Internet Info 1994 March/Internet Info CD-ROM (Walnut Creek) (March 1994).iso/networking/uucp/uupc/pc/changes.txt

Text File | 1993-06-08 | 20.6 KB | 490 lines

Revision

This is the 158th revision of this document, and applies to
UUPC/extended version 1.11z.  This was last updated on May 30, 1993 by
Drew Derbyshire.


Introduction

UUPC/extended is a PC based version (and pun of) UUCP (UNIX-to- UNIX
copy).  UUPC/extended is a program which implements peer-to-peer
networking for using the UNIX UUCP protocols.  MS-DOS or OS/2 based
Personal Computers using these protocols can exchange mail and files
with a UNIX system or other UUPC/extended system over dial up or
dedicated phone lines.

This file summarizes most changes made to UUPC/extended since release
1.11v.  Please contact Drew Derbyshire, [e-mail], for information on
changes previous to the scope of this document or other questions.

Version 1.11z Revision Summary


Bug Fixes

When UUSUB was invoked with the clear (-c) option, it wrote the cleared
status file to the SpoolDir rather than the new directory for the file,
the ConfDir.  Corrected this oversight in hostrset.c.  Also corrected
reset of start of the collection time.

RNEWS snews mode processing failed to process input files in binary
mode; corrected by forcing all input to be read in binary mode.

Corrected expand_path() so that path names beginning with tilde (~) end
need not end with a slash (/).  This mostly affects UUCP file transfers.

Corrected of scrsize() to sanity check BIOS values for the screen size
on systems running versions of DOS previous to DOS 4.0.  Previously,
invalid screen sizes were not trapped on such older systems, causing the
internal pager to require input after every line.

Corrected address parser to include the percent sign (%) in an address
as a indicator of a non-local address.  Previously, such addresses were
handled as invalid local users.\

Corrected bounce() processing to not recursively deliver mail to an
invalid address such as the local postmaster.

Corrected system alias processing to use configuration directory as
current directory rather than a possibly invalid user home directory
pointer.  Also inserted altered system alias processing to call
expand_path() to allow using ~user syntax in system alias include files.

Correct RMAIL to not use a debug level less than zero when initialing,
which caused configuration failure messages to be suppressed (resulting
in RMAIL beeping and dying without offering a clue as to why).

Corrected bug in UUPOLL which caused the program to spin for one second
spitting out messages about waiting for zero seconds before running the
daily clean up command.

Bill Plummer provided fix to COMMFIFO.ASM serial port driver to provide
delay after selected modem command operations to allow slow modems to
respond.

Corrected bug in syslog processing which caused the file to be
prematurely closed and never reopened if multitask was not set.

When UUX generated a command for a remote system, it requested the
command file be sent before any data the command needed.  Corrected this
to sent the data first.


Enhancements

Added -t option UUCICO to cause tracing of data received or sent to
various communications drivers to the file LINEDATA.LOG in the Spool
directory.  Previously, an undocumented feature would cause this tracing
to be performed if the file already existed.

Added multiple parallel communications drivers support to UUCICO, and
added new drivers for via FOSSIL and ARTICOMM controlled ports under
DOS.  The FOSSIL support is enabled by installing a FOSSIL port driver
(not supplied) and adding the keyword:

     suite=fossil

To the modem (*.MDM) file for the affected port.  Likewise, an ARTICOMM
supported port is enabled by providing a suite=int14 keyword in the
modem file for the port.

Rewrote syslog processing to display requester of a file, the remote
system involved, and host (UNIX format) name.  The local (DOS) name is
dropped from the log file.  Many thanks to Mark W. Schumann
<[e-mail]>, who provided the INT14 driver.

Added optional global keywords:

     Systems=       and
     Passwd=

To UUPC.RC file.  These keywords define non-default locations of SYSTEMS
and PASSWD files.  This allows unique (dummy) copies of these files to
be used for client workstations without passwords on shared network
environments.  The default location for these files remain in the
UUPC/extended configuration directory.

Added new option keywords senddebug and honordebug.  In their default
state, UUCICO neither transmits the current debug level to the remote
system when calling, nor does it use the debug level sent by the remote
system called.

    Note: The previous behavior was to not send the current
          debugging level but to honor the remote system's debug
          level.

Renamed hpfs option to longname, which more accurately describes its (as
yet unimplemented) processing in support of longer file names on any
file system which supports it.

Added new UUPC.RC keywords banner= and motd=, which define files
displayed to remote users by UUCICO.  If defined, the file named as the
banner is displayed before the login prompt.  Likewise, if defined the
file named as the motd (message of the day) is displayed after a
successful login only if the login shell is not UUCICO.

Modified loading of the PASSWD file to use the configuration directory
drive as the default when determine the drive letter for home
directories.  This allows omitting the drive letter within the PASSWD
file.

Added new OS/2 command file, GETUUPC.CMD, which is called by the other
OS/2 scripts to determine UUPC/extended configuration information.


Version 1.11y Revision Summary


Bless Snuffles for she has sinned.  She failed to keep track of all the
contributors of bug fixes and enhancements for the 1.11y release.  But
you know who you are, bless you all ...


Bug Fixes

Dropped the beta test port of rn 4.3.  We're working on porting the
newer rn 4.4, but neither source nor object for this is included in
1.11y.

Corrected bug in configuration processor which assumed all tables (i.e.
the modem configuration table) were as long as the master configuration
table.

Added specific error message for when local host name was improperly
added to SYSTEMS file.  Formerly, UUCICO died gloriously with a
(incorrect) message about a memory shortage in dcpsys.c.

Corrected configuration processing to load UUCP spool related variables
for RNEWS.  Previously, RNEWS failed to load such information and thus
ignored overrides of the default character set.

Modified directory search functions to support longer file names used by
non-FAT (non-DOS) file systems and to return file time and size
information to the caller; this implicitly fixes problems with programs
such as EXPIRE running out of memory when running on network drives due
to bugs in the Borland C++ stat() call, which no longer has to be used
as much.

Modified UUCICO status file processing to lock the status file to avoid
overlapping updates.  Previously, race conditions could cause the file
to be reset by mistake.

Corrected printmsg() to use unique buffer for time stamp information in
log file; formerly, the default static buffer used by various
subroutines would be overwritten with the current time when logging.

Made return codes from RMAIL more unique to allow better debugging of
failed mail.

In RNEWS, redid processing performed by SNEWS option to make it even
dumber.

    Note: SNEWS processing is still broken in 1.11y because the
          file is read in text, not binary, mode.

Rewrote RNEWS batched news processing to correctly process files under
512 bytes.  Formerly, such articles and all articles following were
dropped.

Upped maximum length of news group names in RNEWS to keep it from dying
when brain dead lusers create news groups with excessive length names.

Corrected OS/2 WAITING command to load needed subroutine packages before
using them.

Corrected UUPOLL bug which caused it to exit with a return code 0 no
matter how it was terminated.

Corrected UUPOLL bug which caused it to not terminate at the correct
time if both the -e and -f flags were specified.

Added fix to COMMFIFO.ASM from William Plummer to fix incorrect assembly
of references to COMMFIFO error counts.

Modified UUCICO 'g' protocol processor to use FAR memory for packet
buffers to reduce number of out of memory errors under 16 bit DOS and
OS/2 compilers.

Modified UUCICO 'g' protocol processor to correctly neogiate packet
sizes with remote systems, thus allowing the remote system to send the
local system larger packet than the local system can send the remote.
(Error pointed out by Ian Taylor.)

Corrected sample modem files to NOT enable variablepacket processing by
default.

Corrected UUCICO to not update host status if host information was not
initialized during a passive poll.

Corrected syslog option to only set buffering once for the log file if
not multi-tasking.  This bug caused 1.11x to repeatively report that
SYSLOG file was not found when, in fact, it was fine.

Corrected UUCICO modem processing to flag that graceful shutdown was
needed for OS/2 versions of UUCICO.  Previously, it exited immediately
without closing the serial port.

Corrected UUCICO modem processing to invoke carrier detect processing
whenever the modem connects.  This was previously missed for hot logins.

Corrected UUCICO carrier detection processing for OS/2 communications
driver.  It previously OR'ed modem status information rather than
AND'ing it, allowing a half-ready modem to appear ready.

Modified UUCICO to trap unique error code returned by SIO serial port
driver under OS/2 when interrupted.  Interruptions of the read system
call are not really errors, and the default error message alarmed
Snuffles.

Corrected UUSTAT to not de-reference NULL pointers when killing queued
jobs.


Enhancements

Dave Watt <[e-mail]>, with assistance from Evan
Ross <[e-mail]>, made numerous additional changes to round out
the Windows/NT support.  One visible change is that UUPC.RC and
PERSONAL.RC can be prefixed with WIN32. to cause the line take effect
only under Windows/NT.

The ConfDir variable is now optional.  If the ConfDir is omitted from
UUPC.RC, its value is taken from the directory for the UUPC.RC file
specified in the UUPCSYSRC environment variable.

The directories (except the user's home directory) in the UUPC.RC and
PERSONAL.RC file can now be omitted or made relative to the ConfDir; if
omitted, they are assumed be sub-directories of the ConfDir with default
names.  The user's home directory may be relative to the ConfDir, but it
must not be omitted.

Added new configuration variables OS2.priority and OS2.prioritydelta.
These specify the OS/2 priority of UUCICO when connected in the range 1
through 4, and a sub-priority of 0 through 62.

Added new boolean option bounce; when enabled, this causes undeliverable
mail to be returned to the sender (as determined by UUXQT and/or by the
UUCP From line) with a copy to the local Postmaster.

William Plummer <[e-mail]> made various additional changes to
the test driver for DOS COMMFIFO package.

Per request of Katherine Derbyshire <[e-mail]>, modified GENSIG to
print out a more useful message about the quote selected, specifically
including the output file name.


Versions 1.11w through 1.11x Revision Summary

Bug Fixes

Corrected bug in local delivery routine which failed to detect a letter
followed by a colon in a FORWARD file was the beginning of a path name.
This fix was supplied by Russ Nelson.

Modified internal pager to not scroll top line off the screen when the
display is aborted.

Corrected RMAIL usage message to display all the operands allowed
command's rich syntax.  Fix supplied by Russ Nelson.

Modified CHDIR to attempt directory change before invoking MKDIR to
build the directory to change to.  This should be faster, since a
directory will always exist after the first CHDIR to it.

import_path() mangled valid paths under certain conditions.  Modified
the routine to properly convert path names with a single character in
the path and/or terminated by a slash.

Corrected import_newsgroup() to not pad the numbers generated as part of
names of DOS news articles.  Fix provided by Kai-Uwe Rommel.

Corrected via spool directory search routines to correctly handle
interrupted searches when a connection to a host is lost.  Previously,
if a search was not determined to be interrupted, export_path() would
catch the bad file name and abort the program ... usually.

Corrected included strlwr() function to lower case the string, not upper
case it.  This problem only affected users using unsupported compilers
which lacked this function in their run time library.

Modified RNEWS to not shadow or otherwise process an empty compressed
input file.

Modified RNEWS to not shadow or otherwise process an empty compressed
input file; also corrected the file name in various error messages
related to uncompress processing.

Modified RNEWS to report when it has to delete an article, and to
summary number of articles dropped.

Modified RNEWS to report specific error messages via printerr(), when it
is unable to process a file.

Modified RNEWS to write news in the proper news directory when the snews
flag is set.  Fix supplied by Kai-Uwe Rommel.

Applied numerous minor fixes to RNEWS supplied by Kai-Uwe Rommel.

Corrected EXPIRE to properly expiring one news group via the -n flag;
fix supplied by Kai-Uwe Rommel.

UUPOLL would be confused by 25 hour days caused by the end of Daylight
savings time and attempt to poll continuously during the last hour of
such a day.  Corrected UUPOLL to realize not all days are created equal,
and to correctly compute the next poll as the first poll of the
following days.

Altered numerous files to be unbuffered, saving on memory and reducing
memory to memory copying of data.

Deleting extra lock files was a major performance hit under OS/2 with
UNDELETE processing enabled.  Corrected UUCICO and UUXQT lock processing
to not lock systems without reason.

Suppressed closing UUCICO warning message about unable to connect to
remote when the program was only answering the phone.

Made UUCICO 'G' protocol use packets of fixed size to be more compatible
with System V Release 4 UUCP.

Made unique entries in the modem (*.MDM) file for entries for the ''g",
"G", and "v" protocol options.  Also added largepacket modem file option
for "g" protocol to enable large packet processing under this protocol.

Added new UUCICO 'v' protocol, which is 'g' protocol with optionally
large (512) byte variable length packets.  This protocol is only
supported by other UUPC/extended systems.

Corrected two problem with 'g' protocol start-up, from problem
descriptions provided by Ian Lance Taylor, author of Taylor UUCP.  Both
fixes provide for insuring one system does not get ahead of the other,
that is one system thinks it has initialized the connection when the
other has not.

Corrected UUCICO to not abort when fields are missing from the SYSTEMS
file.  This was based on an original fix by Eugene Nesterenko, Moscow,
Russia.

Corrected various UUCICO start-up error messages to display at debug
level 0, not 1. Thanks to Bill Plummer for pointing this out.

UUCICO would previously reject anonymous UUCP connections if the local
system was running a high debug level.  Corrected UUCICO to not confuse
local and remote debug levels.

Modified UUCICO to use a single data transfer buffer for data input and
output as well as a command buffer, thus allowing this buffer to be
bigger.

Modified UUNAME to accept the debug level (-x) option; this was
embarrassing since the upgrade instructions specifically said to use
this option to determine obsolete keywords in the UUPC.RC file.

Corrected UUXQT to send mail to the originator of a UUX job, not the
local postmaster; also corrected UUXQT to not mangle the dummy input
file name NUL and then be unable to open the mangled name.  Fixes
supplied by Charles R. (C.  R.)  Oldham of Arizona State University.

Corrected UUSUB to reset the starting time of statistics collection when
clearing all totals.

Corrected UUXQT to report why RMAIL dies, not just that it failed.

Correct RMAIL to not close its own log file, instead leaving this task
to the common logging functions.


Enhancements

Dave Watt ported the entire source to Windows/NT.  Note this platform
has been not been tested, and executables are not supplied at this time.
Problems are specifically known to exist in creation of the HOSTSTATUS
file.

Dave Watt also wrote DESQView support.  UUPOLL and UUCICO give up the
CPU when idle.

Added a number of new sample configuration sample files, including a
sample PERMISSN file and copies of several files used on kendra.

Modified configuration file routines and expand_path() to use run time
library supplied functions to normalize directory paths; this allows
determining the path on drives other than the current drive.

    Note: Because of this change, placing floppy diskette drive
          letters in the PERMISSN file can cause the system to
          hang when it attempts to determine the current
          directory on the drive.

Rewrote the OS/2 versions of UUIO, UUCLEAN and WAITING commands into
REXX, made enhancements including using the UUPC/extended environment
variables and aging files based on size.

Added MAILCHEK command from Evan Champion <[e-mail]> to
provide running report of mail waiting in an OS/2 window using Visual
REXX.  (This command does not exist under DOS.)

Modified FOPEN() to automatically retry failed file opens for 20 seconds
if the error is a sharing violation.  Also modified openline() and
lock_system() to not use this retry processing.

Moved HOSTATUS file from spool directory to configuration directory, and
moved news ACTIVE file from news directory to configuration directory.
This allows easily backing up these files without backing up the news or
spool directories.

Modified majority of permanent string allocations to use newly written
routine strpool(), which allocates memory in larger blocks, thus
bypassing malloc() space overhead.  Routine also searches duplicates in
strings to avoid allocating the same string twice.  If running at debug
level 2 or above, a summary message of the memory used (and saved) is
printed.  Also, added new boolean option SpeedOverMemory to bypass the
duplicate string scan on slower systems.

Wrote support for a system wide user aliases file.  This file, used only
by RMAIL, allows forwarding for users and/or mailing lists to be defined
without adding the local address to the PASSWD file, resulting in
improved efficiency for other programs which use the PASSWD file such as
MAIL and UUCICO.  Use of the system wide alias file also eliminates the
need for dummy home directories containing forward files, resulting 4
kilobytes disk savings per forwarded user.  This support was based on a
prototype supplied by Russ Nelson.

Modified MAIL to print the numbers of items deleted by the delete
command on one line to keep the screen from scrolling madly.  Also,
items previously deleted are not listed a second time.

Added number items in the mailbox to the MAIL status command.

Added "Path:", "Lines:", and "References:"  to the list of items ignored
by the internal mail pager used by the print command.

Under OS/2 and DOS 4.0 or above, the internal pager now uses the true
screen size to determine the number of lines to scroll.  This allows
exploiting 50 VGA screens or odd-sized OS/2 windows.

Modified loading of ACTIVE file by news processing to not build
directories for empty news groups.  So long as the target directories
are build by the routine posting news (i.e.  RNEWS uses FOPEN()), then
the directories will be created on demand.

Enhanced EXPIRE to report bytes and articles processed, including totals
for data purged, moved, or left eating disk space.  Running EXPIRE at
debug level 2 (-x 2) will report this information on a per group level.

Modified UUPOLL to report when the UUCLEAN command is scheduled to next
run at startup.

Modified UUCICO processing enabled by the syslog option to work with the
multitask option.  Specifically, the SYSLOG is only opened when needed
in multitasking mode and closed immediately.

Modified OS/2 communications support to show communications port errors
in English.  Also added a ShowModem() function to OS/2 communications
support to show modem status in English.

Under OS/2, increased modem recover time from 0.5 seconds to 2.0 seconds
after hanging up the telephone.