tbamud/doc/admin.txt

If you have any additions, corrections, ideas, or bug reports please stop by the
Builder Academy at telnet://tbamud.com:9091 or email rumble@tbamud.com -- Rumble

The tbaMUD Administrator’s Manual 
Originally by Jeremy Elson 

This document describes how to configure tbaMUD and how to compile it for the 
first time. It also discusses how to run the server including documentation of 
command-line options, a description of system logs and how to use them, and a 
description of daily and long-term maintenance required by the MUD. The 
intended audience is implementors new to tbaMUD or MUD administration in 
general. 

More information about tbaMUD, can be found at http://tbamud.com. 

Contents 

1 Welcome to tbaMUD!

1.1 Background and Introduction
1.2 Are you a Player or an Administrator?
1.3 So, you’re sure you want to run your own MUD?
1.4 Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

2 Getting Started
2.1 Section Requirements
2.2 Downloading and Unpacking the Source
2.3 Configuring tbaMUD
2.4 Compiling tbaMUD

3 Running tbaMUD
3.1 Execution and autorun
3.2 Command-Line Options
3.3 Creating an Implementor Character

4 Customizing tbaMUD
4.1 CEDIT and config.c
4.2 TEDIT and Text Files
4.3 World Files

5 System Logs
5.1 Player Information
5.2 Usage Information
5.3 Errors

6 MUD Maintenance
6.1 Technical Maintenance
6.2 Diplomatic Maintenance

7 Final Thoughts

1 Welcome to tbaMUD! 

1.1 Background and Introduction 
tbaMUD is a derivative of DikuMud, the Multi-User Dungeon developed at DIKU, 
the Department of Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen. The original
circleMUD, version 1.0, was run by Jeremy Elson at the Johns Hopkins 
University’s Department of Computer Science with moderate popularity from 
January until September of 1992. The version 1.0 code, which was never released
to the public, was archived and remained inactive for several months after the 
death of the original CircleMUD. In the summer of 1993, it was taken out of 
storage and cleaned up with the intention of making it a public code base that 
anyone could freely download and use to start a MUD. Version 2.0, the first 
publicly available version, was released in June of 1993. CircleMUD was
maintained as a public code base until 2002 with the final release of CircleMUD
3.1. After development stagnated for 3 years The Builder Academy offered to 
take over development. After a 4th year of no continued development The Builder 
Academy released circleMUD 3.5 in 2006. Soon after Jeremy Elson requested we 
change the codebase name. Even though we still follow the CircleMUD vision we 
agreed and the codebase is now known as tbaMUD. The Builder Academy is open to
anyone willing to learn how to build or start their own MUD. 

Thousands of carefully spent hours have gone into the development of this 
codebase, but it is not a finished product – it is only a beginning. It has 
only a small number of spells and skills, and only the 4 original DikuMud 
classes. From a gamer’s point of view, it pales in comparison to other MUDs 
which have dozens of spells spread over a dozen classes, and a rich palette of 
skills. Yet from a programmer’s point of view, tbaMUD is very highly developed.
While the look and feel of the original DikuMud has been maintained, most of 
the underlying code and many of the structures have been optimized, reworked, 
or completely redesigned to be efficient, compact, and easily changeable and 
extensible. Dozens of features which have become standard in the MUDding 
world over the past few years, although they were not part of the original
DikuMud release, were added to tbaMUD as well. 

The result is that tbaMUD is a launching pad for your own MUD ideas. Our hope
in releasing it is that it will free potential MUD implementors from having to
worry about dealing with bug-ridden code or wasting time reinventing the wheel 
by re-coding standard MUD features, allowing them to devote more effort towards
creatively shaping tbaMUD into their own unique vision of how a MUD should look
and feel. The reason why tbaMUD has so few specialized spells, skills, classes,
and races is to encourage implementors just like you to create your own 
unique system instead of just another stock MUD that everyone has seen before. 

So, it is with this message that we inflict our code on the world: don’t just 
put another generic MUD on the Net – give us something new and exciting, and 
have as much fun as possible in the process! 

1.2 Are you a Player or an Administrator? 
If you’ve never played a MUD before, jumping right in and trying to run one of 
your own will probably just get you hopelessly confused. Instead of trying to 
compile and run the tbaMUD package yourself (which is presumably what you’re 
trying to do if you’re reading this document), you should play someone else’s 
copy of tbaMUD first to become familiar with the codebase.

1.3 So, you’re sure you want to run your own MUD? 
If you’re already an old hand at playing MUDs and you’ve decided you want to 
start one of your own, here is our advice: sleep on it, try several other MUDs
first. Work your way up to an admin position and see what running a MUD is 
really about. It is not all fun and games. You actually have to deal with
people, you have to babysit the players, and be constantly nagged about things
you need to do or change. Running a MUD is extremely time consuming if you do
it well, if you are not going to do it well then don't bother. Just playing 
MUDs is masochistic enough, isn’t it? Or are you trying to shave that extra 
point off your GPA, jump down that one last notch on your next job evaluation, 
or get rid of that pesky Significant Other for good? If you think silly 
distractions like having friends and seeing daylight are preventing you from 
realizing your full potential in the MUD world, being a MUD Administrator is
the job for you. 

Don’t get me wrong: running a production MUD can be great fun. It can also be 
overburdened by politics and plagued by spiteful players devoted to making your
life difficult, and otherwise be a highly frustrating endeavour. That’s why I 
started The Builder Academy and develop the tbaMUD codebase. The enjoyment of
MUDding without the pesky players!

1.4 Giving Credit Where Credit is Due 
If I haven’t scared you away yet, and you’re still sure you want to use tbaMUD,
please stop for a moment and look at the license in the file license.txt. It 
outlines the terms under which you must use tbaMUD. 

The license is simple. It boils down to the message, “Don’t rip off other 
people’s work.” Unfortunately, this simple message ended up becoming somewhat 
long-winded because I am trying to prevent people from abusing DikuMud in the 
future as they have in the past. 

Also, out of courtesy if nothing else, please keep the credits file intact. You 
can add your own credits on top of the existing file, but I’d appreciate it if 
you would not simply remove it and all references to the word “Circle” 
everywhere in the MUD. How would you feel if someone took your code and then 
took credit for it? 

USE OF THIS SOFTWARE IN ANY CAPACITY IMPLIES THAT YOU HAVE READ, UNDERSTOOD, 
AND AGREED TO ABIDE BY THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS SET DOWN BY THE LICENSE. 

2 Getting Started 

2.1 Section Requirements 
tbaMUD was originally written as UNIX software and will automatically configure
itself (using GNU autoconf) and compile under most versions of UNIX, both BSD
and System V derivatives, including Mac OS X. With minor adjustments 
(documented below), the same source should compile under Microsoft Windows, IBM
OS/2, and the Amiga. Users have also reported getting tbaMUD to compile and run
under MkLinux, the port of Linux to the Power Macintosh. tbaMUD will not work
under DOS, Windows 3.x, Windows for Workgroups 3.x, or Mac System. Specifically,
the following variants of UNIX have been tested and are known to work with tbaMUD: 

SunOS 4.1.4 
Solaris 2.3 and above
Irix 5.2, 6.2 
AIX 3.2 
Ultrix 4.x 
HP-UX 9.x 
Linux 1.x, 2.x 
BSD/OS 2.1 
Mac OS X (10.0 and above) 

If your system is not listed, don’t despair; because of the autoconf program, 
tbaMUD will compile under most versions of UNIX on its own. A large effort was 
made to make tbaMUD more portable by converting many of its system calls over
to POSIX compliance. Converting tbaMUD to POSIX vastly helps portability on 
modern operating systems, most of which are POSIX-compliant. Unfortunately, 
on some older systems that are not (such as NextSTEP 2.x), it may be more 
difficult to compile than it was to compile earlier versions of the code. 
(POSIX stands for Portable Operating System Interface for UNIX and is an effort
to standardize the way UNIX programs talk to the operating system. For more 
information, see Stevens’ excellent book, Advanced Programming in the UNIX 
Environment.) 

For a small, private MUD, or a MUD used only for testing and development, about
20 MB of disk space and 32 MB of memory should be sufficient. For large, public
MUDs with a large player base, 30 to 50MB of disk space and at least 50 MB of 
memory are recommended. Free memory is much more important than CPU speed; 
tbaMUD uses virtually no CPU time. 

Historically, tbaMUD has always been developed under different variants of UNIX.
The original CircleMUD was run on a DECstation 3100 running Ultrix 4.0, which
remained Circle’s development platform until v2.0. Starting with v2.0, Circle 
was developed under various versions of Linux and Solaris over the years 
ranging from Linux 0.99.11 through the current Linux 2.2.x and including 
Solaris x86 5.6. 

2.2 Downloading and Unpacking the Source 
The first step in setting up tbaMUD is to make sure you have the most recent 
version of the source. You can always find the most recent version of the 
source at tbaMUD’s official website http://tbamud.com.

Next, unpack the archive. If you have the .tar.gz version, unpack it using gzip
(GNU unzip) and the tar archiver. If you don’t already have them, both of these
utilities can be downloaded from the GNU FTP site <ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/>.
To unpack the archive on a UNIX system, type: 

gzip -dc tbaMUD-xxx.tar.gz | tar xvf 

If you downloaded the .zip version, make sure to use an UNZIP program capable 
of handling long filenames and which preserves the original directory structure
of the archive.

For the next few sections, please note that the Cygnus Tools (Cygwin) are 
available for the Windows platform, which allow users to use Unix tools on that
operating system. 

2.3 Configuring tbaMUD 
Note: This section applies only to UNIX users. If you’re using Windows, OS/2, or
the Amiga, read README.WIN, README.OS2 or README.AMIGA instead. 

tbaMUD must be configured using the configure program which attempts to guess 
correct  values for various system-dependent variables used during compilation.
It uses those values to create Makefiles and a header file called conf.h. 

From tbaMUD’s root directory, simply type 

./configure 

If you’re using csh, it may not execute “configure” properly, giving you an
error message like “Permission denied”. If this occurs, try “sh ./configure”
instead. 

configure can take several minutes to run if you’re using a slow computer. It 
will print out various status messages while it works, telling you what 
characteristics of your computer it has found. It should create two Makefiles 
(src/Makefile and src/util/Makefile) and one header file (src/conf.h). 

You should only need to run configure once – right after you unpack tbaMUD from
its archive. You will probably compile the source dozens of times as you add 
new features, but configure only needs to be run before the first time you 
compile. Please note that there is one exception to this rule: if you move your
MUD to a different computer, you must run configure again before you can 
recompile the source code. To rerun configure after moving the source, make 
sure to delete the file called config.cache and then run configure again. 

2.4 Compiling tbaMUD 
Note: This section applies only to UNIX or Cygwin users. If you’re using
windows, OS/2, or the Amiga, read README.WIN, README.OS2, or README.AMIGA instead. 

The src directory contains the source code for the main MUD server; src/util has
the source for a dozen or so MUD maintenance utilities. There are two Makefiles,
one in each source directory, but all compiling is normally performed from the 
src directory only. To compile the only tbaMUD server itself, type “make”. 
Use “make utils” to compile the utilities, or “make all” to compile both the 
server and the utilities. It is also possible to compile individual 
utilities from the src/util directory: from src/util, type “make 
[utility-name]”. All compiled binaries go to the bin directory. 

The stock (unmodified) tbaMUD code should compile with no warnings or errors. 

Despite my best efforts there’s a chance that you’ll have problems compiling 
tbaMUD if you’re using some version of UNIX that I’ve never seen before. It’s 
impossible to give general advice on how to port software, except to say that 
you should ask a friend who knows a lot about both UNIX and C to help you. 
Also, if you have problems, you should definitely look at the tbaMUD FAQ 
(Frequently Asked Questions list with Answers), which you’ll find in tbaMUD’s 
/doc directory. 

If you do port tbaMUD to some other platform successfully, please share your 
hard work with others by sending a description of what you had to do to get 
tbaMUD to compile on your system to rumble@tbamud.com. Be sure to include the 
specific name of your operating system and hardware. Full details on porting to
a new system can be found in Porting.txt. 

The Makefile directs all compiled programs to the /bin directory. Although not 
recommended, you may want to put tbaMUD’s /bin directory in your $PATH. The 
reason that this is not recommended is that most of the resources are 
referenced using relative paths, and thus require that you run the programs
from the base tbaMUD directory. 

3 Running tbaMUD 
Note: This section applies only to UNIX or Cygwin users. If you’re using 
Windows, OS/2, or the Amiga, read README.WIN, README.OS2, or EADME.AMIGA
instead. 

3.1 Execution and autorun 
1. type ’autorun &’ 
2. Wait a few moments for the server to boot. 
3. type: telnet localhost 4000 
tbaMUD should always be run from tbaMUD’s “root” directory, not the /bin 
directory. You can run it manually by typing bin/circle (useful for testing and
debugging). For running the game “for real,” it is better to use the autorun 
shell script provided in tbaMUD’s root directory. 

Autorun lets tbaMUD run itself for long periods of time. It continuously runs 
the game as well as removing old system logs, moving newer system logs to the 
log directory, and saving certain log entries to permanent files. 

Autorun can be controlled by creating files with certain names. You can use the 
’touch’ command to create a file, and, of course, the ’rm’ command to remove a 
file. If a file called ’.fastboot’ exists, the tbaMUD will reboot immediately
if it crashes or is shut down instead of waiting 40 seconds as it normally does.
A file called ’.killscript’ will cause the script to terminate itself; i.e. if 
you want to bring the game down. If you want to temporarily prevent the MUD 
from rebooting, create a file called “pause”; the script will go into a wait 
loop until ’pause’ is removed. 

Although you can create these files manually, the shutdown command from within 
the MUD has several options which will create these files for you. See the 
shutdown help entry for more information. 

3.2 Command-Line Options 
tbaMUD recognizes a number of command-line options. You can use them by actually
specifying them on the command-line when running tbaMUD manually or, by adding 
them to the FLAGS variable in your autorun script to use the options 
automatically every time you run the MUD with autorun. 

The syntax is: 
circle [-m] [-q] [-r] [-s] [-d <path>] [-p] 

-m Mini-Mud Mode. Mini-mud will be one of your most powerful debugging tools; it 
causes tbaMUD to boot with an abridged world, cutting the boot time down to a 
few seconds. It is useful for testing features which are not world-related (i.e, 
new commands or spells). tbaMUD uses split world files (in the lib/world 
hierarchy); each directory (i.e. wld, obj, mob, shp, trg, and zon) has a file 
called "index" which specifies which files should be loaded at boot-time. The 
file "index.mini" specifies which parts of the world should be loaded with the 
-m option. 

-q Quick Boot. Prevents checking of timed out object files. Every time tbaMUD 
boots, it checks every object file to see if it has timed out; if so, it is 
deleted. This is done primarily to save disk space. If time is more important 
to you than space, use the -q option. -q is automatically activated when you 
use -m. 

-r Restricted Game. Allows you to decide at run-time whether or not the game 
will allow new characters to be created. Using -r is equivalent to typing 
"wizlock 1."

-s Special Routines Disabled. Allows you to suppress the assigning and calling
of all mobile, object, and world special procedures. Historically used as a 
debugging tool in conjunction with the -d option (see below), but now obsolete
because tbaMUD checks to make sure entities exist before attempting to assign a
special procedure to them. 

-d Data Directory. Useful as a debugging and development tool, if you want to
keep one or more sets of game data in addition to the standard set, and choose 
which set is to be used at runtime. For example, you may wish to make a copy of
the entire world in a separate directory, so that you can test additions to the 
world files without subjecting players to unnecessary hazards. The default data 
directory is ’lib.’ Any core dumps (may they never happen to you!) will take 
place in the selected data directory. 

-p Port Selection. Allows you to choose on which port the game is to listen 
for connections. The default port is 4000, which is historically the port used 
by most DikuMuds. You can change the default in CEDIT and the PORT= line of the
autorun script. (The PORT= line of config.c is ignored if it is set in CEDIT.)
The port specified on the command line or by the autorun script will take 
precedence over the port specified in CEDIT or config.c. 

3.3 Creating an Implementor Character 
The first character to log in to the MUD will be made the maximum (Implementor)
level. If you log in and aren’t made an implementor, then the playerfile 
probably is not empty – take the MUD down, delete the index at 
tbamud\lib\plrfiles, and start the MUD again. You should fix your stats using 
the RESTORE command when you first create the character (i.e. type "RESTORE 
<your-name>". 

Once you are logged in as an implementor, type WIZHELP for a list of privileged 
commands. In-depth helpfiles exist for all commands.

To create additional wizard characters, log them in normally as level 1. Then, 
advance them using your implementor character, using the ADVANCE command.

4 Customizing tbaMUD 
Once you get over the initial euphoria of having your own MUD compile and run 
successfully for the first time, you should be aware of some of the files which
control how tbaMUD looks and feels so that you can configure it for your 
personal taste. 

4.1 CEDIT and config.c 
The first thing you should do is test out the online configuration editor; 
CEDIT. Go through all of the menus and setup your MUD as you desire. This will
cover loadrooms, messages, PK, PT, etc. CEDIT replaces the required manual 
editing of config.c, make, and reboot. But you should be familiar with both. 
CEDIT info is saved and takes precedence over settings in config.c

4.2 TEDIT and Text Files 
The lib/text directory contains all of the text files read by players. All of 
these files can be edited online by using the text editor TEDIT. The most
visible file is “motd”, (Message Of The Day), which is the message that mortals 
see (though not necessarily read!) when they log in. Similarly, the “imotd” 
(Immortal MOTD) is seen by immortals when they log in. Other interesting 
files are “news” (for the NEWS command), “help” (for the HELP command with no 
arguments), and others. 

One file is particularly important: “policy”. Despite what anyone tells you, 
and your best efforts to the contrary, your MUD will have political problems. 
If anyone tells you that you can run a MUD without politics, they’re wrong. If
you tell your players that you’re going to run a revolutionary MUD that doesn’t
have any politics, you’re lying. Every MUD has political problems sooner or 
later. Unfortunately, this usually occurs “sooner”. There are various ways to 
make political problems easier to handle, but the best way is to decide on some 
ground rules from the very beginning, and then set those decisions down in 
writing. That’s what the “policy” file is for. You probably know what kind of 
political problems MUDs have (you are not trying to run a MUD without ever 
having played one, are you!?) – stuff like playerkilling, thieving, kill 
stealing, client use, multiplaying, reimbursements, etc. Decide on your 
policies early and make sure your characters know what those policies are. 

It is also important to write down a set of rules dictating what immortals are 
allowed to do and not allowed to do. That’s what the “handbook” (Immortal 
handbook) is for. Immortals will always try to bend you as far as they can, so 
it’s important for you to decide on answers to questions before those questions 
come up. Can immortals assist players? What about giving a single ’cure light’ 
for a player about to die? Can immortals kill mobiles for their own enjoyment? 
Can they kill players for the same reason? Are they allowed to make policy? 
Break policy? Moderate disputes? Turn over each others’ decisions? 

4.3 World Files 
The root of the area hierarchy is lib/world/. lib/world/ has 6 subdirectories: 
wld, mob, obj, shp, trg, and zon, which is where the world, mobile, object, 
shop, trigger, and zone files go, respectively. 

Each directory has a set of world files in it with the appropriate extension 
(i.e. the obj subdir will have a bunch of files ending with “.obj”, such as 
30.obj, 31.obj, etc.) plus two special files called “index” and “index.mini”. 
“index” is a list of which world files are to be loaded by tbaMUD. New zones
can be added in game with the "zedit new" command. “index.mini” controls which 
(smaller) set of world files should be loaded in the debugging mode (Mini-Mud 
Mode, explained below.) 

5 System Logs 
tbaMUD writes a wide variety of information to standard output and standard 
error. If you’re using the autorun script, the boot messages are put into a 
file called “syslog”. During tbaMUD’s boot sequence, the system log keeps a 
record of everything the MUD is doing to initialize itself; this can be useful 
to determine what the problem is if the MUD dies while it is booting. Once the 
game is up and running, the syslog contains player information, recording when 
players connect, disconnect, rent, unrent, quit, die, hit death traps, etc. The 
game also records status information about itself, falling generally into two 
categories: usage information and errors. 

5.1 Player Information 
The player information recorded by tbaMUD’s system logs will serve you very well 
as your players start to make wild claims about strange bugs resulting in them 
losing equipment or points. Many mudders prey on the insecurities of a new mud 
administrator who is terrified that his or her MUD is riddled with bugs and 
will do anything to satisfy grumpy players – don’t let yourself fall into that 
trap! tbaMUD is bound to contain bugs, but most of the core systems have been 
well tested, so you should take claims such as “I magically lost all my stuff!”
with a grain of salt and check your system logs. 

If a player ever asks you for reimbursement of equipment, money, gold, 
experience points (XP), or whatever, your gut reaction should always be to 
check the logs first. 

As a sidebar, let me point out that the value of system logs is twofold: 1) 
they actually provide you with valuable information, and 2) they make your 
players paranoid. When I first started mudding and I heard about this 
mysterious “system log”, it made me incredibly paranoid. Now that I’ve done a 
good deal of MUD administration, I’ve seen the same paranoia in many other 
players. 

That paranoia is a very good thing. The system logs become an abstract and 
shapeless but omnipresent force on the MUD. Players hear about “the System Log”
and then get paranoid that everything they do is being recorded, so they tend 
to behave, lest the evil System Log betray their wrongdoings to the Gods. 

For this reason, when you go to check your logs, it’s a good idea to say something
like “Hold on... let me go check the system logs, OK?” because it reinforces the
syslog’s presence in the collective psyche of your players. 

Back to the point. When someone claims that they’ve been wronged by the evil 
system, always check the logs. The logs give you power to say things like “What
do you mean your items disappeared in rent? It says right here in the logs 
‘Rasmussen has quit the game.’ You did not rent at all, you just quit!” 

To diffuse disputes such as, “The game dumped my stuff, but I had enough 
money!!” or “I logged in and my stuff was gone, there must be a bug!!”, two 
types of log entries are written. First, every time a character rents, the log 
records the character’s per diem rent rate as well as the total amount of money 
on hand and in the bank. Second, the log records makes a record of all 
characters’ equipment dumped due to insufficient funds. 

Remember, rent is specified as a daily rate but is amortized on a per-second 
basis! In other words, if you rent at the rate of 100 coins per day and come 
back 36 hours later, you’ll be charged 150 coins. Or you can be nice and leave
rent disabled.

The autorunscript saves 6 levels of raw system logs. In addition, it greps the 
logs for certain pieces of extra-juicy information to save indefinitely. 

The system logs are your friends. Love them. 

5.2 Usage Information 
Every 5 minutes, the game counts how many people are playing and records that 
information in the system log. Optionally, if you define RUSAGE in comm.c, it 
will also record system resource information such as CPU time and memory used. 
The usage information currently logged by tbaMUD is, as you can see, somewhat 
sparse; local MUD admins are encouraged to add to this code as is appropriate 
for their particular site. 

Usage information isn’t critical, but it is interesting to look at the usage 
patterns to determine when your peak playing hours are. If you’re good at using
‘cut’ and other Unix utilities, you can even dazzle your friends by graphing 
your MUD’s system usage. 

Note: friends not included with the tbaMUD distribution. 

5.3 Errors 
Just as your first gut instinct should be to look at the logs if a player starts
begging you for something, your first gut instinct in the event of a crash or 
unexpected shutdown should also be to look at the system logs. 

A Unix utility called ‘tail’ is used to look at the last few lines of a text 
file; it is very useful for looking at the last entries in the system log to 
see the last thing that happened before the shutdown. This can be done in game
with the "file" command by using the "file crash" option. Often, tbaMUD will 
report an error in the logs just before it crashes. This method is particularly
useful if the MUD crashes during its boot sequence, because the logging during 
boot is intensive. 

If tbaMUD shuts down unexpectedly and there is no core dump in the /lib 
directory, the game probably detected an internal error and killed itself. Such
shutdowns are always preceded by entries in the system log describing the error.

If there is no error message at the end of the log, then there probably IS a 
core dump, so you can use ‘gdb’ to examine the core dump and determine the 
reason for the crash. The file hacker.txt, generously provided by Furey of MERC
Industries, offers useful insight into the art and science of debugging – you’d 
be well advised to give it a look-see. 

tbaMUD sometimes encounters a serious but non-fatal error; in this case, the 
error will be written to the system log with the prefix SYSERR, but the MUD 
will not shut itself down. You should always be aware of any SYSERRs which occur
– they are often useful for foreseeing imminent danger or averting problems 
before they become critical. If a SYSERR does occur, try to determine if a 
change you’ve made recently has caused it. Ignoring SYSERRs is like ignoring 
compiler warnings: you can be tempted to ignore them because the game keeps 
going even if they exist, but you can easily get yourself into trouble by not 
listening. The autorun script saves all SYSERRs to the file log/errors. 

6 MUD Maintenance 
6.1 Technical Maintenance 
Once you get the MUD up and running, you will surely want to modify it – adding
new areas, new features, new code, and new ideas, however these topics are 
beyond the scope of this document. See coding.txt, building.txt, and other 
documents in the /doc directory and online at http://tbamud.com. This section 
focuses on some of the simple maintenance that’ll be necessary to keep your MUD 
running smoothly. Make sure not to get so caught up in being a God that you 
forgot you’re also supposed to be acting as a software engineer! 

First, you should look at the log/errors file regularly to make sure there are 
no recurring problems, particularly problems that may have been caused by code 
you’ve added. If the MUD crashes, it will usually generate what is called a 
“core dump” – a big file called “core.#” in your lib directory, created by the 
operating system to record the state the game was in the moment before it 
crashed. You should look at the core dump using a debugger such as “gdb” to
determine why the MUD crashed. See the file “hacker.txt” for more information 
about debugging. 

6.2 Diplomatic Maintenance 
Okay, so now you have your wonderful tbaMUD up and running smoothly and all is 
right with the world. Right? Wrong. 

Well, technically, right. tbaMUD requires very little day-to-day attention in 
order to keep the program itself running smoothly. But the MUD itself is just a
series of instructions running on a computer, processing data. Never lose sight
of the fact that there will be dozens, hundreds, or maybe even thousands of 
people connecting to your MUD – and they are not programs. They are people! 

From the technical side, there are relatively few things you have to do to keep 
the game running. But you cannot just dump a MUD on the Internet and then ignore
it! Spend time on your MUD. Try to keep up with the boards, and make an effort 
to respond to the complaints. Take a look at the ‘bug’, ‘typo’, and ‘idea’ files
from time to time – and respond to some of the ideas using Mudmail. Try to 
respond to Mudmail you receive from players in a timely manner. Make sure that 
your ‘news’, ‘policy’ and other text files are up-to date and suit the political
climate on your MUD. 

If you cannot or just do not want to deal with the player politics, make sure 
that you choose someone who can and will, and make them responsible for dealing
with it. If no one does it, your MUD will stagnate and die. 

7 Final Thoughts 
Try to remember that running a MUD should be fun. It can sometimes be easy to
lose sight of the ultimate goal of personal enjoyment that MUDs are supposed to
provide, particularly when MUDs start to get crushed under the weight of their 
own politics or the egos of the administrators. If you find that your MUD is 
more of a source of frustration than enjoyment, don’t be afraid to close it. 

Good luck with your MUD! Always feel free to email or stop by The Builder
Academy and let us know what you think of the MUD, and the interesting things 
you’ve done with it. We cannot promise a timely response, but we love hearing 
from people who are using our code. 

For further information and updates check out http://tbamud.com.