Synchronet for Windows v3.20d UPGRADE
=====================================
March 3, 2025
You must have Synchronet v3.16-v3.19 already installed and working before
applying this upgrade. If you are running v3.15 or before you may have some
quirks if you don't upgrade to at least v3.16 first.
As always, you should *backup* your Synchronet directory tree before applying
any upgrade (including this one), just in case something goes wrong.
Instructions
------------
The directory where you extracted this readme.txt file should look like this:
01/03/2025 11:07 PM
ctrl
01/03/2025 11:07 PM data
01/03/2025 11:07 PM docs
01/03/2025 11:07 PM exec
01/03/2025 11:07 PM node1
01/03/2025 11:07 PM node2
01/03/2025 11:07 PM node3
01/03/2025 11:07 PM node4
01/03/2025 11:07 PM text
01/03/2025 11:07 PM webv4
01/03/2025 11:07 PM xtrn
If it does not, then you extracted the archive wrong. Try again.
Shutdown Synchronet processes (sbbs.exe, scfg.exe, sbbsntsvcs.exe,
sbbsctrl.exe, jsexec, etc.).
Copy the contents of the included "exec" directory to your Synchronet "exec"
directory, over-writing all files. If you have locally modified files, move
them to your "mods" directory first.
NOTE:
It is important that the files in the subdirectories (e.g. load, ircbots,
etc.) are copied into the subdirectories of the target "exec" directory.
If you end up with files of the same name both in the "exec" directory
and the "exec/load" subdirectory, then something went wrong. You can try
and use the "jsexec update.js" command-line to remedy the situation, but
you may still have old files if your exec subdirectories which you
failed to update correctly.
Virtual UART/FOSSIL Driver
--------------------------
The file exec/sbbsexec.dll must be copied to your Windows/System32 directory.
Web Update Options
------------------
The only web interface now included with Synchronet is ecWebv4. If you wish
to continue to use the old Runemaster web interface, you can get any updates
to it from: https://gitlab.synchro.net/main/sbbs/-/tree/master/web
To switch to the ecWebv4 interface, set the "RootDirectory" key of the [Web]
section of your ctrl/sbbs.ini file to:
RootDirectory=../webv4/root
Text/Menu Updates
-----------------
If you have any locally modified files from the text directory, take care
when extracting this archive and consider only extracting files that do
not already exist or overwrite only files you have not locally changed.
New menu options have been added (especially to the default/Classic
command shell) - so you may want to have the new menu files.
ctrl/text.dat Updates
---------------------
There have been many changes to the ctrl/text.dat file. If you have local
changes, you'll probably want to merge the files or overwrite your text.dat
with the version included in this archive and then reapply your changes
manually. The text.dat changes from v3.18b to v3.19b can be reviewed in
docs/text319b.dif
Finally
-------
After extracting (and optionally merging) the files, from a command prompt
and the current working directory set to your Synchronet "exec" directory,
run:
jsexec update
NOTE:
The following one-time error message displayed by jsexec when upgrading from
Synchronet versions prior to v3.20 is expected and should be ignored:
!ERROR loading configuration files: 2 (No such file or directory) opening
/sbbs/ctrl/msgs.ini
... because later in the upgrade process, the msgs.ini(and other) missing
configuration files will be created (converted from *.cnf):
Upgrading Synchronet v3.1x config files to v3.20
main.cnf -> main.ini
../node1\node.cnf -> node.ini
../node2\node.cnf -> node.ini
../node3\node.cnf -> node.ini
../node4\node.cnf -> node.ini
msgs.cnf -> msgs.ini
Now you are ready to re-run the BBS and enjoy the “latest and greatest”!
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