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Eagle's Nest BBS Information and Policy
Last Revised: 10/08/1997
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This document outlines information about and policies of this bbs.
Revisions will be made from time to time and posted on the ANNOUNCE board.

HOST

The Eagle's Nest is hosted on a Linux server with Cyrix P166 CPU,
32 MB RAM, Adaptec 2940 SCSI adapter, 3Com 3c509 Ethernet adapter,
and 1 GB Seagate drive.

It is owned by, and hosted on the network of, Datasync, an ISP serving
the Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana Gulf Coasts. The Eagle's Nest BBS
is NOT a supported service of Datasync and Datasync disclaims responsibility
for its operation or anything that might happen here.

The primary purpose of this machine is for testing and development
of software prior to deployment on Datasync's production servers.
As such, stability is not guaranteed.

ADMINISTRATION AND POLICY

The Eagle's Nest BBS is administered by TheRock in a hands-off
manner. Mail to the SYSOP account will be read, but not in a
timely manner. If you need help in using the BBS, post on the
General board and someone will probably be glad to assist.

Assistants for purposes of BBS maintenence may be authorized
by the Sysop. It is hoped that this will not be necessary.
Anyone asking for special privileges of any fashion will be
categorically denied.

ACCOUNTS

At this time, new accounts must register by logging in as guest
and filling out the form under (J)oin on the main menu. While this
formality is contrary to the hands-off policy, the Sysop feels is
is necessary given the current state of the Internet.

No personal information including names will be available to anyone
other than the Sysop and authorized account managers.

Account applications that do not adhere to the instructions given
therein will be tossed with no notification to the requestor.

Account that are not used within two weeks or creation, or not
used for a period of three months, will be deleted. Notification
of absence and intent to return may be mailed to the SYSOP and
probably seen in time, but there are no guarantees.

Changes of userid should also be mailed to SYSOP, understanding
that action may be slow to occur. When your old userid stops working,
try the new one.

If you want your account deleted, no action is necessary. Simply
stop using it and it will be cleaned up after three months of non-use.
Account deletion requests will not be honored since invariably they
are emotional decisions and the user usually wants it back in a few days.

MAIL

Please make an effort to purge or forward old messages from your
BBS mailbox regularly. Accounts which accumulate too much old mail
will have their mailboxes cleaned, possibly without warning.

BOARDS

The list of discussion boards should be considered essentially static.
Suggestions for new boards may be posted on the Suggestions and
occasionally acted upon by the Sysop if there is sufficient support
and a demonstrated need. Inactive boards are subject to deletion
at any time.

Old posts will be cleaned up periodically. The Sysop will occasionally
mark posts to be kept longer.

The Sysop reserves the right to remove any posts he deems inappropriate.
Encoded binaries, pyramid schemes, and crossposting are inappropriate.
Anything illegal or libelous is inappropriate.
Censorship based on content alone will not be practiced here.
Off-topic posts may be moved to a board where they belong, however.

CHAT

In accordance with the hands-off policy, the chat room will not
be policed by the Sysop. Complaints about harassment will be
summarily ignored. All users are advised that chat is not
monitored for content in any way and should be avoided by
users who are easily offended. Chat is not appropriate for
young children. All users are encouraged to make use of the
/ignore function to squelch anyone who bothers them.


HISTORY

The Eagle's Nest BBS was created in April 1992 in response to a void
created by demise of the Mars Hotel BBS (mars.ee.msstate.edu) in late 1991.

It began as a ragged port of Pirates BBS 1.6 to the ESIX operating system
on seabass.st.usm.edu by TheRock, cactus, and thud. Many new features
were added to the Pirates code over time. Since Pirates BBS 2.0 was
being developed elsewhere, this derivative was named Eagles BBS in
honor of the University of Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles.
USM is the alma mater of the developers.

Soon, seabass dumped ESIX in favor of an up and coming free operating
system called Linux 0.99. There was much rejoicing. Linux TCP/IP
networking was quite flaky at the time, but the GNU development
environment was so much better. Linux has since been the primary
platform for EBBS development.

EBBS was rewritten nearly from the ground up in mid-1994 and
released as EBBS 3.0. Development has not been very active since
then. The current release is EBBS 3.1.1 and is available
at ftp://ftp.datasync.com/pub/ebbs/ebbs-3.1.1.tar.gz.

The Eagle's Nest was moved from its traditional home at USM
almost precisely five years after it began, to its present home
at Datasync.