Hi All,

I am playing with the Random File Display feature in Mystic (ie file.ans, file.an1, etc) and I found no matter how many files I put, it's always the
same two that shows.

I've tried with the numbers and the letters (as it appears it is now supported), same result.

Is there something special that must be done? Seems pretty straightforward
but the random is not so random according to my tests.

Any toughts, been experiencing the same, found a workaround?

Cheers,

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* Origin: The Bottomless Abyss BBS (21:1/172)

On 11/21/18, StackFault pondered and said...

I am playing with the Random File Display feature in Mystic (ie file.ans, file.an1, etc) and I found no matter how many files I put, it's always
the same two that shows.

Where are you trying to display them and how are they being called?

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A39 2018/04/21 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

I am playing with the Random File Display feature in Mystic (ie file. file.an1, etc) and I found no matter how many files I put, it's alway the same two that shows.

Where are you trying to display them and how are they being called?

I am just testing with it at the moment, but tried using the (PIPE)DF call, it works but only randomize 2 files and never show the others.

So I know the feature is called properly but seems to be limited in the amount of files it display... Was thinking about stracing the calls to the
filesystem to see what it actually tries to read, I might find something more interesting there...

Cheers,

ß Þ
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--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A39 2018/04/21 (Linux/64)
* Origin: The Bottomless Abyss BBS (21:1/172)

I am playing with the Random File Display feature in Mystic (ie file. file.an1, etc) and I found no matter how many files I put, it's alway the same two that shows.

Where are you trying to display them and how are they being called?

Ok, did an strace and I see it access the two files it displays, obviously
:), but never look for any other. I guess something in that routine is missing...

Here we can see the syscall it makes:

<snip>

gettimeofday({tv_sec=1542891610, tv_usec=992133}, NULL) = 0 access("/bbs/themes/default/text/randomtest1.ans", F_OK) = 0 access("/bbs/themes/default/text/randomtest1.an1", F_OK) = 0 access("/bbs/themes/default/text/randomtest1.ans", F_OK) = 0 open("/bbs/themes/default/text/randomtest1.ans", O_RDWR|O_LARGEFILE) =
8 clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, {tv_sec=988298,
tv_nsec=890853991}) = 0

</snip>

And it loops between these two files without even looking for any others.
I also have .an2 to .an5 in the same directory for my test.

Here we should see it trying to access more than just these two files (the access calls) to build it's internal list, then the open call should open one of the list. But since it does not try to access more than these 2 files
(.ans and .an1) it just play with these two.

Let me know if someone managed to get this to work, maybe in a previous release? Maybe it works on Windows but not in Linux?

Cheers,

ß Þ
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--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A39 2018/04/21 (Linux/64)
* Origin: The Bottomless Abyss BBS (21:1/172)

On 11/22/18, StackFault pondered and said...

Where are you trying to display them and how are they being called?

I am just testing with it at the moment, but tried using the (PIPE)DF call, it works but only randomize 2 files and never show the others.

OK but just so I am clear how you're doing this... how are you doing this? :)

Do you have a menu command your calling or what are you exactly doing to call the files you're trying to display randomly? It's just I want to try and
repro your steps to see what's happening when I try :)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A39 2018/04/21 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

On 11/22/18, StackFault pondered and said...

Where are you trying to display them and how are they being call

I am just testing with it at the moment, but tried using the (PIPE)DF call, it works but only randomize 2 files and never show the others.

OK but just so I am clear how you're doing this... how are you doing
this? :)

Do you have a menu command your calling or what are you exactly doing to call the files you're trying to display randomly? It's just I want to
try and repro your steps to see what's happening when I try :)

Well, I tried in a menu command (both in a Display Line of Text with DF and also in a Display File)

It was always alternating between only 2, the .ans and the .an1

After that, I stopped looking after that and moves along... I created another theme and then it started alternating between more files where I feel it's
more random across all the files.

Not too sure yet what it was... but for now it appears to be working in
another theme...

Cheers

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--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A39 2018/04/21 (Linux/64)
* Origin: The Bottomless Abyss BBS (21:1/172)

On 11/22/18, StackFault said the following...

I am playing with the Random File Display feature in Mystic (ie file.an1, etc) and I found no matter how many files I put, it's the same two that shows.

Where are you trying to display them and how are they being called?

I am just testing with it at the moment, but tried using the (PIPE)DF call, it works but only randomize 2 files and never show the others.

One thing to note with the DF command, is that it has special formatting and
is different than most other MCI commands. The format is: <pipe>DFfilename.ans<pipe>

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A39 2018/04/21 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Cyberia BBS | cyberiabbs.zapto.org | San Jose, CA (21:1/120)

On 11/24/18, Gryphon said the following...

On 11/22/18, StackFault said the following...

I am playing with the Random File Display feature in Mystic file.an1, etc) and I found no matter how many files I put, the same two that shows.

Where are you trying to display them and how are they being call

I am just testing with it at the moment, but tried using the (PIPE)DF call, it works but only randomize 2 files and never show the others.

One thing to note with the DF command, is that it has special formatting and is different than most other MCI commands. The format is: <pipe>DFfilename.ans<pipe>

Another thing to note is that if you add the .ans to the file name in the DF command, then it will only ever just display that one file. It really should be <pipe>DFfilename<pipe>

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A39 2018/04/21 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Cyberia BBS | cyberiabbs.zapto.org | San Jose, CA (21:1/120)

One thing to note with the DF command, is that it has special formatt and is different than most other MCI commands. The format is: <pipe>DFfilename.ans<pipe>

Another thing to note is that if you add the .ans to the file name in
the DF command, then it will only ever just display that one file. It really should be <pipe>DFfilename<pipe>

Hi,

Yes, both are clearly understood. Also, I went a little bit farther by
stracing the process, I can see it goes from one to the other but never got
to anything else.

However, I add another theme and now, in that new theme it "randomize" properly. I will continue to experiment on this but so now i found a work-around, if we can call it that way.

Thanks for your input.

Cheers,

ß Þ
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--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A39 2018/04/21 (Linux/64)
* Origin: The Bottomless Abyss BBS (21:1/172)

On 11/22/18, StackFault said the following...

I am playing with the Random File Display feature in Mystic (ie file.an1, etc) and I found no matter how many files I put, it's the same two that shows.

I see your strace and it shows it shouldn't call all of them, but I've tested it on the Raspberry Pi and it does work. I have it up and running at bcw142.zapto.org (telnet 23, ssh 22) using the GD command and no extension on the filename. Whatsnew shows:
+ Mystic's random display file system now also will include letters a-z,
allowing up to 36 randomly selected display files per filename, up from
11. It works the same as before. If myansi.an1 exists, then Mystic
will randomly select any file that exists in the myansi.an0-myansi.an9
range or myansi.ana-myansi.anz range. For OSes with case sensitive
filenames, the extensions are always lowercased. They do not have to be
in any order, just .an1 has to exist to "trigger" the random system:

myansi.ans
myansi.an1
myansi.anz
myansi.an5

I've tested 'logoff' with logoff.ans-logoff.an6 in text as random targets.
I had some issues with it flashing by too fast for multi-screen ANSIs, I had to add a GT |PA after the GD text/logoff to make it work right most of the time. I haven't tried it on Linux64 yet, but it works on the Pi which is Linux32. I likely need to open it up with more than 7 ANSIs, but it does work under A39.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A39 2018/04/21 (Raspberry Pi/32)
* Origin: Mystic Pi BBS bcw142.zapto.org (21:1/145)