Time for a new release announcement of TCP/IP for RSX-11M-PLUS.

This is version 2.15 of BQTCP/IP.


This release comes just a couple of days efter 2.14. The reason is
that a critical bug was discovered that can crash the system. Bottom
issue is that a UDP receive which times out can corrupt the system.
It is strongly recommended that systems are updated immediately.
Apart from this, nothing had been updated compared to release 2.14, so
the release notes will for 2.14 will be repeated below, with the
added bugfix for the UDP driver.

Apart from that, I wish you all a happy new year, with lots of new RSX
fun stuff coming.



Highlights:

Bugfixes for potentially serious bugs in all drivers.
New, completely rewritten name resolver.
New, completely rewritten RWHOD daemon, and added related user applications.
Added functionality in UDP and TCP drivers.



Detailed information on things that have been done since the last release:


IP:
. Bugfixes in all drivers. Sometimes task header was not mapped when
doing manipulations that assumed the task header was mapped.


UDP:
. Bugfix in UDDRV. At packet timeout, we tried to free an IP packet that
don't exist.
. Bugfixes in all drivers. Sometimes task header was not mapped when
doing manipulations that assumed the task header was mapped.
. Bugfix in UDP. If UDP gets an ICMP error packet, system crash out, as
it was incorrectly interpreted as a packet with data.
. Add EFN user notification in UDP.


TCP:
. Bugfixes in all drivers. Sometimes task header was not mapped when
doing manipulations that assumed the task header was mapped.
. Add user flag for blocking ASTs in TCP.
. Improve TCP ack, window update and retransmit performance.
. Improve TCP retransmit timer in case we are probing a zero window.
. Improve retransmit handling. Fixed keepalive management including
actually activating it when enabled.
. Remove separate probe handling.
. Bugfix. If a TCP socket initially cannot send, the retry logic might
not ever have sent any data.
. Bugfix. The fast retransmit logic in TCP was not working right.


RESOLVER:
. Improve resolver ACP abort handling to avoid a race condition.
. Improved DNS resolver. Remember all DNS servers we query, and mark
servers bad not only if we get errors, but also if we get no responses
at all.
. Improved DNS resolver. Remember if we have a bad DNS server, and don't
make use of it for a little while. Fix various timing issues in DNS
resolver.
. Improved DNS resolver. If we get NXDOMAIN on a query, and we also
might consider doing an mDNS query for it, we should not fail the query
at the first NXDOMAIN error. Improve staggered DNS query progress.
. Improved DNS resolver. It now can make use of TASK defined logical names.
. Bugfix in DNS handling of CNAMEs.
. Improved DNS resolving. Proper processing of .local domain.
. Added DNS lookup tool.
. Complete new resolver ACP written.


TELNETD:
. Change telnet server to use flag to block ASTs when terminal driver
indicates XOFF, so that we can still be notified for things like
connection closed.
. Fixed TELNET server to properly handle if TC: is not running.


TELNET:
. Bugfix in telnet client. Even if server responded with DONT to
terminal type, the terminal type was sent.
. Bugfix in telnet client. If we are in binary mode, CR should not be
padded.


RWHOD:
. Added new RWHOD daemon, along with RUPTIME and RWHO client.


MAIL:
. Bugfix in mail reader. If a mail didn't have a label on it, the mail
reader could get into an infinite loop. Repair function did not repair
such mails.
. EXPUNGE function in mail was very slow.
. Bugfix. MAILRD could crash when showing mails with long lines.


LPR:
. Changed LPQ program to be able to take hostname argument.


C libraries:
. Bugfix in C IP libraries. Memory corruption could happen because a
register could get corrupted.
. Bugfix in IPC library. neterr was not set on a successful rcv.


BP2 libraries:
. Revised the BP2 inet library.


IPGEN:
. Bugfix in IPGEN.CMD. On initial generation, if manual interface
configuration is selected, the program crashed out.


IPINS:
. Improved IPINS to dynamically select QNA or UNA for ethernet.


IPCONFIG:
. Rewritten IPCONFIG.CMD




Some additional notes:

As usual, I would recommend people to update as soon as possible.
The changes are somewhat critical, but will also 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@softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

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