[HECnet] Announcing TCP/IP V2.13 for RSX-11M-PLUS

Time for a new release announcement of TCP/IP for RSX-11M-PLUS. This is version 2.13 of BQTCP/IP. It's been almost three months since the last official update. Some major improvements and bugfixes have been done, and it is strongly recommended that systems are updated. Highlights: . Improved TCP performance. . XLISP updated to V1.7. . New patch to the TT: driver in order to make telnetd fully vectorized. Detailed information on things that have been done since the last release: TCP: . Added TCP fast retransmit feature. . Bugfix in TCP. If IO.RAS is used to setup an AST notification, an AST should immediately be generated if we have received a FIN. . Improved TCP retransmit timer calculation. It was wrong on socket creation. Also added handling of delayed transmit time set to 0. TELNETD: . Improved internal time handling in telnetd. . Added full vectorization for TELNETD (if kernel supports it, otherwise no change from before). . Added more checks for errors on snd/rcv for telnetd. RMD: . Bugfix in RMD. In port page, if xmit or rcv size was greater than 32767, RMD crashed. NTPD: . Changed NTPDATE to use time adjustment functionality in kernel, if it exists. MAILD: . Improved MAILD SMTP send error handling. . Improved mail queue processing to not retry mails extra times just because an error notification mail is created for something. . Changed mail daemon to only send notification mails about temporary delivery problems when the mail have been in the queue for at least 30 minutes. LISP: . Updated XLISP to V1.7. BQTLIB: . Added lots of documentaiton for BQTLIB. Cleaned up BQTLIB. . Added functions in BQTLIB for adjusting time. Some additional notes: As usual, I would recommend people to update as soon as possible. The changes are not critical, but will lead to a much better experience. The patches to the TT: driver cannot be applied automatically, but requires users to apply the patches themselves, and then run SYSGEN to generate a new system. Once added, the TNC2 task can be run at login, and will define logical names for the user telling where he is connected from, if using telnet or LAT. The TT: driver patches also allows the updated MCR to give more information with the DEV command (SHOW TERMINAL in DCL). The patched TT: driver also makes is possible to get telnetd fully vectorized, as this version provides two more addresses that are required by telnetd to access information in the kernel. The other patches to RSX can be applied automatically by IPGEN, either if used interactively when answering YES to the question about applying RSX patches, or by running IPGEN explicitly to do the patches, with the command: @IPGEN PATCH Specific information about the patches: LAT: Fixes a memory leak, and adds the ability to read where a terminal connection comes from when using LAT, using SF.GMC. RMSDAP: Fixes a bug in getting the file protection, so the XAB gets filled in correctly for remote files. RMSDSP: Fixes that some numbers were displayed in signed octal, which should have been displayed in decimal or unsigned octal, depending on number. DCL: Added terminal attributes for COLOR. MCR: Too many fixes to be listed here... INS: Fixes that users cannot circumvent protection on common regions. HEL: Fix that users can login with session ID, or with directory, in addition to name and UIC. ACNT: Add no password change attribute to accounts. PSW: Add no password change handling. SYL (SYSLOG): Add terminal idle tracking on accounts without idle logout. ECL: If the receiving machine is very slow, and the sending machine is very fast, and the receiver announce several large buffers available, ECL cannot keep up, and drops packets. This is a problem with the DECnet flow control, as it is used in RSX. The simple solution is to allow more outstanding buffers when receiving. A more complex solution would be to change how RSX DECnet do flow control, but that would require rewriting a fair chunk of the ECL module. NMVACP: Fix handling of "show known nodes" command, which could skip some nodes. NVP: Add ability to use session ID or directory name for user identity in DECnet nodename specifications. EPM: Fix handling of ethernet multicast. NTDEMO: Fix that hosts without names should display DECnet address. NCP: Parse of additional information types in NICE messages. As usual, the distribution is available from: ftp://mim.stupi.net/bqtcp.dsk ftp://mim.stupi.net/bqtcp.tap !!! BQTCP is also available through RPM !!! (As an additional note, if there are any problems communicating with Mim using port 21, the ftp service is also available at port 10021) The documentation is also available through ftp on Mim, or also at http://mim.stupi.net/tcpipdoc I hope people find this update useful. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt(a)softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol