tinymux/mux

author	date	title
Brazil	March 2026	README (Unix)

Congratulations and welcome to the README.md file for TinyMUX 2.14. That you have chosen to actually read the file is a sign of bravery equal to that of Beowulf facing Grendel or anyone who has ever faced the garden variety lumbering behemoth.

We know that README files are often turgid and vague, filled with technobabble that ties the reader up needlessly in corundums of little purpose. Too often, the story ends with someone spending a lot of time with someone else in countless hours of consultation, all to type a few lines that were there the whole time, buried beyond view.

In the past, this has resulted in README being tossed aside, unread, unwanted, unloved, and probably bitter from the experience. However, because we want you to succeed, we are happy to provide a file that will, in our sincerest hopes, provide you with enough information to make that possible. If not, it should be at least an entertaining read.

The TinyMUX 2.14 README and supplemental documentation has been divided into multiple files. For discussion and instructions on how to do various things associated with the care and feeding of your TinyMUX, please refer to the following files:

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README.md General information on the distribution, platforms it has been shown to run under out of the box, and how to report bugs. CHANGES.md New features, commands, and bug fixes. INSTALL.md How to compile your game, step-by-step. NOTES.md All kinds of tidbits made much easier to find. Known compiling issues and known fixes are found here. Known OSes that TinyMUX 2.14 will run on and compiling issues. Has basic conversion information. UPGRADING.md Step-by-step guide for upgrading from earlier TinyMUX versions, including the flatfile-to-SQLite migration. docs/BACKUPS.md A file about the TinyMUX 2.14 Backup script. docs/CONFIGURATION.md How to set up your TinyMUX, including an explanation of the common configuration items and how to customize your GAMENAME. docs/CREDITS.md The people who helped make this server possible. docs/GUESTS.md How the current guest implementation works and how to set it up. docs/PATCHES.md A basic introduction to applying patches to the server.

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General Information:

TinyMUX 2.14 is written in a mix of C and C++ and is currently being developed on Windows, Debian, and FreeBSD. It is a continuation of the TinyMUX 1.x flavor of MUSH servers.

The latest version of this code is found brazilmux.tinymux.org 2860.

Refer to the file CHANGES.md for information about new features, commands, and bug fixes. NOTES.md now has a lot of small bits of info related to running the server, as well as reminders about backups and conversions.

Reporting Bugs:

Bugs happen in any large and complex piece of code.

As for the cases where you do find bugs, we would like you to take the time to send an e-mail with as much data as possible about the bug. Each bug report we receive is rated both by its severity (how much pain it causes) and prioritized according to how beneficial it would be to fix it relative to the other bugs on the list. Sometimes, this process is formalized. Sometimes, due to lack of available time, it is ad-hoc.

• Please double check to be sure it really is a bug and not a new feature or design decision. This is important to the process, as it may mean that something was missed in the documentation and needs to be made clearer. This simple test is that if the server crashes, it is a bug and if you cannot tell, consider it one.

• Try to reproduce and document the sequence of events that will show the bug. This will help the dev team find the problem sooner. The log configuration parameter may be helpful in this process. It is more important for the bug reporter to develop a reproducible case than it is for the bug reporter to isolate where the bug might be located or to develop a workaround or fix for the bug.

• Send mail about it to: brazilofmux@gmail.com If the bug crashes the TinyMUX, try to include the following information from running gdb on the resulting core file:

  • Output of the where command.

  • Output of the info locals command for each frame.

• To use gdb, make sure you are in the game directory, and type:

  • gdb bin/netmux core

• From there, simply type 'help' for help, or 'quit' to exit.

Environment:

TinyMUX 2.14 should run on most Unixes with BSD-style sockets and a C++ compiler that groks function prototypes. It is 64-bit clean code supporting both IPv4 and IPv6.

Build System:

The build system has been modernized with autoconf and automake. The older build process required ./configure; make depend; make, but the new process is ./configure; make; make install. Dependency tracking is now handled automatically by automake, and the install step creates the necessary symlinks in the game/bin directory.

For Debian package maintainers or others requiring deterministic builds without embedded timestamps or incrementing build numbers, use:

DEBIAN_BUILD=1 ./configure
make
make install

This will produce binaries with static version information suitable for packaging.