Subj : Comparing UserLastOn with modification date of file (MPL)
To   : All
From : boraxman
Date : Tue Feb 15 2022 10:40 pm

I am trying to work out a persistent issue I am having with the latest Mystic BBS version, Mystic 1.12 Alpha 47.

I am running this on a Raspberry Pi, on the EXT4 filesystem.  The issue is that the new bulletin notifications do not work as expected.  Mystic almost always fails to detect when a bulletin is new.

I tried a different package to display bulletins, "BULLS - Mystic Bulletins Alternative" by Gary Crunk, version 1.0, and it has has the exact opposite problem, it always considered the bulletins as new, regardless of how many times one has logged in since updating the file.

I suspect the problem is the comparison between the UserLastOn and the date of the file.

Bulletin.mps which comes with mystic does the comparison as such

If DirTime > DateU2D(UserLastOn) And Upper(Copy(DirName, 1,
) - 1)) <> 'BULLETIN' Then Begin      

The bulls.mps from the BULLS package, does it this way
     
if UserLastOn > GetFileDate(Entry.Bullfile) then S:='*NEW*'
if UserLastOn < GetFileDate(Entry.Bullfile) then S:='     '

The reverse order of the comparison in the second examples is why bulls.mps
always says its new, whereas bulletin.mps always says its old.  These values
are not valid values, and I don't know why.  UserLastOn seems to always be less than the filedate.

Either the UserLastOn is incorrect, or the filedate.  However, I'm not sure how
to print these values, or determine whether the functions are returning valid results.

I barely know MPL.  If someone knows how I can print out the date, or see the values, I'll be closer to troubleshooting and solving this problem.

By the way, the function in BULLS.MPS to get the file date is below

Function GetFileDate (F : String) : LongInt
Begin
 FindFirst (F, 7)
  TempLI:=DirTime
 FindClose
  GetFileDate:=TempLI
End

Regards,
BoraxMan

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
 * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

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