Sysop Panel

ib-sysop is a desktop window for a sysop or League Coordinator. It shows a board's league state and runs the game's maintenance commands. It is not for playing the game.

It builds for Windows, Linux and macOS. It needs a desktop, so it does not run on a server you reach only over SSH.

Getting it

Each release from v0.2.1 on has an ib-sysop archive for every platform, beside the game's own archives, and so does the development snapshot. Unpack it in the same place as the game archive: both unpack into the same folder, so ib-sysop ends up next to immortal-barons. The Homebrew formula installs both programs.

On macOS, a downloaded binary is blocked until you remove the quarantine flag:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ib-sysop

To build it from the source instead, run this in the top folder of the repository:

go build -C cmd/ib-sysop -buildmode=pie -o ../..

This puts ib-sysop next to immortal-barons, which the panel runs for every command. Keep the two together.

• Windows: nothing else is needed. You can also build it on Linux with GOOS=windows (amd64 or 386).
• macOS: needs Xcode's command-line tools.
• Linux: needs cgo and these headers (Debian and Ubuntu package names):

libwayland-dev libx11-dev libx11-xcb-dev libxkbcommon-x11-dev libgles2-mesa-dev
libegl1-mesa-dev libffi-dev libxcursor-dev libvulkan-dev libxfixes-dev

Starting it

ib-sysop [DATADIR ...]

Each game data directory opens in its own tab. Open… adds another tab. It takes the data directory itself, or the door folder that holds it as data/.

With no arguments, the panel opens the tabs that were open when it last closed, at the same size. It keeps this in your user config directory (immortal-barons/ib-sysop.json), never in a data directory.

A saved folder that does not open, such as a drive that is not mounted yet, stays on the list for the next start. Forget removes it.

A− and A+ at the top right make the text and spacing smaller or larger. Ctrl+minus, Ctrl+plus and Ctrl+0 do the same (Cmd on macOS). Ctrl+0 goes back to the default size, 125%.

Light, Dark and System at the top right choose the colors. System follows your desktop's light or dark setting, and checks it again every minute. When the desktop does not say, System is light. The panel remembers your choice.

If the panel ever closes on its own, the reason is written to immortal-barons/ib-sysop-crash.log in the same user config directory (%AppData% on Windows). Each tab's Run view shows the full path. Please send that file with a bug report.

The views

Each tab has five views. Click a column heading to sort by it. Click it again to reverse the order.

• Boards: every other board in the league, as the -bbsinfo report lists it. It also shows how long each board has been silent, its average packet round trip, and when a probe last came back. The status is a word (ok, never heard, below min, other rules, held), not only a color. held means the board's latest packet was held rather than applied; an old held file from before the board upgraded does not count. "Held since" says when that hold began. A hold kept by an older version has no recorded time, so it shows when its file arrived instead ("arrived …").
• In flight: every strike, terrorist operation, special operation, trade bid and trade deal that left this board and has no answer yet. Each row shows when the lost-forces timer will give it up. An item stays here for the whole round trip, which is usually hours.

• Held packets: the files in the held directory, why each one is held, when it expires, and whether it pauses the lost-forces timer. The buttons above the table list each reason with its count: pick one, then Hide it or Show only it; Show all brings every row back. This changes the view only, not the files.

• Run: runs one immortal-barons command and shows its output as it runs. Detailed adds -detailed, and is grayed out for commands that ignore it. The League Coordinator's commands appear only on node #1. The two that act on every board, -league-freeze and -league-reset, ask before they run.

• bbs.cfg: the board's bbs.cfg. Edit in default editor opens it in your desktop's default editor. When the panel cannot find one, it says so and names the file. A board with no bbs.cfg gets one written from its current settings before the editor opens. The view reads the file again when it changes.

Each table has a Copy button that puts it on the clipboard as tab-separated text, sorted as shown, with the headings first. It pastes into a message or a spreadsheet. The Run tab's Copy log and the bbs.cfg tab's Copy do the same for their text.

What it changes

It never writes the world. A refresh takes the world lock, reads, and lets go, the same as a door node that only reads. It holds the lock for a few milliseconds, so callers do not notice it. A refresh started during -maint waits for -maint to finish. Auto-refresh is off by default and runs once a minute.

The only file it may write in a data directory is bbs.cfg, and only when the board has none and you click Edit.

Every command is the immortal-barons program, run as a separate process with -data set to that tab's directory. The panel looks for the program in its own folder first, then on PATH. The Program box on the Run view changes that.

Use a game from the same release as the panel. An older immortal-barons ignores Detailed with -maint, and says nothing about it.

Stop ends the command. You lose that run and nothing else: the game writes each file in one step, and its lock ends when it does.