I'm really stoked to have my own Citadel BBS running on the Internet, accessible from outside. It is just a silly, cool little thing to be doing 35 years down the road from my original BBS. 

Even if the traffic isn't what it used to be in the olden days... 

Oh my ... you're from the Sacramento Citadel scene?  Stop me if we've already had this conversation, but you probably remember The Single Biggest Troll Of All Time?

Mon May 27 2019 15:47:20 MST from IGnatius T Foobar

Oh my ... you're from the Sacramento Citadel scene?  Stop me if we've already had this conversation, but you probably remember The Single Biggest Troll Of All Time?

You mean Paranoid Delusions/MetallicA? :D 

Or GoE/Gerhard Eldweisse? 

Or Pagan Flames. 

If it is 916 Citadel, it has to be one of us. :) 

We were the notorious assholes of Citadel. Brenda Daniels was pretty good, too. She once threatened to stick a Louisville Slugger up my ass - sideways, after I had gotten her particularly worked up in a flame war. I was 17. The thing was scary was... I believed she could. 

What BBSes did he/she frequent? Earl's Castle, Omni BBS, The Dragon's Den, The Rubber Crutch? My first Citadel BBS was... shit... Kangaroo something... run by a guy named Wallaby. He was the *first* Citadelphian who went, "there is something more to this kid and I want to cultivate it." 

And he did, and thereby - changed my life. Like... every config file I've ever edited, every registry key I've ever modified, started with that guy teaching me how to get Citadel running on my C-128 in CP/M mode. Vi wasn't hard to contemplate having used the CP/M editor to change flags in a Citadel config file on a Commodore 8 bit. 

Once he did the rough work, Gary and Charles Meadows and Brent Barrett took over. Wallaby died - he had some fatal illness. The guys who seem to decide to help me "level up," are always facing down something terminal - and that is kind of tragic and weird in and of itself when I think about it... 

Ahhh... those were good days. 

Fascinating ... but I don't actually know much about the scene itself.  I am referring to a fellow named Albert L. Mitchell, better known as Curly Surmudgeon.  He's from the Sacramento area and we know that he frequented the Citadels over there.  Really big troublemaker, paranoid as all getout, and to say he was a militant atheist would be the understatement of the century.  He had a tendency to dominate arguments so loudly that any forum in which he appeared basically became unusable.

Needless to say, he eventually became as unwelcome on the Internet Citadels as he had apparently become on his local dialups, and on the WELL (which I understand was sort of a big deal on the west coast at one time).

I do know that name. Not someone I interacted with frequently, oddly enough - as I had a reputation for getting my write privs revoked fairly frequently. Found his profile and I see the friends we have in common with - I suspect he was an ATKeep/The Penthouse Suite/ STadel local. They were always more Left leaning as a community - and as things have become more partisan, these folks have frequently moved away from the community. Their demographics also skewed younger - the Atari and Atari ST scene in Sacramento - whereas the regular Citadel community was made mostly of older engineer guys and academics from CSUS using CP/M first, then PC platforms for their BBSes. 

I was kind of an anomaly in that I was a part of the original C-64 warez scene in Sacramento but transitioned into the main Citadel community mostly. We had a lot of different factions in a very active BBS community in Sacramento. 

Curly was probably more of a lurker on the boards I was really active and an Aide on... and maybe a little younger than I am. 

He's over 70 years old, so I doubt that.  And you won't be hearing from him anymore, because he's in federal prison for being a pedophile.

Well, interestingly, his Facebook profile has seemed pretty inactive other than people reaching out to him, since 2012. 

That being so, it seems like you guys at Uncensored have had more interaction and kept better tabs on his whereabouts than his associations in Sacramento, over the years. :) 

https://www.facebook.com/curly.surmudgeon

Asked around the Sac Citadel community: 

Curly was a frequent presence in the Sacramento Citadel scene probably more in the 90s. Moon Knight, Sinner, myself, Meister, Vector, were among those who tended to know him a little more than others. ran more with the alternative oddball folks.

I considered him a close friend until he started losing his shit midway through the Bush Jr terms. He said some rather unkind things in response to my presenting counter arguments during a debate. Told him to never contact me again.

Few years ago I just happened to wonder what was up. Googled his name. Saw an article about how he was arrested in something called Operation Sunflower and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Not horribly surprised. Disappointed as all fuck, yeah. But not surprised. He had his issues and demons.

Ig - he was after my time. By the 90s I had stopped dialing in to the local Cits anymore. I was busy kind of being a college frat boy in my early 20's. This explains why I had never ran into him. But your assessment of him seems spot on. 

That's a pretty fair assessment I think.  He really did start losing his shit during that era, and I think the "issues and demons" description is spot on.  There was something wrong with him, and it intensified the less desirable parts of his personality.  He basically was completely and loudly intolerant of anyone who didn't agree with his opinion that there were only two types of people in the world: militant atheists, and the clinically insane.

At one point everyone was just slinging random insults around, and someone got to calling him a pedophile.  At that point he unexpectedly went berzerk.  He even went as far as to tell us he was going to sue everyone involved, me in particular, and seek to take control of the citadel.org domain name as part of the damages.  Even though he was using a screen name instead of his real name, and no one had ever doxxed him, he claimed that we had ruined his reputation.

Then in a classic case of "the lady doth protest too much, methinks" he disappeared ... and a short time later we discovered that it was because he *actually* *is* a pedophile and he got arrested.  This was in 2012, and even before he was sent to jail he was prohibited from using computers or the Internet.

I suppose not ever interacting with this guy directly is another reason to be glad I got out when I did. Honestly, the 90s was the beginning of the decline for all of "this"... I mean, shortly thereafter, I discovered the Internet and that helped jumpstart my career in IT and I was back on Usenet doing exactly the same stuff I had been doing on Citadel at the end of the 80's... 

But I was still unlikely to run into Curly even then, I guess - because while I was hanging out in Alt.Fan.StephenKing it sounds like he was probably a bigger fan of the alt.binaries section.

I feel like that upload didn't work. Here. Use this: 

Document

To install Citadel Mail Server on your Raspberry Pi:

First create a user account for the BBS to run under. In my case, I named it ‘bbs’

sudo adduser bbs

Enter a secure password.
Confirm it.

You can accept the default information for the values for Full Name, Room Number, etc.
Enter “Y” to accept.

Now, in your command line and as Sudo/Root – type:

sudo apt install apache2 db4.8-util javascript-common libjs-prototype libjs-scriptaculous libmarkdown2 libsieve2-1 tinymce libdb-dev build-essential curl g++ gettext shared-mime-info libssl-dev zlib1g-dev libical-dev libldb-dev libldap2-dev expat libexpat1-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev

to prepare 

This installs the base libraries and dependencies necessary for the Easy-Install script to work.  Type “Y” to continue.

Easy Install requires a working build environment. This is installed by default on many Linux distributions. [But not Raspbian] Otherwise, to install a build environment use the following commands (as root):

apt-get update && apt-get install build-essential curl g++ gettext shared-mime-info libssl-dev zlib1g-dev

If any of the curl, libssl-dev or zlib1g-dev files are not current or not installed, they’ll install.

Then run Easy Install the normal way:

curl http://easyinstall.citadel.org/install | bash

(Although I think I was using curl http://easyinstall.citadel.org/install | sh instead of bash shell... although I don't know if piping it through one shell or the other makes a difference.) 

This compiles Citadel so will take some time. If this seems not to work just run again. this time is very fast, and will let you do the setup.

The Welcome to Citadel Easy Install setup screen will run and you’ll see the screen below with a rectangle cursor. Hit the “Enter” key to proceed with the install:

You’ll see the warranty disclaimer hit “Y” to accept the terms:

Enter “Y” to attempt to install OS depdencies:

The install will begin:

Once the Easy Install script is complete, the Citadel Setup Program will run automatically

Enter the name of the Sysop/Admin account you want to manage the Citadel with and click OK or hit “Enter”:

Enter a secure password for the Sysop/Admin account and click OK or hit “Enter”:

Change the Citadel User ID to the one you created in step 1, in this case, “bbs” (without the quotes), and click OK or hit “Enter”:

Specify an IP address on which the server should listen for connections. The default, “*” selects any IP address on the host machine – but you can select any IPv6 address, or any IPv4 address. The default is fine unless you are running multiple Citadel Servers on a single box.

Specify the TCP port you want Citadel to listen on. The default of 504 is fine.

Select the user authentication mode. As this example is intended to be a Public Faced BBS and not a mail server, I’ve selected “0. Self contained authentication”.

The next screen warns that /etc/nsswitch.conf is using the db module, which is probably not necessary and can cause Citadel to crash. Select “Yes” to automatically disable this module.

Select “Yes” to configure WebCit to automatically start at boot, unless you want to start it manually each time you reboot the server:

Select the locale information for webcit. 0 lets the user select at the login prompt:

Select the port you want Citadel to listen on for HTTP requests. Apache is installed by default by Raspbian and is already listening on port 80. Unless you’ve removed Apache select a different port:

Likewise do the same for HTTPS requests:

WebCit will attempt to stop (and fail because it isn’t running), and restart. Open a browser and point it at localhost. The login page for WebCit should display. Enter the User Name and Password you’ve created for the Sysop/Admin account and click Log In:

You should now see the Lobby of your Citadel Server. Congratulations, you’ve successfully installed Citadel on your Raspbian based Raspberry Pi.

Note – although the Citadel Text Client appears to install with the Easy Install – it does not. If you want to offer text-based Telnet or SSH connections to your citadel to allow old-school text-based BBS connections – I found that I had to install the Citadel text client package independently, configure, make and compile and install it separately. I will address that in another document later.

In creating this document, I used the following sources:

http://www.citadel.org/doku.php?id=installation:easyinstall:easyinstall

Using the configuration described here: 

https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-email-server/

With additional documentation found here:

http://www.citadel.org/doku.php?id=documentation:system_administration_manual

And this post by rat@uncensored and leon@uncensored:

Donovan Colbert, Paranoid Delusions, The Sanitarium BBS
https://secure.wallofhate.com

http://wallofhate.com

telnet telnet.wallofhate.com

G'damnit. Attachments are fubar on my installation. 

A blast from the past: 

<G>oto <N>ew <E>nter <U>ngoto <H>elp
EIB/Local Politics: read 

<J>ump <N>ext <P>ause <S>top
97Sep01 20:34 from Turk @ ECBBS
Sinner, my point is that to put your preferred political system into action 
would require getting rid of certain groups of people. You do not have a plan 
to do so which is good. It also means your preferred system will never become 
reality. Marxism fails when people do not agree to share. 

Sorry for the late reply, I have been helping my sister and a few other 
people. For free. :)

97Sep01 20:43 from Turk @ ECBBS
Sinner, true Marxism will never exist on any scale of note. That is the 
reason places that advocate its use devolve into dictatorships or other 
horrible forms of government. I have no illusion that my relatives lived 
under Marxism in Slovenia/Yugoslavia or Slovakia/Czechoslovakia. They did 
not. To have Marxism requires cooperation. There was no cooperation. As a 
result, the government killed lots of people. That makes enemies. That makes 
it inevitible that the government will keep the guns and other forms of 
intimidation for protection. The difference in regimes does not matter to a 
lot of workers. They do the same job. Under capitalism, there is risk but 
also opportunity. 

97Sep01 21:06 from Turk @ ECBBS
Jetrock, capitalism has no position on genocide. Capitalism is a matter of 
profit. One capitalist may benefit by selling weapons. Another may lose 
customers because they are dead. Both are capitalists. So are the consumers 
of their products, mostly. 

97Sep01 21:13 from Turk @ ECBBS
Sinner, capitalism is not adverse to sharing, community, or family. It is 
adverse to forced sharing of cost to any of those concerns.

97Sep01 21:16 from Turk @ ECBBS
Somebody asked about my politics. Libertarian. Anarchocapitalist or 
minarchist. Basically, minimal government in a free-market environment. 
Restrict the power of government and therefor restrict the power of big 
business to flex its power for regulating its competition to death.

97Sep01 22:56 from Jetrock @ ECBBS
Turk: ACtually, there were periods when Czechoslovakia came close to true 
Marxism. But then the Soviets invaded, since they couldn't tolerate an 
example of true Marxism to show them up. Just as the U.S. tends to stamp out 
any country which takes American free-market rhetoric too seriously.

Turk, pt. 2: Capitalism has no position on an ything--it's a philosophy, not 
a political position, and therefore can't be blamed for its adherents. Which 
is much like those who say 'Oh, you can't blame christianity just because most 
of its adherents over the past 2000 years have been intolerant scumbags!' 
CAPITALISM can't have much of an opinion on anything. But I'm not taking 
issue with the theories of capitalism. I'm taking issue with the ACTIONS of 
CAPITALISTS. (And communists, by the way.) Just because capitalism doesn't 
teach (Butcher the Timorese people' does not absolve American involvement and 
support of the Indonesian invasion of Timor. 

97Sep01 23:05 from Jetrock @ ECBBS
hm. 'philosophy, not an individual'. Just as millions can be killed in the 
name of Christianity, but the idea of Christianity is still, supposedly, one 
of peace and brotherhood, so is capitalism--it's a Lofty Ideal that people 
kill each other over. Incidentally, so is Communism. Incidentally. both 
systems stink. I've said it before, but apparently nobody has listened 
because they still call me a socialist when I say that capitalism stinks as 
bad as socialism...

97Sep01 23:22 from sinner @ ECBBS
Turk: sorry I tried to debate politics. seems you preferred not to read my 
posts. so, the "debate" on my end died (like princess di). you can't see what 
i say, for the things in your head get in the way. that illogic (and 
non-sense) blinds you. I stated what i said...i meant what i said...what i 
said had meanings...you lost it all in your own interests. it all went 
bye-bye. nothing more to say, or argue. it's there...post after post...some 
jokes, with meaning...some meanings...ina joke. sad that so many can't agree 
that the working person is underpaid...the rich pig overpaid...the 
middle-class is going going...soon gone. i ain't (and never said) TAKE it all 
(except in an extremist joke). 

97Sep01 23:29 from sinner @ ECBBS
thing is, noone ever answered tha question: is there a point that being SO 
rich becomes obscene? 100 million? 1 billion? 10 billion 100 billion? is a 
person with 1 trillion dollars TOO rich?

97Sep01 23:32 from sinner @ ECBBS
i need an answer.

97Sep02 00:40 from Turk @ ECBBS
I read your posts, sinner, concerning both politics and philosophy. Your 
philosophy is politically unviable. To a lesser degree, so is mine. 

No, I do not agree the working person is underpaid. Some people are underpaid 
and others not. A lot of workers are very much overpaid. That does not 
bother me. People have choices on where they work. Many people take less pay 
rather than move or do other jobs. Regulation should not interfere in wages. 
Employees and employers should have a contract and both should abide by the 
contract. 

No, no amount of wealth is obscene. What a person does can be obscene.

Adverse and averse are both turn-offs, but adverse is something harmful, and averse is a strong feeling of dislike. Rainstorms can cause adverse conditions, and many people are averse to rain. If it's a force of nature working against you, use adverse.

Very spartan site with a fairly comprehensive history of Citadel that notes Sacramento's contribution to the software: 

https://lwr.wtf/citadel/

So, last time, I clicked Save To Drafts. I meant to click Post Message. 

I'd love to have the former sysops of the Sac Citadel BBSes each have a room here that they manage completely, even a floor - named after their BBS. There would be no interference from me. Each Sysop would run the BBS as their own kingdom, just like an autonomous Citadel BBS. If someone wants to suggest this on the Sacramento Citadel Facebook page, please extend the invitation to each of them. It is fairly trivial for me to set it up. 

In fact, I imagine that I could run separate instances of Citadel on different ports and could make them independently managed by the appropriate sysop. Kind of like Sacramento Citadelphia cloud hosting. I also have 4 additional IP addresses and ports that could be each assigned to a separate Pi running Citadel. 

I think it would be kinda cool. If there is any interest, they can log in here and send me a PM and we can arrange just about any of these scenarios. 

I don't know about running a BBS again.  That would seem like too much work these days.  ;)  I don't post much in the Facebook Sacramento Citadel page but the next time I am chatting with one of the ex-sysops I know, I'll mention it.

Fri Nov 20 2020 22:53:39 MST from Otto Roboto

I don't know about running a BBS again.  That would seem like too much work these days.  ;)  I don't post much in the Facebook Sacramento Citadel page but the next time I am chatting with one of the ex-sysops I know, I'll mention it.

I know your nick - but it was so long ago. You're not Pagan, are you? Why do I feel like this was one of Pagan's handles? 

I'd be doing all the heavy lifting, honestly. The Sysop would basically be a figurehead - setting the *tone* of *that* particular BBS in their own unique style. 

Log into uncensored.citadel.org. I keep saying, the only thing than ONE Citadel BBS with an active user base constantly creating content... 

Would be two or more Citadel BBSes doing that. 

So far, it seems like there is 1.5 - and I'm the half-wit here.