Hey folks. I recently updated Synchronet to 3.21e on my machine by downloading the sbup321e.zip and extracting the contents over my existing install. I had been running 3.19 prior. My host VM is a Windows 10 32bit environment and the prior version had been running just fine for a while. Every since the upgrade I am having some pretty major stability problems. The first thing I noticed is that in the Synchronet Control Panel GUI the Terminal Server Buttons and text which state Running NT Service flash every couple of seconds. Additionally. if I attempt to stop the service the "sbbsNTsvcs.exe" hangs and I have to manually kill it. Also, after a a day or so the service stops accepting any kind of inbound connections.

I'm not really seeing any errors in the rror log related to the connections, but I do see that the system appears to have stopped polling netmail and QWK. I tried to manually force a QWK callout but I am seeing this in the log:


Wed Apr 15 00:54:17 2026 master/dba8d48f1
term Event thread appears to be blocked running QNET since Tue Apr 14 2026 10:54 pm

Mon Apr 20 00:47:06 2026 master/dba8d48f1
term Event thread appears to be blocked running QNET since Sun Apr 19 2026 10:47 pm

I'm really hoping someone can lend me a hand to figure out what is going on. ---
þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net

Re: Synchronet 3.21e upgrade
By: Digital Man to hax0r on Mon Apr 20 2026 06:21 pm

There's an upgrade_to_SBBS_v3.21e.exe in that zip, I assume you ran it?

Yup, I also ran it again, mayking sure that the sbbsntsvc.exe was killed before I ran it. After running it and starting the service and the running the Synchronet Control Panel GUI the behavior was the same. I can see it flashing between "Running NT Service" and "Down" over and over every half second or so. The funny thing is that I can still connect even when it is doing this.

Not a lot of sysops use sbbsNTsvcs.exe, so first question would: do you have problems if you disable the NT services and just run sbbs.exe or sbbsctrl.exe directly? In the mean while, I'll do some more testing with sbbsNTsvcs.exe and sbbsctrl.exe together to see what I can find.

I just disabled the service and started the GUI and it went to Listening mode. It also immediately ran External events and all of a sudden my Echomail was processed! I am going to leave it running this way for a it and see what happens. I'm surprised more people don't run the service -- I am assuing they are setup to have their systems autologon and run the GUI at startup?

It sounds like the event thread is hung runing a QWKnet call-out event. How many hubs do you have setup in SCFG->Networks->QWK and what are their call-out command-lines? That doesn't explain the not answering incoming connections though.

You are my only network :)
the callout command is %!vert.bat
the contents of vert.bat are as follows:

ftp -s:c:\sbbs\exec\vert.ftp | find /v "Upload complete"
if not errorlevel 1 del c:\sbbs\data\vert.rep
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þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net

Re: Synchronet 3.21e upgrade
By: Digital Man to hax0r on Tue Apr 21 2026 09:35 pm

What's the log output from some or one of the servers while it's doing that?

That's the thing, there really isn't anything happening in the Terminal Server output while that is happening when sbbsntsvc.exe is running and its toggling between "Running NT Service" and "Down". There is some noise every now and then, likely related to some sort of spam script trying to logon but nothing that i could see of significance. Also, while it is doing that, I can connect (and stay connected). After a while, though theserver does top accepting any new connections even though in the GUI it looks like everything is fine.

Likely. That's what *I* do. But still, it sounds like a bug.

If the recommended way to run it these days is to do an auto logon and auto stat of Syncrhonet Control Panel I can make that happen. I always thought that the service was a much more native feel since no one had to physically be loggged onto the box.

ftp -s:c:\sbbs\exec\vert.ftp | find /v "Upload complete"
if not errorlevel 1 del c:\sbbs\data\vert.rep

So that's a really old way to perform a QWK network call-out. It *should* still work, so I'm not telling you to change it, but the new/supported way is using exec/qnet-ftp.js:
https://wiki.synchro.net/module:qnet-ftp

I will work on updating to that new method. Its been working for decades. I think it stopped somewhere late last year. When I look at my messages, I don't see anything new since late 2025. If you want, I can try to pin down a more exact date before I try and fix things.

Also, what do you expect... I'm old. I've been here for a long time and you know, if its not broke, don't fix it :)
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þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net

Re: Synchronet 3.21e upgrade
By: Digital Man to hax0r on Wed Apr 22 2026 10:39 pm

I pinned that bug down and fixed it. That particular issue appears to have been just been cosmetic - no negative impact other than maybe failure to stop or restart the server/service.

Thats great to hear! I have been running it in interactive mode for the past couple of days and it seems to be pretty stable. Once you have the update out I'm happy to switch bact to the service and test things out.

Oh? That's actually good news if it started failing with v3.19. That likely means it was something else that changed that caused that script/method to stop working for QWK packet transfers and *not* the upgrade to v3.21.

Yeah, I was getting occasional QWK errors last year, but I never thought much of it. I had been a while since I newscaned dovenet (you know, life......) so I didn't find it until I put some effort in recently with the update. I'm happy to switch to the newer method and will give it a go this weekend.

I know, no judgment. :-) Yours is one of the longest running Synchronet systems, so I'd expect there to be plenty of cruft (running the chksetup.js could help identify some of it). I'll see if I can repro the isue with that old QWK/FTP method, but there's really no reason for you to keep using it. We moved from that batch file/sript to the qnet-ftp.bin Baja module like 25 years ago and then to the JavaScript module like 6 years ago. :-)

thanks for the tip on chksetup.js. I'll give that a go and see what it says. I do think that I am still having some event issues are my fido is not polling regularly.

I think you should take some of the credit for my board being there all of those years. its been rock solid stable over the and I would not still be here if it wasn't for synchronet. so glad and thankful that you have kept the synchronet machine going all of these years.
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þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net

Re: Synchronet 3.21e upgrade
By: Digital Man to hax0r on Fri Apr 24 2026 09:17 pm

So is it still failing the vert.bat method even after you switched from NT services? The related log output (the "Events" window or the data/events.log file entries) might be helpful in diagnosing why.

yes, the vert.bat method is still failing. see the details in the response to MRO. It appears you dropped passive ftp support in one of t he newer synchronet builds and i was using that since my bbs is behind a 1:1 NAT.
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þ Synchronet þ Vertrauen þ Home of Synchronet þ [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net

Re: Synchronet 3.21e upgrade
By: Digital Man to hax0r on Sat Apr 25 2026 02:43 pm

No, the Synchronet FTP server (and Vertrauen) still support passive FTP: It appears Windows' ftp.exe has never supported passive mode:

https://learn.mic rosoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/1821850/ftp-exe-and-passive-mode

Maybe you were using a different ftp.exe (not from Microsoft) at some point?

Maybe I lad a local ftp.exe or something in one of the folders? It was working for quite some time before, but as I mentioned in the other message I was able to get to working with the pfsense proxy. Now I can procrastinate some more :)

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þ Synchronet þ .. hax0r's palace ..

Re: Synchronet 3.21e upgrade
By: Digital Man to Hax0r on Sun Apr 26 2026 01:06 pm

Speaking of cruft, I still have a bunch of modem configuration files in my
CTRL folder (*.MDM). Does synchronet still support modems? Can I remove
these files?

No, you can remove them.

What's the best practical advice for claning up old installation cruft? Is it doing a fresh install and comparing files/folders? Any other recommendations for things I can clean up?

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þ Synchronet þ .. hax0r's palace ..

Re: Synchronet 3.21e upgrade
By: Digital Man to Hax0r on Sun Apr 26 2026 07:28 pm

Old files are harmless (unless they're really large, e.g. log files). There's the exec/cleanup.js script (you can run with jsexec) and it'll delete many old/unused files, but not all of them.

thanks for the tip. I am ot concerned about space, more my sanity when I am looking at the folders/files. some of those old files are just noise and can mask or lead me down a rabbit hole that does not exist.

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þ Synchronet þ .. hax0r's palace ..