USERNET.EXE (USERNET) is a utility which allows you to modify the contents of your USERNET.DAT file. What is your USERNET.DAT file you ask? The USERNET.DAT file is where information is stored about who is online, where they are from, and what they are currently doing. The USERNET.DAT file is also the file that is used to determine if users are available for chat and to display who is online via the WHO command. An example WHO command looks like this:

(#)   Status                  User
---   ---------------------   -----------------------------
  1   Available for CHAT      JIM SHELBER (PLANTATION, FLORIDA)
  2   Logging into System
  3   Available for CHAT      KIM KARBO (SALT LAKE CITY, UT)

As you can see it shows that the SysOp is on node 1 and unavailable for node chat. This display also shows that the SysOp is from ANYTOWN, ANYWHERE.

You can do all sorts of things with USERNET. Below are some sample uses:

• Change the name of someone in USERNET.DAT
• Change the city of someone in USERNET.DAT
• Immediately drop everyone off of the BBS if they are in PCBoard
• Delete names out of USERNET.DAT that are “stuck”
• Add nodes and users that do not really exist (up to your node limit)
• Show that a node is currently running an event

As you can see there are quite a few things you can do with USERNET. If you use your imagination you can come up with several other uses.

  USERNET [filename] [nodenum] [status] [name] [city] [text]

NOTE: If multiple words are entered for name or city you must enclose them within quotation marks (e.g. “JOHN DOE” “NOWHERE, USA”).

NOTE: With the Y and Z status values no name or city parameters are needed.

Sometimes as a SysOp you may want to list your name in the USERNET.DAT even when you are not online. Your display might look like this:

(#)   Status                  User                          
---   ---------------------   -----------------------------
  1   Unavailable for CHAT    JOE USER (ANYTOWN, ANYWHERE)
  2   Available for CHAT      JIM USER (ANYWHERE, ANYPLACE)
  3   No Caller Online        SYSOP - NOT CURRENTLY ONLINE

To accomplish a similar display you would do the following:

USERNET C:\PCB\MAIN\USERNET.XXX 3 Y N3 N3 "SYSOP - GONE FISHING"

The two N3s in this example are place-holders for the user name and city.
When there is no caller online, the text field is displayed instead of the user name and city. If you normally log into a node other than 3, you can replace the 3s in this example with the node number you log into.

If you want to broadcast all of your nodes from a DOS prompt, you can do so using USERNET. For the example let's say that you need to take your system down. Rather than SysOp chatting with all nodes, you can run a batch file which looks like the following:

USERNET C:\PCB\MAIN\USERNET.XXX ALL M "PLEASE LOG OFF ASAP"

This example uses the M status value to send the message. This is quite similar to the BR SysOp command in PCBoard. One thing that is distinctly different in this example is that instead of a node number, the word ALL is shown. The word ALL tells USERNET to send this message to ALL nodes.

NOTE: If the user is not in PCBoard (i.e., they are in a door), the message will not be displayed to the user even when they come back to PCBoard. You may want to pay special attention to who is in a door when you broadcast a message.

You may run into circumstances when a user name is stuck in the node display.
This type of scenario is most likely to happen when your bulletin board system involves local nodes, floating nodes, and users who reboot their system while online. To clear a user's name out of node 11 on the system, you could issue the following command at a DOS prompt:

USERNET C:\PCB\MAIN\USERNET.XXX 11 Z

This will make it so that node 11 will not show up on the node display (using the WHO user command).

In this example, we will show you how to immediately log off all nodes that are currently in PCBoard. To do this, change all of the node's status to X.
This action will drop the node to DOS as soon as possible. If the user is currently in a DOOR or some other application, they will be disconnected when they return to PCBoard. To mark all of your nodes to drop to DOS, use the following command line:

USERNET C:\PCB\MAIN\USERNET.XXX ALL X

When PCBoard reads the USERNET.DAT file, it will see the X status and will disconnect the user. Before the user is disconnected, the Automatic Logoff Completed message will be displayed.