Nelgin was born in England and moved to the US in 1996. He's fluent in both English English and American English :)

His hobbies include visiting bars and trying different beers, socializing, traveling, music, and astronomy.

He owns an 8" Newtownian telescope.

He plays keyboards, guitar, and drums for fun.

His aim is to visit all 50 states. He's visited 36 so far.

End Of The Line BBS is run by Nelgin

http://www.endofthelinebbs.com

telnet://endofthelinebbs.com

ssh://endofthelinebbs.com

rlogin://endofthelinebbs.com

Point a viewdata emulator at endofthelinebbs.com port 6502 to try the experimental interface.

{{:person:guitar.png}}


===== Mosquitto, Synchronet and TLS With Self-Signed Certs =====

This works for me. It might not work for you. It's easier to do all this as root and then chown/chmod files as necessary to secure them. This works on Ubuntu.

First I created a dns entry mqtt.endofthelinebbs.com to point to my server IP address. You could probably use your regular dns name or something else, I'm not sure. I just know this works for me.
Obviously, don't use endofthelinebbs.com but your own domain name throughout. Your certs are not going to work on my mqtt server!

Next, I decided to create a password for my bbs user for extra security.

In /etc/mosquitto create a pwfile file with a username:password line

    bbs:mypasswd
    
Now, convert the file
    mosquitto_passwd -U pwfile
    
This will upgrade the file and hash the plain text password. Never run -U on an already hashed password file or it'll rehash the hashed password!

In your /etc/mosquitto/certs directory:

Create your CA

    openssl genrsa -des3 -out ca.key 2048
Enter a passphrase you'll remember. You'll need this to sign your certs.

Now create your ca.crt

    openssl req -new -x509 -days 36500  -key ca.key -out ca.crt
    
For Common Name, I just entered the domain, endofthelinebbs.com

  
Create a server.key

    openssl genrsa -out server.key 2048
Now the csr

    openssl req -new -out server.csr -key server.key
Here I use mqtt.endofthelinebbs.com as the Common Name. This is what we'll use to connect to the mqtt service.

Now create the crt
    openssl x509 -req -in server.csr -CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -CAcreateserial -out server.crt -days 36500   
Create /etc/mosquitto/conf.d/sbbs.conf

    allow_anonymous false
    password_file /etc/mosquitto/pwfile
    log_type debug
    # mqtt protocol standard port
    listener 1883
    # mqtt protocol ssl port
    listener 8883
    tls_version tlsv1.2
    cafile /etc/mosquitto/certs/ca.crt
    certfile /etc/mosquitto/certs/server.crt
    keyfile /etc/mosquitto/certs/server.key
    require_certificate true
    use_identity_as_username false
    # websocket protocol standard port
    listener 1884
    protocol websockets
    socket_domain ipv4
    # websocket protocol ssl port
    listener 8884
    protocol websockets
    socket_domain ipv4
    cafile /etc/mosquitto/certs/ca.crt
    certfile /etc/mosquitto/certs/server.crt
    keyfile /etc/mosquitto/certs/server.key
    require_certificate true
    use_identity_as_username false
    
chown mosquitto. /etc/mosquitto/certs/* /etc/mosquitto/conf.d/sbbs.conf /etc/mosquitto/pwfile
chmod 640 /sbbs/mosquitto/certs/* /etc/mosquitto/pwfile
    
Now start or restart your mosquitto service

    systemctl restart mosquitto
    or
    systemctl start mosquitto
    
Check /var/log/mosquitto/mosquitto.log to see if its running

    1702534680: mosquitto version 2.0.11 starting
    1702534680: Config loaded from /etc/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf.
    1702534680: Opening ipv4 listen socket on port 1883.
    1702534680: Opening ipv6 listen socket on port 1883.
    1702534680: Opening ipv4 listen socket on port 8883.
    1702534680: Opening ipv6 listen socket on port 8883.
    1702534680: Opening websockets listen socket on port 1884.
    1702534680: Opening websockets listen socket on port 8884.
    1702534680: mosquitto version 2.0.11 running
    
If all is good you can now make your sbbs certs.


Create your key
    cd /etc/mosquitto/certs
    openssl genrsa -out  sbbs_mqtt.key 2048
Create your csr
    openssl req -new -out sbbs_mqtt.csr -key  sbbs_mqtt.key
For Common Name, I use the BBS hostname, bbs.endofthelinebbs.com
Create your crt
    openssl x509 -req -in sbbs_mqtt.csr -CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -CAcreateserial -out  sbbs_mqtt.crt  -days 36500
    
copy the /etc/mosquitto/certs/ca.crt file and move the sbbs_mqtt files to /sbbs/ctrl

    cp /etc/mosquitto/certs/ca.crt /sbbs/ctrl
    mv /etc/mosquitto/certs/sbbs_mqtt.* /sbbs/ctrl
    cd /sbbs/ctrl
    chown bbsuser:bbsgroup ca.crt sbbs_mqtt.*
Replacing bbsuser and bbsgroup with the username/group of your bbs user.

use scfg to configure your MTQQ accordingly, use port 8883, hostname is mqtt.endofthelinebbs.com and select TLS.

<code>
[MQTT]
Enabled=true
Verbose=true
Broker_addr=mqtt.endofthelinebbs.com
Broker_port=8883
Protocol_version=5
Keepalive=11
Publish_QOS=0
Subscribe_QOS=2
Username=bbs
Password=xxxxxxxxx
LogLevel=Debugging
TLS_mode=1
TLS_cafile=/sbbs/ctrl/ca.crt
TLS_certfile=/sbbs/ctrl/sbbs_mqtt.crt
TLS_keyfile=/sbbs/ctrl/sbbs_mqtt.key
TLS_keypass=
TLS_psk=
TLS_identity=
</code>
    

You'll need to restart sbbs. I found that if it's already connected to port 1883 then it won't establish a new connection.

If you're lucky, your logfile will show sbbs connected:

    1702583738: New client connected from 192.138.210.158:59382 as sbbs-EOTLBBS-bbs.endofthelinebbs.com-web (p5, c1, k11, u'bbs').


This is a very rough draft of what worked for me on my Ubuntu 22.04.3 with the latest build of Synchronet.