1. Backup the files \winnt\dbabblesvr.ini and \winnt\dbabblesvr.exe
2. Backup the directory \dbabblesvr
3. If you need to restore the from the backup, after restoring the above files, from the command line, type dbabblesvr -addsvc to add DBabble to the Windows service database

1. Backup the file /etc/dbabblesvr.ini
2. Backup the directory /usr/local/dbabble
3. If you need to restore the from the backup, add the line /usr/local/dbabble/dbabblesvr_start to your system startup script. For example on linux /etc/rc.d/rc.local

Ports used by DBabble

• 8132 (port) (web and client to server communication via http)
• 8133 (ssl_port) (encrypted web and client to server communication https)
• 25 (optional) (smtp_port) for accepting incoming email
• 119 (optional) (nntp_port) for accepting incoming news (NNTP) requests
• 5269 (optional) (jabber_server_port) for communicating with MSN, ICQ, AIM, Yahoo gateway servers
• 80 (optional) (port/extra_ports) If you want DBabble to listen on the default web HTTP port.
• 443 (optional) (ssl_port/extra_ssl_ports) If you want DBabble to listen on the default web HTTPS port.

• 25 If you want outgoing email to work
• 119 If you want to pull from or post to an external news (NNTP) server
• 110 If you want the email checking feature to work.
• 5269 If you want to use communication with MSN, ICQ, AIM, Yahoo gateway servers.
• 8132/8133 If you want to link your server to other DBabble servers.
• Any other port if you want to allow more than about 800 simultaneous users.

• 8132 If using an unsecure connection to the server
• 8133 If using an encrypted connection to the server
• 80/443 if you have configured the server to listen on these ports and the client has a firewall preventing them from using the ports 8132/8133.

• A random free port if there are more than about 800 simultaneous users on the server. This is so the client doesn't have to keep a connection to the server open and the server can connect to the client instead when there is a new message for them. Note - the server actually starts doing this with clients not behind firewalls at about 400 simultaneous users so that if some users are behind firewalls they can still use DBabble.

User Authentication

• POP Authentication - To use POP server authentication, just specify a value for the auth_pop_host setting. When using a POP server, DBabble will check whether a user name and password is valid by logging into the POP server and logging out again.
• DBabble's Internal Authentication System - If you choose to use DBabble's internal authentication system, then each user must have an account created before they can log in. By using the user_accounts setting, you can specify whether users are able to create their own accounts, or whether administrators must create any new accounts.
• External Authentication (versions 1.2m and later) - To use external authentication, you must first have a copy of the external authentication process you want to use installed on your system. This can be one Netwin has available from the NetWin external authentication page, or can be one you have written yourself. (see External Authentication Protocol) In either case, just set the authent_process to the full path and name of your authentication process. You can also use the authent_process_num setting to control how many authentication processes will be simultaneously running. For example, if you are running the server on Windows and if you want to use the POPAuth authentication process (which will allow you to authenticate with multiple POP servers) then you would do this:
  1. Download PopAuth from http://www.netwinsite.com/authent/popauth.htm
  2. Extract popauth.exe from the zip file into your DBabble server directory (for example to c:\dbabblesvr\popauth.exe)
  3. Create a .ini file with the appropriate settings. For example, use notepad to create c:\dbabblesvr\popauth.ini which contains a line like:
     domains netwinsite.com,netwin.co.nz
     where the domains is a comma separated list of pop server domains to authenticate with.
  4. Set the DBabble server authent_process setting to point to the authentication process. For example
     authent_process c:\dbabblesvr\popauth.exe -path c:\dbabblesvr
     
• If you have set up one of the above systems of authentication, and your users are already logging in to your existing web pages using the same user name and password, then you can create links on your existing web pages to login to DBabble. See Logging in to DBabble from your existing Web Site.
  
  Specifying user details and permissions using the external authentication process
  Using the external authentication protocol, you can fetch user details from your external database for displaying in DBabble. You can fetch the following values from your external database
  • Every user detail specified on the DBabble user details page
  • Every user permission (can create chat rooms, administrator permissions, etc) , or just the permission group that the user belongs to
  • The user groups, chat rooms, and discussion groups the user belongs to
  • A list of users that should appear in the friends list of the user
  You can also optionally write user details and permissions back to your external database if they are changed from within the DBabble interface.
  
  In order to fetch details from the external database, you must configure your authentication module to extract these details from the database and supply them to DBabble. The following 2 examples describe how to do this assuming you are using MySQLAuth. The procedure is very similar for any other authentication module
  
  
  1. If you want to extract the user's display name from your database, which is currently stored in a field called 'FullName' in your SQL database, then you would add this line to your MySQLAuth configuration file:
     info_fields display FullName
     What this means is that MySQLAuth will fetch the field called 'FullName' from your database, and call it 'display' when giving it to DBabble. For a list of what each field must be called when used in DBabble, see the web browser administration page on your server, and go the the 'User Fields' section and look at the 'Internal Name' given for each user field. If your authentication process returns different field names than DBabble expects, use the authent_translate_fields DBabble server setting.
  2. If the field you want to fetch from your external database should not use the exact same value when it appears in DBabble, you can use the auth_groups.txt file in the DBabble server directory to control translation of values. For example, say you have a field called department in your SQL database, that can have a value of either sales or accounts, then you could add this line to your MySQLAuth configuration file:
     info_fields department department
     and these lines to your DBabble auth_groups.txt file:
     department=sales
     groups=5,6 friends=test1,test2,test3 ugroups=2 permissions=1
     
     department=accounts
     groups=7,8 friends=test4,test5 ugroups=4,5 permissions=2
     What this will do is assign any user in the sales department to belong to discussion groups/chat rooms with group-id 5 and 6, automatically add users test1, test2, and test3 to the friends lists of each of these users, make these users members of user group 2, and make these users belong to permission group 1.
  
  User details and permissions are fetched from the database each time the user logs in to DBabble.
  
  If a user changes any of these values within DBabble, they are NOT updated within the database unless you specify those fields in the authent_write_fields server setting. Any fields that you have chosen to not write back to the database will be replaced by the database values next time the user logs in, so you should make these fields unchangeable by modifying the 'User can change' property on the server administrator 'User Fields' web page. Most of the above information assumes you are using DBabble 2.0g or later. You may also want to refer to the Adding Lots of Users section which describes the friends, groups, and ugroups fields in more detail.
  
  Using the authentication process to log in using existing web site cookies
  You can also use this authentication process for allowing your users to access DBabble without having to login again if they were already visiting an authenticated site of yours, by adding support to your authentication process for confirming that a given cookie is valid. To do this, set the auth_check_cookie setting to the name of the cookie that will be given to DBabble. When the DBabble CGI (see http authentication) receives this cookie, it forwards the user to the dbabble server with the cookie value as a form value (it is done using the CGI since some web browsers won't preserve cookies over different ports on the same domain, and DBabble requires a port unique from your standard pages). When the DBabble server receives the request (cmd_cookie_login=cookie_value) , it will send a line to the authentication process of the form:
  cookie_check unique_id cookie_value from_ip_address
  and if the cookie is valid, the authentication process should return:
  +OK unique_id 0 username [fields]
  For example, if you have auth_check_cookie AUTH_TOKEN in dbabblesvr.ini
  and the DBabble CGI receives a HTTP header of the form:
  Cookie: AUTH_TOKEN=xx_123456789
  then it will forward the user to the DBabble server with a request like:
  http://127.0.0.1:8132/dbabble?cmd_cookie_login=xx_123456789
  then DBabble might send a line to the authentication process of the form:
  cookie_check 4522 xx_123456789 127.0.0.1
  and your authentication process might reply:
  +OK 4522 0 test1 display="Test 1" email="test1@netwin.co.nz"
  DBabble will then proceed as if test1 has just logged in.

Adding or Modifying Lots of Users

1. test100 pass=testpass (Adds or sets user test100 with password testpass)
2. test101 pass=testpass display="test 101" email=test101@test.com permissions=1 (Adds or sets user test101 with password testpass, who belongs to permission group 1)
3. test102 permissions=0 f_root=1 (Adds or sets user test102 to belong to no permission group, and have administrator rights)

1. test103 ugroups=1-11,1-12 friends=test101,test102 (Adds user test103 to user groups 1-11 and 1-12, and adds users test101 and test102 to the friends list for test103)

Deleting Users

To delete many users at once, you can use the instructions in the Adding lots of users section and set the flag f_deleted for each user you want to delete.

HTTP Basic Authentication

Logging in to DBabble from your existing Web Site

1. Firstly, you must be using the same set of user names and passwords on both DBabble and your existing system. You have 3 options for this.
   • You could can achieve this by using POP authentication if your users are already set up on your email system with the same names and passwords.
   • Alternatively you can use an external authentication process that will return to DBabble whether or not user names and passwords are valid.
   • A third option is to use DBabble's internal authentication system, and add every one of your existing user names and passwords to DBabble (see Adding Lots of Users)
2. Next, you must have a way of passing the fact that a user is already logged in onto DBabble.
   • If you have access to the user's name and password on your existing web page, then you could just create a link on your existing pages of the form <form name="dbabble_login" method="POST" action="http://free.dbabble.com/dbabble"> <input type=hidden name="user" value="Guest"> <input type=hidden name="pass" value=""> <input type=hidden name="r_login" value="r_login"> <a href="javascript:document.dbabble_login.submit()">Login to Free DBabble</a> </form> which would be show to the user like:
     Login to Free DBabble
     You would replace Guest with the user's name and fill in the password field. There are other options available when using a hidden form like this. For example, you can take users directly to a particular chat room. See web login options for details.
   • Alternatively if you have an existing cookie that users receive after login, you can tell DBabble to look for this cookie, and run a custom program of yours that will return if the cookie is valid or not. See the second half of External Authentication for details on doing this.
   • A third option is to use HTTP basic authentication, but you will only be able to use this if you are already using this for authentication on your existing site pages.

Web login options

• after_login_page - The page within DBabble that the user sees within the main DBabble frame immediately after logging in. You can use any valid command available on any of the normal DBabble pages. For example cmd=chat_list&gid=1 to go to chat room id 1, or cmd=group_items&gid=2 to go to forum id 2, or cmd=r_search_user to show the user search page.
• hide_menu_and_friends - Hides the menu with links in it down the left and hides the list of contacts on the right.
• show_features - Choose which features are available to the user.
  0="Show All Features"
  1="Instant Messages Only"
  2="Forums Only"
  3="Chat Rooms Only"
  4="Chat Rooms and Forums Only"
  5="Chat Rooms and Instant Messages Only"
  6="Forums and Instant Messages Only"
  Note - this feature can have other desired side-effects. For example, if instant messages are not allowed, then in chat rooms there will not be links on user names to send instant messages to those users.
• after_logout_page - The URL of a web page the user is taken to after they logout from DBabble. This also applies if using a direct chat room link and hiding the menu/contacts and the user clicks on the 'leave chat room' link. If you targetted the login form to a new window, then you could give this option a value of "javascript:window.close()" to close then window when done.
• u_day, u_hour, u_min, and u_sec - DBabble adjusts all times displayed to match the users local time. If you don't specify values for these parameters in the login window, then the user is assumed to be in the same time zone as the server. Call the following javascript function function FetchDate() { x = new Date(); document.dbabble_login.u_hour.value=x.getHours(); document.dbabble_login.u_min.value=x.getMinutes(); document.dbabble_login.u_sec.value=x.getSeconds(); document.dbabble_login.u_day.value=x.getDate(); } before submitted the hidden form to fill in these options.
• override_dot_top, override_main_name, and override_check_main_window - If you want the DBabble window to appear within a sub-frame of the existing window you must use these options. DBabble needs to be able to find the top-level DBabble window using javascript. For example, we have code that sets these values as follows:
  if (sub_frame_name!="") { document.dbabble_login.override_dot_top.value=".top."+sub_frame_name document.dbabble_login.override_main_name.value=sub_frame_name document.dbabble_login.override_check_main_window.value="window.length>1 && window.top.frames[1].name=='"+sub_frame_name+"'" }

User Management

For DBabble versions 1.1i and later, each user can optionally be assigned to belong to a permission group from which all of their privileges are taken from. This means that you can change just the rights for the permission group, and all users belonging to the group have their permissions automatically changed to match the permission group. Permission groups can be administered and created from the web browser interface from the "Server Configuration->Permission Groups" section. On that page you can also set the default permission group that any newly created users will be assigned to. Note that if a user belongs to a permission group, any changes you try to make to any of their other permissions will be ignored unless unless you set their permission group back to "None". When using permission groups, the above mentioned settings (user_chats, user_discussions, user_broadcasts, and user_quota) are no longer needed.

Automatic login to other Netwin Web Products

• Logging in to other products from DBabble
  DBabble will generate lines in your dbabblesvr.ini file like:
  auto_login 5 http://$(server)/scripts/cwmail.exe $(dbabble_path)/../cwmail
  where $(server) and $(dbabble_path) get automatically replaced by your system values at run time. You may need to change this to the specific directories on your system. For example:
  auto_login 5 http://free.dbabble.com/cgi-bin/cwmail /usr/local/cwmail
  To reference these in web-pages, you use html source like:
  <a target="_top" href="||action||?cmd=send_auto_login&n=5&tok=||tok||">Login to CWMail</a> anywhere within your template pages. Note that the value 5 in this example is used to associate the correct configuration file line with the appropriate html link. Each auto_login line must use a unique integer value.
  
• Logging in to DBabble from other products
  For other products to login to DBabble, they should have a configuration file line like:
  auto_login 6 $(server):8132/dbabble $(workarea)/../dbabblesvr/work
  Again, if you have different directories or use a different DBabble port setting you will need to change these to something like:
  auto_login 6 http://free.dbabble.com:8132/dbabble /usr/local/dbabble/work
  And within the other products web-pages generate links using the syntax which they specify. For example, in CWMail you would use:
  <a target="_top" href="||action||?cmd=send_auto_login&n=6&utoken=||utoken||">Login to DBabble</a>
  Make sure you include the target="_top" section as DBabble needs to be in the top frame to function correctly.
  
  Note that some Netwin products use a different syntax. For example in WebNews and WebIMAP your configuration file line might look like:
  netwin_autologin http://free.dbabble.com:8132/dbabble /usr/local/dbabble/work
  and your web references might look like <a target="_top" href="||action||?cmd=netwin_login-6&utoken=||utoken||">Login to DBabble</a>
  
  Note that in this case, you must replace the 6 with the index within your WebNews/WebIMAP configuration file that the DBabble netwin_autologin login line is given, starting from 0. For example if your DBabble netwin_autologin line in webimap.ini was the 3rd netwin_autologin line, then you would use the value 2.
  

Using DBabble for online support

Linking discussions to external usenet (NNTP) groups

Sending and Receiving EMail from DBabble

1. Have a look and see if the file work/email.que exists on your server. For example c:\dbabblesvr\work\email.que. This file contains outgoing email that has not yet been sent to your email server. If this file does exist it means DBabble has not been able to attempt to send the email. Make sure you have specified a valid value for the smtp_host setting. If you have, have a look in the error log file (log/error.log) for a possible problem. If you are not sure what the error means, send it to us at support-dbabble@netwinsite.com and we should be able to help you out. A possible error could be due to SMTP server not relaying email for you. You might have to set your SMTP server to accept relaying of email from DBabble. For example, if you are using DMail, then you would need to add DBabble to the forward_from or forward_from_ip setting in dmail.conf.
2. if work/email.que does not exist, then either DBabble has successfully sent it to your email server, or discarded it because of permanent rejection errors from the email server. Have a look in the error log file (log/error.log). If it was rejected there will be a message there explaining the problem.
3. Check you have specified a value for the email_from setting. Some email servers may reject a message that has a blank from header.
4. When DBabble sends out password emails, by default it does not set a bounce return address, so if the email was undeliverable, then no bounce message will be sent back. You can change this behavior with the give_email_bounces setting. If you turn the first setting on, then bounce messages for password messages will be sent to the address specified by the email_from setting. There is also a setting called give_user_email_bounces which applies to messages sent by users and the default for this setting is on. When a user sends an email, the from address is set to their personal email address so that is where bounce messages will be sent.

Receiving Email when you already have an SMTP server on the same machine

1. If you are running DBabble 1.4u or later, and your machine has multiple IP addresses and domain names, you can bind DBabble to only one of the IP addresses using the bind_address setting. In order to do this, your existing SMTP server must also support IP address binding and be bound to a different IP address. For example, if you are running DMail then you would use the Dmail setting bind_in. If you are running SurgeMail then on the administrator web interface, go to Common/Ports page and change the Smtp Port setting to be prefixed by the ip address. For example 10.0.0.26:25
2. If you are running DBabble 1.1h or later, you can allow DBabble to receive email while there is an SMTP server running on the same machine. This relies on your SMTP server being able to support forwarding of all email for addresses beginning with a specific prefix to DBabble, which will be running on the same machine, but on a different port.

   For example, at netwin.co.nz we have our DBabble and SMTP servers running on the same machine. We set the DBabble smtp_port setting to "2025", smtp_listen setting to "true" and set the smtp_user_base setting to "dbabble_".
   

   1. We previously used DMail and did this:
      We added the following settings to dmail.conf:
      forward dbabble_*@netwin.co.nz %1@dbabble.netwin.co.nz
      gateway dbabble.netwin.co.nz 127.0.0.1:2025
      no_autohost true
      forward_from_ip 127.0.0.1
      Note that dbabble.netwin.co.nz is not a real domain name, even on our internal network - it is just a temporary name for DSMTP to use in the forwarding process. The no_autohost setting is to stop DSMTP from thinking 127.0.0.1:2025 is itself, and the forward_from_ip 127.0.0.1 is to allow DSMTP to accept email from itself when generating a bounce message for an invalid address sent to DBabble.
   2. We now use SurgeMail so we do this:
      In the administrator web page in the section
      Common/Redirecting/Redirection Rules/Edit Rules we added this entry:
      dbabble_*@netwin.co.nz      dbabble_%1@127.0.0.1:2025
      
   We also have to be careful that we don't have any existing email accounts at netwin.co.nz that start with dbabble_, otherwise those users would loose their email. With this setup, we can send instant messages to users via email at dbabble_username@netwin.co.nz, while still receiving our normal email sent to us at username@netwin.co.nz. Of course all of the above would be unnecessary if we had our SMTP server running on a different domain than DBabble. (For example if DBabble was at dbabble.netwin.co.nz, then in that case, we would just have set the smtp_listen setting to "true" and DBabble will receive email sent to username@dbabble.netwin.co.nz.)

Sending Messages as Text Messages to Mobile Phones (SMS)

Linking to remote DBabble servers

Example of how to link two servers

If you find the above a description a bit confusing, here is an example. Assume you have two DBabble servers. One at matt.netwin.co.nz running on port 8132 and another one at bob.netwin.co.nz running on port 80 and you want to link these together so that users on each server can communicate with users the other server.

1. First choose one that will be the master server. We choose matt.netwin.co.nz as the master
2. The other server (bob.netwin.co.nz) is going to be the slave server, and it will need to be temporarily stopped while we make the changes. From the command line on bob.netwin.co.nz type dbabblesvr -stop in Windows or /usr/local/dbabble/dbabblesvr -stop in unix.
3. Each server needs to have a unique host identification number (hid). A default DBabble server installation assigns the hid to 1, so you will first need to change it on one of the servers. We change it to 2 for bob.netwin.co.nz by editing dbabblesvr.ini and changing the line hid 1 to hid 2 (note there is a bug in versions 1.5b and 1.5c that would crash the server during startup after changing the hid setting, so you should not attempt this on those servers)
4. Next we need to tell the slave server what it's master server location is and what password the slave server will use. So on bob.netwin.co.nz, we edit dbabblesvr.ini and change the line master to master matt.netwin.co.nz:8132 and the line slave_pass to slave_pass abcd
5. Next we need to tell the master server about the slave server. On matt.netwin.co.nz, edit the file slaves.dat, and add the lines:
   hid 2
   host bob.netwin.co.nz
   password abcd
   port 80
   program /dbabble
   max_groups 5
   match_ip
   
6. Tell the master server to reload the new slave data from disk. On matt.netwin.co.nz type dbabblesvr -reload
7. Start the slave server now, and it should all be working. The slave server will automatically update any data files it uses to use the new hid setting and this may take a few minutes if you have a large number of messages on the server. (On Windows type net start dbabblesvr or on unix type /usr/local/dbabble/dbabblesvr_start
8. To test if it is working, log in to one of the DBabble servers and choose "Find User" and uncheck the "Local users only" checkbox. It should list any users on the other server as long as they have not chosen to be visible to local users only in their user setup. If it doesn't seem to be working, have a look in the log/error.log on both the slave and master servers for any obvious problems.

Linking to Netwin's master DBabble server

Customizing the Windows Client

• The Windows client downloaded from your server is automatically configured to connect to your server domain name.
• You can change almost every piece of text visible to non-administrator users. See customizing the languages for details.
• You can change the name from DBabble to anything you want using the program_name setting.
• The image in the Help->About box can be changed using the brand_image setting.
• You can customize the icons used throughout the Windows client in versions 1.5k and later by modifying the .ico files in the server /client directory.
• In versions 1.6a and later you can customize the default font used
• In versions 2.0c and later you can customize the default color scheme.
• In versions 2.3h and later you can change or turn off the background image. This is done using the server settings called client_background_image_on, client_background_image, and client_background_image_adjust
• In versions 2.4h and later you can remove or change the license agreement that users must agree to before installing the client. Use the show_client_license_agreement server setting.
• In versions 2.5a and later you can set up the Windows client to install quietly without prompting the user for a response to any questions. See the 'Windows Client' section of the web browser administrator interface for details.
• You can change or remove the advertisements. See customizing the advertisements
• You can change the default values for preferences. See the default preferences section in the server administrator window
• You can hide some features from the user. Features you can hide are chat rooms, instant messages (and associated features such as friends lists etc), user groups, discussion groups, and the todo list feature.

Your DBabble server will automatically build a new Windows client download after you make any of the above changes and tell the server to reload. (e.g. dbabblesvr -reload)

Customizing the Windows Client Fonts

1. Copy the font source file into the DBabble /client directory. In the example, the font file is called comic.ttf
2. Add the name of the font source file into the DBabble /client/client.add file (or /client/English.add if you want it added to the English language version only) In the example, the contents of the file /client/English.add would contain just one line with the text:
   comic.ttf
   
3. Tell the DBabble client to add the font to the Windows font database during installation. In the file /client/client.ini1 (or /client/English.ini1 for the example) add a line:
   install_font comic.ttf
   
4. Tell the DBabble client that this should be the default font it uses. In the file /client/client.ini (or /client/English.ini for the example) add the lines:
   default_font_name Comic Sans MS
   default_font_size 12
   

Your DBabble server will automatically build a new Windows client download after you make any of the above changes and tell the server to reload. (e.g. dbabblesvr -reload).

Customizing the Windows Client Color Scheme

*name Custom
colors 12900812 14149618 16711680 8404992 1632071 255 255 32896 7850648 255 32768 255 32768 65535 -2147483640

Your DBabble server will automatically build a new Windows client download after you make the above changes and tell the server to reload. (e.g. dbabblesvr -reload).

Customizing the Windows Client Settings

version 105
use_proxy 1
proxy_use_explorer 0
proxy_use_netscape 0
proxy_host proxy.netwinsite.com
proxy_port 8080
proxy_local_bypass 0
proxy_exceptions 
try_no_proxy_first 0

version 105
do_startup 0

Your DBabble server will automatically build a new Windows client download after you make the above changes and tell the server to reload. (e.g. dbabblesvr -reload).

Customizing the Advertisements

Customizing the User Fields

Customizing the Group Categories

Running multiple servers on the same machine

1. Each protocol must be configured to listen on a different port (see the port, ssl_port, smtp_port, nntp_port, extra_ports and extra_ssl_ports settings). The only problem with this is only one server will be able to accept incoming email since email (smtp) must be running on port 25.
2. Or if you have multiple ip addresses for the machine then you can bind each DBabble server to one ip address. Use the DBabble bind_address and bind_address_out server settings.

1. Assuming you currently have 1 server installed in c:\dbabblesvr then do the following to install a second one.
2. If you are using ip address binding, configure the bind_address and bind_address_out settings for the first server now.
3. Stop your DBabble server. Type the given text in a DOS/Command prompt
   net stop dbabblesvr
4. Move your \winnt\dbabblesvr.ini file into your DBabble server directory
   move \winnt\dbabblesvr.ini \dbabblesvr\dbabblesvr.ini
5. Create a service to run your original DBabble server.
   c:\dbabblesvr\dbabblesvr -addsvc dbabble1 c:\dbabblesvr\dbabblesvr.exe "DBabble Server 1"
   (the first parameter is the service name, the second the executable to run, and the third is a more descriptive name.)
6. Make sure \winnt\dbabblesvr.ini no longer exists (it shouldn't if you did the above commands correctly)
7. Start your original server
   net start dbabble1
8. Install a new server (by running the server download again) and when asked for a location to install to choose something other than c:\dbabblesvr. For example c:\dbabblesvr2
9. After the new server has installed move it's ini file into it's own directory like you just did for the first server
   net stop dbabblesvr
   move \winnt\dbabblesvr.ini c:\dbabblesvr2\dbabblesvr.ini
   c:\dbabblesvr2\dbabblesvr -addsvc dbabble2 c:\dbabblesvr2\dbabblesvr.exe "DBabble Server 2"
   
10. Open the new dbabblesvr.ini file in a text editor and either change the port settings to new values or specify a value for the bind_address and bind_address_out settings
    notepad c:\dbabblesvr2\dbabblesvr.ini
    For example, change the port, ssl_port, extra_ports, ssl_extra_ports, nntp_port lines to look like this:
    port 8142
    extra_ports 8142
    ssl_port 8143
    ssl_extra_ports 8143
    nntp_port 4119
    smtp_port 4025
    Save and close the text editor
11. Start your new DBabble server and go to the setup web page
    net start dbabble2
    Go to http://127.0.0.1:8142 in your web browser

1. Assuming you currently have 1 server installed in /usr/local/dbabble then do the following to install a second one.
2. If you are using ip address binding, configure the bind_address and bind_address_out settings for the first server now.
3. Stop your DBabble server.
   /usr/local/dbabble/dbabblesvr_stop
4. Move your /etc/dbabblesvr.ini file into your DBabble server directory
   mv /etc/dbabblesvr.ini /usr/local/dbabble/dbabblesvr.ini
5. Change your startup script to start DBabble using the -ini command line option.
   echo /usr/local/dbabble/dbabblesvr -ini /usr/local/dbabble/dbabblesvr.ini >/usr/local/dbabble/dbabblesvr_start
6. Make sure /etc/dbabblesvr.ini no longer exists (it shouldn't if you did the above commands correctly)
7. Install a new server (by running the server download again) and when it asks for a destination, type something other than /usr/local/dbabble. For example /usr/local/dbabble2
After the new server has installed move it's ini file into it's own directory like you just did for the first server
/usr/local/dbabble2/dbabblesvr_stop
mv /etc/dbabblesvr.ini /usr/local/dbabble2/dbabblesvr.ini
echo /usr/local/dbabble2/dbabblesvr -ini /usr/local/dbabble2/dbabblesvr.ini >/usr/local/dbabble2/dbabblesvr_start
Add /usr/local/dbabble2/dbabblesvr_start to your system startup script
8. Open the new dbabblesvr.ini file in a text editor and change the port settings to new values or specify a value for the bind_address and bind_address_out settings
   vi /usr/local/dbabble2/dbabblesvr.ini
   For example, change the port, ssl_port, extra_ports, ssl_extra_ports, nntp_port lines to look like this:
   port 8142
   extra_ports 8142
   ssl_port 8143
   ssl_extra_ports 8143
   nntp_port 4119
   smtp_port 4025
   Save and close the text editor
9. Start your new DBabble server and go to the setup web page
   /usr/local/dbabble2/dbabblesvr_start
   Go to http://127.0.0.1:8142 in your web browser

Upgrading the server when running multiple servers

• Upgrading to versions 2.1v and later
  Run the standard DBabble server download and choose the upgrade option. Enter the full location of the dbabblesvr.ini file of the server you want to upgrade. Note: Do not choose to start the DBabble service at the end of installation as this will start the default server. (Instead choose "no" and manually start it yourself. (e.g. by typing "net start dbabble1")
• Upgrading to versions prior to 2.1v
  The server installation procedure looks for the existence of the default dbabblesvr.ini file to decide whether it is performing a new installation or an upgrade installation, and it does not recognise that you have multiple servers installed on the same machine. So in order to upgrade each server you must temporarily rename the default dbabblesvr.ini file to something else and copy the dbabblesvr.ini file for the server you want to upgrade over it and then run the server installation. Do not choose to start the DBabble service at the end of installation as this will start the default server. (Instead choose "no" and manually start it yourself.) Repeat this for each server you want to upgrade, and at the end, restore your original dbabblesvr.ini file. For example on Windows NT assuming you have an extra server installed in \dbabblesvr2 which uses ini file \dbabblesvr2\dbabblesvr.ini and has a service name of dbabblesvr2
  1. copy \winnt\dbabblesvr.ini \winnt\dbabblesvr.ini2 (backup the default ini file)
  2. copy \dbabblesvr2\dbabblesvr.ini \winnt\dbabblesvr.ini (replace the default ini file with the one for the server you want to upgrade)
  3. dbabblesvr15n.exe (run the server upgrade, which will upgrade the server installed to \dbabblesvr2)
  4. Choose no to the question about starting it automatically.
  5. copy \winnt\dbabblesvr.ini \dbabblesvr2\dbabblesvr.ini (the upgrade with have added default values for any new settings to dbabblesvr.ini so replace your original ini file with it)
  6. copy \winnt\dbabblesvr.ini2 \winnt\dbabblesvr.ini (restore the default ini file)
  7. net start dbabblesvr2 (start the upgraded server)

Performance

Chat Room Simultaneous Users: 100 to 500
Using direct Windows client connections, a single chat room can handle about 500 simultaneous users.
However, when using a web browser, it sends a request to the server to check for new messages every 2 seconds and refreshes the list of user's present every 10 seconds. The creates a limit of about 100 users present in a single chat room, or about 200 users spread over multiple chat rooms. If you remove the list of users present frame and/or increase the refresh interval (using the web_chat_refresh setting) you can expect better performance in chat rooms.

DBabble does not currently support multiple servers sharing the same user database, or server redundancy (we do plan to add this in future). DBabble does support linking multiple servers each with their own user database together for the purposes of inter-server communication. See Linking to remote DBabble servers for more information on this.

Running DBabble with high numbers of users.

If you want to have more than about 50,000 users in your database or more than 1,000 users online at a time, you will need to modify some settings. You should increase the user_hash_num setting to at least twice the number of users in your database and 20 times the number of users that will be online at any one time. This setting uses about value*10 bytes of memory, and the higher it is the better performance will be. It defaults to 100,000.

Versions 2.3 and later of DBabble have built in SSL encryption on by default. SSL encryption is quite intensive on server performance and you will need to disable it to achieve the best performance possible.

Normally the Windows client keeps a connection open to the server to receive notification of new messages and the server is limited to max_chans simultaneous connections (default of 800). You can raise this value as high as you want, and the server will internally restrict it to the maximum number of connections supported by your operating system. (from 1,000 on linux up 32000 on Windows NT and some unix platforms.) If you increase this on unix systems, make sure you increase the ulimit to be at least 100 higher than this. Edit the dbabblesvr_start script and change the "ulimit -n 1024" line.

In order to be able to support more than 1,000 simultaneous users on operating systems that cannot support many connections, the Windows client can listen for incoming connections to itself, so it will not need to keep a connection to the server open. The server will automatically check if this is possible for each client by attempting to connect to the client when they login and if not (due to a firewall or proxy server) it will continue as normal. The client_listen_threshold setting (defaults to 400) specifies the number of connections the server must be using before the Windows client will not keep connections open any more. If the Windows client is operating in this mode, it will not know immediately if it's connection to the server has been lost.

Every minute (which can be changed by the client_check_interval setting, the Windows client sends a very small request to the server to confirm that it is still connected. This normally takes only a very small amount of server processing time, but if you have thousands of users online simultaneously this can become significant and you may want to increase this to every 10 minutes.

By default once a minute the Windows client checks with the server if any subscribed discussion groups or chat rooms have new posts, and if any discussion groups, chat rooms or user groups have changed names or properties. There is a user preference that controls whether it does this. To set the default to off, in the server administration default preferences page, turn off the preference called refresh_group_list (# 135). You may want to turn this off if you have hundreds of users online simultaneously.

Every 5 seconds (which can be changed by the web_message_refresh setting, web browsers send a small request to the server to check for new messages. You may want to increase this if you have more than a few hundred web browser users online simultaneously.

Encryption (SSL)

• What is SSL/TLS?
• Does my version of DBabble support SSL/TLS ?
• How to generate a Certification Authority Request to get a CA signed key

What is SSL/TLS and how secure is it?

SSL/TLS is the same encryption system used by 'https' web pages. It is generally considered to be the most (if not only) secure method for sending sensitive information across the internet, and is the basis of all ECommerce security systems used today. Both the DBabble web interface and DBabble Windows client support SSL. The Windows client defaults to using SSL to communicate with the server so that no one else can view any information sent over the network or internet.

When installed, your DBabble server automatically creates you a private key and a matching self-signed certificate. Since the certificate is self-signed, when a user visits your DBabble server using a web browser over a secure connection, they will be warned that they have not chosen to trust you. The only way you can remove this message is to get a certificate authority to sign your certificate and verify that you are who you claim to be. This will cost you money. See the How to generate a Certification Authority Request to get a CA signed key section below. The DBabble Windows client you download from your server is automatically configured to know the certificate your server generates can be trusted.

The private key that DBabble creates for you by default is 1024 bits. This is secure enough for most users. If you really want a longer (more secure and slower) key, you can do this in versions 2.4c and later by changing the server setting ssl_private_key_bits and do the manager recreate private key command.

In order to generate your private key, random data is required. On OS's such as Windows and Linux there is random data available from the system to do this, but on some OS's such as Solaris your private key that DBabble generates may be predictable, although DBabble does use various system event times, which are kind of random to generate a reasonable key.

To create a more secure private key, place some random data (1K should be sufficient) in the file random_data.dat in your main DBabble server directory. Stop your server, delete the files private_key_YOUR_DOMAIN.pem and certificate_YOUR_DOMAIN.pem and start the server again. You should only do this soon after installing - if you already have existing Windows client users using secure communication with the server, they will be warned your certificate has changed

Does my version of DBabble support SSL/TLS ?

SSL/TLS is supported in the Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris Sparc, and Mac OSX DBabble servers 2.3a and later. The Windows client 2.3a and later includes SSL support too.

How to generate a Certification Authority Request to get a CA signed key

DBabble automatically generates you a private key and self signed certificate. For high level security you should consider getting a certificate signed by a CA. This means that web browser clients can be sure that they are talking to 'your' server and not just someone pretending to be your server.

A script is provided for Windows machines. Copy the files

• request.cnf
• make_req.cmd
• sslreq.exe

This will create two files, request.pem and privkey.pem

Paste request.pem into a CA registration form at a site that provides CA services, e.g.
http://www.verisign.com/
http://www.abaecom.com/
http://www.digsigtrust.com/
http://www.e-certify.com/
http://www.entrust.net/
http://www.equifax.com/
http://www.globalsign.com/
http://www.tc-trustcenter.com/
http://www.thawte.com/
http://www.valicert.com/

DBabble uses OpenSSL encryption / decryption libraries for SSL.

When the certificate authority sends you your signed certificate, save it as certificate_YOUR_DOMAIN.pem (e.g. certificate_netwin.co.nz.pem) in the main DBabble directory.  Also, copy the privkey.pem file into the same directory and call it private_key_YOUR_DOMAIN.pem. (e.g. private_key_netwin.co.nz.pem)

Then restart your DBabble server.

dbabblesvr -restart

Keep in mind when doing this, that any existing users who are using the Windows client will be warned that the server certificate has changed. Any new downloads of the Windows client from your server will be pre-configured to trust your new certificate.

Encryption in Versions prior to 2.3a

1. Install Stunnel on your machine by following the instructions at http://www.stunnel.org/faq/install.html#ToC1
2. Assuming you have DBabble running on port 8132, and want your users to be able to connect to DBabble on the default https port (443), you would start stunnel (version 3.14) using the command line:
   UNIX: stunnel -d 443 -r 8132 -f (you can omit the -f option once you have it running correctly):
   Windows:stunnel-3_14 -d 443 -r 8132
   You should then be able to access your dbabble server using https://server.name instead of http://server.name:8132.

1. Download from http://www.stunnel.org/download/binaries.html the following files and save them in the DBabble client subdirectory.
   • stunnel-3.14.exe and rename it to stunnel.exe
   • libssl32.dll
   • libeay32.dll
2. Create the following files in the client directory.
   • client.add, which contains the lines
     

     stunnel.exe
     libeay32.dll
     libssl32.dll
     

   • client.ini, which contains the lines
     

     run_process stunnel.exe -d 8133 -r free.dbabble.com:443 -c
     run_process_checked true
     

     where you replace free.dbabble.com:443 by your server name and port you will be listening on for SSL connections.
3. Change your server win_host_port setting to 127.0.0.1:8133
4. Tell your DBabble server to reload ("dbabblesvr -reload"). The windows client downloads will be regenerated to include the new files, and to automatically run stunnel in the background on their machine to encrypt all outgoing DBabble connections.
5. Notes: This only applies to new installations of the windows client. If a user is upgrading from a previous version of the windows client, they must manually change their server host setting to 127.0.0.1:8133 from the configuration window. Also note that this will not work properly if they must connect through a proxy server. In this case, they must change their proxy server server setting to 127.0.0.1:8133 and their server host to whatever your server host and SSL port are.

Problems

If for some reason you are having difficulty installing or getting DBabble to work properly, you can try the following

1. Have a look in the error log file. On Windows this is in c:\dbabblesvr\log\error.log and on unix /usr/local/dbabble/log/error.log. This file might mention a something that is wrong that you can fix yourself.
2. Windows Only - If there is no useful information in error.log, and you can't get the server to go at all, try running DBabble from the command line instead of as a service. At a DOS prompt,
   • First make sure the DBabble service is not already running by typing net stop dbabblesvr
   • type cd c:\dbabblesvr
   • type dbabblesvr -go
   • This will start DBabble running from the command line, and it will print error messages if anything goes wrong. Press <Ctrl-c> (or type dbabblesvr -stop in an different DOS window) to stop it, or close the DOS window.
3. UNIX only - If there is no useful information in error.log, and you can't get the server to go at all, try running DBabble without detaching it from the console.
   • type cd /usr/local/dbabble
   • type ./dbabblesvr -stop to make sure it is not already running
   • type ./dbabblesvr -nodetach
   • This will start DBabble running from the command line, and it will print error messages if anything goes wrong. Press <Ctrl-c> (or type ./dbabblesvr -stop in an different window) to stop it.
4. If you are still not sure what is wrong, we will be happy to help you. We provide free email support during your trial period and for 12 months after purchasing. Just email us at support-dbabble@netwinsite.com and give a description of what exactly is not working. Please include what system you are using (e.g. "Windows NT 4.0 Service pack 2" or "Linux 6.0"), and what version of DBabble you are using (e.g 1.4f for dbabblesvr14f.exe or dbabblesvr14f_linux_libc6.tar.Z). It is very useful to us if you can send as email attachments the error log and configuration files. (On Windows c:\winnt\dbabblesvr.ini and c:\dbabblesvr\log\error.log) (On Unix /etc/dbabblesvr.ini and /usr/local/dbabble/log/error.log)
5. If in the unlikely case you find your DBabble server crashes due to an error and must be started again, we would like to know about this so we can fix it. If you can send us the above information (version number, dbabblesvr.ini and error.log), and the following information, we should be able to have the problem fixed (and send you a fixed version) within one or two working days.
   
   • Windows NT/2000:Most versions of Windows come with a program called Dr Watson. This program needs to be enabled at the time of the server crash to generate the information we need. To enable it, from the command line type "drwtsn32 -i". What this does is catch any program on your machine that crashes, and writes a log file. (which might be at C:\WINNT\Profiles\AllUsers\Documents\DrWatson\drwtsn32.log or C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\DrWatson\drwtsn32.log ). If you can send us this file it is extremely useful to us in finding and fixing the problem.
   • Unix:When the server crashes, it generates a core file on most platforms. This might be called core or dbabblesvr.core. From the command line in the DBabble server directory, type "gdb dbabblesvr". When gdb has started, type "core core" (or "core dbabblesvr.core" if the core file name is dbabblesvr.core). Then type "bt" and this should generate a backtrace which is extremely useful to us in finding and fixing the problem. Copy the output from the console and send it to us.
   • If you can't provide with one of the files, then the DBabble log/debug.log file can also be very useful. To generate this, you should change the line debug false to debug true in dbabblesvr.ini and restart your server. Next time it crashes, make a copy of log/debug.log and send it to us. Make sure you turn the debug setting off again after generating a log file, as the server can run very slowly in some situations when debugging is enabled.
6. If you are having problems with the Windows client crashing or giving a program error, please let us know. If you can provide a description of what you were doing at the time of the error that would be useful. The DBabble client can generate a log file, but by default it does not. To generate a log file, run it from the command line using "DBabble -log dbabble.log". When an error next occurs, make a copy of dbabble.log and send it to us.

Uninstalling DBabble