middle of Europe, the center of the
World, it's the heart of humanity. Current time here is CET. Anything
else is irrelevant.
I appreciate your suggestions to make this better. It inspires me.
morena
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NEXT ONE Wed Mar 12 14:15:30 2025 CET
Another inspiration came from the last IanJ's gopher article about
dictionary server protocol.
gopher://gopher.icu
It's the last article. I can't post direct link for two stupid reasons.
Gopher is retarded as much as Gopher clients. You open directly
article and game is over, you can't browse anywhere from it, you have
to exit your browser. The second funny reason is, that IanJ's Gopher
URLs are longer than 70 characters. He can't fit 70 characters in a
line in articles, as he uses 69 characters length line, however his
links are longer than history of computing.
Anyway, I recommend to check it and see another pile of manure in the
computer's junkyard. I don't mean IanJ's article, he has quality and
valuable text and ideas. I mean 1600 lines, 30 pages in RFC 2229 ;/
I got inspired to create something usable, simple and minimal.
Probably something with hundred times fewer lines in specification
and code. 100 times dear!
morena
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NEXT ONE Wed Mar 12 18:37:04 2025 CET
> game is over
If the game is showing the article then what more is there?
Job is done.
lynx(1) and gopher(1) have something like 'G' key to edit link
of current resource.
Trim the gopher type and selector and continue.
re: rfc 2229
This document has the rigor of a specification. It's not just
a list of superstitions, or piece of performance art. This
adds to the line count but helps when the curl dev wants to
support the protocol. gemini users take heed.
It's simple to write a DICT client in chickenscratch but
netcat ought to be the client. It rules the net!
- eidolon
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NEXT ONE Wed Mar 12 20:58:50 2025 CET
Combine nc(1) with rlwrap(1) to get readline editing, history,
reverse-search and completions to flesh out the feature set of
your new client.
alias d='rlwrap -P "DEFINE " nc dict.org 2628'
Connect to server, make queries til done, quit.
- eidolon
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NEXT ONE Thu Mar 13 16:54:14 2025 CET
> No matter how hard you try to hide, God will find you
I want to hide from the enemies of God, here on earth!
nmap's distribution of netcat supports encryption with --ssl
https://nmap.org/ncat
since you aren't interested in using tor for encryption, maybe this is
minimal enough for you? (untested (lazy) but I'm sure this works)
`ncat -l 1901 -k --ssl -e nex.pl`
`ncat morena.rip 1901 --ssl`
openbsd's netcat also does this, and I read that it supports TLS too,
but I haven't used it.
ik you like inetd, idk much about it, but at the end of this page
there is a short tutorial on how to proxy TCP through TLS using inetd.
https://tools.suckless.org/ii/usage/
even if I use tor, my tor exit-node can still see unencrypted
exit-traffic. TLS/SSL prevents this; TLS is a good standard.
part of the appeal of simple software like nex is its security, but
you can't have security without encryption.
- kawaii (formerly anon)
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NEXT ONE Thu Mar 13 22:43:23 2025 CET
Security is an illusion, golden cage for slaves. If you are afraid to
live then die, that's safe. Nobody will touch you there. The promise
of security comes only from overlords, tyrants.
TLS itself has history of hundreds security vulnerabilities. It's not
only senselles, it's harmful. Hundred thousands lines of crap tripping
in every already backdoored machine around the world.
morena