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|  |  | This page lists all the settings that can be modified to configure your DBabble server. Normally, you should be able to modify these from within the DBabble user interface by logging in as an administrator user and going to the DBabble Server Configuration page. However, in cases where you break some aspect of the server so that it stops functioning correctly, you may need to modify these settings by hand using any text editor. These settings are stored in the file dbabblesvr.ini. On NT this can be found in the windows directory (eg "C:\WINNT\dbabblesvr.ini"). On Unix this is found in the /etc directory (eg "/etc/dbabblesvr.ini"). After modifying any settings manually, you will need to reload your DBabble Server. For example type dbabblesvr -reload. See DBabble Server Management Instructions for further details. A list of the settings supported is given below. When specifying values that are file sizes, if no units are specified, they are assumed to be in bytes. Append either kb, mb, or gb for other units. When specifying values that are time intervals, if no units are specified, they are assumed to be in seconds. Append either mins, hours, days, weeks, months, or years for other units. Settings are separated into the following sections: Common Settings (9 settings) Which features are available (9 settings) Authentication and Password Settings (32 settings) User Settings (25 settings) Advertisement and Brand Settings (10 settings) News (NNTP) Settings (17 settings) SMTP (Email) Settings (26 settings) Connection Settings (13 settings) Web Browser Settings (9 settings) Windows Client Settings (17 settings) Discussion, Chat Room, and Talk Settings (43 settings) Logging Settings (21 settings) Master/Slave/Remote Server Settings (9 settings) Uncommon Settings (68 settings) Test Settings (you shouldn't change these or server may not work) (4 settings)
Name | Type | Default | Example | Description | Version Added
--- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---
Common Settings |  |  |  |  |
key | Text |  |  | Registration key. If no key specified, temporary license is assumed | 0.5a
path | Text |  | "/usr/local/dbabblesvr" or "C:\dbabblesvr" | Installation Path - can't change while server is running |
domain | Text |  | dbabble.com | Local host and domain name for email |
port | Integer | 8132 |  | Port to listen on. DBabble can not share this port with any other programs. If you choose to make this setting port 80, then you must NOT have an existing web server running on the same machine |
ssl_port | Integer | 8133 |  | Secure Port to listen on. DBabble can not share this port with any other programs. If you choose to make this setting port 443 (default https port), then you must NOT have an existing secure web server running on the same machine | 2.3a
manager | Text |  | admin@dbabble.com | Email address to send manager error/warning messages to |
manager_instant_message_to | Text |  | admin | User account name of user to send administrator error/warning messages to. If not specified, first created account is used, unless the value of this setting is 'no', in which case no user is sent instant message warnings. | 2.1g
program_name | Text | DBabble | Quick Chat | If specified, changes the program name to something other than DBabble. If you are using a free educational license then this setting must have a value of 'DBabble' | 1.1d
languages | Text | English,Español(Spanish),Deutsch(German) |  | Specifies the list of languages available. First language listed is default. You do not need to have operating system language support on either the server or client to use these. However, if a language uses a non-English character set then it will require the client to have the correct font installed. Languages must be comma separated with no spaces and the names must be an exact match to the language file name that exists in the /lang sub-directory of the server. If corresponding language files do not exist, then English is used. Try English,Español(Spanish),Deutsch(German),Chinese,Italiano(Italian),Français(French),Japanese,Portuguese,Korean,Russian,Dansk(Danish) to see how it works with all the default languages provided. Note that most of these are machine language translations. Danish, German, Italian, Chinese, and Spanish are partially corrected from their machine language translations. Note that using lots of languages available will mean the server will be slower at starting and processing reload commands (a few seconds per language), but other than that will have no impact on performance. See http://netwinsite.com/dbabble/language.htm for details on customizing and adding new languages. If you are running on a Windows platform, you can run the program lang/editlang.exe in the server directory to edit languages, or you can modify the text files directly. | 1.2b
Which features are available |  |  |  |  |
use_discussions | Boolean | true |  | Whether or not discussion groups are available on this server | 2.2c
use_chat_rooms | Boolean | true |  | Whether or not chat rooms are available on this server | 2.2c
use_user_groups | Boolean | true |  | Whether or not user groups are available on this server (only applies if instant messages are also in use) | 2.2c
use_instant_messages | Boolean | true |  | Whether or not instant messages (and associated features such as friends) are available on this server | 2.2c
use_todo | Boolean | true |  | Whether or not todo list is available on this server | 2.2c
use_windows_client | Boolean | true |  | Whether or not the windows client can connect to the server and be downloaded from the server | 2.2c
use_web_browser_interface | Boolean | true |  | Whether or not the web browser interface can be used to login to this server | 2.2c
users_can_choose_features | Boolean | true |  | If you have more than one of the instant messaging, chat room or discussion features enabled, then if this setting is on, users can optionally choose to only show features they want. | 2.2c
hide_user_details_for_hidden_features | Boolean | true |  | If this setting is on, and the current user is not using some features, then user detail fields that are not relevant are hidden from them. For example 'Accept message from ...' is hidden when not using instant messages | 2.2c
Authentication and Password Settings |  |  |  |  |
auth_pop_host | Text |  | mail.dbabble.com | Pop server for authentication |
auth_pop_timeout | Time Interval | 10 seconds |  | We time-out authentication requests with the pop server after this long |
user_accounts | Boolean | true |  | If this setting is on, then any user can create new accounts. If it is off, only admin users can create new accounts. Note - this setting only applies if you are using internal authentication, or external authentication with the external_authent_create_accounts setting on. In other situations, accounts are automatically created when a user logs in for the first time using a valid user name and password. |
email_password | Boolean | false |  | If this setting is on, generate and email passwords to new users. Useful if you want to ensure your users enter a valid email address when creating their account. Note - this setting only applies if you are using internal authentication, or external authentication with the external_authent_create_accounts setting on. The template for the contents of message is in email/email_password_new.txt |
email_forgotten_password | Boolean | true |  | If true, and not using POP-authentication or external authentication, then users can request their password be emailed to them (template for content of message is in email_password_old.txt) | 1.0b
min_password_length | Integer | 3 |  | If users specify their own passwords, they must contain at least this many characters | 0.3k
email_add | Text |  | @dbabble.com | If specified, this text is added to username to form default email address rather than pop-host. Set to 0 to not create a default email address, or 1 to set default email address equal to the username | 0.6a
auth_append | Text |  | @dbabble.com | If specified, this text is appended to username (if it is not already there) before sending to the authentication process or pop server. Useful if your authentication process or pop server requires a full email address but you want your users to login to DBabble using just their user name rather than entire email address. | 2.5a
must_setup | Boolean | false |  | If true, and using pop-authentication, then users will be taken to user-setup window after their first login and be forced to enter valid values | 0.6a
auto_login_links | Boolean | false |  | If true then links to automatically login to other Netwin products are provided in the main web page displayed after a user has logged in. Note - this feature was recently added, so it may not work for other Netwin products that have not released a new version since adding support for it | 1.0e
auto_login | Multiple Values |  | 1 netwinsite.com/cgi/webnews.exe /usr/local/webnews/work | Provides support for allowing users to use other Netwin web based products without having to supply login information again. Syntax is "auto_login unique_id web_reference work_directory_reference | 1.0d
auto_login_user | Text | nobody |  | Unix only - the owner of the temporary file created for the destination auto-login program to read. Should be same user as your CGIs run as | 1.1k
pass_disk_cache | Boolean | true |  | If true the pop authentication passwords are encrypted and cached on disk in the user details file (users.dat). | 1.1a
guest_logins | Integer | 0 | 10 | Specifies the maximum number of guests that can be simultaneously logged in. Set to 0 to disable guest logins. Guest's have their subscribed groups and permissions copied off the username "guest". You can login as the guest administrator using the username "guest" and password in the guest_admin_password setting. You should change that setting at the same time as you enable this setting. | 1.2i
guest_logins_for_online_support_only | Boolean | false | true | Used to restrict the guest_logins setting to only allow it to be used for the purposes of online support using private conversations. With this setting on guest users will not be able to see or use chat rooms, discussion groups and instant messages. With this setting off, guest login links will be added to the standard login page, assuming the guest_logins setting has a value greater than 0 | 2.5f
show_online_support_ip_addresses | Boolean | true | false | If this setting is on the guest users for online support appear with names like 'Guest 1 @ 10.0.0.26' to the recipient of the online support request. | 2.5h
guest_admin_password | Text | admin |  | If guest logins are enabled, then by logging in as a guest with this password, you can administer guest details, and what groups guests are subscribed to. | 1.2i
guest_login_chat_rooms | Text |  | 1 | If you specify the group-ids of one or two chat rooms here (found on the chat room modify page) and you have guest logins enabled, then links are added to the web browser login to that logs the user in as a guest and takes them to this chat room, removes the menu frame on the left and friends frame on the right, and disables non-chat room features (such as links to send instant messages to users present in the chat room). If you want links to more than 2 chat rooms on the login page, you can add them yourself by directly editing tpl/login.htm and duplicating and modifying the line containing GuestLoginChatRoom | 2.2c
guest_login_discussions | Text |  | 2,3 | If you specify the group-id of one or two discussion groups here (found on the discussion modify page) and you have guest logins enabled, then a link is added to the web browser login to that logs the user in as a guest and takes them to this discussion, removes the menu frame on the left and friends frame on the right | 2.2c
guest_login_private_talks | Text |  | 1 | If you specify the user-id of one or two users here (found on the user details page) and you have guest logins enabled, then a link is added to the web browser login to that logs the user in as a guest and request a private talk with the given user id, removes the menu frame on the left and friends frame on the right. If the given user is not currently online, the guest will be informed they are not online. In versions 2.4a and later, if you prefix the user-id by a 'g', e.g. 'g1' then it is interpreted as a user group and a random member of the user group will be picked to receive the talk request. | 2.3b
guest_login_talk_greeting | Text | Hi, -NAME- here. How can I help you? |  | If you have used the guest_login_private_talks setting to specify guest login links for private talk sessions, then this initial message is given to the user when they first initiate it. -NAME- gets replaced by the display name of the request recipient. | 2.4a
guest_login_talk_style | Integer | 1 |  | 0= A conversation request is sent to the recipient as soon as the guest initiates the talk request. 1=As soon as the guest types a character. 2=As soon as the guest presses enter at the end of their first message. | 2.4a
uppercase_first_display_char | Boolean | true |  | If this setting is on then when a user's display name is automatically generated to be the same as their login user name at the time their account is created (e.g. using pop authentication or external authentication) , the first character is automatically made uppercase. | 2.2c
authent_process | Text |  | c:\dbabblesvr\ntauth.exe or /usr/local/dbabble/unixauth | Specifies the name of an external authentication module to use. See http://netwinsite.com/dbabble/manage.htm#authent_ext | 1.2m
authent_process_num | Integer | 2 |  | The number of simultaneously running authentication processes. | 1.2m
authent_process_timeout | Time Interval | 60 seconds |  | If an authentication process doesn't respond after this long, give up on it | 1.2m
auth_check_cookie | Text |  | AUTH_TOKEN | If specified, then if a connection is made to the associated DBabble cgi, and this cookie is given, DBabble sends an authentication request to the authentication process for checking if this cookie is that of a logged in user. See http://netwinsite.com/dbabble/manage.htm#authent for details | 1.2m
authent_write_fields | Text |  | email display | A space separated list of user detail field names to write back to the external authentication process when they are changed within DBabble. If you are also using the authent_translate_fields setting, the names listed here should be the names used by DBabble. | 2.1g
authent_translate_fields | Text |  | email=emailaddress display=name | A space separated list of user detail field names and names of the fields as used by the external authentication process. Use this setting if your authentication process would pass DBabble field names that do not match the field names as they are used within DBabble. For example 'display=name' would mean the user field 'display' used within DBabble is initialised to be equal to the field 'name' that the authentication process returns | 2.1g
authent_translate_values | Text | @ - true false | / + 1 0 | Consists of 4 space separated values. First value is a character that gets translated to the @ symbol when passing to the authentication process. (useful if your external authentication module uses a database where the only unique field is a user's email address, and you want to use that database field as the user name within DBabble, but since that name could be confused with the actual email address within DBabble, the @ character gets replaced by the specified character to form their user name). Second character is the same as the first, but applies to the - character. Third value is the text used for storing flag values that are on within the external authentication module. Fourth value is the off value for flags in the external authentication module. | 2.1g
external_authent_create_accounts | Boolean | false |  | If this setting is on and you are using external authentication that supports writing data back to it, then accounts can be created from within the DBabble interface and they are added to the external authentication database. User's can create accounts themselves if the user_accounts setting is on, otherwise only administrator users can create accounts | 2.3i
external_authent_write_password | Boolean | false |  | If this setting is on and you are using external authentication that supports writing data back to it, then the user has the option to change their password and when they do, the changed password is written to the authentication database | 2.3i
User Settings |  |  |  |  |
user_discussions | Boolean | true |  | If true, default users can create discussions. This setting does not apply if you are using permission groups. (which are on by default for versions 1.5i and later). To change default user permissions, log in as an administrator in the web browser interface, and select "Server Setup","Permission Groups" |
user_chats | Boolean | true |  | If true, default users can create chat rooms. This setting does not apply if you are using permission groups. (which are on by default for versions 1.5i and later) |
user_global_discussions | Boolean | false |  | If true, default users can create global discussions. This setting does not apply if you are using permission groups. (which are on by default for versions 1.5i and later) |
user_global_chats | Boolean | false |  | If true, default users can create global chat rooms. This setting does not apply if you are using permission groups. (which are on by default for versions 1.5i and later) |
user_broadcasts | Boolean | false |  | If true, default users can broadcast messages to all users. This setting does not apply if you are using permission groups. (which are on by default for versions 1.5i and later) |
user_modify_account | Boolean | true |  | If false, non-administrator users are not able to modify their own account details such as email address, display name, date of birth etc. This setting does not apply if you are using permission groups. (which are on by default for versions 1.5i and later) | 0.3i
users_delete_accounts | Boolean | true |  | If true, then non-administrator users are able to delete their accounts. | 1.5a
user_quota | Byte Count |  | 1MB | If specified, limits the amount of disk space each user is allowed for storing of messages. This setting does not apply if you are using permission groups. (which are on by default for versions 1.5i and later) |
user_posts_from | Integer | 3 |  | Specifies who any discussion group posts appear to come from. 1=User Display Name, 2=User Login Name, 3=User Full Name (or display name if they haven't entered a full name) 4=User email address. This setting is applied at the time the article is posted, so only articles posted after you change this setting will appear using the new format. | 1.0d
user_posts_from2 | Integer | 4 |  | Specifies an additional name in brackets that appears after the name generated by user_posts_from. 0=Nothing 1=User Display Name, 2=User Login Name, 3=User Full Name (or display name if they haven't entered a full name) 4=User email address | 1.0d
user_add_self_friend | Boolean | true |  | If true, then whenever a new user account is created, the user is added to their own list of friends. | 1.2m
user_max_add_all_friends | Integer | 50 |  | Specifies the maximum number of local users that can be in the DBabble database before the preference to automatically add all new users to your friends list becomes disabled. This limit is imposed because friends list sizes are limited anyway, and it is inefficient to do this once you have too many users. | 1.2n
user_partial_search | Boolean | true |  | If true, allows partial text user searching. For example, "Gue" would find user name "Guest 1". Not recommended on systems with >50,000 users as it becomes slow. | 1.3b
check_email_enabled | Boolean | true |  | If true, then users are allowed to specify email servers in their preferences, which the server will connect to to inform them when they have new email. | 1.5p
check_email_min_interval | Integer | 10 |  | Minimum number of seconds that users can specify how how often the server checks if they have new email | 1.5p
check_email_max_chans | Integer | 5 |  | Maximum number of simultaneous connections that the server can open to POP servers for checking whether users have new email. If a situation arises where the server would require more than this (due to lots of users checking email often over slow connections to the POP servers), it will queue up email checks until there are free channels available, effectively increasing the interval at which new email is checked for. | 1.5p
check_email_default_server | Text |  | 1 1 1 netwinsite.com | Controls assigning a default server to each user's email checking preferences. Syntax is 3 integers (1 (on) or 0 (off)) followed by POP server host name. First integer is whether or not the default server is enabled for each user. Second is whether or not to set the default user name on that server to the same as the user's current username, and the third value is whether or not to set the user's current password as the password to use on that server. If you leave this setting blank, and you are using POP server user authentication, then this setting defaults to "0 1 1" followed by your POP server host name. If you leave this setting blank, and you have specified a value for the email_add setting, then the default server and user name are based on the user's default email address. | 1.5p
check_email_defaults | Text | 60 0 0 0 | 60 1 1 0 From: @netwinsite.com | Specifies default values for new email checking server users add. Values are (interval) (Notify for messages received while offline) (Fetch full email message from server) (Is IMAP server (not currently supported)) (Message matching rules) | 1.5p
delete_accounts_not_used | Time Interval |  | 365 days | If specified, then the accounts of users who have not logged in since longer than this value ago will be automatically deleted. As with all time interval settings you MUST SPECIFY TIME UNITS when using this setting or it will be assumed you are giving a time in seconds. For example use '365 days' rather than just '365'. There is an internal minimum value of 14 days which you can override with the delete_accounts_force setting. The server checks for deleting users once a day, and logs a record of deleted users to the users.log file with lines of the form 'Auto-deleting user ...'. Just in case anyone sets their clock forward more than 7 days without thinking about what this could do (people have been known to set their server machine date to a future time!), there is built in code to not do account deletion if the last account deletion attempt happened more than 7 days ago, or if more than 50% of accounts would be deleted. You can override these checks using the delete_account_force setting. Note: if you have users on your system created with old versions of DBabble (prior to 1.0c) who have not used DBabble since then, these users do not have their last online times recorded and will not be deleted by this setting. | 2.1g
delete_accounts_never_used | Time Interval |  | 7 days | If specified, then accounts of users who have never logged in will be automatically deleted after this time. This feature will only apply to users who were created using DBabble versions 2.4f and later. | 2.4f
delete_accounts_force | Boolean | false |  | Special override setting for use with the delete_accounts_not_used setting. Do not use this setting unless you are really sure you want the server to delete accounts that it thinks are old. | 2.1g
friends_of_all_users | Text | first_user | matt chris | a space separated list of user names of users who should automatically be added to the friends lists of all newly created accounts. The default for this setting is first_user, which is a special value indicated the first user account appears in the friends lists of all users. To apply this setting to all existing users, use the manager command 'Apply friends_of_all_users setting' | 2.1p
append_admin_status_text | Text | Administrator |  | This text is appended to the status message of all administrator users. If you are using multiple languages, set this setting to the English text to appear and add an appropriate line to each of your language translation files. | 2.1p
encryption_default | Integer | 1 |  | Specifies whether users can use public key encryption and whether or not they are prompted to create a private key when using DBabble for the first time. 0=public key encryption not allowed. 1=yes, and user can tell DBabble to create a key from their preferences. 2=Ask them the first time they login if they want one created. 3=Automatically create a private key the first time they login and warn them to copy it to any other machines they connect from. 4=Quietly create a private key the first time they login and don't warn them to copy it. (option 4 is not recommended if users may login from different machines or use the web browser interface) | 2.3a
users_can_edit_own_posts | Integer | 1 |  | Specifies whether or not users are allowed to edit discussion group posts they have made. 0=Users can not edit their own posts. 1=Users can edit their own posts in non-moderated discussion groups. 2=Users can edit their own posts even in moderated discussion groups. In call cases, administrator and moderator users can edit articles posted by any user. | 2.3c
Advertisement and Brand Settings |  |  |  |  |
show_ads | Boolean | true |  | If true, we show advertisement images in both the web browser and windows clients | 0.4h
ad_change_time | Time Interval | 5 minutes |  | The windows client changes the displayed ad this often | 0.4h
ad_click_confirm | Boolean | false |  | If true, then when users click on the advertisements in the windows client, they are asked for confirmation before the page is loaded in their web-browser | 0.5a
show_ad_details | Integer | 1 |  | Specifies whether a count of how many ads shown and clicked on by each user is recorded. If value is 1, then administrator can see these. If value is 2, then user can also see their own record. If value is 3, then any user can see any other user's record | 1.2i
ad_click_recent_interval | Time Interval | 24 hours |  | If a user has clicked on an advertisement less than this long ago, then a template variable "recent_ad_click" is set to "true". Useful if you want to hide advertisements for the remainder of the day after a user has clicked on one. | 1.4a
brand_text | Text | Brought to you by NetWin Limited |  | If specified gives co-branding text to appear in both web browser and windows-client | 0.5d
brand_image | Text | /img/netwin.gif |  | If specified gives co-branding image to appear in both web browser and windows-client | 0.5d
ads_in_main_window | Boolean | true |  | If the show_ads setting is on, then advertisements are displayed in the main window in the Windows client or the subscribed groups list in the web browser. Note: You can place ads where ever you want in the web browser interface by inserting ||show_advert|| into any of the template pages. | 2.4d
ads_in_chat_rooms | Boolean | false |  | If the show_ads setting is on, then advertisements are displayed at the top of chat rooms in both the Windows client and web browser | 2.4d
win_client_web_page | Text |  | 80 1 4.0 0 * http://netwinsite.com/dbabble | This setting is used to replace advertisements in the Windows client with a particular web page. This feature will only work for users who have Internet Explorer version 4.0 or later installed on their machine. In this case, instead of advertisements, this web page is displayed inline in the Windows client. The first value for this setting specifies the portion of the window in pixels to allocate for the web page. The second value specifies whether or not to show scroll bars for the page (1=yes 0=no). The third value is the version of Internet Explorer that the user must have installed before this page will be displayed (useful if the web page you want to show uses features only present in later versions of Internet explorer. Use a value of 4.0 if your page should work in any web browser). The fourth value (if it is not 0) is a user group id that a user must belong to (and be flagged as receiving messages sent to the user group) in order to show the web page. This value should be the second integer value in the user group id. For example if the group id is 1-3 then you would use 3 here. The fifth value is an option list of ip addresses that the user must connect from to show the web page (e.g. * for all ip addresses or 10.0.0.*,!10.0.0.26 for all local network ip addresses except 10.0.0.26). The last value is the complete url of the web page to display. In order for changes to this setting to take effect, Windows client users must logout and login again if they were already logged in. | 2.4d
News (NNTP) Settings |  |  |  |  |
pull_host | Text |  | news.dbabble.com | USENET Upstream nntp server name to pull news from and send posts to |
pull_user | Text |  | bob | Username for upstream nntp server |
pull_pass | Text |  | bobs_password | Password for upstream nntp server |
pull_time | Time Interval | 5mins |  | Time to wait before pulling news again |
nntp_listen | Boolean | false |  | If true, Will listen on nntp_port (default 119) for incoming news requests (Note: Do not enable if you are running an NNTP server on the same port on the same machine) |
nntp_port | Integer | 119 |  | NNTP protocol port to use for listening on if nntp_listen is true |
nntp_must_auth | Boolean | true |  | If true, nntp connections to DBabble must be authenticated | 0.4h
nntp_include_attachments | Byte Count | 1 MB |  | If discussion attachment sizes are less than this, then when reading discussion group articles through NNTP connections, attachments are included as MIME parts. If they are larger than this, then a http link to the attachment on the server is included instead | 1.3b
nntp_fix_from_line | Boolean | true | false | If this setting is true, then any posts made via authenticated NNTP connections have the "from" field removed and replaced with the name/email of the authenticated user | 1.4a
show_nntp_names | Boolean | true | false | If the setting is false, then when clients view discussion groups that are linked to NNTP groups, they do not see that NNTP name of the news group anywhere | 2.0g
nntp_ban | Boolean | true | false | If this setting is false, then users who are banned will still be able to access the server using authenticated NNTP connections | 2.0g
nntp_anonymous_posting | Boolean | true |  | Specifies whether anonymous NNTP users are allowed to post to discussion groups. Only applies if you have set the nntp_must_auth setting to false | 1.4p
nntp_anonymous_from_append | Text |  | (not authenticated) | If you specify a value for this setting, then when anonymous NNTP users post to discussion groups, this text is appended to their name. Used to prevent anonymous users from impersonating registered users. | 2.1n
max_daily_posts_per_user | Integer | 10 | -1 | If this value is greater than or equal to zero, then authenticated users are limited to making this many discussion group posts per day, unless they have permission to modify or moderate the group they are posting to. | 2.1n
max_daily_anonymous_nntp_posts_per_ip | Integer | 10 | -1 | If this value is greater than or equal to zero, then nntp posts made by unauthenticated users are limit to this many per ip address per day. | 2.1n
nntp_min_rating | Text | 1.5 | 1.2 | Articles with an average rating of less than this value will not show up to NNTP users. Articles that have been rated less than the min_ratings_before_average setting times are always displayed via NNTP. | 2.2c
nntp_cancel_from_matching_ip | Boolean | false |  | Specifies whether or not users can cancel discussion group articles via NNTP connections if they are connecting from the same IP address as the original poster. If a user is connecting to the NNTP server using authentication, then they will always be able to cancel their own posts no matter what value this setting has. | 2.3k
SMTP (Email) Settings |  |  |  |  |
smtp_host | Text |  | smtp.netwinsite.com | SMTP host to send mail to. Append :port to use a port other than 25 |
smtp_listen | Boolean | false |  | If true, Will listen on smtp_port (default 25) for incoming mail (Note: Do not enable if you are running an SMTP server on the same port on the same machine) |
smtp_port | Integer | 25 |  | SMTP protocol port to use for listening on if smtp_listen is true |
smtp_user_base | Text |  | dbabble_ | If specified, then any email addresses intended for DBabble are assumed to be prefixed by this. You should only give this setting a value if you have an SMTP server running on this machine that is configured to redirect all email beginning with this prefix on to DBabble. See http://netwinsite.com/dbabble/manage.htm#email for details | 1.2h
smtp_accepts_instant_messages | Boolean | true |  | If false, then no users on your system can receive instant messages via email. If true, users can still individually stop their own account from receiving email instant messages to prevent spam | 1.2h
email_from | Text |  | dbabble_server@dbabble.com | Email address that outgoing email appears to come from. This only applies to administration type email messages (such as initial password messages). User sent email messages will appear to come form the user's email address. If you don't set a value for this setting, then outgoing email may not get delivered as some servers will reject messages with blank "From:" headers. | 1.1a
users_can_send_email | Boolean | true |  | If false, then users can not choose to send out email, and can not choose to receive copies of their instant messages forwarded to their email account | 1.2i
instant_message_email_subject | Text |  | DBabble Instant Message | If specified then instant messages sent out as email have this subject | 1.5k
allow_discussion_email | Boolean | true |  | If this setting is false, users can not choose to have discussions send them copies of new articles by email | 1.2i
allow_discussion_email_posts | Integer | 2 |  | 0= Nobody can send incoming email posts. 1=Only members of the discussion can send in email posts. 2= Same as 1, except nobody can send to private discussions via email. 3=Anyone can send in email posts. Note that setting this to 1 does not really stop anyone from emailing to a discussion, since anyone can set their from address to whatever they want when sending email, so can easily impersonate a valid discussion member. | 1.2i
discussion_email_from | Text |  | dbabble_server@dbabble.com | Email address that outgoing discussion group email appears to come from. It not specified, then poster's email address is used. If value is 1, email address of the discussion group is used. | 1.1a
support_email | Text |  | support-dbabble@dbabble.com | Email address advertised on web pages for contacting you | 1.1a
give_email_bounces | Boolean | false |  | If false, then outgoing email from discussions and password emails are sent using "Mail From:<>" to avoid bounces going to sender | 1.2c
give_user_email_bounces | Boolean | true |  | If false, then outgoing email originating from an individual user is sent using "Mail From:<>" to avoid bounces going to sender | 1.2i
auto_responder_headers | Text | autoresponse autoresponder auto-responder auto-response |  | When accepting incoming email for instant messages or discussion groups, we ignore it (for discussions) or don't email it out (for instant messages) if there is a header name containing one of these strings. To prevent infinite forwarding between DBabble and email auto-responders | 1.2i
max_user_email_out | Integer | 100 |  | Specifies the maximum number of instant messages that can be forwarded to a user's email account without a 5 minute break, before temporarily stopping. This is mainly intended to prevent infinite looping of outgoing email addresses that get replied to by an autoresponder/bouncer and would otherwise keep generating new messages. Normally this is not a problem, but some email servers may generate non-standard responses that DBabble does not correctly detect. | 1.2i
phone_gateway | Multiple Values |  | @phone.netwin.co.nz +6425 025 | When someone enters a phone number that matches any of the listed prefixes, it is sent to an email address built up from the first prefix and the gateway name. See http://netwinsite.com/dbabble/manage.htm#phone for further details | 1.2i
phone_remove | Text | -() |  | These characters are removed from phone numbers before they are matched to phone gateways | 1.2i
phone_max_length | Integer | 160 |  | The maximum length of messages that can be sent to mobile phones (SMS). If a user tries to send a message longer than this they will be told it failed and can changed their message at that time. If you specify a negative value for this setting (e.g. -150) then that means the limit specified has the length of the current user's DBabble email address subtracted from the maximum length they can send (used for SMS gateways that prepend text like "reply with (user@domain.name)" to the message before it sends it. | 2.2c
unsubscribe_words | Text | remove unsubscribe |  | A space separated list of words that users can email as the body of a message to a discussion group to remove themself from being emailed copies of new messages. If no words are specified, then this feature is disabled. Note that this is not secure as anyone can claim to be any email address they want and effectively unsubscribe others from discussions. Users should normally uncheck the email checkbox next to the discussion name to stop receiving email. | 1.2i
smtp_include_attachments | Byte Count | 100K |  | If discussion attachment size is less than this, then when reading discussion group articles are sent out via email, attachments are included as MIME parts. If it is larger than this, then a http link to the attachment on the server is included instead | 1.3b
user_group_incoming_email | Boolean | false |  | If true, then anyone can send in email messages that get converted to instant messages to any user group. Send email to user_group_[user_group_id]@domain.name. For example usergroup_12345@free.dbabble.com | 2.0g
smtp_from_append | Text |  | (via unauthenticated email) | If you specify a value for this setting, then when users post to discussion groups by sending in email, this text is appended to their name. Used to prevent users from impersonating registered users when posting via email | 2.1n
max_daily_smtp_posts_per_ip | Integer | -1 | 10 | If this value is greater than or equal to zero, then incoming smtp posts to discussion groups are limited to this many per ip address per day. Be careful using this setting as incoming email from different sources could appear to come from the same IP address if they come in via the same mail server. | 2.1n
smtp_user | Text |  | bob | If your outgoing email server in the smtp_host setting requires authentication then this setting specifies the user name to use for it. You must also set a value for the smtp_pass setting. Currently only supports the PLAIN authentication method, which most email servers support. Leave this setting blank if your email server does not require authentication. | 2.3k
smtp_pass | Text |  | bobs_password | Matching password for use with the smtp_user setting | 2.3k
Connection Settings |  |  |  |  |
connections_from | Text |  | 161.29.2.*,161.29.5.*,127.0.0.1,!161.29.2.26 | If specified, restricts IP Addresses that anyone is able to connect from. This is a list of comma separated ip address, with wildcard operator * allowed. Use the ! operator to exclude ip addresses. For example to allow all ip address except 123.456.789.*, you would use '*,!123.456.789.*'. Note: If you are connected to a master server, you should probably not restrict as non-local users may then not be able to connect to communicate with your users | 0.6b
admin_from | Text | 127.0.0.1,10.0.0.* | 127.0.0.1,10.0.0.* | IP Addresses that administrator functions can be performed from (you must still login as an admin user - this is just added security). For multiple addresses these must be comma separated with no spaces. |
local_users_from | Text |  | 161.29.2.*,161.29.5.*,127.0.0.1 | If specified, restricts IP Addresses that local users are able to connect from | 0.6b
smtp_users_from | Text |  | 161.29.2.*,161.29.5.*,127.0.0.1 | If specified, restricts IP Addresses that can connect as SMTP clients (for posting to discussions) | 0.6b
broadcasts_from | Text | * | 161.29.2.*,!161.29.2.25 | IP Addresses that users who are allowed to broadcast can broadcast messages from (a list of netwin wild settings) |
nntp_users_from | Text |  | 161.29.2.*,161.29.5.*,127.0.0.1 | If specified, restricts the IP Addresses that can connect as NNTP clients (for reading and posting to your discussions) | 0.6b
max_chans | Integer | 800 |  | Maximum number of simultaneous connections permitted. You can raise this as high as you want, and DBabble will still impose a limit of 20 less than the operating system limit (which ranges from 1024 for some unix systems (e.g. linux) up to about 32000 for others (including windows)). If you increase this setting on unix machines, be sure to increase the file limit by changing the "ulimit -n" line in the dbabblesvr_start script. | 0.5b
socket_expire | Time Interval | 5 minutes |  | If any connection sends or receives nothing for this long and the server doesn't have any data still waiting to be sent, we close it |
socket_expire_pending | Time Interval | 2 hours |  | If any connection sends or receives nothing for this long, we close it even if there is still data waiting to be sent on it | 2.1n
socket_read_expire | Time Interval | 12 hours |  | If a connection to us sends nothing for this long, we close it. This should be longer than the longest download time any users may experience when downloading large attachments, or their connection will be closed by the server |
bind_address | Text |  | 128.242.170.117 | If specified, then connections are only accepted if they are made to this ip address. Used if you already have other programs listening on the same port on this machine, but have multiple ip addresses pointing at this machine. | 1.4u
bind_address_out | Text |  | 128.242.170.117 | If specified, the outgoing connections are bound to this ip address. Used when you have multiple ip addresses pointing at this machine. | 1.5r
keep_client_message_connections_open | Boolean | true |  | If this setting is on then when the Windows client makes connections to the server to send instant messages then the server will allow the connection to stay open so the client can reuse it for future messages. | 2.5n
Web Browser Settings |  |  |  |  |
tpl_sets | Text |  | Standard,Blue | Specifies a list of template sets available for users to select from. First option is default template set. When loading the appropriate template set, DBabble loads it from the tpl/template_name (or tpl/current_language/template_name) directory instead of the standard tpl directory. If the specified template does not exist, the standard copy in the tpl/ directory is used instead. See http://netwinsite.com/dbabble/templates.htm#template_sets | 1.2i
friends_frame | Boolean | true |  | (Obsolete from versions 1.2m - use default preferences from server admin web page instead) If true, then the friends section in a web browser appears in a frame. If false, it appears in a separate window | 1.0c
chat_images_inline | Byte Count | 10 KB |  | Image attachments posted to chat rooms appear inline as long as their size is less than this (as opposed to a link the user has to click on to see it) | 0.5d
group_threads_open | Boolean | false |  | (this setting is obsolete in versions 2.5a and later. There is now a user preference to control this.) If true, groups threads appear expanded when first viewed through web browser |
web_message_refresh | Time Interval | 5 seconds |  | When using a web browser, it checks for new messages and talk requests this often. This setting is obsolete in versions 1.5p and later where each user has a preference for what this value is, and you can set the default value on the "Default Preferences" page. | 0.3g
web_talk_refresh | Time Interval | 2 seconds |  | The web browser frame showing what the other user in a talk session has said is refreshed this often | 0.3g
web_chat_refresh | Time Interval | 2 seconds |  | The web browser frame showing what the other users in a chat room have said is refreshed this often | 0.3g
web_chat_users_refresh | Time Interval | 10 seconds |  | The web browser frame showing what other users in a chat room is refreshed this often | 0.3g
web_background_image | Text | whttxtr2.jpg |  | The background image for the web browser interface. This image must exist on the server in the /img directory. Set this value to nothing to have no image. This setting will not work if you have upgraded from a version prior to 2.3e. In that case, edit tpl/define.txt instead to change the image. | 2.3e
Windows Client Settings |  |  |  |  |
win_version_required | Text |  | 0.2a | If specified, requires local users of the windows client, to have at least the specified version of it. Server already ensures that compatible versions are required, but if this setting is specified, it overrides the default value. Requires server restart after changing |
win_set_host | Boolean | true |  | If true, we modify the windows client download to default to our host and port so that users don't have to enter it themselves. Additionally, if false, then changing the program_name setting will not affect the windows client download | 0.5e
win_host_port | Text |  | free.dbabble.com 8132 | If specified, then the windows client is automatically configured to connect to this address instead of the standard address formed from the domain setting and the port setting. Make sure you include both the domain/ip address and a space followed by the port. It is not recommended using port 80 for the windows client, as some ISP's modify http requests going through port 80, which can stop the windows client functioning correctly. By default DBabble will set the client to connect to port 8132 even if you have changed the port setting to 80 as long as 8132 is still listed in the extra_ports setting | 1.1h
win_default_use_ssl | Boolean | true |  | If this setting is on and if the server is listening on at least one SSL port, then this client will by default be configured to connect using SSL. The default SSL port it will try will be 8133 (as long as it is listen in the ssl_port or extra_ssl_ports settings) or whatever is specified by the ssl_port_tell setting | 2.3a
client_no_server_change | Boolean | false |  | If true, then on the windows client configuration window, there will be no option for the users to change what server name they connect to. | 1.4k
client_check_interval | Time Interval | 60 seconds |  | Specifies the number of seconds between each small request that the windows client sends to the server to check that it is still connected. If you increase this, increase the online_expire setting to be higher than this setting. | 1.5a
client_listen_threshold | Integer | 400 |  | Specifies the number of channels that must be used before windows clients that can accept incoming connections will do so. Should not make this much more than half the maximum number of channels. Set this setting to 0 to force clients to accept incoming connections if possible. | 1.5a
max_tell_upgrade_per_minute | Integer | 10 |  | To prevent server overloading tell only at most this many users that there is a new version of the Windows client available per minute | 1.5a
delay_tell_upgrade | Time Interval | 15 minutes |  | Just in case something goes wrong when you upgrade your server, the server does not tell non administrator users about new versions of the Windows client for this long after the upgrade | 1.5p
client_background_image_on | Boolean | true |  | If the Windows client option to use a background image is on by default | 2.3e
client_background_image_off_low_color | Boolean | true |  | If the machine the Windows client is running on only supports 256 colors or less, then the background image defaults to off due to it not looking good and causing performance problems. | 2.6i
client_background_image | Text | marble1.jpg |  | Default background image for Windows client. This file must exist on the server in the /client directory. Any new downloads of the Windows client from your server will automatically have this file included and set to the background image. By default this image is tiled to the background. If you want a single copy of this image centered in each Window, use the client_background_image_adjust setting | 2.3e
client_background_image_adjust | Text | 1 +25 +25 +25 1 -20 +10 +10 1 +50 +50 +50 0 1 |  | Settings for adjusting color of Windows client background image. First number is 0 or 1 specifying whether the checkbox is on or not. Next 3 values are percentages to adjust red, green, and blue intensity of standard background image. The 4 are same, but for button/menu images. Next 4 are same but for text area images. Next value is whether to apply image to text area images (slow on some computers) (1=yes 0=no). Last value is whether the image is tiled (rather than a single copy centered in the window) (1=yes 0=no) | 2.3e
client_data_in_user_directory | Boolean | false | true | If this setting is on then client side user data (e.g. save user name & password, and cached instant messages) are stored in the user's windows 'Documents and Settings\WindowsUserName\Application Data\DBabble' directory. The default is to store all DBabble files and settings within the DBabble installation directory | 2.3e
client_use_windows_login_name | Boolean | false | true | If this setting is on, then whenever the DBabble Windows client starts, it sets the DBabble login user name to the current Windows login user name | 2.3e
client_open_group_window | Multiple Values |  | 5 1 2 * | This setting is used to make the Windows client open a chat room or discussion group window to open in addition to (or instead of) the main window when the user logs in. The first value specifies the group id (a single integer found on the group modify page). The second parameter specifies whether or not to (1=yes 0=no) open the main window as normal too (normal operation is for the main window to only open if the user manually logs in by pressing the login button rather than an automatic login while DBabble is not the active application). The third parameter specifies a user group id (a single integer - the value after the '-' character in the user group modify window) of a user group that a user must be a member of (and set to receive messages sent to the user group) in order for this group window to automatically open for them. Use a value of 0 for this parameter to match every user. The last parameter is an ip address list which the user must connect from for this setting to apply. Use a * to match all ip addresses. This setting will only apply if the discussion group or chat room specified is listed in the user's subscribed group list. There are options in the group modify window to make particular groups automatically added to the subscribed group list of all users. | 2.4g
show_client_license_agreement | Boolean | true |  | If this setting is on then anyone who installs the Windows client downloaded from your server must accept our license agreement before doing so. You may modify (by editing lang/English.license in the server directory) or remove the client license agreement, but in doing so you agree to take all responsibility for any problems or damage caused by DBabble to your clients or your clients' machines. | 2.4h
Discussion, Chat Room, and Talk Settings |  |  |  |  |
itemspace | Text | 100 MB |  | Space for items in discussions / chats (in megabytes) |
filespace | Text | 100 MB |  | Space to allow attachments/files to use (in megabytes) |
direct_discussion_group_access | Boolean | false |  | If this setting is on then anyone can read public discussion groups via a direct URL to the group of the form http://domain.name/forums/group.nntp.name/ For example http://free.dbabble.com/forums/dbabble.general/ | 2.5a
direct_discussion_group_file_access | Boolean | true |  | If this setting is on then non-private discussion group attachments are accessible via a public URL. This feature is intended for use when users choose to receive email copies of articles posted to discussions, but the attachment is larger than the smtp_include_attachments setting. In this case the attachment is not included within the sent email, but a link to download it is instead. | 2.5d
show_find_groups | Boolean | true |  | If you turn this setting off, then there will not be a separate window for users to find chat rooms and discussions group in - i.e. all non-private groups will be listed in their subscribed group list. If you plan on only having less than about 10 discussion groups and chat rooms on this server and not linking this server to any other servers then it would be a good idea to turn this setting off. | 2.5a
show_find_groups_options | Integer | 10 |  | If there are less than this many discussion groups and chat rooms (and this server is not linked to any other servers) on your server, then the group (chat room and discussions) searching options (categories, title searching etc) are not displayed | 2.5a
show_group_categories | Boolean | true |  | Specifies whether or not the discussion group and chat room categories are displayed | 2.5a
group_page_size | Integer | 50 |  | Number of group items per page |
members_page_size | Integer | 50 |  | Number of group members listed per page | 1.3b
chat_timeout | Time Interval | 20 secs |  | Time before chat/talk users who haven't requested an update are considered to have left |
talk_lines | Integer | 5 |  | The number of lines displayed per user during a private talk |
chat_messages | Integer | 8 |  | The number of messages displayed in a chat room when a user first enters. This setting can have a maximum of 20. |
chat_show_times | Boolean | true |  | If on the the time is displayed next to each message in chat rooms | 2.2c
web_show_chat_users | Boolean | true |  | If you turn this setting off, then the frame that shows the list of users present and lets you invite other users in a chat room will not appear | 2.1j
chat_messages_from | Time Interval | 5 minutes |  | When a user enters a chat room, a few recent messages up to this long ago will be displayed. No more than the chat_messages setting will be displayed in any case. | 1.2d
items_read_expire | Time Interval | 3 months |  | The server keeps a record of which items a user has read in a group for this long after the user hasn't read any articles in the group before discarding the record (about 300 bytes per user per group) | 0.6c
min_expire | Time Interval | 1 day |  | Any article or file posted to a group is guaranteed to remain at least this long before expiring |
add_footers | Integer | 1 |  | If 0, nothing added. If 1, items/post.add is appended to all discussion items. If 2, items/post.add is prepended to all discussion items. You can use different a different post.add for each discussion by creating a post.add within the items/gid directory. | 1.2n
pull_add_footers | Boolean | false |  | If true, then the add_footers setting is also applied to articles pulled from external news groups | 1.2n
nntp_add_footers | Integer | 0 |  | Controls adding of a header or footer to the content of every article made available via nntp. The file items/nntp.add is used (or if these files exists: items/nntp_anonymous.add for anonymous users or items/nntp_ad_clicked.add for authenticated users who have clicked on an advertisement recently). If 0, nothing added. If 1, file is added to end of article. If 2, file is added to top of article. Must do a reload command after editing nntp.add to force server to reload it. | 1.3d
member_email_footer | Boolean | true |  | If true, then at footer is appended to outgoing discussion email telling them how to unsubscribe from it | 1.2n
discussion_reject_words | Text |  | sex shit | A space separated list of words that are not allowed to be present in discussion group posts | 1.2n
chat_reject_words | Text |  | sex shit | A space separated list of words that are not allowed to be present in chat room messages | 1.2n
group_index_memory_cache | Byte Count | 10 MB |  | Specifies a maximum on how much memory can be used for in memory caching of group indexes. Each group item requires almost 300 bytes of memory, so you get about 3,500 items indexes cached in memory per MB. If you have lots of large groups on your server, and memory to spare, increase this setting. | 1.2n
expire_more_than_group_settings | Boolean | false |  | If true, then if discussion groups are using more disk space that allowed by the itemspace and filespace settings and all articles older than each groups expire time have already been deleted, then even some articles that were posted less recently than the group's expire time will be deleted in order to free up disk space. | 2.3k
web_groups_list_moderators | Boolean | true |  | If this setting is on then a list of each discussion group and chat room moderators/administrators is displayed in user's subscribed group lists and within the discussion group window. You can manually choose where you want the moderators listed by editing the template pages yourself. Search for lines of the form ||include||list_moderators.htm||. | 2.4g
max_cross_post | Integer | 2 |  | Specifies the maximum number of discussion groups a single message can be posted to at a time (NNTP only) | 1.3b
reject_blank_articles | Boolean | false |  | If false, then discussion articles are allowed to contain empty bodies | 1.3b
fts_enabled | Boolean | true |  | Specifies whether full text searching is enabled on this server. You will need to restart the server after changing any full text searching parameters. If you have upgraded from a version of DBabble prior to 1.4a (which did not have full text searching), use the manager command "full text index all existing articles" to enable full text searching on old articles. | 1.4a
fts_page_size | Integer | 20 |  | The number of articles listed per page in full text search results | 1.4a
fts_index_numbers | Boolean | true |  | If true , full text searching treats words containing different digits as distinct words. For example if this setting is false, "abc22" and "abc23" would be treated as identical words. | 1.4a
fts_index_high_bytes | Boolean | true |  | If false , full text searching ignores character values>127. Set this setting to true when using with languages that require high bytes. | 1.4a
fts_index_headers | Text | Subject: Keywords: From: Summary: Newsgroups: X-Attachment: |  | A space separated list of article headers which are used in full text searching | 1.4a
fts_item_words | Integer | 1000 |  | Only the first this many words in each article are indexed for full text searching. The higher this is the more disk space and slower full text searching will work. | 1.4a
fts_word_max | Integer | 10% |  | This is the number of times a single word can occur before it is considered to be so common that it has no value as a searching tool. This number is a percent of items. Once a word occurs in more than this many articles, searching based on this word will not find any results. | 1.4a
fts_min_substring_length | Integer | 4 |  | The minimum number of bytes long a search string must be before it is allowed to be used for searching as a substring of other words. If you make this too low, then full text searching on substrings may become quite slow. Set this to 100 to disable substring searching. You will need to restart the server, and then do the manager command "full text index all existing articles" before changes take effect | 1.4n
show_posting_ip | Integer | 2 |  | Specifies whether or not the NNTP-Posting-Host header is visible to users. 0=Visible to nobody, 1=Visible to Admin, 2=Visible to Everyone | 1.5a
min_ratings_before_average | Integer | 3 |  | Each discussion group article must have been rated by at least this many users before it's rating is displayed and used for hiding low rated articles from users who don't want to see them. | 2.2c
submit_average_user_rating | Text | 5 3 3 |  | Syntax 'a b c'. If a user has made at least 'a' rated article posts, each rated on average by at least 'b' different people, then 'c' copies of their average rating is automatically submitted for any new discussion group posts they make. For example, if this setting is '5 3 3' if user 'xyz' has previously posted 10 discussion group posts, 7 of which have been rated, and the total number of ratings submitted for these 7 articles is 23 (giving a value for b of 23/7=3.3) , with an average rating of 3.3, then when this user makes any new posts, these new posts automatically have 3 anonymous ratings submitted to make an average as close to 3.3 as possible - in this case, two of '3' and one of '4' | 2.3a
use_group_ratings | Integer | 2 |  | If 0, then group ratings are not used. If 1, then group article ratings are used for every discussion group. If 2, then whether or not group article ratings are used can be specified on a per group basis in the group settings. | 2.2c
guests_can_rate_articles | Boolean | true |  | If true then guest users are able to give ratings to discussion group articles. | 2.2c
hide_old_articles | Time Interval | 0 | 14 days | Discussion group articles posted longer than this amount of time ago are not visible to non-administrator or group moderator users. If you turn this setting on, you will probably also want to turn on the setting called accurate_article_counts | 2.4a
accurate_article_counts | Boolean | false |  | If this setting is on, then article (and new) counts of articles in each discussion group are more accurate, but are slow to calculate. It only becomes significantly slow if you have thousands of articles in any discussion group. If this setting is off, then article counts may be wrong due to articles posted but not yet moderated or due to hiding articles older than a certain date. | 2.4a
Logging Settings |  |  |  |  |
debug | Boolean | false |  | If set to true, then all log files are enabled and flushed on every write |
log_error | Text | on 1MB 3 flush |  | Specifies logging settings for errors. Syntax is "[on/off] [maximum log file size] [number of log files] [flush/no-flush]". Flushing means the log file is flushed to disk after every write and degrades performance. With flushing disabled, files are flushed to disk every 10 seconds. | 1.5a
log_warning | Text | on 1MB 3 flush |  | Specifies logging settings for warnings and errors | 2.0c
log_info | Text | on 1MB 2 no-flush |  | Specifies logging settings for information messages | 1.5a
log_debug | Text | off 1MB 2 flush |  | Specifies logging settings for debugging messages | 1.5a
log_tcp_info | Text | on 1MB 2 no-flush |  | Specifies logging settings for tcp information (all opened and closed connections) | 1.5a
log_tcp_data | Text | off 1MB 2 no-flush |  | Specifies logging settings for tcp data (all sent and received data) | 1.5a
log_users | Text | on 1MB 3 no-flush |  | Specifies logging settings for when users are created, come online, or go offline. | 1.3f
log_stats | Text | on 1MB 2 no-flush |  | Specifies logging settings for performance statistics. (includes information such as number of connections open, number of requests handled) | 1.3f
log_actions | Text | on 1MB 3 no-flush |  | Specifies logging settings for when users come online, go offline, send instant messages, post discussion messages, send/receive email | 1.3f
log_messages | Text | off 1MB 2 no-flush |  | Specifies logging settings for instant message contents | 1.5a
log_discussion | Text | on 1MB 2 no-flush |  | Specifies logging settings for discussion message contents | 1.5a
log_chat | Text | on 1MB 2 no-flush |  | Specifies logging settings for chat message contents | 1.5a
log_talk | Text | off 1MB 2 no-flush |  | Specifies logging settings for talk (private conversation) message contents | 1.5a
log_email_in | Text | on 1MB 2 no-flush |  | Specifies logging settings for incoming email contents | 1.3f
log_email_out | Text | on 1MB 2 no-flush |  | Specifies logging settings for outgoing email contents | 1.3f
log_ex_process | Text | on 1MB 2 no-flush |  | Specifies logging settings for stdout and stderr from external process started using external_process setting | 1.4c
visual_debug | Boolean | false |  | If true, some logging data may appear on web pages |
malloc_listing | Boolean | false |  | If true, we keep a list of all malloc/realloc/strdup/free calls to find source of memory leaks (Note - we count all calls anyway, so on shutdown we notice if we haven't freed everything anyway - this just finds the source code location of any unfreed blocks) (Greatly Impairs Performance) |
malloc_logging | Boolean | false |  | If true, we log every malloc/realloc/strdup/free call (Impairs Performance) (Doesn't log calls before loading ini-file |
log_status_interval | Time Interval | 1 minute |  | Specifies how often performance statistics are logged | 0.5b
Master/Slave/Remote Server Settings |  |  |  |  |
hid | Text | 1 |  | The Host ID for this Server (not needed for stand-alone server) - Can't change while server is running |
master | Text |  | dbabble.com | Master server for this group of servers (optional) |
slave_pass | Text |  | xyzzy | Password for master server login |
local_name | Text |  | Netwin | When any option appears that would refer something like "local users only", the word local gets replaced by this value. Note - you will also need to change any references to the word "local" in user_fields.dat | 1.1e
remote_server_timeout | Time Interval | 20 seconds |  | We time-out requests to other Servers after this long |
slave_auto_register | Boolean | false |  | If true and this is not a slave server, then provide a form accessible from login page for other server administrators to register their server with us | 0.1g
slave_default_global_groups | Integer | 5 |  | The default number of global groups we allow slaves to have | 0.1g
master_ip | Text |  | 161.29.2.26 | If this is a master server, and a DNS lookup from here would translate to an invalid IP address for our slaves, use this ip number instead | 0.3b
remote_use_ip | Text | false |  | If true, then whenever we give out remote server domain names to clients or web browsers, we instead give them an IP address | 2.1g
Uncommon Settings |  |  |  |  |
ignore_users_enabled | Boolean | true |  | Whether or not users can choose to ignore other users | 2.3c
external_viruschecker | Text |  | /usr/local/bin/sweep -s -nc -remove -archive $FILE$ | Specify a virus scanning process to run for each attachment sent or received in instant messages, discussions and chat rooms. The virus scanner should delete, quarantine or repair any files that contain viruses before terminating. $FILE$ is replaced by DBabble with the full path and filename of the file to be scanned. See http://netwinsite.com/dmail/anti_virus.htm for recommended virus scanners and examples for our DMail software which uses the same syntax as DBabble | 2.1i
min_free_disk_space | Byte Count | 25 MB |  | If free server disk space is ever below this value, then posting to discussions, chat rooms, and sending instant messages are all disabled until some disk space is made available. When free disk space drops below twice this setting, a warning message is sent to administrator. Set this value to 0 to disable free disk space checking. | 2.1g
port_tell | Integer |  | 80 | If given, server advertises that it is listening on this port instead of what the port setting is. Useful if you have an external port-mapping to the real server port | 0.6b
ssl_port_tell | Integer |  | 443 | If given, server advertises that it is listening on this SSL port instead of what the ssl_port setting is. Useful if you have an external port-mapping to the real server port | 2.3a
extra_ports | Text | 8132 | 80 8080 | A space separated list of additional ports to listen on. Connections are treated identically to connections to the main port | 0.5e
extra_ssl_ports | Text | 8133 | 443 8133 | A space separated list of additional ssl ports to listen on. Connections are treated identically to connections to the main ssl port | 2.3a
ssl_msie_bug_workarounds | Boolean | true |  | If this setting is on then DBabble responds differently to Microsoft Internet Explorer web browsers to work around some bugs in Internet Explorer when using the SSL protocol. These are not allowing keep-alive connections and doing unclean SSL socket shutdowns. These and other MSIE bugs are documented at http://www.modssl.org/docs/2.8/ssl_faq.html#ToC49 in reference to SSL on Apache web servers. | 2.3a
ssl_cipher_suite | Text | ie_bug_fix |  | Set this setting to nothing to make all the ciphers available. The ie_bug_fix value of this setting gets translated to ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv2:+EXP and is mainly intended to work around bugs with some 56bit export versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer. For the syntax for this setting, see http://www.openssl.org/docs/apps/ciphers.html#CIPHER_STRINGS | 2.3a
ssl_allow_version3 | Boolean | true |  | If you disable this setting then SSLV3 is not used. This can be used to work around bugs in some rare versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer using SSL, but disabling this setting could effect communication with other browsers so it is not recommended | 2.3a
external_process | Text |  | C:\dbabblesvr\stunnel.exe -d 8445 -r 8132 | Specifies an external process to start and stop whenever DBabble starts and stops. You must specify the full path to the executable. All output from the external process is logged in ex_process.log | 1.4c
max_online_users | Integer | 10000 |  | The maximum number of users allowed to login simultaneously. If there are already this many online users when another user tries to login, their login attempt will be rejected. | 2.3i
max_users_per_chat_room | Integer | 1000 |  | The maximum number of users allowed to be present in a chat room at once. If there are already this many users in a chat room when another user attempts to enter, they will not be allowed to enter | 2.3i
english_replace_words | Multiple Values |  | "friends"->"contacts" | Replace all occurrences of a word with a different word in the 'English' language file. For example, you can use this to replace all occurrences of 'friend' with 'contact'. For more advanced language word replacement, including languages other than English, see http://netwinsite.com/dbabble/languages.htm. There is a manager command to set default values for this setting. | 2.6f
using_https | Boolean | false |  | If true, then when the server adds direct http links to itself within messages, it uses https instead. This setting is for use if you are using an external SSL program between your users and this server. See http://netwinsite.com/dbabble/manage.htm#encryption for details. | 1.4a
jabber_gateways_enabled | Boolean | true |  | Specifies whether users can use Jabber protocol gateways to connect to other instant messaging protocols. Use the jabber_gateway to create default gateway settings for your users. In order for this feature to work, your server must be accessible from the internet on port 5269 using the domain name specified by the 'domain' setting (or 'jabber_domain' if it should be different) | 2.4i
jabber_gateway | Multiple Values |  | jabber_gateway aim.jabber.org.uk jabber.org.uk @aim 'AIM (AOL)' 'AIM Name' 'AIM Password' 1 | Specifies a Jabber protocol gateway to another instant messaging protocol. Used for allowing users to connect to other instant messaging servers whenever they are using DBabble. All Jabber gateway values can be disabled with the jabber_gateways_enabled setting. The first parameter to this setting specifies the domain name of the gateway server that is included in the 'To' header of any data sent to it. The second parameter is the domain name or ip address used to actually connect to the server. (this should be the same as the first parameter, but for some existing publicly available servers, the actual domain name is not registered.) The third parameter specifies a suffix that must appear at the end of friend names to be recognized for the purposes of sending to this gateway. For example 123@icq would mean the friend is an ICQ gateway friend with icq number 123. Note: Some gateways have additional special recognition. For example, if the suffix is @icq, the user is presented with an option to import their existing ICQ contact list. The final value is either a 0 or 1 representing whether DBabble should send a subscribe message for all the user's contacts each time they connect. On some servers this is necessary for it to function properly, but on others it will send an authorization message to the contact every time. For a list of public Jabber gateway servers available, see http://www.jabber.org/user/publicservers.php or consider installing your own for better security and performance. You should be aware when using the same machine for different protocols that some Jabber server implementations do unexpected things if multiple protocols try to connect at the same time, which can cause it to not work properly. For this reason (and to share the load around) the default settings use a different domain for each protocol. | 2.4i
jabber_gateways_upgrade | Boolean | true |  | If this setting is on, then when you upgrade the server any jabber_gateway settings that have values equal to the default value in old versions which now have different default values in this version are treated as though they are using the new value. This is used for situations where the jabber_gateway servers used in older versions no longer work, | 2.5c
jabber_server_port | Integer | 5269 |  | Specifies the port that the server listens on for incoming Jabber server messages | 2.4i
jabber_domain | Text |  |  | This setting specifies the domain name of this server for the purposes of being connected to by other Jabber servers. If you leave this setting blank, then it uses the same value as the 'domain' setting. In most situations you should leave this setting blank. If you change this setting, you must restart the server. | 2.4i
jabber_reject_from | Text | messenger@microsoft.com,YahooMessengerTeam@yahoo |  | This setting is used to reject jabber messages from specific users. It is intended for ignoring messages from an external instant messaging server informing their clients that they must upgrade their client. The value of this setting can be a comma separated list of values. | 2.5h
jabber_resend_status_interval | Time Interval | 4 minutes |  | This setting is used to work around problems with Jabber gateway servers. For example, some MSN Jabber gateway servers will decide that all about 4 am GMT every day to forget about all users that are online until they resend their online status. This setting is used to resend every online or idle user's status to the gateway servers this often. Set to 0 to disable. For optimal performance, this setting should be slightly less than the socket_expire setting. | 2.6k
icq_enabled | Boolean | false |  | [This setting no longer works. Use the jabber_gateways_enabled setting instead.] If true, then users can specify an existing icq account number and password in their preferences, and then whenever the log in, the server will log into that icq account to allow that user to communicate with icq users through DBabble. | 1.6c
nntp_extra_ports | Text |  | 4119 | A space separated list of additional NNTP ports to listen on. Connections are treated identically to connections to the main nntp port, except in the case where you have issued a "Renumber Articles to Match Pull Server" command, which is only applied to the primary NNTP port. | 1.3b
remove_deleted_friends | Boolean | true |  | If true, then when a user is deleted, they are removed from the friends list of any other users who have them as a friend next time the other user logs in. | 1.5d
show_login_on_empty_request | Boolean | false |  | If true, then whenever an empty request is sent (e.g "http://127.0.0.1:8132/cgi/dbabble.cgi") the login page is shown. If false, then an error page is shown (the login page is only shown on requests of the form "http://127.0.0.1:8132"). This setting is mainly to provide backwards compatibility with old versions, where the default was to show the login page on empty requests | 1.2m
subject_threading | Boolean | false |  | Normally, incoming discussion items posted via nntp or email are only threaded together if they have a valid references header to a previous article. If this setting is true, articles with identical subjects are also threaded together. Note that old versions of Outlook Express (97 and earlier?) do not send references headers, so if your users will be using those, you will probably want to set this to true | 1.1i
users_with_at_symbols | Boolean | false |  | If this setting is true, then user names can contain the @ symbol. This is disabled by default to prevent users from creating names that look like email addresses. If user names can contain the @ symbol, then when someone sends a message to an email address from within DBabble, someone else could have created a user name the same as that email address , so they would receive the message instead | 1.2i
users_with_hyphen_symbols | Boolean | false |  | If this setting is true, then user names can contain the - symbol. This is disabled by default to prevent users from creating names that look like DBabble users on other servers. | 1.6a
default_ugroup_filter_index | Integer | 0 |  | Specifies the default option selected when sending new user group instant messages. 0=All recipients 1=Online recipients 2=Online & Idle 3=Idle 4=Idle & Offline 5=Offline | 2.5a
require_cookies | Boolean | false |  | When users login, an access token is generated and used as a parameter to all requests. However, when visiting external sites, the users token will be included in the referer field, which could then be used by malicious sites to access their account while they are still logged in. So additionally a cookie is also used for authentication confirmation if allowed by the users browser settings. If a users browser settings do not allow cookies, then normally their login is allowed, but there is the slight security hole. If this setting is true, users won't be able to login unless they have cookies enabled | 1.1d
invite_users | Boolean | false |  | If true, then in the search for users page, there is a link to a page that lets users send invitations by email to a specific user to join DBabble. In versions 2.2c and later, user also has the option of automatically creating a new account for the user and attaching the windows client to the email message sent. In addition to this setting being on, the a user who wants to invite other users must have the 'Can Invite Users' permission on in their user details. | 1.0d
smileys_enabled | Boolean | true |  | If on then when users read messages containing smileys in the web browser interface (e.g. :-) ) then they get replaced by images. Smileys and matching images are defined in the file smileys.txt on the server. Smileys are substituted for in any template variable prefixed with html_ref_encode_ or html_ref_encode2_ | 2.3a
priority | Integer | 2 |  | Windows NT/2000 only. Valid values 0-4. Changes the main thread priority. 0=lowest 1=below normal 2=normal 3=above normal 4=highest. Useful when using Netscape's Web Browser on same system as server, as Netscape decides to use as much of the CPU as it can while waiting for a reply - set to 3 in this case to fix problem. WARNING - change with care - can affect performance of other applications. | 1.1a
max_daily_article_delete | Integer | 100 |  | The maximum number of articles that users with the "Delete Articles" permission can delete each day | 1.4i
web_login_page_image | Text | dblogin.gif |  | The file name of the image displayed at the top of the web browser login page. This file must exist in the /img sub-directory of the directory the server is installed in. Different versions of this image can for each language can be optionally created in sub-directories. For example /img/English/dblogin.gif | 2.3k
timezone_post | Text |  | +0700 | The timezone to add to posts to discussion groups and email if the default local timezone that DBabble uses is not correct |
timezone_add | Boolean | false | true | If true then the local timezone is appended to displayed times. | 1.2c
time_show_seconds | Boolean | false | true | If true, then the seconds are appended to instant message and discussion group items times that the user sees. | 1.2c
show_using | Integer | 1 |  | Whenever a user views another user's details, they get to see what browser+platform/windows client, and ip address the other user is using. If set to 0, no-one can see what others are using. If set to 1, they can see what browser and platform are being used. If set to 2, they can also see the ip address. In any case, administrator users see all values. | 1.2c
date_day_first | Boolean | false |  | If true then user-specified dates are assumed to be of form day/month/year rather than month/day/year | 0.6a
tpl_names | Boolean | false |  | If true, comments are added to generated web pages with template source file names | 0.5b
tpl_cache | Boolean | true |  | If true, then template files are partially parsed and cached in memory when accessed the first time to improved performance. Memory cache is cleared on reload command. Set this setting to false while customizing your templates so that you can edit and view results without reloading server | 1.3b
memory_files | Integer | 10 |  | Specifies the maximum number of temporary files that can be in memory before they written to disk. Used for performance improvement. | 1.3e
lang_errors | Boolean | true |  | If true, language translations are checked for the correct number and formatting of %% signs, and rejects the translation if there are not. Note - setting this to false could cause invalid language translations to crash the server and/or client | 1.2d
lang_warnings | Boolean | true |  | Only applies if lang_errors setting is on. When an error is detected, if this setting is true, a warning message is generated in error.log. Turn this setting off to avoid lots of warning messages appearing in error.log when you really don't care about them. | 1.6e
search_page_size | Integer | 50 |  | Number of search results per page |
max_search_size | Integer | 1000 |  | Maximum number of results from a single user search |
max_file_size | Byte Count | 5MB |  | The maximum size of individual attachment files posted to discussions, chat rooms and other users. If you want this higher than 10MB, you should also increase the max_tcp_data_size setting. |
max_tcp_data_size | Byte Count | 10MB |  | The maximum size of any incoming and outgoing tcp messages. | 1.6c
program | Text | /dbabble |  | The web reference to the server. This can be whatever you want as long as it isn't a directory name in use (eg /img /files /ads /help). Changed in 2.2c to default to same as program_name setting but with spaces removed and a / prepended |
ops_on_startup | Boolean | false |  | If true, all daily operations are performed on startup. If false, they are all performed staggered over next hour after startup | 0.5d
daily_ops_at | Integer | 1 |  | Specifies the number of hours past midnight (0-23) local time at which to perform daily operations (such as expiring old discussion items). It is recommended that you choose a time at which users are generally not online so as not to degrade performance for them. | 1.4b
first_user_admin | Boolean | true |  | If true, the user with the lowest user-id has administrator rights. If the originally lowest numbered account is deleted, the new lowest numbered account becomes an administrator. | 0.4j
max_msg_to | Integer | 10 |  | The maximum number of recipients of a single message (excludes broadcast messages) | 1.0d
online_expire | Time Interval | 2 minutes |  | If a user makes no contact for this long, then they are assumed offline. This setting can not be less than the client_check_interval setting. |
relogin_expire | Time Interval | 24 hours |  | If a user makes no contact for this long, then they are logged out (ie they can't be relogged-in using their current access token |
user_hash_num | Integer | 100000 |  | The number of hash table entries used for recording user details. Uses about 10 bytes of memory per entry. This should be at least the number of users in your user database for optimal performance (the higher the better). Must restart server after changing this value. | 1.5a
user_group_all_can_send_to | Boolean | false |  | If this setting is on, then every user is allowed to post to every user group they can see, regardless of their permissions. This setting is to provide backwards compatibility with versions prior to 2.1j, where there was a bug which allowed users to post to user groups even if they did not have permission to do so. | 2.1j
user_group_search_show_all | Boolean | true |  | If you turn this setting off, then when a user views the user group search page, it will not show user groups which they already have listed in their subscribed user group list | 2.1j
force_listen | Boolean | false |  | Windows Only: If true, then when trying to listen on a port, if another program is already listening on the required port, DBabble will listen on it anyway. Sometimes this can result in the original program loosing access to the port and DBabble gaining it instead. If false, then if another program is already listening on a port DBabble wants to use then an error message is generated | 1.5v
image_cache_control | Text | max-age=3600, must-revalidate |  | Specifies the value for the cache-control field of files downloaded from the /img/ and /sounds/ directories on the server as well as javascript files. The 3600 part means all images downloaded are never checked with the server again for 3600 seconds (1 hour). If you will never be changing the images on your server, you may want to increase this value. | 2.2c
max_memory_allocation | Byte Count | 500 MB |  | Windows servers only. Specifies the maximum amount of memory the server can have allocated at any given time for any purposes. This setting is mainly intended to catch any possible bug where the server may keep allocating memory when it shouldn't. If it tries to allocate more memory than this in total, this program will restart itself. Set this setting to 0 to disable this check. It is not recommended setting this setting to less than 100MB. If your machine has more memory, you should set this setting to about 30MB less than the total amount of memory you want DBabble to use. | 2.3k
show_netwin_links | Boolean | true |  | If links are shown to other Netwin products on the server login page. You can remove these if you want but we would appreciate it if you maintained them somewhere on your site. | 2.3a
ssl_private_key_bits | Integer | 1024 |  | When your SSL private key is created it has this many bits. Higher values gives more secure encryption but slower performance. If you change this setting, then you must re-create your SSL private key for this to take effect. You can do this with the 'Recreate SSL private key' manager command. 1024 bits is secure enough for most cases. Anything much larger than this will greatly reduce server performance since encrypting/decrypting all network traffic is CPU intensive. | 2.4c
error_auto_restart | Boolean | true |  | If on, then if the server ever crashes or hangs, it is automatically restarted and an error message emailed to server administrator. | 2.2a
error_hang_timeout | Time Interval | 5 minutes |  | If the server does not reach the point where it processes new incoming requests for longer than this time interval, then it is automatically terminated (and restarted if the error_auto_restart setting is on) | 2.2a
error_catching | Integer | 1 |  | Specifies what to do if an error occurs on the server. 0=Don't catch and pass on to OS. 1=Catch, log it (to log/crash.log) and terminate 2=Catch, log it, and pass on to OS. After and error occurs, the server will restart if the error_auto_restart setting is on, but on some OSs this may not be possible if the error is passed on to the OS. | 2.2a
Test Settings (you shouldn't change these or server may not work) |  |  |  |  |
testing | Boolean | false |  | For testing purposes only - if true, server may do unexpected things |
test_value | Integer | 0 |  | Don't set this to anything other than 0. Your server may not work if you do |
dont_build_help | Boolean | false |  | If true, then cached help files are never rebuilt even after server restart |
netwin_value | Integer |  |  | Don't set this to anything. It is for internal Netwin use |