[HECnet] Announcing TCP/IP V2.10 for RSX-11M-PLUS

Time for a new release announcement of TCP/IP for RSX-11M-PLUS. This is version 2.10 of BQTCP/IP. It's been three months since the last official update. Some major improvements and bugfixes have been done, and it is strongly recommended that systems are updated. Some of the errors fixed could cause system crashes under the right conditions. Highlights: . Improved TCP performance . Improved telnet behavior and features . Improved ftp/ftpd behavior . Improved mail daemon . More RSX patches Detailed information on things that have been done since the last release: ARP: . Bugfix in ARP cache timer. If the time to the next event related to the ARP cache was too big, the timer stopped. IP: . Bugfix. IP packet processing could cause a crash with fragmented packets. TCP: . Improve TCP flow control. . Fix to make sure TCP socket in last-ack state will time out. . Improved TCP reception code. (Sequence and window check.) . Improved TCP probe handling and keepalive handling. . Improved TCP retransmit handling. . Changed semantics of TCP window update statistics. . Improved TCP performance by better ACK handling at packet loss. . Improved TCP window update and ack sending. . Improved TCP retransmit and congestion recovery. IFCONFIG: . Added more TCP tuning parameters to IFCONFIG. FTP/FTPD: . Fix FTPD log file lock error. Implemented retries. . Bugfix in FTP and FTPD. When block mode read of files was done, a multibuffer implementation was used which did not free memory at completion. . Added cleartext error messages in FTP and FTPD. . Changed ftp directory Unix format timestamp. MAILD: . Improved MAILD SMTP server to better handle relaying and bad host detection. . Improved MAILD mail delivery to not do parallel delivery to the same destination by several tasks. . Changed MAILD to use possibly multiple tasks for delivering new mails, since to some destinations, mail deliver can be really slow. Also changed SMTP mail receiver to accept mails from hosts even if they present bogus host names in HELO/EHLO command. . Added some more spoof notification calls in smtp mail receiver. TELNET/TELNETD: . Improve telnet option negotiation in server and client. . Added terminal type option to telnet client. . Removed binary mode from telnet client. . Added processing of SB/SE functions in telnet client. . Added processing of SB/SE functions in telnet server. . Added proper handling of terminal names in telnet server. . Added proper handling of terminal names in telnet client. Multinet: . Bugfix in Multinet. Under some circumstances, the timers would stop. LPT: . Added hardtab expansion in LPT printer despooler. . Added a simple TXT print spooler symbiont. XLISP: . Changed XLISP INET daemon functionality to use a filename based on port connection accepted on. Patch updates: . Datatrieve-11: . Fixed DTR leap year bug. . Fixed DDMF (remote DTR) server to set correct default directory. . Improve DTR programming interface to allow DECnet to work in parallel with DTR. . Updated MCR. . Added patched ACNT, PSW and SYSLOG to distribution. . Added patched NVPFSL.TSK to distribution. . Added patched HELRES.TSK to distribution. 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, and might avoid system crashes in rare circumstances. 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 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. 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. On a final note, Mim have moved. Mim.Update.UU.SE does not exist anymore as a domain name. The machine is now only available as Mim.Stupi.NET. 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