To use this menu, simply telnet into your account and type 'menu' at the unix prompt.

I.   Double-Check The Bots

A common mistake is to not see your bot on IRC, and assume that it is not actually launched on the server itself. In many cases this is false.

To double check to see if your bot process is running, type ps -x at the unix prompt. If your bot is running in the background, you will see something that looks like the following examples :

1. /usr/local/bin/eggdrop/bot./egg.config(egg.config)
   
2. ./eggdropegg.config
   
3. botegg.config
   

Need to know how to kill your bot dead? Click HERE.

II.   The Botchk Test

A great way to actually see what the real problem is, is to run BOTCHK just like CRONTAB does. Type the following at the SATEXAS Unix prompt, from inside your bot directory.

./botchk (Period - Slash - botchk)

1. Your bot fires up, which means you have a problem with CRONTAB itself. See the section below regarding the CRONTAB file.
2. You get an error, which means your BOTCHK file, or more likely, your eggdrop config file isn't configured correctly. Follow the next sections below.

III.   Config File - Special Characters

This is the most common error. If you edit your config file in DOS (Windows), and have ftp'd it back onto SATEXAS (Unix), depending on the editor you used (Wordpad, notepad, etc), you might have line breaks inserted in the file. They appear as ^M at the end of each line in UNIX. If the very first line in your eggdrop config file has a ^M at the end of it, BOTCHK/CRONTAB will FAIL.

Why? Because DOS/Windows sees it as a end-of-line character, but Unix translates it as a special character symbol, meaning something.

To check this, simply use vi (Do NOT use pico), a unix editor, to view the file, and see if these special characters have corrupted your file. If so, you have 2 choices :

1. Upload your file from your pc to the server using ASCII mode (not default auto or binary modes)
2. Edit it using vi and manually remove the ^M

What SHOULD my config file look like :

GOOD :!/usr/local/bin/eggdrop/bot
BAD :!/usr/local/bin/eggdrop/bot^M

We fully suggest that if your editor at home is causing the file to end with ^M (which look fine in windows, but show up in Unix), that you switch or experiment with other windows editors.

IV.   Config File - The Correct Settings

1. It's very important that the first line of your bots configuration file is the full path to the bot's executable file. Here are some examples :
   • #!/usr/local/bin/eggdrop/bot (Internal bot)
   • #!/usr2/home/efnet/login/bot4.4/eggdrop
   • #!/usr2/home/undernet/login/mybotdir/eggdrop

     To get your full path, type 'pwd' at the unix prompt.

   The most common mistake here is to put the full path to your bots directory, but leave off the executable file itself.

2. The other item to check in the config file is the following line.
   setusername:"loginname"

   The above name loginname, needs to be your actual login name (which you use in telnet), not your bot's nick.

A rare but known mistake. If your config file (whatever it's named) does not have executable file rights, it will fail botchk.

Double-check the file permissions on the files to make extra-sure they are correct by typing the following commands :

chmod+xegg.config
chmod+xbotchk

VI.   Botchk File Issues

If you have incorrectly answered any of the questions in the menu's automatic installation program, this will also cause your botchk to fail.

Your user name and config file can not have any special characters in the name. Unix reserves these special characters in script language as special expressions, and the botchk file is considered a script. Try to use only Alpha-Numeric. This is stated in the SATEXAS default botchk file for your protection.

In our examples below, the italicized words need to be substituted with your file names and settings.

botdir="Bot4.2"
botname="botnick"
userfile="Bot.user"

VII.   Editing CronTab

To go into edit mode on your CRONTAB, type the following :

crontab-e

Make changes to your crontab file to look similar to the following :
(All on one line!)

4,14,24,34,44,54****/usr2/home/efnet/Bot4.3/botchk>/dev/null2>&1

This tells the cron daemon to check every ten minutes to see if the bot is running and if it isn't, to restart it. These numbers may look funny to you, but we chose those minutes of the hour because most people do it exactly at 0, 10, 20, etc. The reason for this is to help the server out by not constantly being bogged down at those exact minutes.

Once you have added that one line, save and close the file.

To check to make sure you even have a crontab entry, you can type crontab-l at the SATEXAS Unix prompt.

VIII.   The Big Test

Kill or stop your bot, and wait for it to refire back up. Since CRONTAB is programmed to run every 10 minutes, you need to wait at least that long before worrying.

Need to know how to kill your bot dead from unix, or check processes? Click HERE.