MQTT Topic Naming and Payload Scheme

Synchronet v3.20 can publish and subscribe to message “topics” on a configured MQTT broker.

As enabled and configured in SCFG->Networks->MQTT:

╔══════════════════════════════════════╗
║   Message Queue Telemetry Transport  ║
╠══════════════════════════════════════╣
║ │Enabled             Yes             ║
║ │Broker Address      192.168.1.2     ║
║ │Broker Port         1883            ║
║ │Username                            ║
║ │Password                            ║
║ │Keep-alive          60 seconds      ║
║ │Protocol Version    5               ║
║ │Publish Verbosity   High            ║
║ │Publish QOS         0: At most once ║
║ │Subscribe QOS       2: Exactly once ║
║ │Log Level           Informational   ║
║ │TLS (encryption)    Off             ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════╝

Retention

Most Synchronet MQTT messages are published with the retain flag enabled. Retained messages published before a client/subscriber connects will still be received (upon new client connection) until until the broker is restarted or the retained messages are explicitly removed from the broker.

Topics

Synchronet MQTT message topics start with sbbs/BBSID where BBSID is the System's BBS ID (for QWK Packets) as configured in SCFG->Message Options. It's possible for a single MQTT broker to serve multiple Synchronet BBSes in this way. The full BBS name is published to this topic level (not a leaf topic). For example:

sbbs/MYBBS = My Brand-new BBS

All leaf topics are published as children of the sbbs/BBSID topic under 3 main branches:

sbbs/BBSID/node - BBS nodes
sbbs/BBSID/host - Server hosts
sbbs/BBSID/action - Client actions (events)

All MQTT messages published by Synchronet contain just plain text (US-ASCII characters), the one exception being sbbs/+/node/+/output topics that include terminal control characters/sequences. Numeric values, unless otherwise are specified, are represented in US-ASCII decimal characters.

Nodes

The BBS's terminal server nodes (servicing terminal connections via Telnet, SSH, RLogin, Raw TCP) can be monitored and controlled via MQTT.

Under the sbbs/BBSID/node hierarchy, you'll find a sub-topic for each BBS node, with the total node count published to the node topic, for example:

sbbs/MYBBS/node = 4 total

In “High” Publish Verbosity mode, human-readable node status messages are published directly to node/+ topics. For example:

sbbs/MYBBS/node/1 = Bubbaboy at external program menu via telnet
sbbs/MYBBS/node/2 = At login prompt via telnet
sbbs/MYBBS/node/3 = At login prompt via telnet
sbbs/MYBBS/node/4 = Waiting for connection

Sub-topics of each node/+ topic include:

sbbs/+/node/+/status - tab-delimited node status values (see load/nodedefs.js for details)
sbbs/+/node/+/terminal - tab-delimited current (or last) connected-terminal definition
sbbs/+/node/+/output - live output to connected-terminal (for spying)
sbbs/+/node/+/input - keyboard input to inject into connected-node

Example:

sbbs/VERT/node/1/status = 0       0       1       65535   0       0       0       7
sbbs/VERT/node/1/terminal = 80    24      syncterm        ANSI    CP437   6       0       2005

Hosts

A single Synchronet BBS can be split across multiple instances running on separate inter-networked host computers. Each host will be represented with its own sub-topic of the sbbs/BBSID/host topic. For example:

sbbs/MYBBS/host/MYCOMPUTER
sbbs/MYBBS/host/rPi
sbbs/MYBBS/host/ubuntu

The public host name (configured in ctrl/sbbs.ini) of the host is published to this topic level (not a leaf). For example:

sbbs/MYBBS/host/MYCOMPUTER = mybbs.synchro.net

The control and monitoring of a specific Synchronet instance is done through this “host sub-topic” tree.

Publishing any message to the recycle sub-topic of any host topic will initiate a recycling of that host's servers (all of them).

Servers

Each Synchronet instance (host) contains the following servers, each represented by its own sub-topic of sbbs/BBSID/host/hostname/server:

sbbs/+/host/+/server/term - Terminal Server
sbbs/+/host/+/server/mail - Mail Server
sbbs/+/host/+/server/ftp - FTP Server
sbbs/+/host/+/server/web - Web Server
sbbs/+/host/+/server/srvc - Services

The status of each server is published to its server topic, for example:

sbbs/MYBBS/host/MYCOMPUTER/server/term = 2   ready   1/5 clients     223 served

The numeric state (first field of status) for each server is 0-5 corresponding with Stopped, Initializing, Ready, Reloading, Stopping, and Disconnected.

The server status contains more details/statistics and is published more often when “High” Public Verbosity is enabled.

Publishing any message to the recycle sub-topic of any server topic will initiate a recycling of that server.

Each server topic has the following sub-topics for status reporting:

sbbs/+/host/+/server/+/version
sbbs/+/host/+/server/+/max_clients - maximum number of concurrent clients supported by this server
sbbs/+/host/+/server/+/served - total clients served since server was started
sbbs/+/host/+/server/+/error_count - total errors logged since server was started
sbbs/+/host/+/server/+/client_count - current count of connected clients
sbbs/+/host/+/server/+/client_list - tab-delimited details of all connected clients, one client per line

Logs

Each server/+ and event sub-topics has a log child topic where all messages of all log levels (severity) will be published as well as a grandchild topic for each log level (0-7, decreasing in severity) of logged messages. Log messages published directly to the “log” topic also have a MQTT v5 user property that specifies the log level of each message (for indication / sorting by the receiving client).