MaxTel

MaxTel — the telnet supervisor for your Maximus BBS

MaxTel is the telnet front door for your Maximus BBS. It listens for incoming connections, assigns callers to available nodes, and gives you a live dashboard to watch everything happen. If you’ve run a BBS before, think of it as the modern equivalent of FrontDoor or BinkleyTerm — except it speaks TCP/IP instead of dialing phone numbers.

---

What MaxTel Does

When a caller telnets to your BBS, MaxTel handles the connection from start to finish:

1. Accepts the TCP connection and negotiates telnet options (terminal type, ANSI support)
2. Finds an available node and spawns a Maximus instance on a PTY
3. Bridges the caller’s socket to that PTY so they get a full BBS session
4. Tracks the session — who’s online, how long, what they’re doing
5. Cleans up when the caller disconnects or the session ends

You can run up to 32 nodes simultaneously. MaxTel manages all of them.

---

Features at a Glance

• Multi-node management — 1 to 32 simultaneous BBS sessions
• Live dashboard — ncurses interface showing nodes, callers, stats, and user details in real time
• Automatic node assignment — callers get routed to the next free node; if all are busy, they get a polite “try again later”
• Snoop mode — watch (and interact with) any active session live
• Inline configuration — launch the MaxCFG editor without leaving MaxTel
• Headless & daemon modes — run without a UI for servers, systemd, or startup scripts
• Responsive layout — the dashboard adapts from 80×25 all the way up to 132×60+ terminals
• Telnet negotiation — handles terminal type detection and ANSI capability checks automatically

---

System Requirements

• OS — Linux, FreeBSD, or macOS. Any modern Unix-like system should work.
• Maximus — a working Maximus installation. Make sure max runs correctly in local mode before pointing MaxTel at it.
• ncurses — required for building (and for interactive mode at runtime). Most systems include it by default.
• Network — the ability to bind a TCP port. The default is 2323; ports below 1024 need root.

---

Getting Started

Before your first launch, make sure a few things are in order:

1. Maximus runs locally — try ./bin/max -l to confirm it works on its own. If it doesn’t, fix that first — MaxTel spawns the same binary.
2. Config is in place — your TOML config files should be under config/.
3. Port is available — pick a port that isn’t already in use. Check with netstat -an | grep LISTEN or ss -tlnp.
4. Firewall allows it — if you’re on a VPS or behind a firewall, open the port.

Then start MaxTel:

cd /path/to/maximus
./bin/maxtel -p 2323 -n 4

That gives you 4 nodes on port 2323. You’ll see the dashboard come up immediately. If you’d rather run headless, add -H — see Running MaxTel for all the options.

Directory Layout

MaxTel expects these paths relative to the base Maximus directory (override the base with -d):

Path	Purpose
bin/max	The Maximus binary (override with -m)
config/	TOML configuration files
etc/callers.dat	Caller history log
etc/stats.dat	System statistics
m/1, m/2, …	Per-node working directories

---

Where to Go Next

• Running MaxTel — command-line options, interactive mode, headless mode, and daemon mode
• The Dashboard — understanding the UI panels and responsive layouts
• Sysop Features — snoop mode, inline config editor, kicking and restarting nodes
• Troubleshooting — common issues and log files
• Building — compiling Maximus and MaxTel from source