Maximus BBS

Documentation for Maximus BBS — Next Generation

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MaxCFG User Editor

Managing user accounts with the MaxCFG user editor

Every BBS needs a way to manage its users — reset a forgotten password, bump someone’s access level, check how active they’ve been, or ban a troublemaker. MaxCFG’s user editor gives you a full interface for all of that, right inside the configuration tool.

Maximus NG stores user accounts in a SQLite database (user.db in your sys_path). This is a big upgrade from the old fixed-record user.bbs binary files — it’s faster, more reliable, and you can even open it in any SQLite browser (like DB Browser for SQLite) if you ever need to do bulk queries or exports outside of MaxCFG. But for day-to-day sysop work, the built-in editor is all you need.

Opening the User Editor

From the maxcfg main screen, navigate to:

Users → User Editor

MaxCFG connects to the user database and loads the user list. If you’re running a fresh install, you’ll see the sysop account and possibly a guest account — that’s normal.

User List

MaxCFG User List

The list shows every user in the database with their name and alias. If your board has been running for a while, this list could be hundreds of entries long — that’s where filtering comes in.

Key Action
Up / Down Navigate between users
PgUp / PgDn Page through the list
Home / End Jump to first / last user
Enter Open the category picker for the selected user
/ Set a filter (see below)
C Clear the current filter
Esc Exit the user editor

Filtering

Press / to enter a filter string. The filter matches case-insensitively against user names and supports wildcards:

For example:

Press C to clear the filter and show all users again. When you’ve got a few hundred users, this is the fastest way to find who you’re looking for.

Category Picker

When you press Enter on a user, a picker appears with six editing categories. Each one opens a focused form for that part of the user record — you don’t have to scroll through a massive single form.

MaxCFG User Edit Category Picker

Changes are written to the database when you save each sub-form (F10).

Personal Information

The basics — who is this person?

Field Type What it is
Name Text The user’s real name (or alias, if your board uses the alias system)
Alias Text Their handle / screen name
City Text City or location (freeform text)
Phone (Home) Text Home phone number
Phone (Data) Text Data/BBS phone number

Name and Alias have a maximum length enforced by the form. If your board is set up with an alias system, the alias is what callers see in most places — their real name is stored but not publicly displayed.

Security

This is the one you’ll use most often as a sysop — changing someone’s access level or resetting their password.

Field Type What it does
Privilege Level Select The user’s access level. Opens a picker with all your defined levels.
Password Action Set or change the user’s password.

Password Management

Select the password field and you’ll be prompted to:

  1. Enter a new password
  2. Confirm it

If password encryption is enabled in your config (maximus.encrypt_pw = true), the password is hashed before it’s stored. You can’t see the current password in that case — only replace it. If encryption is off, passwords are stored in plain text (not recommended for production boards).

The privilege picker shows all the access levels defined in your access_levels.toml. You can also press Space to manually type a custom privilege string — useful for key-based restrictions like Normal/1C.

Settings

These control how the BBS presents itself to this particular user. Callers normally set these themselves through the Change Settings menu, but sometimes you need to override them — for example, if someone’s terminal negotiation went wrong and they’re stuck in TTY mode.

Field Type What it controls
Video Mode Toggle TTY / ANSI / AVATAR / RIP
Help Level Toggle Novice / Regular / Expert
Sex Toggle Male / Female / Unspecified
Screen Width Number Terminal width (20–132)
Screen Length Number Terminal height (10–66)
Hotkeys Toggle Whether single-key commands work without pressing Enter
More Prompt Toggle Pause at the bottom of each screenful
Full-Screen Reader Toggle Use the full-screen message reader
IBM Characters Toggle Allow CP437 extended characters (box drawing, etc.)

Statistics

Running counters that the BBS maintains automatically. You shouldn’t normally need to touch these, but they’re here for those times when you do — maybe a door game corrupted someone’s download count, or you want to grant upload credit to a user who contributed files offline.

Field Type What it tracks
Total Calls Number Number of logins
Time Used Today Number Minutes used in the current day
Time Used Total Number Cumulative minutes across all sessions
Messages Posted Number Total messages written
Uploads (count) Number Number of files uploaded
Uploads (KB) Number Total upload size
Downloads (count) Number Number of files downloaded
Downloads (KB) Number Total download size

Dates

Field Type What it is
Date of Birth Text The user’s date of birth (MM/DD/YYYY format)

Other date fields — first call, last call, subscription expiry — are maintained automatically by the BBS and shown as read-only information in the user list.

Keys/Flags

Per-user feature flags. These are the low-level toggles that control specific BBS behaviors for this user. Most of them are set automatically based on the user’s terminal capabilities, but you can override them here if needed.

Flag What it does
NotAvail User is marked as unavailable for chat
Nerd Nerd mode — abbreviated prompts, less hand-holding
NoUList Hide this user from the public user list
Tabs Terminal supports tab characters
RIP RIP graphics capable
BadLogon Flagged for bad logon attempts (security alert)
Bored Use the BORED (built-in) message editor instead of an external one
CLS Terminal supports clear screen

MaxCFG User Keys/Flags Editor

How Changes Are Saved

Unlike the TOML-backed configuration screens (which hold changes in memory until you explicitly save), the user editor writes changes immediately to the SQLite database when you press F10 on any sub-form. There’s no separate “Save Configuration” step for user data — when you save the form, it’s done.

This makes the user editor safe for live use. You can edit a user’s access level while the BBS is running and it takes effect on their next action.

Using a SQLite Browser

Because the user database is standard SQLite, you can also open user.db directly in any SQLite tool — DB Browser for SQLite, the sqlite3 command-line shell, or any programming language with SQLite bindings.

This is handy for:

Just be careful about editing the database while the BBS is running. MaxCFG and the BBS both use proper SQLite locking, but an external tool might not. When in doubt, stop the BBS first, make your changes, then restart.

Tips

Use filters to find users quickly. With hundreds of users, scrolling is impractical. The wildcard filter (/) is the fastest way to locate a specific account.

Reset passwords carefully. If password encryption is enabled, you can’t see the current password — only replace it. Make sure you have a way to communicate the new password to the user.

Check privilege levels after migration. If you’ve converted from a legacy Maximus system (or from another BBS package), verify that user privilege levels map correctly to your new access level definitions. The names might be the same but the numeric values could differ.

Don’t edit statistics casually. The BBS uses these counters for ratio enforcement and time limits. Only edit them to correct genuine errors or to grant credits.

Back up user.db regularly. It’s a single file and it’s your entire user base. Copy it to your backup location alongside your TOML configuration.

See Also