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VERSION 3.53 - MARCH 6 2010 --------------------------- This very minor release only has various internal code cleaned up. The default log level on new installations is "Verbose". When DB TERM exits, it no longer jumps back to the SETUP screen. No other changes were made in this release. VERSION 3.52 - FEBRUARY 27 2010 ------------------------------- This is a very minor release which has the following changes: - The reporting of "New mailbox entries" is disabled now by default and can be enabled again by making a dummy/semaphore file called DBRIDGE.NMM. - A portion of the kernel was rewritten slightly, to address "Lock Queue" and the "Unlock Queue" problems. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.51 - FEBRUARY 14 2010 ------------------------------- WARNING: You must shut down the BinkD system, if it is running, prior to upgrading to this version. This is a very minor release which should resolve the issues of having Fido "nets" (FTN's) with domains in BinkD longer than 8 characters. No other changes were made in this release. VERSION 3.50 - FEBRUARY 9 2010 ------------------------------ WARNING: This is an important release and should be treated as a CRITICAL upgrade for your D'Bridge system. Please back up system settings via the DB EXPORT command prior to installing. Please review these release notes carefully. WARNING: You must shut down the BinkD system, if it is running, prior to upgrading to this version. A very serious fundimental flaw with the BinkD system existed in 3.49 and prior versions. This release corrects that problem, as it was mailer- related. It also upgrades the BinkD module to address some other minor problems. Its not just BinkD that is addressed in this release. Some minor PSTN dialup stuff has been slightly rewritten but more to improve the overall "hybrid" nature of how D'Bridge handles both BinkD and PSTN transactions. - The big problem in question relates to the way the BinkD system moves mail into mailboxes. A certain condition would cause either a duplicate entry to be made in the Queue, or the mail not be moved at all. That has been corrected in this version. In addition, a test was done to ensure that PSTN dialup still functioned correctly after the fix was made in this release (FTS-0001, WaZoo and EMSI) and before this release was posted to my website. - The logic behind having both a PSTN dialup and a BinkD connection active in D'Bridge has been slightly adjusted so that if you define a PHONE NUMBER OVERRIDE in the NODELIST CONFIGURATION screen, that takes priority over the BINKD criteria. So what that means is that D'Bridge will NOT move mail for the BinkD system into the mailbox. It will keep the mail in the Queue for the outgoing PSTN call (EMSI/Wazoo/FTS-0001). And of course, having FORCED PRIORITIES in the PACKET/MAIL CONTROL screen takes priority over everything, including "Forced Hold" status. This change keeps D'Bridge within its original "flow" of how the Queue works. The above change in the logic, also makes it possible to have mail waiting for a PSTN system to poll you for picking up mail if you place everything on the above-mentioned "Forced Hold" status. You can also then run an event which would cycle the mail for the PSTN system into their BinkD mailbox whenever you want. - The PHONE NUMBER OVERRIDE command was broken, now its fixed and works the way it should. The display of a Queue entry now properly displays the proper phone number if an override command is issued. - Note that whenever "override" criteria is defined in the NODELIST CONFIGURATION screen such as phone numbers, synonyms, baud rates or flags, you should rebuild the nodelist database (UTILITIES -> BUILD NODELIST) or create a dummy/semaphore called DBRIDGE.FNC. The nodelist database is NOT recompiled automatically incase a user mistake is made in that screen or you otherwise botch your configuration. - This version updates the Windows BINKD module from version 0.9 to 1.00 thereby solving some issues in that module. The OS/2 BinkD module for D'Bridge remains at 0.9 since I no longer have an OS/2 computer to test it out on. Voulenteers? - Several minor corrections were made to the mailer's BINKD code when you choose to run the module as a "service" under Windows. Note that when you run BinkD 1.00 as a service, it is not recommended to "downgrade" the BinkD module to 0.9 or lower as this may cause problems. - The BinkD system now reports the filenames it is moving into the mailboxes of the systems. It also reports if it is making uncompressed mail if the "U" parameter is specified in BINKD SESSION INFORMATION. - Added a new command, DBUTIL DROPTHEBOMB to completely nuke all messages from all directories, lastread pointers and "hi water marks" except for NETmail. This was required for proper operation of tossing mail on the Searchlight BBS software. - Introduced a time-slice in the PSTN Xmodem, Telink/SEALink and Zmodem code to not hog the CPU so much, this should improve performance when using VOIP or SIP software such as the MagicJack device for PSTN dialup. - Fixed "Database error #200" in the NODELIST CONFIGURATION screen. - Also fixed a possible "Database error #200" in the FUNCTION KEYS screen. - Revised and rewrote a few sections of the online HELP system while I was at it. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.49 - FEBRUARY 2 2010 ------------------------------ This minor release should address some reported video-corruption problems. No other changes were done in this release. VERSION 3.48 - JANUARY 26 2010 ------------------------------ This version has a very, very minor correction to Areafix that caused it to stop responding to requests under a certain condition. No other changes were done in this release. VERSION 3.47 - JANUARY 22 2010 ------------------------------ This release adds an item counter (next to the free RAM display) to all system windows. A vertical scroll bar is added when multi-line input makes a window "scroll". The new feature defaults to Off (disabled). Turn it on by going to CONFIG -> ADVANCED -> WINDOW/DESKTOP. No other changes were done in this release. VERSION 3.46 - JANUARY 18 2010 ------------------------------ This is yet another minor release but it addresses two issues. I know I said that I would only fix serious problems, but these two were very easy to do and felt that it was important. First, the disk-swapping and CPU time used by the BinkD module during mail transactions, has been eliminated. The entire code was rewritten to not use DBUTIL to move mail anymore; instead its all done internally. It may seem trivial but the improvement greatly "streamlines" how D'Bridge operates. It is definately noticable when there is a large volume of mail being processed by your D'Bridge system. On that note, I'll reveal an "undocumented" command, DBUTIL MOVEQUIETLY, which functions the same as DBUTIL MOVE except it does not display any output or log entries. DBUTIL MOVEQUIETLY was what D'Bridge was "running" in 3.45 and prior versions. The second change was done in the XMAIL code; an addition of checking the FTSC-naming on XMAIL archives was done. Archived mail destined for other systems including those not running D'Bridge (ArcMail) have filenames ending with a two-letter abbreviation of the current weekday, followed by a number from zero to nine, then the alphabet, from A to Z. After 36 mail transactions, the code makes sure the "counter" in DBRIDGE.HIS is set back to zero. DBRIDGE.HIS is a database simply containing the proper filename "extension" to make when sending XMAIL to another system as an ArcMail-named file. The counter mentioned here resets automatically when the date changes and it does not rely on the AutoUpdate event to do this. When dealing with other BinkD systems, I strongly recommend the use of the "U" parameter to tell D'Bridge to send uncompressed mail (the PKT files) as opposed to regular XMAIL/ArcMail; since mail can "turn around" more than 36 times a day thanks to the "always on" nature of broadband Internet. Also make sure that the "session limits" value in the SCHEDULER -> UN-EVENT is also adjusted accordingly. The BinkD module already has a "built-in" file-renaming procedure in the event that duplicate Fido mail is received... but we can trust the Russians, right? Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.45 - JANUARY 14 2010 ------------------------------ This minor release corrects another rare but serious "lockup" condition when your D'Bridge system is processing large amounts of mail. This condition was caused by a large mixture of *.PKT and Arcmail/XMAIL bundles in the INBOUND directory. Another very complex, elaborate module of code that I had written 2 years ago was slightly adjusted to prevent the gathering of statistical data from tying up CPU usage. The problem happened when there was a large amount of BinkD traffic being handled by your system and the size of the log files were megabytes in size. Note that at this point, I'm only going to try to fix what I consider to be serious problems in the software... though I seriously doubt theres any more problems like as per above. Reading the HISTORY file will give you an idea as to the amount of work that has gone into a DOS product and that its time to move forward. No other changes were done in this release. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.44 - JANUARY 4 2010 ----------------------------- This is a very minor release which improves the performance of certain Areafix conditions involving a Usenet/NNTP gateway. No other changes were done in this release. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com The following document is a "timeline" of D'Bridge development and history, starting from most recent all the way to the earliest notes I could find. Please note that this is not exactly 100% accurate and any corrections should be sent to me directly. - Nick Andre. VERSION 3.43 - DECEMBER 13 2009 ------------------------------- This minor release adds support for Info-Zip's "ZIP" and "UNZIP" programs, as documented on www.info-zip.org. In addition, each of the questions in the XMAIL SETUP SCREEN have been updated to allow for mixed-case parameters for the programs. Info-ZIP may be desirable over the default "PK-ware" if your D'Bridge system is being used to hub a lot of mail to other systems. If you decide to use Info-ZIP's programs in place of the PK-ware, ZIP.EXE requires the "-mj" parameter (dash, lowercase m, lowercase j). -mj means move the Fidonet *.PKT files into a ZIP file and strip the full pathnames out of the mail bundle. UNZIP.EXE only requires "-j" (dash, lowercase j), to strip the full pathname when extracting a Fidonet mail bundle. If you wish to have Info-ZIP run in a "window" inside of D'Bridge, then do not use the plus-sign (+) before the programs; otherwise if you do, then D'Bridge will run them "full-screen" as it does with PK-ware. Also note that D'Bridge still ships with and installs PKZIP and PKUNZIP by default to your DB directory. You must obtain ZIP and UNZIP on your own if you wish to use those programs instead of the default PK-ware programs. Support for Info-ZIP may not function correctly on the OS/2 operating system and on Linux it is recommended to stick with PK-ware under DOS emulation. No other changes were done in this release. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.42 - DECEMBER 5 2009 ------------------------------ This very minor release corrects two long-term stability problems - one with the start of a mail tossing session with thousands if not tens of thousands of packet files waiting. The other problem was in regards to "syncing up" the log files when BinkD is ran as a service (or seperate process) and D'Bridge itself has not been ran for lengthly periods of time. No other changes were done in this release. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.41 - NOVEMBER 13 2009 ------------------------------- This is a very minor, almost trivial release. Less than six lines of code were changed in the D'Bridge kernel for a slight performance improvement. No other changes were made in this release. VERSION 3.40 - NOVEMBER 9 2009 ------------------------------ This minor release corrects a possible "lockup" condition in the COMM/MODEM HARDWARE screen. A very minor tune-up was also done to the D'Bridge kernal. No other changes were made in this release. VERSION 3.39 - OCTOBER 28 2009 ------------------------------ WARNING: If you are upgrading from 3.37 or prior, please review the notes in HISTORY.TXT for 3.38. This is a very minor release which corrects a possible long-term reliability problem with the way large volumes of Echomail processing are accounted for in the system log file. No other changes were done in this release. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.38 - OCTOBER 25 2009 ------------------------------ After a short hiatus, I looked at the source code, tested something and sure enough, another problem. This is a very minor release that corrects a rare but serious fundimental problem with DBUTIL SORT AREAS, DBUTIL PURGE, DBUTIL REMOVEDUPEDATABASES, DBUTIL SHOWDEADECHOES and DBUTIL REMOVEDEADECHOES. This release shall be treated as a "critical" update for your D'Bridge system. When DBUTIL runs, several checks are done against your setup to ensure that any database modifications run trouble-free. A very serious problem with the logic behind the Echomail "database integrity" check was resolved. Under one rare but possible condition, it was apparent that DBUTIL was removing perfectly valid Echomail areas out of your configuration and possibly causing corrupt entries towards the end of the DBRIDGE.ADF database file. If those missing Echomail areas was added again automatically by D'Bridge, further corruption was possible. The corruption evident in the problem in 3.37 and prior can be used maliciously; since the security settings are often corrupt. For example, an affected system could have downlinks Areafixing themselves to areas to which they should not have access to. Therefore, even if your D'Bridge system has no problems; it is strongly recommended to upgrade to this release. If that is not desirable then install this release in a seperate directory and manually copy over the DBUTIL.EXE file to your current installation. An effort was made to ensure backwards-compatibility with this fix with prior versions. This is really the only time I would ever recommend this approach; only because the problem is isolated to one "module" of code rather than the entire mailer. I am not disclosing in this echo exactly what caused the "failed check" in 3.37 and prior - since that can be potentially used as both a security and reliability exploit for existing systems. But rest assured that although its serious, its very rare that anyone cares enough to try to hack another system in Fidonet. Fido's dwindling numbers makes it possible to fix things without mass-panic; I can only imagine if this problem happened during the "glory days" of BBS'ing. So, be thankful for the low membership numbers of this net (yet, please keep this net going with the usual FIDONEWS banter) While I appreciate that there are those of you who follow my work closely, I strongly recommend that you DO NOT allow prior versions of D'Bridge for download on BBS's or websites. At the very least, explain to the user to check for updates on my website first, before installing. Newcomers to D'Bridge are strongly advised against installing any version of D'Bridge 3.37 or prior and it is recommended that the "Notify when new updates are available" setting be kept enabled. I may not be participating in Fidonet as often as I (probably) should; so any serious problems with D'Bridge please contact me via Internet Email to nick at nickandre dot com. I will not address the recent rumor-mill. What fun would that be? It is fun to think, however, that it never occured to anyone that any downtime may in fact be intentional. You know, just to see what happens when I deny certain downlinks their daily dosage of important, educational, fair, balanced, honest, life-imperative-that-you-always-participate-in echoes like Z1C, FIDONEWS, FIDOGAZETTE, FTSC, and ALT.SEX.FETISH.ROBOTS. Uhh wait... I think only one of those was ever really important. (Those offended should realise that the sassy robot from Short Circuit needs love and affection as much as your reliable Linux system needs my Inbox to know about it) Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.37 - OCTOBER 12 2009 ------------------------------ This minor release should correct reported excessive CPU utilization under Windows 2000 and higher, including Vista and Windows 7. I say "should" because its all relative to the number of other programs running at once notwithstanding the speed of the CPU. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.36 - SEPTEMBER 18 2009 -------------------------------- NOTE: If you are upgrading from 3.31 or prior, please review HISTORY.TXT for the notes for 3.35 and previous versions. This is a very, very minor release which corrects the display of personal messages received from Wildcat, TBBS and any other systems which produce mail with uppercase FROM fields. No other changes were done in this release. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.35 - AUGUST 15 2009 ----------------------------- NOTE: If you are upgrading from 3.31 or prior, please review HISTORY.TXT for the notes for 3.32, 3.33 and 3.34 first. This is a very minor release which corrects a fundimental problem with the purging of the BinkD log file. No other corrections were done in this release. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.34 - AUGUST 5 2009 ---------------------------- NOTE: If you are upgrading from 3.31 or prior, please review HISTORY.TXT for the notes for 3.32 and 3.33 first. This is a very minor release which corrects the following: - Another problem with the Areafix for NNTP has been fixed and all functions in that now appear to work properly as they should. - When upgrading from now on, custom junk-filters defined in the JUNK*.CFG files are no longer overwritten. Instead, those files are now in the file called JUNKCFGS.ZIP. - A minor problem with DBUTIL SORT AREAS has been fixed. It was not a stability problem; but a "leftovers sitting too long in the fridge" problem that I just never got around to, until now. - Work has began for a "Favourites" feature in the internal editor, but won't be done until the next release. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.33 - JULY 29 2009 --------------------------- This is somewhat of a major release which contains more significant improvements and changes to the underlining source code. Some minor problems reported should also be resolved. If you are upgrading from 3.31 or prior, please review HISTORY.TXT for the notes for 3.32 first. - A serious problem with the Areafix for NNTP (Usenet gating) is fixed. - Two new semaphore files relating to the above Areafix for NNTP make their debut here, for better control over the gating when D'Bridge is being ran in the most demanding "hub" scenarios. Note that when I refer to the NNTP/USENET gateway, I'm referring to the actual Internet NNTP connection made via. the SOUPGATE/VSOUP modules (automatically managed by D'Bridge). So the following "bedtime story" is not suitable if you are obtaining Usenet in Fido/FTN format from someone else already (like me, Allen Prunty, Frank Linhares, etc). Before I explain, theres a file called NEWSRC (no extension) that is used by the VSOUP module to control what Usenet groups its supposed to download from your Internet provider. There is also a file called USENET.BBS, that is to be specified as the LAST line in PACKET/MAIL CONTROL if your hubbing Usenet for downlinks. It makes sense that if you're hubbing Usenet, you wouldn't want to carry 70,000+ Usenet groups on your system all at once. You would have it set up in a way where your downlinks will Areafix what they want and they are automatically added as Passthru areas. USENET.BBS should always come last in your PACKET/MAIL CONTROL setup. Put any other networks (including Fidonet) first and above the "line" where you have USENET.BBS defined. So, unknown Areafix requests for Usenet groups makes D'Bridge manage the NEWSRC file. (Or if you press ALT+R and enter your Gateway address followed by some "unsubscribed" groups). D'Bridge will also generate the USENET.BBS file automatically. When things are set up properly and the smoke clears, D'Bridge treats Usenet as if its any other Fido/FTN network. Now the new semaphores are only useful when D'Bridge has been configured to use an "External" gateway in the USENET/GATEWAY screen. The ability to use an external gateway allows a much more flexible and versatile way for D'Bridge to work in the most elaborate and complicated setups I could think of. You control your own software for Usenet by editing the included GATE.BAT file in this release. WARNING: Answering "External" to that question means that I cannot provide technical support for any Usenet problems beyond D'Bridge as you are going to be doing things I haven't thought of... yet. Not to worry as the GATE.BAT file that I included shows how D'Bridge would normally work with SOUPGATE and VSOUP that are called in "Basic" operation. By following my example, you should have a better understanding of whats involved and why the two new semaphores were necessary. DBUAFIXI.EXT is a dummy file that D'Bridge will check *before* processing any Areafix requests destined for the USENET gate. That file is created by the GATE.BAT file and deleted when the batch file ends. D'Bridge needs to wait for GATE.BAT to finish because any pending Areafix transactions for the Usenet gateway because the NEWSRC control file is rewritten as part of the Areafix code. If D'Bridge overwrote NEWSRC while GATE.BAT was running, partial or even complete damage of that file would result... and your downlinks would not receive any Usenet mail from you. Likewise, DBUAFIXI.TMP is a file that D'Bridge creates when its processing Areafix requests for the gateway. GATE.BAT checks for that file and immediately terminates if it exists, and again this is due to the changes being made to the NEWSRC file. - It is impossible now to specify your Gateway address in the "Unknown area forwarding" question in PACKET/MAIL CONTROL. This was done for security reasons. If you had previously specified your Gateway, the setting will be erased. - Two new control-files have been added to D'Bridge. They suppliment the file AREAS.TXT when new Echomail areas have been added either as "normal" areas or Passthru type. As you know, AREAS.TXT contains the Echomail tag, a space, then the description. AREAS.AKA lets you specify the originating Fido/FTN address to use for the new area added. The format of this file is the Echomail tag, a space, then the address to assign to the newly added area. For example, if theres a line called NICKANDREDOTCOM 1:229/426, then when that Echomail area is added, the 1:229/426 address will be assigned as the originating address. AREAS.SEC is the same except you can specify the default group and security level. For example, NICKANDREDOTCOM B,50 means to assign the group B, security level 50 when that Echomail area is automatically added to the system. - The BinkD system no longer hammers the system log file with "error" entries. If theres a problem now, the system log will only be updated once with the error of that session. The problem happened in prior versions when BinkD was running as a server process and there was more than one session happening at once. - The BinkD outbound operations can be aborted now via CTL+A if its really necessary to do so. - The COMM/MODEM SETUP screen no longer probes the COM port or the modem if you start D'Bridge in SETUP mode from the command prompt, ie. DB S or DB SETUP. This was done to improve any diagnostics needed especially if you entered the wrong COM port and Windows "traps" with an error. - The internal editor now finally supports CTL+LEFT and CTL+RIGHT movements to "skip words" when composing/editing a message. WARNING: The code for this is experimental. Let me know the minute that it messes up other functions. - Cleaned up the help file a little more, once again. - Cleaned up the logic behind various configuration screens. - Rewrote a minor logic routine in the kernal. D'Bridge should overall run approx. 5% faster now... but its really a matter of perspective. VERSION 3.32 - JULY 22 2009 --------------------------- This is a major release and it has significant and fundimental changes done internally to the source code. A lot of work was done to simplify or improve the functionality of several elements of D'Bridge. Please try only to report any problems once 3.32 has been installed. The source code for 3.31 and prior versions has been archived/moved off the workstation. I will not be able to quickly diagnose any problems in 3.31 and prior versions. Thats not to say I can't do it; its just going to take more time if you are reporting stuff from 3.31. WARNING: If thats not possible or if this release does not perform as desired, then rollback to 3.31 or prior releases and send a report accordingly, ASAP to my attention via Internet Email. DO NOT send regular Fido NETmail. The release notes for this version are lengthly; so I've broken it up into several sections, and for posting in the Fidonet DBRIDGE echo: REDESIGNED SETUP WIZARD - Explains the install/upgrade improvements. FIDO PLUG AND PLAY - Allows new users to automatically obtain addresses. UPDATES NOTIFICATION - Explains the new auto-updates notification feature. CORRECTIONS/FIXES/ETC - The largest section; outlining the obvious. REDESIGNED SETUP WIZARD ----------------------- The Setup Wizard has been rewritten from scratch; functioning exactly as it did in the version 1.xx series. This was done for a few reasons, but the end result is a more simplified procedure. And most important: Less code used. The Setup Wizard will do a fair amount of "cleanup" of your DB directory when you upgrade from 3.31 or prior versions. There may be a considerable amount of disk-activity during this process. A fair amount of files will be permanently DELETED from your directory. These are: - ANY and ALL "leftovers" from terminated Soupgate/VSOUP sessions. - DB07*.3 and DB08*.3; obsolete/retired code from 3.31 and prior versions. - COMM.CFG, obsolete from version 1 and version 2 series. - DBRIDGE.MSG, obsolete from version 2. - DBRIDGE.NRN, DBRIDGE.NMW, DBRIDGE.EMW, DBRIDGE.BXS, DBRIDGE.RSN, DBRIDGE.RSE, DBRIDGE.MSR, DBUTIL.DAT, DBUTIL.NRN, DATA\*.DB?, DB06.DAT, AMERICA.COS, DBUTIL.C1, DBUTIL.C2, DBRIDGE.QSD, DBRIDGE.NMS are removed either for obsolescence or because of possible conflicts after upgrading to 3.32. - The infamous empty "Queu" directory. There may be a problem if you decide to rollback to 3.31 or prior versions when these files are missing, however it would (theoretically) be more of a cosmetic/minor problem than major. FIDO PLUG AND PLAY ------------------ This was a past topic you may remember discussion on in the Fidonet DBRIDGE echo. A completely redesigned Wizard in 3.32 now gives the end-user the option of either manually configuring their address, uplink and routing information or to have that automatically-obtained. This is done via Fido Plug and Play, or FPNP for short. FPNP is a way to dynamically-assign Fidonet/FTN addresses to systems who connect to you for the first time. When prior versions of D'Bridge were installed for the first time, a Wizard would appear, asking the user to enter in their network address and that of their Fidonet uplink/provider. And of course DB would configure itself accordingly. FPNP is now fully functional, works properly across "othernets", and is a major step in allowing newcomers to join our hobby. WARNING: This is an advanced feature. You should not enable FPNP unless you are an experienced administrator with a very thorough knowledge of how Fido/FTN addressing, routing and hubbing works. When a remote system is assigned an address by you, they are given a POINT ADDRESS and can optionally be connected to Echomail areas of your choice. All of the complicated routing, scheduling and packet/mail settings are automatically configured on both your side and the user's. The Wizard will ask if the user already has a Fido/FTN address. If so, then the system will be auto-configured with their address and uplink info, the same way it worked in prior versions. However, if not, then FPNP works to obtain the address. The way it works is a new installation of 3.32 (and higher) connects first with nickandre.com (1:1/130). The 1:1/130 address on Fidonet is a "primary directory" of all known D'Bridge installations worldwide that are offering FPNP services to end-users; along with which networks (ie. Fidonet, DBNET, etc) and their corrosponding geographical locations. The data exchanged with nickandre.com is your address and FPNP information as configured in this screen. No other information is sent to that site. WARNING: Systems who do not refresh themselves within a one-week period are automatically purged from the database at 1:1/130; to help present a most-recent list of available systems that an end-user can exchange mail with. By carefully manipulating BinkD on the end-user side, a short query is done and a list of available "hubs" is downloaded from 1:1/130 and presented to choose from. The user can then choose one (usually whoever is closest geographically) and optionally choose which networks to connect to. A request is then sent to your system to obtain an address. D'Bridge then computes and sends back the address along with special commands that automatically configure that remote end-user with the proper address, routing, Echomail areas and so forth. The questions in the new FPNP SETUP screen control how it works: ZONE:NET This is where you specify the network Zone and Net where the addressing should start. For example, 1:229 means that I will auto-assign addresses in Zone 1, Net 229. The ZONE:NET must match at least one of your network addresses specified in the BASIC CONFIGURATION screen. The first matching ZONE:NET will be the one that addresses are auto-assigned from. WARNING: Be very careful with the deligation of Fidonet ZONE and NET properties. If you are not the Network Co-Ordinator (NC) of your local "net", you should ask permission to use FPNP first. NETWORK ID A unique ID to assign for this network. Up to 8 letters and numbers only. For example, FIDONET or DBNET. The network ID is presented to the remote system. NODELIST D'Bridge will send the specified nodelist to the remote system. Do not enter an extension; it will send whatever matches. DEFAULT Specifies the default security criteria to apply for new systems SECURITY and this should match the criteria in the PACKET/MAIL CONTROL screen. For example: A,50 means assign group A, security 50. START The starting "scope" for address assignment. For example, if you enter 50 and your network address is 1:229/426, then D'Bridge will assign addresses from 1:229/426.50 and onward. END The ending "scope", as per above, D'Bridge will assign addresses up to this criteria. OPTIONAL You may send an optional "infopack", usually a ZIP file that INFOPACK would contain an official application, rules and list of areas. Specify that name of the file here (*with* an extension) FPNP updates and controls the points via the POINTS.LST control file. D'Bridge is smart enough to figure out if the POINTS.LST already exists and if its in that "Boss-node" format as discussed recently (as of this writing) in the FIDOGAZETTE echo. Originally it was my intention to provide NODE addressing and full support for MakeNL-compliant segments, however, there are a few "political" drawbacks of offering this service. Internally however, the code can be adjusted fairly easily to provide NODE addressing. AUTOMATIC UPDATES NOTIFICATION ------------------------------ When D'Bridge 3.32 is installed for the first time, a Wizard appears, asking you if you wish to be automatically notified when new updates are available. If you answer YES to this question, D'Bridge will check with nickandre.com approximately once per week, to see if a new version is available. If so, then a message is flashed on the MAILER screen accordingly. CORRECTIONS/FIXES/ETC --------------------- As explained earlier, a significant amount of work was done behind the scenes to help improve the way certain fundimental components operate. In addition: - The overall installation/upgrade process should be several times faster than before. - The overall operation of the mailer should be anywhere from 5% to 25% faster now. - The overall operation of the BinkD subsystem should be anywhere from 10% to 75% faster now and use less disk access/swapping. - D'Bridge will unpack any received mail immediately after a BinkD transaction if running in "client only" mode. - D'Bridge uses slightly less memory when running now. - A serious stability/reliability problem with the way D'Bridge handles COM ports has been resolved. - A serious stability problem with Error 23 relating to COMM/MODEM setup should be resolved. The problem is in the length of the MCF files. - A serious problem with the way BinkD stopped polling remote systems upon installation of some recent versions of D'Bridge should be resolved now. This version underwent serious testing to ensure that problem did not happen again.... but if it does, let me know. - A serious problem with DBUTIL SORT AREAS has been resolved. - A serious longstanding problem with DBUTIL CHANGE on alias-addresses (non-Fidonet) has been resolved. - A minor improvement was done to the code of DBUTIL PURGE. - The nightly "cleaning" of the system log files is now done internally in D'Bridge. - A problem with a malfunctioning COM port-status in the menu system has been fixed, and no, it wasn't something I botched before... it was a new thing I botched. - The internal editor should no longer duplicate the MSGID kludge on NETmail destined for multiple recipients. - The internal editor's "Custom tear line" is no longer Wildcat. - DBUAFIXI is no longer included in D'Bridge, I rewrote that entire program and all the code to function during the tossing of mail; internally. - USENET.BBS is properly auto-generated on all transactions from the NNTP SOUP gateway that update the NEWSRC source file. - AUTORUN.INF is no longer included in D'Bridge; for security reasons, and Microsoft has recently released a series of "patches" to their OS's to change the behavior of AUTORUN.INF. It is fairly simple to create your own if you decide to burn D'Bridge to CD-R to share with others. I also rewrote a few sections of code to be less dependant on Assembler and be a bit more compiler-friendly instead of just hammering the DOS session with assembler calls. After working on 3.32, I am inspired to start work on eliminating ALL of the assembly-language calls out of D'Bridge entirely. There are two fundimental problems in the code that I may need help on. Those are ZMODEM and the B- Tree database system used by the Nodelist, Costbase and system Queue. Eliminating the assembler code means that I can compile cross-platform DB that will work natively in Linux, OS/2, Unix, FreeBSD, Win32/Win64, etc etc. Depending on what feedback I get from that, I may just release that as the version 4 series. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.31 - JUNE 13 2009 --------------------------- This is a very minor release which addresses some problems in the HARDWARE/ MODEM SETUP screen and other internal things too numerous to mention. WARNING: Be prepared to rollback to a prior version if this one does not perform as expected. VERSION 3.29 - MAY 23 2009 -------------------------- This is yet another minor release which corrects the following: - The BASIC CONFIGURATION screen has two new questions for the purging of log files for DBUTIL and BinkD (and that old option for that log file was removed out of BINKD SETUP). Also, all logging purges as it should now. - Problems with session-limits in BinkD transactions should be gone now. VERSION 3.28 - MAY 19 2009 -------------------------- 3.28 is a very, very minor release which corrects the menu system and Fido Plug and Play (FPNP). FPNP is being revised for the next release. VERSION 3.27 - MAY 15 2009 -------------------------- There is going to be an upcoming major release of D'Bridge (still version 3) to fulfill certain promises I made in the past about things in the works. A lot of hard work has gone into 3.27 as it was originally planned to be that release... however... at this point I decided that the work so far was worthy of release to "tide you over" until the major stuff gets done. My Email address is not working until Monday due to yet another ISP issue and I'm going away on holidays for the weekend. So... this is possibly the first release that has been announced here in the DBRIDGE echo as opposed to regular Email. - Pretty sure I solved that problem with installing DB to a partition other than drive C. - A very rare "Error 5" problem should be resolved when aborting a toss cycle to fire up the internal editor. - Should of solved a very minor but serious problem with regards to the way D'Bridge manipulates COM ports on Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Server 2003 and 2008 platforms. The problem does not happen with OS/2, real or emulated DOS "machines" such as DOSBOX or DOSEMU. - A problem with QuickDial on PSTN dialup modems has been resolved. - A problem with BinkD transactions immediately starting when D'Bridge has been started has been resolved. - An inconsistent display of certain outbound BinkD transaction was corrected. - The BinkD module for Windows has finally been upgraded from 0.9.6 to 0.9.10. The OS/2 module still remains at version 0.9.6. - A few minor changes were done to various setting screens, for logistical reasons. - A minor issue with DBUTIL CHANGE has been fixed. - BinkD can now be ran as a "service" on Windows 2000 and higher. When you answer "S" to the question "Run BinkD as a server?", D'Bridge will install the BinkD module as a service-process. That means that BinkD will run in the background, with no window. WARNING: If BinkD is currently running, shut it down before changing the answer to that question from YES to SERVICE. If you change from SERVICE to YES, you will need to manually start BinkD as before. - D'Bridge will automatically shutdown and restart BinkD when a configuration change has occured; so manual intervention is no longer required on your part. Future versions of D'Bridge will also automatically shutdown and restart the Binkd service in Windows if an upgrade needs that to happen. - Note that the process is left installed and running even when D'Bridge has been shutdown. It is assumed that if you are running BinkD as a service then obviously you intend to accept incoming connections all the time. If you want to automatically shutdown BinkD when you shutdown D'Bridge, create a dummy file called DBRIDGE.BSS (short for BinkD Service Shutdown) in your DB directory. - Also note that when BinkD is installed as a service-process, it will be started whenever Windows starts. D'Bridge will assume that the process is always running. WARNING: Do not use the Windows Task Manager or any 3rd-party software to change the priority of the BinkD service. Doing so may cause a malfunction. Under NO circumstances should the BinkD service be terminated manually. ALWAYS let D'Bridge shut the service down. - It is not recommended to attempt to run "real time log viewers" or any simular programs with BinkD. Those programs may interfere with the way D'Bridge interoperates with the service. - A new feature has been added to the EMAIL/USENET gating system to allow the operation to run as a seperate process rather than from D'Bridge itself. If you enable that setting in that screen, you need to run the batch/ command-file "GATE.BAT" (or GATE.CMD on OS/2). You schedule this to run on your own, using your own scheduler. This was done to provide a bit more flexibility in the way that EMAIL and USENET is handled in D'Bridge. A lengthly gate session would tie up D'Bridge for several hours on end in 3.26 and prior versions. Note that when you enable that setting, the auto-checking of EMAIL and USENET groups is disabled. - A new feature has been added to the ECHOMAIL AREAS screen which allows you to "unlink" systems defined in the FORWARD-TO fields prior to removing an area. When you press R to remove an area, D'Bridge asks you if you really wish to do it. If you answer "Unlink" or "U" then an unlink request will be sent out AFTER you exit the whole screen. Those are added to the main Queue. WARNING: Incorrect use of this feature may result in lost mail and/or upset and possibly "lost" downlinks if you catch my drift. This is a feature for experienced D'Bridge administrators only. WARNING: At the last minute prior to publishing 3.27, I changed the way the feature works so unlinking is "queued up" if D'Bridge has been started in SETUP mode (ie. C:\DB> DB SETUP). When D'Bridge is started "normally" then you can process those transactions by going back into ECHOMAIL AREAS again, and press ESC. The transactions will be processed immediately. - After a series of REMOVE requests as explained above, D'Bridge will also create two textfiles. DBRIDGE.UAL (Unlinked Area List) contains the Echomail tags of whatever was removed when you exit the whole area screen and DBRIDGE.UAF contains the *.MSG directories (if applicable). These two files are created to assist with whatever batch files or events you decide to write to do other tasks when Echomail areas are removed. An example is creating/publishing a "removal log" in an echo of some sort. NOTE: At the last minute prior to publishing 3.27, I decided to not purge those files, for diagnostic reasons. Its up to you to delete them both if they are not required any longer in whatever manipulation you do with them or as part of a weekly "cleanup" event. - In addition, when you remove Echomail areas, you may create a batch file called UNLINKED.BAT containing commands to run after one or more REMOVE commands were issued. One simple way to ensure that the *.MSG directories are "consistent" with your Echomail database is to create UNLINKED.BAT with the command DBUTIL SORT AREAS. This makes sure that whenever you remove an area, DBUTIL will also remove the directory (archiving any old messages first if the Archive criteria is defined). Personally I run DBUTIL SORT AREAS as part of a midnight event, but you may choose to do it the other way if you want. - The code is smart enough to send unlink's as a "batch" and not individual messages. - At the very last minute prior to publishing 3.27, I added a warning/ confirmation question when you exit the ECHOMAIL AREAS editor and there are pending unlink transactions. Answer YES or NO accordingly. Its here because on Qwerty keyboards Y is next to U. And I didn't want U to make a mistake and ask Y. - The work on QWK support has been removed and scrapped. After careful consideration, it was not a service which I felt would benefit a D'Bridge user. QWK is somewhat popular. Basically someone eventually figured out that a protocol designed for off-line mail reading could be used for networking. It didn't take long thereafter for the idea to catch on and soon, QWK-based "othernets" appear. Those appear to be prevailent on Synchronet, a popular BBS platform. Its true that it "serves its purpose" by allowing people to write messages back and forth. But with a lack of basic necessities such as organised network structure and lack of proper mail routing, the two problems result in an administrative nightmare. The problems are obvious when a BBS wants to run a dual-setup with both a QWK network and offering Fido/FTN connections. The QWK system is for Sysops who simply do not understand (or don't want to understand) how to set up a proper Fido/FTN system. Version 3.27 drops any and all references to QWK and removes a fair portion of code in both the mailer and the exported configuration files, freeing up some RAM. - The code that controlled non-local-net Internet EMAIL routing, a rarely used feature in EMAIL/USENET GATING has been removed from 3.27 and is left to the user to set this up through the other question, ADVANCED GATING OPTIONS. If this feature was configured in 3.26 or prior versions, the D'Bridge Update Advisor (DBUPD) should automatically make the necessary "conversion" for the advanced-gating. - Support for legacy CGA video card snow-suppression has been removed from 3.27 as the compiler's CRT unit was modified and patched. If D'Bridge is being ran on an IBM XT with a CGA card and has a snow-problem, there are various TSR programs which can be installed overtop to fix it. - The overlay diagnostics feature has been removed from 3.27 and will not return. It was superceded by various mailer-code reworkings in 3.24, 3.25 and 3.26. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.26 - APRIL 14 2009 ---------------------------- This is a very, very minor release which adds a question to maintain the list of personal messages waiting in the internal editor, when the YOUVE GOT MAIL option is enabled. Some ongoing cleanup was done to the source code for all aspects of the mailer, the internal editor, DBUTIL and the Setup Wizard... so, this release affects all areas of operation. Nothing noticable or worthy of mention at this time. D'Bridge should use slightly less memory and file-handles and run approx. 25% faster in nodelist compiling, message tossing and scanning. Incase "you didn't get that memo about the TPS reports", my new Email address is nick [at] nickandre [dot] com. The Hotmail account will be permanently closed, effective a month from today. VERSION 3.25 - APRIL 9 2009 --------------------------- This is a very minor release to fix some reported problems since 3.24. Based on feedback, a new feature, NETMAIL FILTER, makes its debut in the SCHEDULER. This will show a new screen where you have these questions. Keep in mind that these questions override any and all settings in all mail events in the schedule including the "Un-event". Also keep in mind that it is not my intention to program a full-blown NETmail "tracker" system; but this should at least do some of the things that those programs offer. WARNING: This new feature is provided solely for aiding in troubleshooting and diagnosing "problems". It is not meant as a permanent solution. NETMAIL FILTER: Answer YES to turn the system on or NO to shut it off (default setting). This keeps all of the below settings intact and serves as a "master override" to all operation. FILTER TO: When building the outbound Queue, each NETmail message is checked to see if it has a valid destination address AND that it can be routed. If a message cannot be routed, D'Bridge can "bounce back" the message to the sender. D'Bridge will explain to the sender that the destination address is invalid or that they may not be authorized to route mail through your system. Answer YES to do this or NO if not (default setting). If you wish to bounce the message in your own words, create a textfile called DBRIDGE.NFB with your "words of wisdom" to those senders. If you wish to override what D'Bridge thinks is undeliverable; create a textfile called DBRIDGE.NFO (short for NETmail Filter Override) and specify the addresses; one per line. D'Bridge will not bounce-back messages destined for addresses in the DBRIDGE.NFO file; it will leave them as undeliverable in the outbound Queue. BLOCK DESTINATIONS: This allows you to specify addresses that D'Bridge should never route mail to. Any NETmail processed that matches the addresses in this screen will be blocked. You may not use "wildcards" here; you must specify the addresses individually. The blocked messages are bounced. NOTIFY ON THOSE: Answer YES to CC you via NETmail or NO if not. Other things done: - Some aspects of the on-line help system (F1) have been either rewritten, updated or otherwise cleaned-up entirely. - A rare freeze-problem in the internal editor when replying to certain NETmail messages should be fixed now. - The status line should no longer be "garbled" and I will tell you all that there is over *2 thousand* lines of code that controls just the display of that one status line. 2 thousand lines of code to control the display of 80 characters on the mailer screen. This is yet another mystery to me. - The DBUTIL BACKUPMAIL command has been slightly adjusted to now include a log file, BACKUP.LOG, inserted into the ALLMAIL.ZIP file created by the ALLMAIL.BAT file. If you do not wish to have a log file in the ALLMAIL.ZIP file; then modify your backup process to run the command "pkzip -d ALLMAIL.ZIP backup.log". While not really a "fix" per say, its there incase you need to troubleshoot things. - A minor performance improvement was done to DBUTIL PURGE. VERSION 3.24 - MARCH 30 2009 ---------------------------- I recommend that those of you running a Fidonet server or "Hub" run that on a server-level platform for maximum uptime and less likelyhood of data loss. Thats how Net 229 has ran here for years. Net 229, my website and BBS run on an industrial-grade rack server with RAID/mirrored hard drives, redundant power supplies and fans. Yes, its probably overkill and "its only a hobby" but a lot of systems depend on mine for all of their mail. Loosing Fidonet would be like loosing a pet in real life, I guess. Now I understand that the vast majority of users are running DB on average desktop PC's. So with that in mind, this release should be considered somewhat major. It addresses several issues with long-term stability and "worst case scenario" problems with the Queue, databases and configuration files. With this version; it should be possible to recover even a very damaged DB directory missing the majority of its files. I also understand that being told to backup your data is a lot like driving somewhere with a girlfriend and being nagged at to "ask for directions". Real men DO NOT ask for directions. If we can build nuclear weapons and NASA probes, we're quite capable of finding the nearest shopping mall. So... you don't need me nagging you to backup your data on a regular basis. Adding a cheap external USB hard drive or "flash stick" and automating backups of your D'Bridge directory is one simple way to avoid data loss. - The exported configuration file (ie. DB EXPORT) now includes the contents of the DBRIDGE.XMA file. This is another important database that was overlooked since version 1. This is a temporary file used by D'Bridge when it generates packet files for other systems during a toss cycle. If this file was lost in a crash, D'Bridge would loose all pending transactions during that time; even if the packet files remained. - DBUTIL itself has had over a dozen significant internal changes to ensure that it can successfully recover from a few exceptionally-rare conditions with corrupt files. A lot of hard work was done in "stepping through" various code to ensure it accurately checks the data on computations even with a severely corrupted database. - A new command, DBUTIL RENDATE, will rename a file to todays date or a date you specify. The syntax is DBUTIL RENDATE [file] [optional date] The date format is mm-dd-yy, mm/dd/yy, mm-dd-yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy. For example, DBUTIL RENDATE DBCONFIG.ZIP will just rename the file to todays date - In this case, March 30th 2009, becomes 03302009.ZIP. Or, DBUTIL RENDATE DBCONFIG.ZIP 07/04/2009 will rename it to 07042009.ZIP. You would use this in conjunction with a backup schedule. Your backup would run this once a week. The DBCONFIG.ZIP archive contains over a weeks worth of "restore points". By renaming this file with DBUTIL RENDATE and moving that file onto another hard drive, CD-RW, or other media, you can have as many backups as you wish to restore from. - The database DBRIDGE.ADF contains all of your Echomail areas. Now a new command, DBUTIL REBUILDADF, will read an exported configuration and generate a new DBRIDGE.ADF file only. This command shall only be used as a worst-case-scenario if you are repairing a damaged D'Bridge installation; whereas that file is corrupt. A lot of hard work has gone into this simple feature because incorrect entries in that database would result in "problems" down the road. This new feature should effectively and permanently solve any and all future issues with the ADF file. WARNING: Since this command destroys the database, DO NOT use this command unless absolutely necessary. Yes, I understand that DB IMPORT does the same thing; but this feature was done to avoid changing any settings in the mailer and other components. Note that "cropping" an exported configuration with just Echomail areas and then using DB IMPORT is NOT recommended - use this command instead. - DBUTIL REBUILDADF will produce a text file called DBUTIL.CFX (short for Configuration Fixed) to allow manual inspection of possible corrupted entries. - Another new DBUTIL command, DBUTIL BACKUPMAIL, will generate a batch file to backup all of your messages in the NETmail directory and each individual Echomail directory. The batch file will be called ALLMAIL.BAT. It will use PKZIP to do this and produce an archive called ALLMAIL.ZIP. I've also made sure that the batch file was designed around the handling limitations of PKZIP as well. The batch file is NOT called after running; you must manually start it or "call" it from another. By using the RENDATE utility, you can then move/rename that archive as part of a backup plan. - The startup sequence of the mailer and the midnight "AutoUpdate" cycle have had several changes done to ensure that in a scenario where crucial databases are missing; that D'Bridge will still start and function, even if its at the bare minimum. - Minor corrections were done to the BinkD system; no noticable changes. - A few other problems with regards to "Error 202" and "Error 203" should also be resolved. - An extremely rare condition was corrected where D'Bridge would "freeze" entirely during a toss cycle. VERSION 3.23 - MAR 19 2009 -------------------------- WARNING: If you are upgrading from 3.1 or prior versions, please read the HISTORY.TXT file for important changes done for version 3.2. This is a very minor release which corrects the broken Twit feature and the REMOVEDEADECHOES "field overflow" bug. Only a single line of code had to be changed in both. So its probably not a wise idea for me to be working on this project in the early morning hours... Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.22 - MAR 16 2009 -------------------------- WARNING: If you are upgrading from 3.1 or prior versions, please read the HISTORY.TXT file for important changes done for version 3.2. This is a very, very minor release which should (hopefully) address the "magic 8000" problem in the internal message editor in addition to the lost-leadreads when reading messages. It was tested here successfully. It is not imperative that you upgrade to 3.22 unless you have a large number of messages; or the internal editor always starts on message #1 when selecting an Echomail area for the first time. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.21 - MAR 13 2009 -------------------------- WARNING: You must shut down the BinkD system, if it is currently running, prior to installing this version. This is a very minor release which corrects the following problems: - D'Bridge 3.21 should no longer crash on unpacking new personal Echomail or scanning out (caused in 3.2) - D'Bridge should mind its manners and not belch Error 202 on a QueueScan (caused in 3.2) - D'Bridge now accurately reports time spent on a Queue entry for BinkD transactions (did not work entirely correctly in 3.2) - The use of DBRIDGE.RSN in the BinkD module has been replaced with a less disk-intensive DBRIDGE.UFM (short for Unpack/Forward Mail). - The same change has also been done to Internet EMAIL/USENET gating. - Usenet group "sync-up's" were not being properly done in prior versions and this has been fixed here. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.2 - MAR 12 2009 ------------------------- Okay, I have a little bit of time to spend here. This is a minor release but contains dozens of corrections, fixes, and improvements to the mailer and the internal message editor. It is recommended that everyone upgrade to this version as this version contains a fair number of improvements to operation and overall stability. A very important stability/security update was also done in this version. - A very serious "lockout" bug when a series of BinkD transactions are done in a row has been fixed. In prior versions this could have been used as a potentially annoying way to interfere with a D'Bridge system. The way that D'Bridge processed BinkD transactions was not based on the kernal's timer code. With PSTN transactions, the mailer sends stuff out and returns to "Idle/Next Call" state and waits a specified number of seconds (as defined in the UN-EVENT). So the problem was that in a series of BinkD transactions were sent out, the mailer would not return to Idle/ Next Call status and wait. The bug would cause the mailer to not respond to *any* commands including the ALT+X shutdown command, until all BinkD transactions were done. It was equivalent to using the QuickDial command with PSTN transactions... with no way to stop it. If a remote system was clever and malicious enough, he could keep sending mail packets (destined for others) on a continuous-loop, thereby causing the mailer to continuously process BinkD transactions and effectively locking-out the Sysop from intervening or using his own system. - This version tremendously improves the performance of the way that the Queue works with BinkD transactions, greatly reduces disk access, and things that I have written for BinkD have been streamlined and "fine tuned". Disk access is down approx. 50 percent; about a thousand lines of code have been eliminated; and a few K's of valuable memory-space freed up. - A new TWIT feature makes its official debut here... yes, the internal editor was long overdue for having one. The way it works is when browsing a message you may press the T key. A new window will appear, where you can add/remove people to the TWIT LIST. - The TWIT filter will no longer show messages from twits either via browsing messages or using the LIST command. It does NOT, however, "skip over" those messages. To do so would require reworking the way the browser works and thats not something I had time to get into... - I added a new question to EDITOR OPTIONS, to control whether or not you wish to be notified of personal messages from twits when D'Bridge unpacks messages. The default setting is NO. - You cannot twit D'Bridge. Doh! - Messages from twits are never deleted; so they're still stored. Changing the TWIT FILTER instantly hides/reveals messages... handy for those who just want to read certain messages from certain individuals when they feel like it. Better than adding a "Mood filter" I guess. To auto- delete messages from twits would require reworking the browser and/or mail tossing and thats not something I had time to do. - The twits are stored in the text-file DBRIDGE.TWT. - Try to twit me and see what happens. Keep in mind that it is not my intention to get carried away offering anymore new features to the version 3 series - aside from what I've promised that I would do. VERSION 3.1 - FEB 26 2009 ------------------------- WARNING: If you are upgrading from a prior version, you must shut down the BinkD module if it is presently running. After the upgrade is complete; you may restart the BinkD module again. This minor but CRITICAL release corrects yet another stability flaw in the way that D'Bridge interacts with BinkD. Under certain conditions, the BinkD system would not deliver mail destined to a remote system that was running Charles Cruden's Internet Rex (IREX), or it would not be possible to exchange mail with remote systems running D'Bridge versions 3.08 or 3.09. It is imperative that you upgrade to this version to avoid future problems with the way that BinkD functions on your system. A minor improvement was also done to the way that the "Uncompressed mail packets" operates (the U option in the BINKD SESSION INFO question). The improvement was done only because it shares the same code module as the subroutine that manipulates the behavior of BinkD. No other corrections or fixes were done at this time. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.09 - FEB 15 2009 -------------------------- WARNING: If you are upgrading from a prior version, you must shut down the BinkD module if it is presently running. After the upgrade is complete; you may restart the BinkD module again. This is a very minor but CRITICAL release which corrects a serious stability and design flaw with the way D'Bridge interacts with BinkD. It is imperative that you upgrade to this version to avoid future problems with the way that BinkD functions on your system. No other corrections were done at this time. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.08 - JANUARY 13 2009 ------------------------------ This is a very, very minor release. The mailer now responds to Areafix requests addressed to "D'Bridge Areafix" because I've noticed that some Sysops will just reply to Areafix requests that D'Bridge sends out to request what they want. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.07 - JANUARY 3 2009 ----------------------------- WARNING: This release deals with message processing. Please back up the contents of your NETmail directory and the outbound QUEUE if you are upgrading. This is a very minor release, although a fair amount of work and testing went into it. This release routes Areafix receipts from your uplink back to your downlinks if a downlink requested an area that did not exist. There is a new question in the PACKET/MAIL CONTROL screen, "Route receipts?" and it defaults to NO. When enabled, you will need to specify the address of your uplink in the "Unknown area forwarding" question at the bottom of the screen. Note that this feature does NOT work for uplinks in listing- files specified in the AREAFIX INFO question. You will need to edit the file DBRIDGE.RBU (Route Bad Uplink receipts), which tells D'Bridge what "qualifies" as a bad receipt from an uplink. When NETmail is unpacked, if the criteria is met, the message gets re-routed. Only 3.07 will be made available on my website. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.06 - DECEMBER 27 2008 ------------------------------- This is a very minor release which should correct a rare problem in the DBUTIL SORT AREAS and DBUTIL MOVE commands. Other reported issues will take some time to resolve. Only 3.06 will be made available on my website. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.05 - NOVEMBER 30 2008 ------------------------------- This is a very, very minor release which corrects a serious FTSC compliance problem with the "Add missing kludges" feature in the PACKET/MAIL CONTROL screen. Under certain conditions, the kludges added to a non-compliant message would be corrupted entirely. The "Add missing kludges" question now has three choices: OFF/DISABLED, LOCAL ONLY and ALL. Answering "Local" tells D'Bridge to only add missing kludges to messages scanned locally (ie. for those of you running legacy/ non-compliant BBS software), or "All" for adding missing kludges to all messages passing through your system. The feature has also been changed to NOT add INTL or FMPT/TOPT kludges because I felt that it was over-complicating things in the NETmail processor code; and to help out with the proverbial finger-pointing over whoes mailer software is better than the others. Lets look at it this way, if someone isn't running compliant software, wouldn't it be nice to have DB show the glaring facts instead of someone else messing around with the kludges? Note that this feature should be left OFF (disabled) unless you exchange mail with a system who insists on running non-compliant Fidonet software. If you have not upgraded yet to 3.04 - I strongly suggest you read up on the notes in HISTORY.TXT. Only 3.05 will be made available on my website. VERSION 3.04 - NOVEMBER 25 2008 ------------------------------- WARNING: This release contains dozens of updates, fixes and corrections to all message processing code and the internal message editor. Back up your entire D'Bridge system before applying this upgrade. Be prepared to rollback to a prior version if necessary. Three important security/stability fixes have been issued in this release and so with all the work done, this is a major update for those of you running 3.03 or prior. Some new optional features have also been added. Even if you are not experiencing any problems, it is recommended to upgrade to this release. A lot of hard work was done in this release; not of a programming-nature, but more in trying to understand exactly where these problems reside, because D'Bridge is a very large program. So large, that changes I make to one section of code can have adverse effects on other areas. Whether you choose to use 3.04 in permanent full-time operation is up to you, but I strongly suggest a "trial run", if possible, before assuming that all is running well. - The major security fix in 3.04 is for Echomail areas that are auto-added by the Echomail processor. A possible minor exploit exists in ALL prior versions because there was no logic to control whom to add areas from. It was possible for any system to exploit, to some extent, the Echomail database file or "usurp" operation of the Echomail processor entirely. WARNING: It is highly recommended to enable this particular fix especially if you are a Network or Zone Co-ordinator. But not paying attention to the instructions below will result in "problems" and possible angry/upset messages from the operators of systems whom you exchange mail with. In the PACKET/MAIL CONTROL screen, I added two new questions: "From Listed Systems Only?" and "List of Systems to Auto-Add From". These two questions tell D'Bridge that it should only be auto-adding areas from systems you specifically list, or if it should just auto-add whatever it encounters. So now if these new questions are enabled, D'Bridge will reject all new areas from unknown systems into the BADECHO area, if new echoes arrive and those systems are not explicitly listed in the ADD-FROM screen. The default setting is NO, or blank, meaning that if you want to use this, you need to turn it on manually. WARNING: Only your immediate uplinks should be specified in ADD-FROM only. Careful testing was done to ensure that all Echomail unpacking/tossing worked properly after I wrote the fix. - Two new security questions were also added to PACKET/MAIL CONTROL to allow you to set the default security levels for Echomail and Passthru areas that are auto-added to your system. I've kept the default settings to 5000 for both; that was the security that D'Bridge has always assigned. Only the "Level/Passthru" setting should be lowered: During testing, I found that a downlink cannot "un-Areafix" themselves from a Passthru area because their security was too low. As for the other setting, that one should only be lowered to match the security of existing downlinks if you wish to make added areas from your uplink available immediately, without your review. If thats not what you want, then leave it set to 5000. - A second vulnerability has been corrected in the Areafix system where a downlink could possibly take advantage of the Areafix "quotas" that had been set up and the system had not successfully completed a prior AutoUpdate routine due to a system crash or other event. The quotas and security now works the way it should, no matter what "events" happen (or don't happen) - The major stability problem with DBUTIL should be resolved - DBUTIL was using way too much memory and I was able to replicate Ward's problem on my own server after careful diagnosis and testing. I rewrote a huge portion of the program, moved other code around, reduced file-handles required, and generally cleaned up a lot of stuff inside of it. - I added a new DBUTIL command, DELETEINSIDE, which will erase Echomail areas out of your system from a text file specified. So if you ran DBUTIL DELETEINSIDE DEADECHO.TXT, then DBUTIL will erase areas that match whats contained inside DEADECHO.TXT. - And a new DBUTIL command, DELETEAREA, will erase one Echomail area out of the system. For example, DBUTIL DELETEAREA TESTECHO will erase TESTECHO out of the system. - Those two new commands will also archive messages to a text file (if specified in the Echomail Areas screen) and erase the *.MSG directory. - DBUTIL MOVE, has yet again been slightly modified for stability and performance concerns. - A possible problem was corrected for DBUTIL PURGE and an odd mixture of Passthru areas. - The D'Bridge NNTP Areafix component (DBUAFIXI.EXE) has also been redesigned and rewritten for stability and performance reasons. It has been tested over this past weekend and does not appear to have any problems at all. I get the odd Email from people wondering what this DBUAFIXI.EXE file is and what it does. D'Bridge has the ability to automatically manage Passthru areas via the Areafix system, for uplinks and downlinks. So it only makes sense that in a Usenet-gating setup, that the Usenet gateway also be automated. DBUAFIXI is the module that is called in the rare occasions when an Areafix request is sent to the outbound Usenet gateway when the EMAIL/USENET GATEWAY system in D'Bridge is enabled (and set up properly). It updates the NEWSRC file with add (or drop) requests by D'Bridge and/or your downlinks. Essentially its a "tosser within a tosser" because its taking the binary packet and doing its own translation on it into something useful that the VSOUP component can work with. It requires absolutely no intervention on your part. In order for automated NEWSRC management to work correctly, the "AREAFIX TIMEOUT DAYS" parameter must be set to 1 or higher... but not too high. The default setting is 3 days and should not be changed unless you are an experienced D'Bridge administrator and AREAFIX TIMEOUT DAYS is found in the PACKET/MAIL CONTROL screen. WARNING: Do not run DBUAFIXI manually. It is specifically designed to be ran automatically from D'Bridge only. - A slight correction has been made to two questions in the EMAIL/USENET GATING screen. They were not exactly working the way they should. The help system has been slightly updated: SOUP MAXIMUM NUMBER OF MESSAGES TO DOWNLOAD: This sets a cap on the maximum amount of messages that should be downloaded per group whenever a connection is made on Usenet. The default setting is 500 messages and that should be good enough for most installations. If you answer zero (0) to this question, no cap is put in place. THIS IS NOT RECOMMENDED for those of you who download large volumes of mail, because all it takes is a large posting in some group to effectively "tie up" your connection. A cap should always be put in place as a fail-safe. SOUP MAXIMUM NUMBER OF MESSAGES TO DOWNLOAD ON NEW GROUPS: Most Usenet providers keep a fairly large "retention" rate - That is, they tend to keep a lot of messages per group. So it makes sense that when you connect to a Usenet group for the first time, you would end up downloading all of the messages in that group to "catch up". This can easily tie-up your Internet connection for hours on end. So in this question, you can specify a limit as to how many messages to download when D'Bridge/VSOUP connects to a Usenet group for the first time. The default is 100 messages, and should not be changed for normal usage. Reduce this to 50 or even down to 25 when "hubbing" a lot of Usenet groups. Increase this number if you carry less than a dozen or so groups in total. If you answer zero (0) to this question, no cap is put in place. THIS IS NOT RECOMMENDED unless you're an experienced D'Bridge administrator and theres some strange or bizarre reason not to place a cap on new messages... - A rare but possible "Xmail Bundle Corrupt" problem when forwarding Areafix requests to the EMAIL/USENET gateway has also been solved. The problem was replicated here during the testing of the other above-mentioned fixes. - A possible non-compliance condition in the internal editor has been corrected, under certain conditions, the extensive use of kludge-lines would cause problems during Forward and Duplicate operations. - A possible non-compliance condition in the internal editor has also been corrected for NETmail messages addressed to the EMAIL/USENET gateway if that feature is enabled. The correct kludge-lines are properly inserted if D'Bridge determines that the NETmail is in fact an Internet Email message bound for the gateway and/or the kludge-lines were missing. - The internal editor should no longer add another INTL or FMPT/TOPT kludge when editing a NETmail message. - D'Bridge should no longer complain of database problems under MS-DOS 6.22. Note that SHARE.EXE is required for operation under MS-DOS 6.22. This should be loaded in your C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT file. - Minor trivial problems in exporting a configuration has been solved. Only 3.04 will be made available on my website. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3.02 - 14 OCTOBER 2008 ------------------------------ WARNING: Be prepared to rollback to 3.01 (or prior) incase this release doesn't work as expected. D'Bridge 3.02 is a very, very minor release, and is "experimental". It should NOT be treated as stable. It is ONLY for those of you who are hubbing mail to point-systems. This release should address the issue of exporting duplicate messages to points during an EchoScan. If duplicate-messages-to-point-systems is not of a concern to you, then you should NOT install 3.02. You should stick with 3.01 or prior versions. Do not install 3.02 just because its a new version. As Ward "points out", newer is not necessarily better. During testing, this release did not appear to break a related section of code which controls the way messages written in the internal editor get exported during an EchoScan if you chose NOT to export immediately after leaving the editor. But just because it didn't break here, doesn't always mean thats the case for others. Only one "cycle" of Echomail was tested for 3.02. It is absolutely imperative that if you decide to install 3.02 that you test *ALL* Echomail processing features and give it a good "run" of mail to work with. A slight change has also been done to DBUTIL MOVE, mostly for Ward, and nothing worth noting. The way that file-operations are treated in the code was slightly adjusted and may fix a crash-problem. On my website, both 3.01 and 3.02 will be available; not just this one. VERSION 3.01 - 7 OCTOBER 2008 ----------------------------- D'Bridge 3.01 is a minor but very important release which corrects the following problems. Even if you are not experiencing any issues now, you should upgrade to 3.01 for stability reasons. - A major bug in the Areafix system should finally be resolved for good now. If you use D'Bridge to hub mail, then any downlinks which have previously been "refused" their Areafix requests should be told to re-send them again... unless you fixed things yourself using the ALT+N command in the mailer. Just blame it on me and everything will be okay. - DBUTIL MOVE shouldn't crash anymore under certain conditions but if it does, the log screen should be a little more detailed now. - The internal editor should properly save messages numbered 8000 or higher. - A minor change was done to the Web processor (DBUTIL PROCESSWEB) to account for "long Echomail tags" not properly being parsed into HTML code. Okay so these things got *some* people's attention in the DBRIDGE echo, therefore as usual I have done my part to save Fido from extinction.... (insert 80's-sitcom-canned-laughter here) Nick Andre www.nickandre.com VERSION 3 - 30 SEPTEMBER 2008 ----------------------------- D'Bridge 3 contains all of the countless fixes since 2.99 in addition to a minor fix in the BinKD system for "locked log files" under Windows. In addition, a minor trivial fix was done to the EMAIL/Usenet subsystem to prevent cluttering of the DATA directory with outbound packet files if you use the gating system but you don't allow outbound posting to Usenet. A minor problem was adjusted for Passthru echomail areas in the midnight AutoUpdate routine. The version 3 series is the final series of upgrades based on DOS. Future releases will focus on Windows, Linux and Macintosh. I'm taking a bit of a hiatus from D'Bridge development for a little while to focus on my daughter. WARNING: You must shut down the BinkD system, if its running, prior to upgrading to version 3. 2.99 - 26 SEPTEMBER 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 24 --------------------------------------------- SR24 is a very, very minor release that should correct a rare MSGID/REPLY kludge problem when pressing F8 in the internal editor (the "Multiple Recipient" feature), or forwarding Echomail messages to the NETmail area. Some minor cleanup was done to various aspects of the mailer, documentation and help screens, nothing really worth noting. No changes were made to any processing routines, so its more of a cosmetic fix. As an example, the COMM/MODEM screen is now called HARDWARE/MODEM DEVICES and BINKD PROTOCOL SETUP is now called the BINKD TRANSACTIONS menu. It is not necessary to shutdown BinkD prior to upgrading your D'Bridge system to SR24. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com 2.99 - 24 SEPTEMBER 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 23 --------------------------------------------- SR23 is a very minor release to fix recent problems reported in the DBRIDGE echo on Fidonet. - I don't quite understand why some other Fido software insists on generating lengthly MSGID/REPLY kludging but the internal editor should properly handle those now. - The Areafix system should properly respond to %LIST, %QUERY and %RESCAN. It is not necessary to shutdown BinkD prior to upgrading your D'Bridge system to SR23. 2.99 - 18 SEPTEMBER 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 22 --------------------------------------------- SR22 is a very minor release. Only one problem is being addressed at this time. Other things reported will have to wait. A serious fundimental change has been done to the way the Echomail area database file (DBRIDGE.ADF) is handled. It is important that you first back up that file along with your D'Bridge configuration. Prior to installing SR22, first inspect the size of the DBRIDGE.ADF file. The size of the DBRIDGE.ADF file must be in relation to the number of Echomail areas you have. On mine, with over 10,000 areas the ADF file is around 24 megabytes, which is normal. On a system with only a few hundred areas and an ADF that is 50 or 60 megabytes in size - thats wrong. If the size of that file is "normal" then copy that file to another directory. Then run DB EXPORT of your configuration, and copy that file as well to another directory. You're doing this because if your ADF is normal, then you will need to ZIP them both up and send to me for inspection ONLY IF THE ADF BLOATS AGAIN. It is not necessary to shutdown BinkD prior to upgrading your D'Bridge system to SR22. 2.99 - 4 SEPTEMBER 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 21 -------------------------------------------- This is a minor release which corrects a serious logistical flaw in DBUTIL PURGE on the NETmail directory for compatibility with certain "InterBBS games" such as the LORDnet module, Barren Realms Elite and Falcons Eye. InterBBS games should be configured to operate in FrontDoor mode (or Fido *.MSG mode). Do not configure any games to operate in any other modes, regardless of what their documentation states. Technical support is not offered for configuring InterBBS games to work with D'Bridge; however, basic assistance with configuring proper directories and packing of file-attachments may be provided in the Fidonet DBRIDGE echo if it is a mailer-specific concern you have. It is not necessary to shutdown BinkD prior to upgrading your D'Bridge system to SR21. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com 2.99 - 29 AUGUST 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 20 ------------------------------------------ This is a minor service release for 2.99. Even if you are not experiencing any problems outright; it is recommended that you upgrade to this version to ensure stability and reliability of your D'Bridge system. Several minor but fundimental changes have been done to various aspects of the program. WARNING: This release contains significant changes to the DBUTIL program. Before installing SR20, please BACK UP your message directories if possible. The DBUTIL.LOG file should be inspected after running any Echomail-purging or renumbering operations in SR20. If you have disabled logging, then first delete the DBUTIL.NLG semaphore file (short for "No Log Generation") prior to purging or renumbering. Once you are satisfied that purging/renumbering works correctly, you can go ahead and shut off logging again if you want. - A fairly serious fundimental problem with DBUTIL PURGE, DBUTIL RENUM and DBUTIL PURGERENUM has been corrected and is the main reason for this upgrade. As per above, the first run of those commands should be done while you're at the console; and/or ensure that logging is enabled. - A serious stability problem when attempting PURGE or RENUM operations across a LAN drive share that encounters a disconnection (for any reason) should be fixed now. - A serious problem with FAT32 hard drive partitions possibly encountering a significant degree of data loss in the Echomail directories if the computer crashes during DBUTIL PURGE or RENUM has been corrected. - The serious problem with "empty messages" in Echomail directories has been fixed. The empty messages will be removed during the first DBUTIL PURGE operation. They will not be archived if the Archive Message criteria is specified in the Echomail Areas manager - only "real" messages get archived during a PURGE operation. - A very rare and "worst case scenario" of possible Queue problems after DBUTIL PURGE completes a run on the NETmail directory has been solved. - A minor stability flaw, caused by DBUTIL PURGE with a "full" NETmail directory has been fixed. The problem could not be used to the advantage of any downlinks. But 3rd-party legacy software that generates NETmail messages with file-attachments ("InterBBS" games) was shown to cause trouble in certain rare conditions. - A very rare but serious problem of the Queue "locking up" under certain conditions if there is a large mixture of outgoing mail for PSTN dialup and BinkD transactions in the same Queue has been fixed. - A minor security flaw in the Areafix Rescan feature has been fixed. The flaw could not be exploited by a downlink to cause trouble - but repeated Areafix Rescans was proven to slowly degrade performance until the next nightly AutoUpdate procedure. Under one condition, it was possible for subsequent Areafix requests to fail if those requests also wanted a Rescan of the Echomail areas. - The internal editor should no longer crash during certain PURGE or RENUM operations that may take place if such operations are running as another process on your operating system. WARNING: Purging or renumbering messages while you're in the middle of reading or replying using the internal editor is NOT recommended and technical support will NOT be offered for problems caused by this scenario. - The problem of the DBRIDGE.ADF database growing out of hand should be fixed in this release. Two problem areas have been identified however the problem could not be replicated here; please test thoroughly. - A cosmetic problem with the lastread-pointer problem in the internal editor should also be fixed after DBUTIL PURGE. The problem in this case had more to do with the way the editor works, rather than DBUTIL itself. - A cosmetic problem with the DBUTIL log file has been corrected. - A minor problem with error-logging in the BinkD system has been fixed. The fix does not require any adjustment whatsoever to your configuration. - SR20 should also solve an ongoing "speedy timer" problem under the open- source DOSBOX environment (tested with 0.7.1). The problem should be solved on both Windows and Linux systems. Again, please do not use the "virtual modem" feature of DOSBOX with D'Bridge. The use of mailer- over-telnet is not recommended and is largely superseded by the BinkD protocol anyway. The dialup modem code in D'Bridge is specifically designed to work with hardware (non-emulated) modems. It is not necessary to shutdown BinkD prior to upgrading your D'Bridge system to SR20. 2.99 - 9 AUGUST 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 19 ----------------------------------------- SR19 is a very minor update to D'Bridge. - Soupgate executables for Windows and OS/2 are now included with D'Bridge. You will need to manually rename the desired executable to SOUPGATE.EXE. This only applies to those of you using the EMAIL/Usenet gating features in D'Bridge. If you aren't, then DO NOT rename any executable files. - DBUTIL UNDELETE and DBUTIL DELETEDOS commands have been amalgomated into DBUTIL SORT AREAS for stability and logistical reasons. Those two commands are no longer supported; please modify any maintenance events accordingly. - DB2RG (D'Bridge to Renegade utility) no longer ships with D'Bridge and will no longer be supported; it is being superceded by another program that I've been working on. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com 2.99 - 26 JULY 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 18 ---------------------------------------- WARNING: If the BinkD module is running in another process, please shut it down before installing SR18. After SR18 is installed, you may then restart BinkD. This is a minor update to D'Bridge but you should consider installing this to bring your system up to better functionality in some aspects of BinkD. DBUTIL SEND and DBUTIL TRANSMIT have also been slightly corrected but nothing earth-shattering done to it. A new question, LOG ERRORS in the BINKD SETUP SCREEN will notify the console if a BinkD transaction has failed (either in "client" or "server" mode). One issue brought to my attention is the use of BinkD on dialup, so I also added two new questions - START TRANSACTIONS and END TRANSACTIONS. These two questions allow you to specify any DOS commands you wish to run immediately before and after D'Bridge manipulates BinkD to move the mail. You would use those commands to initiate (and terminate) a PPP/SLIP connection on dialup-Internet. Keep in mind that whatever "dialer" you plan to use in such a scenario must not ask for console input - otherwise D'Bridge becomes stuck asking you to do things. For those of you running OS/2 Warp, you must initiate your dialer with the use of the HSTART utility by Henk Kelder. WARNING: Under most circumstances, these two questions should be left blank and technical support will NOT be offered for BinkD problems if you are running external commands using these new options. Only experienced D'Bridge administrators with a very thorough knowledge of the BinkD protocol should use these features. Attempting a BinkD session over regular PSTN dialup (non-Internet) is not supported and I will not offer technical support for any attempts at manipulating the mailer into beyond what it was designed to do. I don't care if the protocol "may" work this way; I will not support this method in the mailer. To be honest, anyone who wants to do that obviously has a much more pathetic social life than I do. This also includes running D'Bridge as a mailer-over-Telnet. Sorry but as of this release I will now stop offering technical support for those setups. There is simply way too many things that can go wrong with that setup, and I found myself attempting to help out with OS-related and TCP/IP-related issues and other things that are far beyond mailer-related stuff. However I will not remove or change any of the code that makes all of it work; it will remain as is. You are on your own with mailer-over-Telnet. I also received questions about TransX compatibility in the EMAIL/USENET GATING screen. I'm sorry but that is beyond the scope of what I had originally designed. Only SMTP/POP3 NETmail routing and Usenet gating is supported in D'Bridge. I do not recommend the use of Internet Email to transfer your Fido mail as this form of transfers is largely superseded by the use of the BinkD protocol. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com 2.99 - 10 JULY 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 17 ---------------------------------------- This is a very minor update to D'Bridge. - The problem of writing messages in the internal editor and then having the mailer perform an entire Echomail scan instead of just scanning the areas written in has been fixed. The problem may of caused duplicate messages exported to point systems as per SR16. Please review HISTORY.TXT and the notes for SR16 if you are upgrading from SR15 or prior versions. - An improvement was done to the way that D'Bridge handles Areafix security violations. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com 2.99 - 6 JULY 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 16 --------------------------------------- This is a minor release which should solve the problem of messages received from point systems, then immediately exported back to those same points. The problem is caused by a misinterpretation of the FAKE POINTNET setting in the NODELIST setup screen. Even if you do not forward or hub mail to points, it is highly recommended to install SR16 to avoid "problems" down the road if you decide to provide mail for points. This was a very difficult problem to resolve as the message-processing code in D'Bridge is very complicated. It took several hours just to figure out exactly where in the code the problem took place; to say nothing of the fix. Those of you who know me, know that I am VERY reluctant to change any of the message-processing code... but in this case it was necessary. WARNING: This release must be tested VERY carefully if you are hubbing mail to point systems. Be prepared to rollback to a prior version in the event of problems. DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, attempt to install SR16 if you have "Fake Pointnet For" settings defined, without first consulting me directly via phone, Email or NETmail. Based on tests performed with SR16 on my site and using another workstation, the problem of duplicate messages appears to be resolved with this release. Actually I feel bad about it. Its another thing I solved that the non-DB crowd can't complain about anymore; thereby reducing valuable discussions and traffic in Fidonet, thereby causing you to actually have social lives on weekends, thereby leading to the downfall of western civilization. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com 2.99 - 1 JULY 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 15 --------------------------------------- WARNING: You must shutdown the BinkD system, if it is running, prior to installing SR15. This is a somewhat-major functionality update which fixes the bug of not being able to poll a point-system defined in BINKD SESSION INFO. The problem was caused by an incorrect method of generating the control files for the root domains due to an entirely different method used by the BinkD system for Fido/FTN point address management. The way that D'Bridge manages the root domains and their corrosponding control files has been slightly adjusted and improved. Please note that D'Bridge will NOT exchange mail directly to a point of another system. If your Fido/FTN address is 1:229/426, you may not generate a poll-entry for 1:229/427.30. However, you may host-route NETmail and other "direct packets" to that system's uplink, ie. 1:229/426.1 to 1:229/427 to 1:229/427.30. So basically you may only send Echomail packets or other direct-corrospondence to any points off your Fido/FTN address, ie 1:229/426.xxx. I don't quite understand the need to deal directly with points off other systems; not that I'm asking to be proven wrong as it is impossible to add support for that without reworking the entire Queue code. And that my friends, is something that will never happen. The Queue code has worked for 20 years unchanged for a good reason. A minor fix was also done to the COMM/MODEM SCREEN - if you disable the multi-line support, it actually stays disabled now. Shutting down the mailer is no longer necessary unless you are modifying another node other than node one. When SR15 is installed, your D'Bridge system will still show 2.99 as the version number, but the build-date will show July 1st 2008. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com 2.99 - 19 JUNE 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 14 ---------------------------------------- This is a very, very minor release which corrects the MSGID kludge in the internal editor when you write Echomail messages in networks other than Fidonet, or more specifically, when the primary address changes to an AKA address. The problem could not be replicated for NETmail messages. When SR14 is installed, your D'Bridge system will still show 2.99 as the version number, but the build-date will show June 18th 2008. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com 2.99 - 15 JUNE 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 13 ---------------------------------------- WARNING: You must shut down the BinkD module, if its running as a server process, prior to installing SR13. After this upgrade is installed, you may then restart BinkD. SR13 is a very minor release which only corrects and adjusts the way that sent and received items using BinkD are accounted for in the INBOUND and OUTBOUND HISTORY SCREENS as well as the INFORMATION menu. Several fundimental changes have been made to the BinkD support so please test carefully. Report problems in the Fidonet DBRIDGE echo or to me directly. Also, the "Show messages in D'Bridge" question in BINKD SETUP has been changed to "Log BinkD transactions". The default answer is NO, for both newcomers AND upgrades. If you answer Yes to this question now, a file called DBBINKD.LOG will be created in your D'Bridge directory. Some minor corrections have been made to the Setup Wizard. It has been tested on a few workstations here - but NOT with Windows XP SP3. If installation problems persist on Windows XP SP3, please let me know. When SR13 is installed, your D'Bridge system will still show 2.99 as the version number, but the build-date will show June 15th 2008. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com 2.99 - 11 JUNE 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 12 ---------------------------------------- WARNING: SR12 includes the BinkD fix of SR11. If your D'Bridge system is version SR10 or older, you should first refer to HISTORY.TXT or consult the Fidonet DBRIDGE echo as a fundimental change was done in SR11 to correct a problem with the BinkD system. This is a very, very minor release that fixes a few ongoing "behind the scenes" problems in the mailer, editor, DBUTIL and Fido Plug and Play. There are no new features in this release; only corrections to the code. I may not be able to participate in Fidonet as often as I would like to, over the next few weeks. I will still answer all personal corrospondence but am recommending that troubleshooting/diagnostic issues be discussed in the Fidonet DBRIDGE echo. If you are a newcomer, the "fan club" will be more than happy to assist you with your D'Bridge installation questions. When SR12 is installed, your D'Bridge system will still show 2.99 as the version number, but the build-date will show June 11th 2008. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com 2.99 - 22 MAY 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 11 --------------------------------------- A recent test on a workstation revealed a SERIOUS fundimental problem with the way that I programmed a certain aspect of the integrated BinkD support. This is a CRITICAL stability update for D'Bridge if you are using the integrated BinkD support AND you are creating uncompressed mail packets via the "U" option in the BINKD SETUP screen. If you are not using the Uncompressed Mail Packets feature; then it is not necessary to install this upgrade or concern yourself with the specific problem it addresses. ***IT IS ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL THAT YOU INSTALL THIS UPGRADE*** if you are using that feature. Technical support will NOT be provided for that specific feature if you do not install the SR11 upgrade. Please DO NOT post requests for help in the Fidonet DBRIDGE echo for the Uncompressed Mail Packets feature until you have upgraded to SR11. Only after the upgrade has been installed will I answer questions about what the problem was. SR11 only corrects that problem. It does not resolve any other issues. When SR11 is installed, your D'Bridge system will still show 2.99 as the version number, but the build-date will show May 22 2008. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com 2.99 - 16 MAY 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 10 --------------------------------------- This is a minor update for D'Bridge, to address some problems with the way certain operations work for PSTN dialup sessions. Rest assured that the fundimental code that controls dialup mail exchanges has NOT been changed. The only reason this update is being released is from recent testing with the MagicJack VOIP solution (www.magicjack.com). If it wasn't for that, then I would not be able to correct the following problems. WARNING: You should not install this release until the Queue is empty. If this is not possible for whatever reason; then pay close attention to the way the Queue works and report any problems to me ASAP. In a scenario where there are a large amount of Queue entries and its a mixture of both BinkD and PSTN dialup calls, a cosmetic problem began to occur when the Healthgraph is enabled. This has been solved, along with a very rare but potential stability problem when you have PSTN dialup Queue entries and you press Q (for QuickDial mode). A potentially serious delay problem has been solved during an EMSI session on PSTN dialup if you use the Intercom (Instant-messaging) feature and you elect to view the remote system's BBS or mail-waiting by pressing F1, and then press ALT+X to instruct D'Bridge to shut down after the session has completed. A potential security problem has been resolved in the instant-messaging code for PSTN dialup in the form of a Zmodem-exploit situation where it was possible to cause a long delay in the response of whoever initiated the instant-messaging conversation by sending Zmodem frame-initializing bytes. A minor delay problem has also been fixed if a PSTN dialup session cannot establish EMSI or WaZOO and reverts to FTS-0001 mode, and something is preventing a successful session. The code has been adjusted to abide to a maximum 3 minute time-out (180 seconds) if all else fails in D'Bridge-land and for whatever reason the mail can't be exchanged. Usually in such cases the lack of communication is caused by MNP compression failure in the dialup modem, line noise, or other factors (ie. call-waiting) When SR10 is installed, your D'Bridge system will still show 2.99 as the version number, but the build-date will show May 16th 2008. I'm also going to the E-Bay conference in Chicago the second-last weekend of June, if any of you "fellow churchgoers" are within that area and want to meet up downtown. 2.99 - 10 MAY 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 9 -------------------------------------- This is a very minor release which corrects a few ongoing display problems in certain aspects of D'Bridge. When SR9 is installed, your D'Bridge system will still show 2.99 as the version number, but the build-date will show May 10th 2008. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com 2.99 - 1 MAY 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 8 ------------------------------------- A very minor release which fixes the obvious problem with personal mail waiting along with a minor improvement on how its shown in the mailer. A stability problem with DBUTIL PURGE on NETmail messages has been fixed. When SR8 is installed, your D'Bridge system will still show 2.99 as the version number, but the build-date will show May 1st 2008. 2.99 - 29 APRIL 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 7 ---------------------------------------- This is a small update for D'Bridge, which corrects a few minor problems, mostly specific to the internal message editor as per recent discussions in the Fidonet DBRIDGE echo. If you don't use the internal editor, then its not necessary for you to install this update right now. When SR7 is installed, your D'Bridge system will still show 2.99 as the version number, but the build-date will show April 29th 2008. - The lastread pointers resetting to message 1 (in most cases being the "NOECHO" message) should be fixed now. - Messages numbered over 8150 should display correctly now. - A slight adjustment has been done to the display of personal messages. - Hal keeps quiet now after personal mail is unpacked and subsequent QueueScan's are performed. Coincidentially, the release of SR6 killed the traffic in FTSC_PUBLIC. As a newly elected member, this is very concerning. So therefore, I plan to add a feature to purposely cut-off quoting of messages replied to in that echo as well as letting you add hidden message kludges of your choice (ie. ^AZONE_1_SUBLIMINAL_MESSAGE). I promise I'll come up with something fun for an entertaining flame war from our friends in the non-DB crowd. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com 2.99 - 20 APRIL 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 6 ---------------------------------------- This is somewhat of a major upgrade for D'Bridge. It adds some new facilities to automate routine tasks for those of you who are Network Co-ordinators so your D'Bridge system can be better maintained. An extremely rare but serious stability flaw has also been fixed in this release. WARNING: The format of the DBRIDGE.ADF file, which controls the Echomail areas, has changed. If you are a 3rd-party developer, please refer to TECHSPEC.TXT for the updated database structure for this file. WARNING: DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, use any other version of DBUTIL with SR6. It is not recommended to downgrade/rollback to a previous version of D'Bridge if the new features are going to be used. When SR6 is installed, your D'Bridge system will still show 2.99 as the version number, but the build-date will show April 20 2008. - If DBUTIL MOVE is being ran in another window or process on your computer, it now waits for any Queue operation on the node in question to finish, or an entire Echomail scan to finish first before proceeding. This was done to prevent any "problems" with moving mail under certain conditions on busy server systems. A dummy/semaphore file called DBRIDGE.QIP (short for QueueScan In Progress) is created when the Queue is accessed. Its removed when the QueueScan is done. Its also created during Echomail scan operatons (initiated manually only) and removed when thats done too. The DBRIDGE.QIP semaphore is not created during UnpackMail (tossing) cycles because the way that D'Bridge handles forwarding of mail and the Queue itself is treated differently in a manner that does not cause problems for DBUTIL MOVE. And yes, the code is smart enough to determine if a QueueScan is taking an unreasonably-long amount of time to finish as well in the event that the computer has crashed; because D'Bridge creates a semaphore file to tell DBUTIL that its busy modifying the Queue entry for the node in question. The code is also not affected by "QueueScans before midnight". If all else fails, DBUTIL MOVE resumes operation after approximately 1 minute 30 seconds if it can't "gain access" to the Queue because its locked. The QueueScan "locking" is controlled by a dummy/semaphore file called DBUTIL.DCQ (short for Don't Check Queue status). If this file exists, then DBRIDGE.QIP semaphore checking is NOT done and DBUTIL will execute the way it has in SR5 and prior versions. WARNING: THIS IS THE DEFAULT SETTING, to prevent problems with existing processes or batch files - If you want the checking, you MUST erase the DBUTIL.DCQ file that will be created when you install SR6 for the first time. QUEUE CHECKING IS DISABLED BY DEFAULT. - A new command, DBUTIL SHOWDEADECHOES [days] will produce a log of any Echomail areas that have not had any traffic in them in the specified number of days. This is saved in both the DBUTIL.LOG file, and, a plain ASCII text file called DEADECHO.LOG is created (or appended) containing just the Echomail tags, a space, and their description if available. That text file can be used as part of any "robot" reporting process or anything you can think of. - The new command DBUTIL REMOVEDEADECHOES [days] [optional uplink] will actually remove the dead echo from your system. DBUTIL REMOVEDEADECHOES 90 1:123/500 means that DBUTIL will remove any Echomail areas that have not had any traffic in them after 90 days, AND create an Areafix request to un- subscribe from my uplink. Note that for the Areafix feature of this command to work, the proper criteria must be defined in the PACKET/MAIL CONTROL screen in D'Bridge for your uplink in the AREAFIX INFO question. You do not specify the Areafix password in this command because its being culled from your D'Bridge configuration. An ASCII text file NUKEECHO.LOG is created (or appended) whenever Echomail areas have been removed from your system. The format of this file is the Echomail tag, a space, followed by a space, then the description if available. As per above, this can be used as part of automated "housekeeping" events you may be running. - When a dead echo is removed by DBUTIL, it doesn't just kill the message directory; it does a PURGE on all messages. So, if you specified message archiving criteria, then DBUTIL will archive all of the messages in that echo into whatever text-file you specified. After the PURGE is done, then the message directory is removed and the database entry is erased out of the Echomail manager. WARNING: I understand that an Echomail message directory may be in use by other processes or 3rd-party applications. I wouldn't want DBUTIL to encounter a problem and cannot continue and having it apologizing for the inconvenience. So if removing the directory after purging dead echoes is not what you want, create a dummy/semaphore file called DBUTIL.DRD (short for Don't Remove Directory). If you don't want the messages purged either, create a dummy/semaphore file called DBUTIL.DPM (short for Don't Purge Messages). - It is possible to use DBUTIL UNDELETE to restore any Echomail areas that have been erased by the above commands, provided that you did not perform a SORT AREAS request on the database. - Note that the above new commands do NOT work for Passthru Echomail areas because the messages in those areas are not actually stored on your system anywhere. Removing Passthru areas is automated by D'Bridge itself, not through the use of DBUTIL; refer to the questions in PACKET/MAIL CONTROL for more explanation. - A new command, DBUTIL RESETLASTACCESSEDDATE, will reset all of your Echomail areas "last accessed" dates to todays date. This is performed when SR6 is installed for the first time - and is only done once. - QWK index numbers have been corrected on auto-adding Echomail areas. - The "Global Change" command in DBUTIL has been updated to do SORT AREAS first before any mass-editing takes place. - The overall performance of the Health Graph should be vastly improved now. - Feeding D'Bridge mail after midnight no longer causes the Gremlin to mysteriously and randomly hang the mailer during an UnpackMail cycle on plain PKT files. - A new question, "ADD MISSING KLUDGES" has been added to the PACKET/MAIL CONTROL screen. Specifically, this allows D'Bridge to allow legacy BBS software to function properly within basic Fidonet kludge-line compliance. It also allows you to effectively "trap" non-compliant routed messages. Under most circumstances, answer NO to this question - the default setting - unless you have very good reason to suspect that a system is routing messages through you that are not conforming to standard. This should only be used as a debugging tool, or for legacy BBS software; not a permanent solution. It will slow down processing. When you answer YES to this question, the kludge lines which will be added if they are missing will be the INTL and FMPT/TOPT for NETmail messages, and MSGID for both NETmail and Echomail messages. The TID kludge will also be added to indicate that the message was modified by D'Bridge "in transit" to destinations. WARNING: DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES answer Yes to this question unless you are an experienced Fido network administrator. - Generally speaking, if the above mentioned feature has actually reported "problems", then you should politely notify the Sysop via NETmail and possibly ask if its possible to check for a program update, or, bring this to the software author(s) attention. Don't make a big deal about it as this feature is nothing more than a stopgap-measure. Above all, it should be understood and appreciated that there may be new Sysops who want to "re-live the good ol' days" by installing their favourite BBS software from the 80's and early 90's. Recent Internet web sites for "abandonware" BBS software such as Phil Becker's TBBS and Galacticomm's MajorBBS/ WorldGroup products are beginning to spark renewed interest in our hobby. It is not my intention to get into debates about kludge-lines. The above feature was primarily added for legacy BBS support only. - A new question, "CHRS Line Kludge" has been added to EDITOR OPTIONS, and this allows you to override the default character-set definition for messages written using the internal editor. The default setting is IBMPC 2 and has been that way since version 1.87. I really don't quite understand the significance of changing the value, but if you need to do that, its now a feature instead of a hardcoded value. - The TID kludge addition in the internal message editor has been removed and D'Bridge only generates TID kludging as per the ADD MISSING KLUDGES question explained earlier. The PID kludge is still intact. - A slight improvement to the way the code works for MSGID/REPLY kludging has been done. And yes, it was tested quite rigorously to ensure that it still works properly after I made my changes. - Quoting kludge lines in the internal editor when the SHOW KLUDGES feature has been enabled in EDITOR OPTIONS no longer causes "duplicate" kludge lines on the saved message. - Making a change to a NETmail message no longer causes duplicate kludges. - Multi-user notification of personal mail in the internal message editor has been corrected. - When using the internal editor with aliases/handles, you must be sure to specify your real name first, followed by the aliases/handles in the ADDITIONAL USERS question in EDITOR OPTIONS. This is not necessary if you are using D'Bridge to participate in networks other than Fidonet. - Personal mail via the Y command works again as it did before but it is going to be redesigned for a future release. - The date and time of the system log display should be correct now. Don't worry, theres more bugs. But hopefully I'll find that perfect balance between bugs-that-annoy-DB users and bugs-that-annoy-non-DB users. I promise I won't solve them all - because if I do, then the non-DB crowd would have nothing to complain about, thereby decreasing our valuable precious Fido traffic, thereby Echomail forums would die, and thereby Fidonet itself would die. Aren't you glad I'm doing my part to keep our hobby alive? Nick Andre www.nickandre.com 2.99 - 5 APRIL 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 5 --------------------------------------- This is a very minor update to D'Bridge which should correct several minor ongoing problems with DBUTIL. An extremely rare lockup condition has also been fixed in the AutoUpdate event routine. When SR5 is installed, your D'Bridge system will still show 2.99 as the version number, but the build-date will show April 5rd 2008. 2.99 - 3 APRIL 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 4 --------------------------------------- Service Release 4 is a very, very minor release to D'Bridge that should correct the "Xmail Bundle Corrupt" or "Unable to create ZIP" problems when the BinkD support is disabled. The problem was replicated here on a workstation and was to do with the logic behind how certain variables conditions were treated. Please test SR4 carefully and report any problems ASAP via the Fidonet DBRIDGE echo or MSN Email. When SR4 is installed, your D'Bridge system will still show 2.99 as the version number, but the build-date will show April 3rd 2008. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com 2.99 - 31 MARCH 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 3 ---------------------------------------- Service Release 3 is a major update for D'Bridge 2.99. Two new enhancements were done to the BinkD system in addition to a revised and redesigned flag-translator in the nodelist compiler. It is now possible to poll any system in the nodelist using the D'Bridge BinkD system rather than whats just defined in the setup screens; please review these release notes in detail. Minor cosmetic improvements have been done as well. When SR3 is installed, your D'Bridge system will still show 2.99 as the version number, but the build-date will show March 31st 2008. WARNING: I will not get into political discussions about the new native support for BINKD.TXT or nodelist INA/IBN flags, the features were added to let you scale/customise D'Bridge better to your needs. Any work on things to do with nodelist handling has been done with the upmost care and respect for those of you who wish to have such support "disabled" - and the new BinkD feature defaults to disabled when upgrading from 2.99 SR2 or previous versions. - Minor updates were done internally to the D'Bridge Setup Wizard to facilitate improvements to the FPNP system for Service Release 4 (SR4) which should be due the middle of April. - A new question, USE THE BINKD.TXT FILE, has been added to the BinkD setup screen to support the use of BINKD.TXT. It was actually suggested quite some time ago back when I released 2.95. But due to the large amount of code required to support integrated BINKD.TXT file management; it was something I never really got around to do until now. WARNING: This feature is for experienced D'Bridge administrators and requires that a file called BINKD.TXT be obtained from your uplink and/or a reputable system. This must be placed in your DB directory before you enable this feature. If you wish to poll systems outside of whats defined in the BINKD SESSION INFO screen, then D'Bridge needs to know where to obtain the Internet address information from... since the BinkD subsystem does not access the nodelist databases directly. If you answer YES to this question, then D'Bridge will check for the presence of BINKD.TXT, which appears to be a weekly "list" of BinkD systems culled from the master Fido nodelist. D'Bridge will then add entries from the BINKD.TXT file to your BinkD configuration when its necessary. Ask your uplink for more information or in the Fidonet DBRIDGE echo for more information about the BINKD.TXT file. This now lets the POLL command work properly, and in theory lets others such as TRANSMIT FILES work as well; however, be warned that a temporary directory called BLISTDIR is created. This holds any mail that shall be sent to the system during a transaction based on a BINKD.TXT file entry and not whats defined in the setup screen. The contents of BLISTDIR are not erased; and in the event of failure; it is up to you to erase it. Answering NO to this question shuts this feature off (the default setting) and makes D'Bridge behave as it has in 2.99 SR2 and prior releases. - Now, if polling a system from BINKD.TXT fails, then it may be necessary to create the domain directories manually. D'Bridge and DBUTIL create the domain directories in the DATA folder. If you are exchanging mail in a Fido zone other than your own, then you need to create the directory for that zone. For example, if my 1:229/426 address tries to exchange mail with 2:2/20, then I must first make sure the DATA\FIDONET.002 directory exists beforehand... otherwise the transaction fails because D'Bridge can't find the proper domain directory. DBUTIL and D'Bridge do not automatically create out-of-zone domain directories. Use caution when testing polls for out-of-zone systems. Further discussion on BinkD domains or domain usage in more elaborate and complex setups may be better posted in the BINKD echo on Fidonet. Technical support is limited to diagnosing D'Bridge-specific domain configuration and usage only. - In the case of a "hybrid" listing (a node number with a PSTN entry and a BinkD entry), D'Bridge defaults to using the BinkD information. If a dialup modem is not configured, then the Queue entry becomes "Hold/ Unlisted". This was actually programmed awhile ago in a previous release but needs to be brought to your attention if you have a "hybrid" setup. - Further issues with polling "BINKD.TXT-listed" systems requires additional diagnosis by either myself or others in the Fidonet DBRIDGE echo. - A "looping poll" condition has been solved when running D'Bridge on the OS/2 Warp operating system and Serenity's ECS environment. - A "trap-keyboard" condition has been solved when running D'Bridge on MS-DOS 6.22 with DESQview/386. - A possible lockup condition has been fixed in the built-in terminal program when downloading a file using Zmodem and for some reason the connection failed; causing a timeout. - A possible lockup condition when navigating the help system and doing an extensive use of "See Also" has been fixed. - The built-in "Intercom" system (instant-messaging during file transfers) has been fixed so that the "Chat commands" works the way it was designed to do so originally. If by chance you happen to use the Intercom, D'Bridge now lets you see what the waiting mail is (allowing you to discuss it), request files (FREQ), or access the remote Sysop's BBS if its configured. - The STANDARD SCANS question in PACKET/MAIL CONTROL has been removed entirely (and D'Bridge will only use standard-scans in Echomail now). - The RUN DOS COMMANDS in the SCHEDULER for Mail-type events has been removed. The presence of a dummy/semaphore file called DBRIDGE.AMR (short for After Mail Received) now tells D'Bridge to run the DOS commands defined in the SCHEDULER for any Mail-type events. This file is NOT removed after such events are ran, and was actually an undocumented feature since 1.58 - the code for it was never finished. Until now. WARNING: The use of DBRIDGE.AMR on multi-line setups is not recommended. - When YOUVE GOT MAIL is enabled, the internal message editor now shows messages addressed to you in a brighter color when you LIST them. This should make it easy to pin-point personal mail now. Due to the fundimental design of the editor, it only works when pressing HOME, PGUP, PGDN or END as the ARROW KEYS currently "prevent" the new coloring. - YOUVE GOT MAIL has also been enhanced to play audio files of your choice when new personal mail arrives. If a batch file exists in your DB directory called PLAYMAIL.BAT, then D'Bridge runs this upon showing the notice in the LOG screen. The PLAYMAIL.BAT file should contain nothing more than a command to play the audio file at the DOS prompt. - I've included a sample setup called PLAYMAIL.ZIP in this release, for Microsoft Windows environments. Unzip the PLAYMAIL.ZIP into your DB directory if you are running Windows... and Hal from 2001 will greet you personally. - The playing of audio files will only happen during the times specified in the Audio Options questions in BASIC CONFIGURATION. - The D'Bridge Web processor (DBUTIL PROCESSWEB) has been slightly enhanced to support XML markup language, embedded Javascript and the use of frames-based HTML code. A trap-condition in 2.99 SR2 and prior versions prevented the use of more "complex" code in the template files. - A minor cosmetic correction has been done to the Information Display screens. - The help file has been slightly updated in this release. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com 2.99 - 21 MARCH 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 2 ---------------------------------------- Service Release 2 is a very minor update to 2.99, as per recent discussions in the Fidonet DBRIDGE echo. This release only deals with semaphore/dummy files. A very minor cosmetic correction was also done to this release. When SR2 is installed, your D'Bridge system will still show 2.99 as the version number, but the build-date will show March 21st 2008. - If you create a DBEXIT.xxx [where xxx is the DOS errorlevel you want], then D'Bridge will be shutdown accordingly when the system is IDLE or between "calls". When multi-line is enabled in the COMM/MODEM SETUP SCREEN, then all running copies of D'Bridge will be shutdown upon seeing DBEXIT.xxx. Due to the fundimental design of the internal D'Bridge multi-tasker, the mailer will NOT be shutdown during the processing of mail, exchanges with PSTN sessions, or executing a DOS event defined in the Scheduler. Only after such events are finished will the mailer check for the presence of the DBEXIT.xxx files and shutdown accordingly. This may be of concern for those of you running processes or batch-files that are somewhat of a "timely" nature and D'Bridge is busy processing large volumes of mail. When D'Bridge has shutdown, it will erase the dummy file it made. So if you told it to shutdown via DBEXIT.200, then the mailer shuts down with errorlevel 200, and erases that file. When multi-line is enabled, the last running "copy" of D'Bridge will erase that file. - A dummy file called DBRIDGE.NSP (short for "Not Shutdown Properly") is created whenever D'Bridge starts up and it has determined that the mailer has been improperly shutdown (as per the initial LOG window). This dummy file is erased upon proper shutdown of D'Bridge via QUIT commands or the use of the trigger-files mentioned above. The creation of DBRIDGE.NSP may be useful for those of you running D'Bridge on server-systems which run 3rd-party software that may not "fire up" properly after a system crash such as Harold Harm's Allfix or Charles Cruden's Internet Rex. The dummy file would be used in a scenario in any such batch files to run "checks" on your setup, restore automated backups, etc etc. - The DBRIDGE.TCK file should be erased now when "returning" from GoldED or other external message editors. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com 2.99 - 18 March 2008 - SERVICE RELEASE 1 ---------------------------------------- WARNING: D'Bridge requires a full 640k of memory to function properly. If your DOS environment is reporting 590,000 kilobytes or less, you may be unable to use this release properly. Service Release 1 is designed to correct and address several reported problems with D'Bridge 2.99. There are no new features in this release. If you are a newcomer and installing D'Bridge for the first time, you don't need to concern yourself with these notes. When this release is installed; the version number stays the same but the build-date will state March 17th. Remember that the version and build-date are displayed when you exit D'Bridge, underneith the blue bridge logo. - The display of modem activity is shown the way it was in prior versions when the Health Graph feature is shut off in WINDOW/DESKTOP settings. - A very, very rare but potentially serious stability bug has been fixed when you are using a dialup modem with D'Bridge under Windows NT, 2000, XP, Windows Server 2003 or Windows Vista operating systems. - Specifying a dialup modem in D'Bridge, then opting not to use it (ie. erasing the entry in COMM/MODEM SETUP) no longer "hangs" the mailer. - The dialup modem requirement for ClockSync functionality has been removed. - The problem of Echomail being written in the internal editor (with the Scan Echomail feature disabled), tossing new messages and then not having the original scanned out later on should be resolved now... for good. - DBUTIL MOVE will no longer halt on "problems" if running from a batch file or external event. - D'Bridge should properly perform a Queuescan when GoldEd is used instead of the internal message editor and the Rebuild Queue option is set to Yes. - Reports of corrupt outgoing packets was investigated but I was not able to replicate the problem here. However, several minor changes were made that may solve the problem. - Minor changes were done to the system timer to hopefully resolve the reports of freezing; again, a problem that I am not able to easily replicate here. - D'Bridge should now properly install on "plain" DOS systems but be advised that SHARE.EXE must be installed when running D'Bridge in a plain-DOS environment. 2.99 - 10 March 2008 -------------------- WARNING: D'Bridge requires a full 640k of memory to function properly. If your DOS environment is reporting 590,000 kilobytes or less, you may be unable to use this release properly. The mailer doesn't check for free memory - Theres not even enough codespace anymore to do THAT. This is a very, very minor release. Its designed to prepare your entire Fido system for the upcoming version 3 series. D'Bridge 3 will be the last of the DOS versions, unless serious bugs are brought to my attention that require fixing. It takes over several hours to fix one problem in the code; due to its assembly-language nature and complicated use of codespace and variables. What that means to you, is that I plan to offer what I promised for version 3 and call it quits with DOS. Future development will be focused entirely on the Windows/Linux/Macintosh rewrite (version 4) and will be 100% GUI with a completely redesigned kernal and functionality. The look and feel, configuration file and so forth will be kept the same and will be completely cross-platform; so more time can be spent enjoying Fidonet and less time dealing with software issues. D'Bridge 4 should be due out by summer/fall this year. When that happens, all previous versions and work will be archived-up and retired for good. - Switching from the BinkD support to Charles Cruden's Internet Rex or some other solution no longer causes problems when you've ran everything then opt to disable BinkD in D'Bridge. - A problem in the scheduler with polling a UUCP/Email/Usenet system and having another poll execute immediately afterwards has been fixed now. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com 2.98 - 3 March 2008 ------------------- WARNING: When 2.98 is installed, it is NOT recommended to rollback to prior versions. Please backup your data accordingly. This is a minor release that improves BinkD even more and fixes "Invalid arguements" in Binkd setups by moving the domains into the DATA directory. Minor adjustments have also been done to overall operation. For newcomers: Whenever you upgrade a version of D'Bridge, a tiny assembly language program called DBUPD (D'Bridge Upgrade Advisor) runs before exporting your current setup and actually updating the files. DBUPD runs because in certain previous versions; it was not possible to export or fix certain problems of my doing. DBUPD is a normal part of the installation/ upgrade process of D'Bridge and is no cause for concern. Note that if you plan to run D'Bridge on a Linux platform, the use of DOSBOX or DOSEMU is highly recommended. How you plan to exchange mail is up to you. A modem is not required obviously and it is not required to define a "dummy modem" in DOSBOX. NOTE: It has been reported that DOSBOX does not properly "refresh" when new mail or files are received. So that being said, you have three options in this case. You may run BinkD for Linux. D'Bridge 2.98 fully supports a Linux-based configuration file now and significant work was done to improve support for the way that it runs on Linux. However, BinkD for Linux does NOT ship with this release of D'Bridge but you can download it from Janis Kracht - www.filegate.net/mail or www.2f.ru/binkd. BinkD should be unpacked into your DB directory. Your second option is you can either network or map-out the virtual DOS session so D'Bridge looks to create outbound mail somewhere else for actual sending (ie. another workstation on a LAN). Your third option is to run D'Bridge entirely on a Windows PC and use your Linux computer for message editing, BBS, etc etc. The BinkD that ships with D'Bridge 2.98 can run with as far back as windows 95, so, an older legacy PC can easily do the job. Lars... your feedback awaits. ;-) - When installing this release for the first time, the D'Bridge Upgrade Advisor (DBUPD component) will show you a list of domains that it needs to move. One by one, it will attempt to move them. At the end of the installation please check the DATA directory for the presence of the domains, if they are not there please let me know ASAP. The D'Bridge Upgrade Advisor only moves the domains once and once only. - Additional checking is done in the BinkD setup screens against invalid domain names. - A new question allows you to specify the base-location to store mailboxes, in BINKD SETUP. You must shutdown BinkD if its running, before changing this option. D'Bridge does NOT move the mailboxes for you; you must do this manually. The default setting is to have D'Bridge store the mailboxes in your DB directory. ***WARNING*** Only experienced D'Bridge operators should use this feature. The moving of BinkD mailboxes is NOT recommended. The feature is only provided for advanced troubleshooting/customising only. Technical support will NOT be provided for this feature. - When set to Linux mode, BinkD now may only be used as a "server" - the "Run as a server" question becomes disabled because it is not possible for DB to call BinkD for Linux from within DOSEMU or DOSBOX, the way that it can for Windows or OS/2. - Minor problems of my doing have been fixed in the mailer and Queue scan code. - Missing BinkD domains should be properly created now. - The default BinkD domain ("root-domain" in DBRIDGE.BNK) is now properly written and saved for those of you with multi-network configurations. - Various problems with Soup gating with a dialup modem enabled have been fixed. - The system uptime should be properly kept now. - A possible crash in DBUTIL PURGE has been fixed when an archive-text file is specified in the Echomail Manager and for some reason it can't be opened properly. - A slight correction has finally been done to the Editor Options screen so that if you chose anything but the internal editor as your preferred reader, then the other options would remain (ie. You've Got Mail). - A slight correction has been done to the internal message editor when you choose to write NETmail messages to multiple non-CM recipients (CC'ing). 2.97 - 26 February 2008 ----------------------- This is a very minor release, essentially a "refresh" of 2.96 with some cosmetic fixes done to the Queue and random freezing should be corrected. I was not able to replicate that problem here as 2.96 was running fine for days on end now, but I looked at the code and saw some things that may of caused that problem. If this release does not fix things, please let me know ASAP. Version 2.96 - February 20 2008 ------------------------------- This is a minor release which adjusts performance of the mailer's overall operation, and enhances BinkD. If you are NOT using the BinkD integration I wrote or you're using Charles Cruden's Internet Rex, it is not necessary to install this update. - BinkD support is improved in this version and mixed into the mailer now as accounted for the same as dialup sessions. When an outbound "call" is being placed, the familiar OUTBOUND SESSION INFO screen (from the days of dialup) is shown before the "swapout". Uncompressed raw Echomail does not show up in this screen but all other types of messages should (ie. NETmail, XMAIL, file-attachments and so forth). - Random keyboard lockup problems and other such nonsense should be fixed permanently now. I was not able to replicate some of these problems but I found some glaring mistakes that needed to be fixed. - A minor problem with DBUTIL SORT AREAS should be fixed. - The web processor works about 25% faster now. - Auto-polling systems, cancelling, then immediately starting D'Bridge again causing another poll, should be eliminated now. New feature - Health Graph -------------------------- As an eye-candy treat for all of you, and my love of TBBS, I added a "Health Graph" to D'Bridge. This is a general graph of the overall performance of the mailer. The graph shows CPU load, Exchanges (ie. time spent dealing with BinkD or dialup calls), and mail processing. The total system uptime since last shutdown is also displayed. The health graph is shown on the bottom of the screen and updates approximately every 5 to 15 seconds depending on CPU load. The health graph is color-coded. Green means your D'Bridge system is operating normally under ideal conditions. Yellow means the mailer is getting busy. Red means that D'Bridge is spending a lot of time processing. If things get in the red, it would mean your computer is turning into quite the little mail hub... And folks - It even doubles as a message-ticker simular to a stock exchange. Personal messages that are waiting for you are "scrolled" in the graph, one by one, every few seconds. This of course only works if YOUVE GOT MAIL is enabled. The new feature is turned on or off in the WINDOW/DESKTOP SETTINGS screen. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com Version 2.95 "final" - February 12 2008 --------------------------------------- This is a major release, quite possibly the most important one of the 2.xx series since the first 2.0 was introduced a few years ago after the takeover of the project from Chris Irwin. A few months of dedicated hard work has gone into this release, and several thousand lines of code later, I think this is the release that will officially solve a LOT of ongoing problems we've been having for awhile. Theres lots to talk about, so lets first summarise this document/posting: - Redesigned BINKD support - Redesigned Internet EMAIL/USENET gating - Cell phone/SMS support - Redesigned installation for newcomers - Support for PKT-only generation for large systems - Dozens of fixes and corrections since 2.94 including serious bug fixes. Redesigned BINKD system ----------------------- WARNING: When upgrading from 2.94 or previous versions, BINKD support is set to DISABLED, to make sure you understand how the new system works - and to prevent accidential loss of mail. - The entire BINKD configuration screen has been rewritten from scratch, and support has been reprogrammed to fix bugs for both clients-only and those of you running servers. If you have enabled the BINKD support from 2.94 or prior versions, your BINKD setup should be preserved but you may need to re-enter Internet ports and SOCKS 4/5 information. When you enable BINKD as a "Server", D'Bridge no longer calls BINKD to exchange mail - instead, you must manually run and "leave" the BINKD program running in another window on your operating system to handle the mail. D'Bridge will update the "Queue" for BINKD automatically. Please refer to the on-line help screens for the redesigned BINKD system as some things have been changed with how everything works. WARNING: The "-C" parameter mentioned in 2.94 and earlier MUST NOT BE USED when running BINKD in this version of D'Bridge. - An enhancement has been done to the BINKD SESSIONS screen to allow you to connect to a non-standard "port" for a specified system; overriding the default INCOMING and OUTGOING PORTS in the BINKD Setup Screen. Non- standard ports for BINKD outgoing sessions is a feature found in certain 3rd-party software and I am including it for convenience, for those of you who exchange mail with Sysops running bizarre or strange setups. WARNING: It is NOT RECOMMENDED to run BINKD as a server on a non- standard port with D'Bridge. You will not be able to accept connections from other BINKD systems unless they know exactly what your port number is. - The format of the "new" BINKD Session Information screen is as follows: <ADDRESS> <DOMAIN> <ID> <IP OR PICKUPONLY> <PASSWORD OR NONE> <PORT> ie. 1:229/426 fidonet NANDRE nickandre.com ABC123 1:229/2000 fidonet RCOUTURE hub2000.darktech.org ABC123 24551 1:229/0 fidonet PSIMPSON PICKUPONLY NONE The PORT parameter is new and tells D'Bridge that the BINKD system should connect on a specific port. Its optional and if not specified, it will use the value of the OUTGOING PORT defined. So if I've defined the OUTGOING PORT to the default 24554, every system in the BINKD SESSION INFO will use it unless, in the above example, its 1:229/2000, in which case it would "call out" on port 24551. - The above new format renders the old "BINKD Domains" feature obsolete. - The upgrade process (DBUPD) should be smart enough to import settings from the old BINK DOMAINS option and "merge" it into BINKD SESSION INFORMATION. But please double-check after the upgrade is completed... just in case. WARNING: Again, remember that when upgrading from 2.94 or earlier, BINKD support is set to DISABLED. - The BINKD system now uses FLO files and BSO (Binkley Style Outbound) correctly and efficiently... at least while testing here. Test carefully. - The BINKD system now works correctly with polling, either through mailer events or through the use of DBUTIL POLL. Note that it is not my intention to support different "flavors" of BSO/FLO control files as I see no difference with the way the BINKD system treats the priority of outbound BINKD sessions. - A new command, DBUTIL GENBINK, generates a FLO file manually for a BINK system entry. The format of the command is: DBUTIL GENBINK [address] [domain] [directory] For example, DBUTIL GENBINK 2:2/0 fidonet C:\WARD will generate a FLO file in the Fidonet directory containing the contents of C:\WARD\*.* to be sent out by the BINKD system. DBUTIL GENBINK is smart enough to distinguish the "Home Zone" (ie. the first domain entry in the DBRIDGE.BNK setup file) and if its not the Home Zone, then the zone is appended as an extension to the domain directory. To understand this better, my BINKD setup has a domain entry for Fidonet for Zone 1, and then entries for the other Fidonet zones (2 to 6). My hard drive has a directory called FIDONET and then FIDONET.002, FIDONET.003, FIDONET.004 and so forth. Now if I was in Zone 2, the first domain just becomes FIDONET because thats the Home Zone. But the remainder zones (1 and 3 to 6) becomes FIDONET.001, FIDONET.003, FIDONET.004 and so on. DBUTIL is smart enough not to add the contents of a directory to an FLO file if the contents are already listed in the FLO for sending-out. DBUTIL GENBINK is called automatically by D'Bridge during the processing for BINKD; so it is unnecessary to run this manually. It does NOT read or parse the DBRIDGE.BNK file - it reads the D'Bridge configuration directly and uses that. The feature is completely integrated. Again, no GENBINK or DBUTIL MOVE is done whatsoever if the BINKD support has been disabled in the setup screen - to maintain compatibility with existing batch files or setups that you may have. Asserting manual control over BINKD ----------------------------------- Under most circumstances, you shouldn't have to maintain your BINKD configuration manually. If you do, then I haven't done my job properly. :-) I've added a BINKD OPTIONS screen that allows you to manually override or specify your own settings for the DBRIDGE.BNK file. This should be good enough for most situations. If it is necessary to have complete, manual control over BINKD while still using the BINKD setup screen, set the support to Linux/Other. The DBRIDGE.BNK file would be managed automatically, but all aspects of the actual connections themselves are left up to you to handle. When BINKD support is disabled (set to None), it is left up to you entirely to handle and process mail and packets for BINKD systems. No generation or maintenance of the DBRIDGE.BNK file would be done. When BINKD support is set to Linux or disabled, you will need to "move" the mail yourself using DBUTIL MOVE and DBUTIL GENBINK. Redesigned Internet EMAIL/USENET and Cell phone support ------------------------------------------------------- - The entire Internet EMAIL and USENET support has been rewritten and redesigned from scratch to be integrated into D'Bridge as much as possible. The use of SOUPGATE and VSOUP is so closely-knit together now that it's no longer necessary to use any other workarounds for EMAIL and Usenet gating. In D'Bridge-land, you're used to having your settings migrated over with little hassle as possible during upgrades - but unfortunately, in this upgrade, you will NOT be able to migrate any "workarounds" or calls to other external programs for EMAIL and Usenet gating - Those should first be removed from 2.94 (or whatever you're upgrading from), before you install this upgrade - then re-entered in the new screens afterwards. So, make sure you have your ISP's information for SMTP, POP3 and NNTP/Usenet once you're prepared to use the redesigned features. To properly use the gating, you must first specify the address you wish to use as the gate in the PACKET/MAIL CONTROL screens as well as define it in the SCHEDULER. This could have been automated; but to avoid confusion I decided to have you do this manually. The policy of development is NOT to add things automatically to routing tables or packet control settings for security/stability reasons - That code has not been changed for years for a reason. But on new installations, thats a different ballgame; as per the new Fido Plug and Play feature. When you're finished that, you then begin to answer the questions in the EMAIL/USENET GATING screen. There is even two "Test" options in the top of the screen to ensure that you're doing things properly. In tradition with the keep-it-simple approach of D'Bridge; all of the questions in the redesigned screen have been carefully constructed so even a complete novice can set up a working gateway system. And the online help screens have been rewritten as well. - When you wish to "poll" your EMAIL/USENET gate, you just do so with the ALT+P command or DBUTIL POLL like you would any other system. D'Bridge treats mail for the EMAIL/USENET gate just as it would any other system, and this approach greatly simplifies things for administration. - When you change your input in the "NNTP address" question, or type something in there for the first time, D'Bridge may display a warning asking you to "Re-Sync" (using the option at the top of the screen). This is done because in my opinion no two newsgroup servers have the same count (or "retainment rate") of messages. Whenever you change NNTP servers, you MUST re-sync. Otherwise D'Bridge may not accurately download the messages from the newsgroup server. What happens during the "Sync" is VSOUP connects to download the full list of newsgroups available from the NNTP/Usenet server, and computes a quick count of how many messages are in each newsgroup. This process should only take up to a minute. If it takes longer (especially when you are using the "Test" features in the top of the screen), then this indicates a problem with the connection to your NNTP server. Diagnosing those problems can be complicated; its best to refer the matter to me personally. Contact me directly or on the DBRIDGE echo on Fidonet. Note that it is beyond the scope of the DBRIDGE echo to provide help and assistance for issues relating to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) so, it is recommended that you have at least a basic understanding of how some Internet services work, like routers, ports and so forth. - The only thing that needs to be done to start the flow of Usenet traffic coming in, is to edit the NEWSRC file and change the "!" to a ":" for the groups you wish to receive. I plan to have this automated in the next release along with tying in the Areafix support to handle this. It is not necessary to edit NEWSRC to exchange Internet EMAIL. - Note that if you are using OS/2, the EMAIL/USENET gate feature requires the use of the shareware program "HSTART", available from Hobbes. The HSTART program is not shipped with this release of D'Bridge. - If you require SSL encryption for SMTP or POP3 mail transfers in D'Bridge, be warned that the VSOUP program shipped with this release does not support SSL. However, on my website, you can download "X-Ray Mail Assistant" from the SOFTWARE DOWNLOADS section. When X-Ray is installed, it "takes over" the role from VSOUP and actually does the job of authenticating SSL. The installation and administration of X-Ray is fairly straightforward if you are knowledgable enough to configure SMTP and POP3 settings. The on-line help in this release explains a little bit more about X-Ray and whats involved and how it works. However, providing help for installing X-Ray with D'Bridge will have to be done on a "case by case" basis (since SSL is an ISP issue); so please contact me directly or post a message in the DBRIDGE echo on Fidonet for assistance. - D'Bridge now supports cell phone/SMS message "gating". In other words, with the YOUVE GOT MAIL setting set to "EMAIL" and ALL of the settings in the EMAIL/USENET GATING screen answered correctly, you can use your cell phone to participate in Fidonet. Please refer to the on-line help screens for more assistance, or contact me via EMAIL or in the DBRIDGE echo on Fidonet. Cell phone support has been tested with BlackBerry 7290 and 7100 series. It also supports MSN and Yahoo Mobile EMAIL accounts. As these release-notes are cross-posted into the DBRIDGE echo; I will not get into an elaborate discussion about SMS support until necessary; as covering whats involved is beyond these release notes. Discussion is more than welcome in the DBRIDGE echo on Fidonet so long as pertains to configuring/troubleshooting your cell phone or software with D'Bridge. It is beyond the scope and topic of the DBRIDGE echo to troubleshoot issues pertaining to specific cell phone models; so its assumed that you have a working knowledge of how text-messaging works on your cell phone (ie. you know how to configure alerts, settings, etc) Be warned however, that you should first check with your cell phone carrier (ie. Rogers, Bell Canada, Telus) to ensure that you have a "plan" that includes free text-messaging or at least gives you significant messaging to let you enjoy the SMS support in D'Bridge without incurring substantial charges. Avoid plans that charge a per-message fee if at all possible. Improvements to management and administration --------------------------------------------- - D'Bridge now has an "AutoPurge" feature, to improve efficiency and eliminate the need for DOS events to manually purge your message forums. The AutoPurge feature can be found in the PACKET/MAIL CONTROL screen and obviously defaults to Disabled during upgrading - but is set to Enabled for new installations. When AutoPurge is enabled, old messages are purged on-the-fly after Unpacking/tossing of messages based on the criteria. Of course, you may still use DBUTIL PURGE if necessary. - You can now specify "Aliases" for the Queue screen. Now you can look at your Queue window and see the name of the Sysop, not just the address. This is controlled by the QUEUE ALIASES question in the PACKET/MAIL CONTROL screen and defaults to blank (disabled) on upgrades. Any name up to 16 characters is okay, except "EMAIL/NNTP" which is a reserved name by the Internet features explained earlier. No spaces are allowed. So lets say you've got things set up with Roger as your uplink. You just type in his Fido address and name in QUEUE ALIASES, and whenever mail is destined for Roger's system, his name shows up in the outbound Queue. This feature was added to give a little bit more clarity in the Queue window; its easy to see now who has mail, if you prefer to referring to other systems by name instead of memorising Fido addresses. It was also added for the Fido Plug-and-Play auto-addressing feature. - If you like the Queue Alias feature, I can see about enhancing that so the names can be used elsewhere, like in routing events, ie. ROUTE TO WARD FOR 2:ALL or ROUTE TO SEABORN FOR 1:ALL. I can even make it go so far as DOS events, ie. DBUTIL MOVE JOE C:\JOE. Let me know... - The "You've Got Mail" feature has been enhanced to show a running total of personal mail waiting as a non-intrusive flashing indicator in the ACTIVITY window, simular to InterMail and TBBS/FLAME. The indicator will start flashing after D'Bridge idles for about a minute, and stays there until you read your mail. So now you can simply just glance at your monitor from a distance, and know right away if anything is waiting for you personally. When you read your mail, the flashing indicator goes away. Obviously none of this stuff happens if "You've Got Mail" is OFF. - A new command, DBUTIL NETMAIL, will NETmail a specified system the content of a text file of your choice. The format is DBUTIL NETMAIL [address] [file] ie. DBUTIL NETMAIL 1:229/426 C:\BUG-RPT.TXT. DBUTIL automatically does a "zone match" if you are running other "nets" on your system. The first two lines of the text file must be who the message is to, and what the subject is. For example: [Start] Joe Sysop - Who the message should be address to. New features - The subject line of the message. Hi Joe, I have tested the new features, here is some things I've noticed so far... [End] - For Echomail, you may use DBUTIL POST and specify the FROM and SUBJECT and even the Echomail area as parameters - In this case, DBUTIL won't attempt to read that from the text file. The format would be: DBUTIL POST FROM "Sysop" TO "All" SUBJECT "Testing" IN FIDO_TEST C:\TEST.TXT The use of quotations is necessary when using the FROM, TO and SUBJECT commands. DBUTIL POST can also be used as an alternative to DBUTIL NETMAIL; just use NETMAIL as the area name. Redesigned installation for newcomers ------------------------------------- The installation for newcomers has been rewritten to auto-configure D'Bridge much easier than before. By simply answering the new on-screen questions properly, D'Bridge can be up and running in minutes. Fixes / Corrections since 2.94 ------------------------------ - Dozens of corrections and improvements have been done to the Setup Wizard to facilitate Fido Plug and Play and to simplify things even more for newcomers to our hobby. - A very rare but serious bug from the Chris Irwin days has been fixed in the mailer startup sequence. - A potential bug in DBUPD (D'Bridge Update) has been fixed. - A serious bug with command-line options in D'Bridge itself has been fixed. - An extremely rare but potential EMSI security problem from the Chris Irwin days has also been fixed, for dialup modem sessions running in both multi-line and a combination of highspeed/lowspeed where CONNECT strings unrecognized caused a strange behavior in the mailer. - A serious problem with the AutoUpdate routine not properly exporting configurations on multi-line setups into ZIP files has been fixed. - Echomail is now unconditionally scanned out first instead of after the Unpack cycle if the DBRIDGE.RSE semaphore is created or you select UTILITIES -> PROCESS MAIL MANUALLY. This change was done to simplify the integration of certain BBS software. - The bug where Echomail is entered in the internal editor and not being packed out if inbound mail is waiting upon exit has been fixed. Note that for this fix to work correctly, the "Scan Echomail" question must be answered YES in the EDITOR OPTIONS screen. If you answer NO to the "Scan Echomail" question, Echomail written in the editor will still go out but the next Echomail scan may take much longer to complete since D'Bridge must scan each and every message to determine if in fact it must be sent out. So, the recommended setting is YES, and this is the default setting for new installations - but not for upgrades, because in very complex and large setups it is preferred to have it off. This problem was very hard to replicate here based on how my configuration works, which I'm sure is different than others due to it also being used for testing-purposes, but I saw exactly where the problem was. - D'Bridge should no longer "freeze" with the 1-second-remaining on events that require outbound calls, because the majority of that problem was based around the old BINKD code. Now that the BINKD support has been completely rewritten from scratch (with stability and reliability in mind) the problem doesn't happen anymore. - D'Bridge should no longer crash during the AutoUpdate routine if no Echomail areas have been defined. - A serious bug with the way COM ports are handled for Dialup modems has been fixed. - D'Bridge no longer randomly crashes or hangs a Windows 2000/XP/2003 Server session when you have a dialup modem defined and you decide to run DB UNPACK or DB ECHOSCAN and multi-line support is enabled. - DBUTIL has been updated so that having at least one Echomail area to make it work has been removed - except for DBUTIL SORT AREAS, DBUTIL PURGE and others that specifically deal with NETmail or Echomail. This was done for those of you running a "NETmail only" scenario, or for testing. - Another serious problem with DBUTIL MOVE not functioning correctly in the above scenario has been fixed. - DBUTIL's overall performance and stability has been improved and tested to be stable here on my server - a machine that has over 10,000 Echomail areas and processes over 100,000+ messages per day. - The logic behind DBUTIL DELETE, DBUTIL DELETEDOS and DBUTIL SORT AREAS has been slightly modified now. If you use DBUTIL DELETEDOS, the Echomail areas (and Fido *.MSG directories) are removed, but the actual record still remains in the database; if you decide it was a mistake and you want to use the DBUTIL UNDELETE command. Now, Echomail records marked for deletion are not actually "purged out" until the use of DBUTIL SORT AREAS. - A minor enhancement was also done to the Unpack cycle which should improve the initial speed of unpacking on systems with large amounts of Echomail areas. While not necessarily a "fix", it does "fix" poor performance when tossing mail on large configurations (ie. over 10,000 Echomail areas) - Mail turnaround and unpacking when Idle and activated by semaphores should be vastly improved now; D'Bridge should no longer sit idle for too long when theres waiting mail to be processed. - The bug where a "BinkD" call is placed and the mailer attempting to dial that same system immediately afterward (if a dialup modem was specified) has been fixed. This means that a system has to be defined as "one or the other" - either they are connecting via Dialup *OR* BINKD. Not both. If both scenarios are required to be supported simultaneously, let me know. - D'Bridge should no longer "barf" on nodelist segment updates (DIFF files) that have been generated by MAKENL. Although this problem was corrected back in 2.92, some minor things have been fixed for stability reasons. - D'Bridge no longer ships with a DBNET nodelist. DBNET is obsolete and has been entirely replaced by the Fido Plug and Play system explained earlier. Get rid of the DBNET nodelist entirely from your setup and delete the file altogether. If you have a DBNET node number as an AKA address or in your ROUTING table, delete it. - Nodelist IBN/INA and IVM flags are translated properly now if those features have been enabled in the VIRTUAL MODEM/MAILER-OVER-TELNET screen. - A somewhat serious bug in the IBN/INA/IVM translation has been fixed. - The "Bad record number" bug in DBUTIL should be fixed in this release. - A minor cosmetic problem has been corrected in DBUTIL PURGE, DBUTIL RENUM and DBUTIL RENUMDATES. - D'Bridge no longer ships with the RAR archiver; if you wish to have support for RAR, please download RAR16 or RAR32 from www.rarlab.com and install to the D'Bridge directory. RAR support is still here, however. - If the mailer complains of an "Echopack 5", please report this ASAP. The message DOES NOT affect processing or forwarding of mail - this was intentionally put in there to help me diagnose a possible condition that maybe one of you lucky folks will be kind enough to report if it happens! - If the mailer complains of "Unable to open DBRIDGE.XMA" or simular situations, and you have a fairly large configuration, increase the size of the FILES statement to 60 or 80 in CONFIG.SYS or CONFIG.NT on Windows-based computers. If the problem persists, please notify me ASAP. - Some minor things in the on-line help system have been updated, at some time in the future I would like to completely revise the entire help system and make it up-to-date. - Numerous behind-the-scenes cleanup work was done to all of the code to improve performance in some areas as best as I could. Nick Andre www.nickandre.com Version 2.94 - December 1st 2007 -------------------------------- WARNING: Although careful testing was done to ensure a stable release, please back up your D'Bridge directory before installing. This is a major release of D'Bridge which "rolls up" all of the dozens of bug fixes and corrections done in 2.93 with several improvements done to the support for dialup modems and Internet Rex by Charles Cruden. In case you missed it, 2.93 removed a lot of limitations with the Echomail processor. D'Bridge can now process up to 32,000 Echomail areas and error 202 and 203 problems are gone. As fellow Church of Andre member Ward likes to point out, new features mean new bugs... and 2.93 was no exception. Roger also pointed out a serious problem with DBUTIL. So, a lot things happened as a result of removing the limits. Thankfully, most of it was caught in time during testing, and 2.94 should be a very stable release to "tide you over" while I now focus on the major feature I want to write. Yes, the BINKD subsystem is being rewritten from scratch, and I've already began work on a much more simplier approach for BINKD, Internet EMAIL and Usenet groups. And Echofile/TIC processing is almost ready for testing. - Dialup modem performance under Windows 2000, XP and Vista should be improved and there should be no more of this "The NTVDM session is attempting to access COM1" nonsense when running DB SETUP. - The serious bug where if there is no dialup modem and D'Bridge tries to call a system anyway (thus causing a "freeze") has been fixed. When there is no dialup modem, all Queue entries will be marked as HOLD/UNLISTED. Please note that the recommended way to run BINKD is in "server" mode - ie. D'Bridge in one window and BINKD in another. Do NOT run it in "client" mode despite what the help file says - it doesn't work correctly. - D'Bridge has been tested with the BlackBerry 7100 and 8000 series cell phones and the later revision Palm TRIO connected to a PC as a USB modem for placing outbound Fido calls using cellular technology, if such a need arises. The USB modem driver must be configured to operate on COM1 or COM2 usually under ADVANCED PROPERTIES. - D'Bridge and DBUTIL now create a dummy file/semaphore called DBRIDGE.QSD (short for "Queue Scan is Done"). When Internet Rex sees this file, it will rescan its own Queue - when properly configured. Internet Rex works very well with this new improvement - though the use of DBUTIL MOVE and Mailbox directories in Rex's NODE MANAGER is still recommended. To configure support for the new DBRIDGE.QSD file in Internet Rex: - Fire up Rex Configuration (ie. REXWCFG or REXCFG) - FILES, PATHS and PROGRAMS. - MAILER TYPE should obviously be set to D'Bridge. - SEMAPHORE directory should be your D'Bridge directory, ie C:\DB - Set the RESCAN SEMAPHORE to DBRIDGE.QSD. - Set RESCAN FREQUENCY to "Use Semaphore files" - Save and Exit. To ensure proper operation of D'Bridge with Internet Rex altogether, follow these steps. We'll use my Fido address, 1:229/426 as an example, so lets pretend for arguements sake that you exchange mail with me... - Configure the new QSD file support mentioned above. - Lets say D'Bridge is installed in C:\DB and you've got me all set up. - Make a directory called C:\DB\NANDRE - Create a DOS event in D'Bridge which runs DBUTIL MOVE 1:229/426 NANDRE - Fire up the Internet Rex configuration program, ie REXWCFG.EXE - Go to GENERAL INFORMATION and be sure User Level is set to ADVANCED. - Then go to the NODE MANAGER screen. - Add a system, 1:229/426 with the MAILBOX DIRECTORY set to C:\DB\NANDRE - You would then configure all the other info, ie. BINKD, passwords, etc. - Thats it! - The use of DBUTIL MOVE is recommended because Internet Rex does not properly read all of the Queue data in D'Bridge. Contrary to popular belief, this is a problem with Internet Rex itself - NOT with D'Bridge, and anyone who needs this proven simply has to watch the way that NETmail and Areafix requests are blatently ignored by the Rex scanner. So what you're doing in the above steps is essentially move things out of the Queue into another directory and tell Rex to look in there for mail. Note that for each system defined in the NODE MANAGER of Internet Rex you must have a seperate mailbox directory - don't just move everyone's mail into one directory. :) Please note that it is not my intention to provide any more workarounds or support for Internet Rex as that product has several serious and fundimental flaws in it which would require the authors intervention... - The serious bug with purging obsolete entries in the ECHOMAIL HISTORY screen and the DBRIDGE.DL3 file growing out of hand has been fixed. - A serious bug during the display of Echomail history with weird bizarre nonsense on the top of the first record in the list has been fixed. - Minor bugs with the RESCAN feature of Areafix have been fixed. - A serious bug in the Delete Empty Passthrus feature during the Auto- Update midnight event has been fixed. - A serious bug in DBUTIL PURGE has been fixed with regards to date-purging as per Roger. DBUTIL PURGE now works correctly as it did prior. - DBUTIL SORT AREAS has been rewritten from scratch and sorts areas much faster than before, especially on systems with lots of Echomail areas. It is a little more disk-intensive but much better. A system with over 10,000 Echomail areas (like mine) now sorts in less than a few minutes, instead of over a half hour. - A serious bug with BBS callers being rejected regardless if the SCHEDULER and BBS CONFIGURATION was set to "Yes" has been fixed. - A new feature, DBUTIL REMOVEDUPEDATABASES has been added, which will remove the DBRIDGE.DUP databases from each *.MSG directory. This has been added for debugging/testing purposes. Under normal circumstances this should NOT be used. - Dozens of other minor corrections have been done as the mailer is being prepared for new features in progress. Version 2.93 - November 24th 2007 --------------------------------- WARNING: This release makes several dozen fundimental changes to the Echomail processor, XMAIL and the DBRIDGE.ADF database file. After this upgrade has been installed, 3rd-party programs which directly access the Echomail database will not function properly. However you may downgrade/rollback to 2.92 or prior if you are not happy with this release. A lot of hard work and careful consideration has been given if you are not happy and wish to rollback. No version-specific files are created and no additional steps are required if you feel a rollback is necessary. This is a very minor release but has a lot of internal code changed to facilitate large amounts of Echomail areas, and to resolve Error 202 and 203 problems for good. After this upgrade has been installed, Echomail tossing may slow down somewhat; depending on the speed of your computer. However, other problems have been solved, so its a case of trading a little bit of performance to solve problems elsewhere. D'Bridge can now process up to 32,000 Echomail areas, as opposed to the previous limit of around 2,000 before Error 202 and Error 203 happened. There is also a little bit more memory available for other settings such as routing tables, Packet/Mail control lines and so forth. It is not necessary to upgrade to this version right away unless you are a Fidonet Zone or Network Co-Ordinator and you process large volumes of Echomail AND you have a large amount of downlinks or other setup information. It would be a good idea to pay attention to the system log files and you should check your message bases after each "tossing" cycle has completed. - If you are running D'Bridge under OS/2 Warp, Echomail performance is actually improved on HPFS partitions when the size of the cache is set *low*. A cache size of 128k to 256k is recommended. - The entire Areafix system may run a little slower than usual because the whole code for requesting areas depended heavily on the old method. It has been tested here to be stable and bug-free. - The keyword "ALL" now tells Areafix to add (or remove) all available Echomail areas for a system. For example, an Areafix request from 2:2/0 containing just "ALL" would connect that address to all available areas based on security level (or all of them if the request was forced using the ALT+N command). Likewise, if 1:229/2000 sent a request with "-ALL", all current areas would be disconnected. - The new changes to the Echomail processor have no effect if you are using the QuickBBS storage system. It is impossible to have thousands of areas with QuickBBS or GoldBase. In fact I plan to completely get rid of the support for QuickBBS/GoldBase support altogether... unless someone out there absolutely insists on having it. - A new version of DB2RG has been included for the Renegade BBS software to work properly with this release. - The internal editor now correctly handles Echomail areas up to 32,000. - The BADECHO area where "bad" messages get sent to, is now numbered as 32767, instead of 9999. - DBUTIL has been significantly updated to handle the new code changes. - The problem in DBUTIL DESCFILE not correctly justifying descriptions is fixed. - Please double-check all your events and routing information after installing; since the way that memory is managed with those screens has also changed slightly. Version 2.92 - November 10th 2007 --------------------------------- WARNING: This release makes a fundimental change to the Echomail processor including changes to XMAIL and the internal message editor, and fundimental changes to the Nodelist Compiler. Please backup accordingly and test very carefully. This is a major release which introduces the ability to compile nodelists designed with MAKENL amongst Fidonet along with major fixes to DBUTIL PURGE and several other corrections. - The Nodelist Compiler should now properly process and compile Nodelist segments amongst the recent switchover events in Fidonet. - DBUTIL PURGE has been redesigned to purge-out old messages first, instead of just "randomly purging". - This is a release that has a minor fix that has shown to improve the way Echomail is imported by 3rd-party software that tosses mail to BBS's, for any areas that use Fido *.MSG storage. In each Echomail directory that uses Fido *.MSG storage, a file is written to keep track of the last message read by the editor or "tossed" by the D'Bridge Echomail processor. This is simply known as a "last-read pointer". This pointer may also be used by BBS or 3rd-party software that manipulates Fido *.MSG directories. Since the very beginning of D'Bridge, this file is called 1.MSG. Its the infamous "Ignore this message; used for internal Echomail processing" text. For example, Searchlight by Frank LaRosa / Telegraphix uses SLMAIL to import Fido mail into the BBS, Renegade uses either Renemail or CDRMAIL to import messages. I'm sure there are others that I just don't know about. When you are using such software, sometimes those programs may get "confused" and think that 1.MSG is actually a message, when in fact its just there to keep track of the last message in the area. The result would be that the message gets imported into your BBS software anyway. So, only change the filename if this is the case and you're having problems. I understand that the fix in this release is probably many years too late but this issue has finally been resolved in D'Bridge thus making it compatible with most 3rd-party software that handles Fido *.MSG format. - A new search/replace field for the Forward-To lines has been added to the GLOBAL CHANGE command in DBUTIL. - A minor correction to DBUTIL RENUM and RENUMDATES has been done for stability reasons. - A somewhat serious problem has been solved in the Web Processor (DBUTIL PROCESSWEB) where large messages were not being handled properly. - The Setup Wizard has been corrected to NOT overwrite any Web templates for DBUTIL and Anti-SPAM configuration files for SOUPGATE. Nick Andre http://www.nickandre.com Version 2.91 - November 7th 2007 -------------------------------- This is a minor release. - The D'Bridge SCHEDULER screen has been enhanced to allow you to run any DOS commands for a MAIL event either after a Dialup session, or after any mail has been processed regardless (such as manipulating via. DBRIDGE.RSN) The "Allow Filesharing" question has been changed to "Execute DOS commands" and you have two choices - DIALUP ONLY or ALL MAIL. The default is DIALUP ONLY which is the normal behavior that Chris had in the DOS command code since 1.58. This new feature was absolutely necessary to aide in the proper operation of certain 3rd-party software or for those of you who use DBUTIL MOVE to manipulate the Queue. - The blinking-ANSI problem in the internal message editor has been found, replicated here, and should be fixed now as per Roger. Version 2.9 - October 28th 2007 ------------------------------- This is a very minor release that doesn't fix any problems at all but contains various changes to code and other "behind the scenes" stuff. Please back up and test very carefully - this release changes some fundimental code in the Echomail processor, that has been unchanged since 1.58. The code has now been changed slightly in order to accomodate some upcoming features for a future release. Version 2.89 - October 15th 2007 -------------------------------- This minor release should correct the 8000-crash problem in the internal message editor when you list the messages in an area. Please test accordingly and keep in mind that the code for the internal editor is a real spaghetti-mess and fixing one thing usually breaks something else. Not that I did this release at the last minute mind you; but I'm very reluctant to change any of the code in the internal editor. Version 2.88 - October 13th 2007 -------------------------------- This minor release corrects a very, very rare and hard-to-notice problem with DBUTIL PURGE. I will be spending some time on the other problems in the next week or so... please be patient. Version 2.87 - October 12th 2007 -------------------------------- This is a very minor release of D'Bridge that adds a new feature to the DBUTIL program: RENUMDATES. DBUTIL RENUMDATES will date-sort an Echomail area, putting messages in order from oldest to newest dates. You can also specify an individual area to date-sort, ie. DBUTIL RENUMDATES FIDONEWS. Note that the RENUM and RENUMDATES features execute an Echoscan when the mailer fires up again... Version 2.86 - October 2nd 2007 ------------------------------- I will be "down" in Fidonet for at least a few weeks and busy with personal matters. If you need to reach me, call my cell at 416-567-0117 or EMAIL me at nick@nickandre.com. I will try to catch up on the DBRIDGE echo as much as I can. Most likely from Internet cafe's while on the road. Call it soul searching or a personal journey I really need to take folks. In the meantime I may use Docs Place BBS or whatever halfway-decent "Fido on the Web" board I can find. Suggestions anyone? Anyway, this is a very minor release. If there are serious bugs, please call me or let me know via EMAIL and I'll do my best to write any fixes. - D'Bridge now supports RAR archiver types. RAR support is configured in the XMAIL CONTROL screen. And yes - done so WITHOUT removing any existing support for PAK or ZOO. There was *just enough* codespace left in the XMAIL subroutines to squeeze that in... - D'Bridge ships with RAR32 for DOS and comes with the RAR options already preconfigured for new installations. On upgrades, it *should* fill in the new settings but if not, just put the cursor in the RAR field and press delete or CTL+Y to erase it, and D'Bridge fills in the proper settings. - The Setup Wizard will ask you if you wish to place the RSX/EMX libraries required by RAR, into your system path. This happens once only. If you need to do this manually, copy the RSX.EXE, EMX.DLL and EMX.EXE files to the WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 directory or OS2\APPS\DLL, respectively. - The version of RAR that ships with D'Bridge 2.86 requires at least a 386 processor. It may not run on a Tandy 1000 or earlier IBM PS/2 computers but should run okay on Tandy 2500 series. - A plus sign (+) is required before the RAR compress/decompress commands in the XMAIL CONTROL SCREEN, just like the rest. - If you are using D'Bridge under OS/2 Warp, you may need to change the properties for the virtual DOS session to enable DPMI (DOS Protected Mode Interface) if you plan to use the new RAR support under OS/2. - NODEDIFF segments archived with RAR should unpack okay, but only if the extension of the segment has the letter R in the first part, for example, NODEDIFF.R12, NODEDIFF.R19 and so forth. For "net-wide" compatibility I recommend that segments only be compressed in ARC format. - A minor bug has been corrected in the import/export functions. - Removed the references to Squish and JAM... for now. Version 2.85 - September 23rd 2007 ---------------------------------- WARNING: Please study the release notes for 2.83 and 2.84 if you have not done so already. Theres a reason why we have three new releases in one night... This is a very minor release which adds the ability to have a little bit more control over systems who use no packet passwords and the SECURED MAIL ONLY option is set to YES. This was absolutely crucial to have this feature to aide in diagnosing/troubleshooting packet passwords between systems, and was important enough to be coded and released immediately tonight. Version 2.84 - September 23rd 2007 ---------------------------------- WARNING: If you are upgrading from 2.82 or prior, please review the notes for 2.83 (included in the release file) if you have not done so already. No sooner did I release 2.83, I realised one important thing was missing. So this is a very minor release which enhances the PACKET PASSWORD feature and the SECURED MAIL ONLY question in the PACKET/MAIL CONTROL SCREEN. SECURED MAIL ONLY now has three choices. No, Yes and Detailed. The feature works the same, except if you answer DETAILED, D'Bridge will show the packet password from the remote system in the LOG window screen (and also in the log file). Even if you are happy with 2.83, upgrade to this release immediately and test all mail processing again as I have made a minor correction with the way D'Bridge handles missing packet passwords when the SECURED MAIL ONLY option is enabled. Version 2.83 - September 23rd 2007 ---------------------------------- This is a minor release as per recent discussions in the DBRIDGE echo. Although its a minor release, it addresses mail security. Because this release deals with the way mail is processed, carefully test all features. Pay attention to the system log during mail tossing and packing. A minor correction to DBUTIL MOVE was also done as well. WARNING: All inbound mail and pending XMAIL should be processed first before installing this release. DO NOT INSTALL THIS RELEASE if mail transactions are currently pending. WARNING: If you are a Hub or Co-Ordinator, careful planning and precautions should be taken during this upgrade if you wish to use the PACKET PASSWORDS feature mentioned below. When using packet passwords, it will become impractical and time-consuming if you don't like this version and wish to rollback - seeing as how previous versions of D'Bridge did not support packet passwords. If at all possible, install a fresh copy of 2.83 in a new directory and do a "test run" with one system to ensure passwords and security are correct, BEFORE installing this release. - The BINKD configuration now allows for mixed-case passwords. Note that when upgrading to this release, the BINKD configuration is imported as uppercase. This problem happens only once and is due to the import/export code in prior releases. It won't happen again on future releases. However if you rollback to a prior version, the BINKD configuration is imported as uppercase again. Some improvements are going to be made to the BINKD administration but probably not for a little while yet. - PACKET PASSWORDS is located in the PACKET/MAIL CONTROL screen. You can now use packet passwords to secure your D'Bridge system even more, or to use passwords for exchanging mail with other systems that require it. - SECURED ECHOMAIL ONLY in the PACKET/MAIL CONTROL screen has been renamed to SECURED MAIL ONLY. - Some of the questions in the PACKET/MAIL CONTROL screen have been expanded to make things a bit easier when entering data, for those of you with large configurations. - The Setup Wizard will offer to temporarily disable the SECURED ECHOMAIL ONLY setting if it detects mail or files in the INBOUND directory waiting to be processed, to allow proper testing of this particular version. - DBUTIL MOVE now generates a unique packet name when moving NETmail and should solve the "lost mail" problem as reported. This unique name is generated every time DBUTIL MOVE is ran and does not rely on a counter or anything like that - So it should never overwrite any NETmail packet that is waiting in another directory or BINKD outbound queue. If... and I do mean *IF* this problem happens again, let me know ASAP and back to the drawing board I'll go... Version 2.82 - September 20th 2007 ---------------------------------- WARNING: This release makes a fundimental change to the DBRIDGE.ADF file, that stores your Echomail areas. Please back up this file first. This is a very minor release which corrects some serious bugs in the new Web integration module. A potential problem with the way the RENUM feature of DBUTIL works has also been corrected. Although it doesn't look like it on the outside, a lot of hard work went into writing this release. In order to fix the bugs, a fundimental change in the way certain information is stored has been revised. To avoid potential problems, I also added various security checks to ensure that you are only using the DBUTIL that is meant for this release... and not others. Therefore: *********************************************************************** * DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, USE ANY OTHER VERSION OF THE * * DBUTIL PROGRAM WITH THIS RELEASE OR ATTEMPT TO COPY A DBRIDGE.ADF * * FILE FROM A PREVIOUS VERSION TO THIS ONE. DATA LOSS WILL HAPPEN! * *********************************************************************** - The Setup Wizard does not overwrite or update your HTML template files, only the SAMPHTML.ZIP file gets updated when upgrading. For this reason, if you have custom HTML code for the Web integration system, any changes that are done to the way placeholder variables work will need to be done manually. I don't expect this to be much of a problem if you are using the Web features; you should have a basic understanding of how HTML works anyway at that point. - The ON WEB SERVER question in the ECHOMAIL SETUP SCREEN has been changed to three different choices now. You can specify NO, YES or DETAILED. The "detailed" setting saves the SEEN-BY, PATH and KLUDGE lines of a message on your Web server. The standard "Yes" option does not. The help file has also been updated with this change along with the import/export function in D'Bridge itself. - A new feature, "Web ASCII" has been added to the ECHOMAIL SETUP SCREEN as well, enabling you to properly filter out high-ASCII from messages when posting to a Web server. - Did some work in trying to correct the plethora of LF/CR confusion in HTML code generation but its not entirely fixed... so be warned. If anyone can suggest to me a proper way to handle the whole LF/CR mess, let me know via EMAIL or in the DBRIDGE support echo on Fidonet. - The numbering of the messages shown in an HTML listing is correct now. - Two new placeholders, %%%MESSAGE_NUMBER%%% and %%%MESSAGE_OF%%% have been added to the message body template file (MSG-B.HTM). The code looks like this: Message %%%MESSAGE_NUMBER%%% of %%%MESSAGE_OF%%% which translates to Message 1 of 102 Please update any existing code on your web site accordingly. The new placeholders, like everything else in D'Bridge, are completely optional and your Web site doesn't need to use them if you don't want to. Note that the MESSAGE NUMBER placeholder in the message body template works differently than the one in the listing body template. - The %%%MESSAGE_PREVIOUS%%%, %%%MESSAGE_LISTING%%% and %%%MESSAGE_NEXT%%% placeholders work properly now. The MESSAGE PREVIOUS placeholder will not be shown when viewing the first message. Likewise the MESSAGE NEXT placeholder is not shown on the last message. - At the last minute, I also added two new place holders for the PREVIOUS and NEXT links - If you add a pound sign (#) in the above-mentioned placeholders, it will put the number of the referenced message in there. So for example: %%%MESSAGE_PREVIOUS#%%% will show "Previous Message (25)" as opposed to just "Previous Message", and %%%MESSAGE_NEXT#%%% will show "Next Message (27)" as opposed to just "Next Message". - For icing on the cake, I updated all of the sample HTML files to show off all the new features... and updated my website as well. Please note that it is not my intention to offer features such as font size, typeface and the like - these are things you should be using your Web publishing software to do. DBUTIL's primary task is to simply replace placeholders with HTML code, nothing else. It is fairly straightforward to implement whatever fonts and typeface you want in the template files. Nick Andre http://www.nickandre.com Version 2.81 - September 14th 2007 ---------------------------------- This is a very minor release that fixes the bug with the missing REPLY kludge when writing messages in the internal editor. Another release is going to be coming a little later to fix a variety of bugs with the Web integration. Version 2.8 - September 7th 2007 - WEB SERVER READY --------------------------------------------------- WARNING: This release of D'Bridge now requires that any DOS events in D'Bridge that call DBUTIL have the plus sign (+) infront of the command, because DBUTIL now requires a full 640k of memory to function properly. Please check this BEFORE upgrading. You can now let Internet Web users access Fido messages on your system. This release of D'Bridge now supports Web servers such as Microsoft IIS and Apache. I've done all the complicated hard work of making sure that this new feature is "as easy as 1-2-3". The new feature is fully contained in the DBUTIL program. *** SUGGESTION *** You should view this document on your computer with your web browser pointed to nickandre.com, so you can fully understand how this works and how simple it is. All is accomplished with DBUTIL PROCESSWEB followed by the directory to generate HTML messages in. Six "template" HTML files exist in your D'Bridge directory that you can edit and tailor to your liking. Once you're all done, one simple command instantly transforms your D'Bridge mail to the Web: For example: DBUTIL PROCESSWEB D:\WWWROOT\MESSAGES This must be a directory strictly for use by DBUTIL - The contents of this directory will be erased or updated every time DBUTIL PROCESSWEB is ran. WARNING: Do NOT tell DBUTIL to generate messages in the root of your Web site for this reason. Always create a subdirectory off your site. Any directory that can be accessible in DOS can be accessible by the Web Server component. This means that D'Bridge can run on the same computer as your Web Server, or on a "nanny" machine on a LAN on a networked drive. The WEB SERVER HOME DIRECTORY question has been removed from the INTERNET CONNECTIVITY screen in case you haven't noticed. I felt that this belonged on the command-line with DBUTIL, so those of you who run Web servers can offer the same Fido messages across multiple websites on the same server (as opposed to having to install multiple copies of D'Bridge to handle multiple websites) When DBUTIL PROCESSWEB is ran, it scans through your Echomail database and creates HTML messages on your Web server. First, it checks to see if the "On Web Server?" question for each area is set to YES. For each area it finds, it builds a list of Echomail areas on your Web server. If you have a large number of Echomail areas that you want to set the "On Web Server" question, just use the CHANGE feature of DBUTIL. For more help on that, view the D'Bridge manual or consult the DBRIDGE echo on Fidonet. WARNING: Please use due diligence. "Private" Echomail areas (such as net-wide, regional or co-ordinator only) should not be made accessible on your Web server. Web search engines such as Google and Yahoo could easily "crawl" these sites, thus making such forums available for the whole world to see. Be sure that private Echomail forums have the "On Web Server" question answered NO. DBUTIL will then use the following files from your *DBRIDGE DIRECTORY* to create the HTML files. Six HTML files are shipped with this release of D'Bridge for you to modify as you see fit. The following files MUST exist in your D'Bridge directory, otherwise the DBUTIL PROCESSWEB command won't work. If you wish to allow your website to have Fidonet areas available but NOT allow "web robots" from Yahoo, Google or MSN.COM to index them, you should create a ROBOTS.TXT file in the root of your website. Drop me an EMAIL and I can explain how this is done, or just google "robots.txt structure" if you want. In a future release of D'Bridge I plan to integrate support for ROBOTS.TXT management. There are three different "parts" to an HTML Fido message that DBUTIL will work with. The Header, Body and Footer. The header should contain HTML code that "sets up" the display of the area or message. The body contains any code displayed along with the content of the message. And the footer is any HTML code appended to the end of the display. The HTML editing can be done with any HTML or text editor, or a fancy "what you see is what you get" program like Microsoft FrontPage. If you are totally lost, there are even Web-based editors such as http://htmledit.squarefree.com or http://www.ewebeditor.com There are some "placeholders" that you use when you write the HTML. When DBUTIL processes a message, it will replace the placeholder with the actual value. Note that headers and footers of AREAS, LIST and MSG template files should not contain any placeholders. DBUTIL only processes placeholders in "body" templates. Placeholders can be anywhere in the body, in any order, wherever you want to use them is fine with me. If you are a web developer or programer, you can even stick them even inside Javascript or Visual BASIC code if you want. Heres what the six D'Bridge HTML template files are: AREAS-H.HTM HTML header to show before the list of available areas. AREAS-B.HTM HTML code containing the area listing itself. AREAS-F.HTM HTML footer code to append to the end of the area listing. LIST-H.HTM Header to show before the actual message listing. LIST-B.HTM The body of the message listing. LIST-F.HTM Footer to add to the end of the message listing. MSG-H.HTM Header to show before the message. MSG-B.HTM The actual body of the message. MSG-F.HTM Footer to append to the end of the message display. AREAS.HTM The compiled area listing code when DBUTIL PROCESSWEB ends. Your web site must point to this file. This file will reside in the base directory you define in INTERNET CONNECTIVITY. The user reads and views messages from here on out. The user essentially sees AREAS.HTM, which will display the list of available Echomail areas (generated from AREAS-H, AREAS-B and AREAS-F). The user then clicks on an area they want. They see the list of messages in that area (LIST-H, LIST-B and LIST-F) and clicks on a message (MSG-H, MSG-B and MSG-F). When DBUTIL encounters the following "placeholders" in AREAS-B.HTM, it will substitute them with the proper information. Three percent signs (%%%) tells DBUTIL that it should replace the code in the HTML file with what you want. %%%AREA_TAG%%% The Echomail "tag", ie. DBRIDGE or FIDONEWS %%%AREA_DESCRIPTION%%% The description of the Echomail area. %%%AREA_TOTALMESSAGES%%% The total number of messages in the area. When DBUTIL encounters the following placeholders in LIST-B.HTM, it will replace with: %%%MESSAGE_FROM%%% Who the message is from. %%%MESSAGE_TO%%% Who the message is to. %%%MESSAGE_SUBJECT%%% What the subject of the message is. %%%MESSAGE_DATE%%% The date of the message. When DBUTIL encounters the following placeholders in MSG-B.HTM, it will replace with: %%%MESSAGE_FROM%%% Who the message is from. %%%MESSAGE_TO%%% Who the message is to. %%%MESSAGE_SUBJECT%%% What the subject of the message is. %%%MESSAGE_DATE%%% The date of the message. %%%MESSAGE_CONTENT%%% The contents of the message. %%%MESSAGE_PREVIOUS%%% Adds a "Previous message" button to the message. %%%MESSAGE_LISTING%%% Adds a "Back to Listing" button to the message. %%%MESSAGE_NEXT%%% Adds a "Next message" button to the message. DBUTIL PROCESSWEB should be ran as part of a nightly event, but for those of you who are Hubs with busy traffic, DBUTIL PROCESSWEB should be ran as a seperate process on your operating system, so it doesn't "tie things up". Or, run another copy of D'Bridge on a nanny machine as described earlier. Note that if you are tossing messages to a BBS, DBUTIL PROCESSWEB should be called before the commands to toss the mail, and the message areas should not be purged on a regular basis. If you decide you don't want to use the Web support anymore, just delete the base directory and erase the HTM files in your D'Bridge directory (or rename them). DBUTIL is smart enough not to run if those HTM files do not exist. So if you stored Fidonet Web mail in C:\INETPUB\WWWROOT\FIDO, then erase the entire C:\INETPUB\WWWROOT\FIDO directory. The method I chose to generate Web mail allows you to maintain your existing site, whether its a real small simple one or a very elaborate complex website. Be warned that it is still a little "crude", but I plan to eventually add support for replies. For an example of D'Bridge on the Web, visit my website! Version 2.74 - August 27th 2007 ------------------------------- This is a very minor release which corrects a few outstanding issues, including very rare bugs that may pop up from time to time. - The obvious problem in DBUTIL has been fixed; I'm sure you know what... - "Enhanced Areafix" options are gone; the built-in Areafix in D'Bridge now supports handling %LIST and %RESCAN natively. Upon studying the logic a bit further I felt that having %LIST and %RESCAN support as an option just didn't make sense... - Along with the above mentioned cleanup, under exceptionally rare circumstances any Areafix requests destined for the host system were not being processed correctly if the previous "Enhanced Areafix" support was enabled. - Areafix messages destined for SOUPGATE are no longer processed if the SOUPGATE address is not defined properly in the INTERNET CONNECTIVITY screen *and* if that address already exists as part of the AKA's. - A problem with dialup modem support being set up by the user and then removed in the same instance of D'Bridge causing the "Unable to initialize the modem" problem has been solved. - SQUISH and JAM support are still being worked on despite what D'Bridge says in the setup screens. - Some minor things in the mailer have been cleaned up; nothing really worth noting here. Nick Andre http://www.nickandre.com Version 2.73 - August 15th 2007 ------------------------------- This is a minor release correcting some outstanding issues with 2.72 and adds a few features with regards to how D'Bridge handles Internet USENET groups via. external software. This release should "tide you over" until the upcoming version 3 series. On the subject of USENET, if you folks need a Usenet feed (and delivered to you as regular Echomail), I can set you up directly from my system at 1:229/426, via BINKD, FTP or D'Bridge-Over-Telnet. - If a TELNET connection came in and another system was running an Auto- Update cycle, D'Bridge would corrupt the backup configuration files. This problem has been fixed in this release. This was a very, very rare and difficult bug to track down, and only happened on multi-line setups. - A new "placeholder", *L, has been added to the BBS CONFIGURATION screen as well as the EVENT SCHEDULER. When *L is encountered by D'Bridge, it will replace *L with the number of the current "line" running, if MULTI LINE SUPPORT is enabled. If you are not running a multi-line setup, then the line number placeholder will always be set to 1. - The DESCFILE function in DBUTIL has been corrected to properly account for justification when importing descriptions from text files. - DBUTIL has been significantly rewritten to use a more "modular" approach in the way it runs, please test all features and report any problems accordingly. - Various minor fixes and updates have been done to the Setup Wizard. - D'Bridge now ships with PKZIP/PKUNZIP 2.50 instead of 2.04g. When the Setup Wizard installs D'Bridge for the first time, it will ask if you would also like to copy PKZIP/PKUNZIP to your operating system's directory as well, ie. C:\DOS or C:\WINDOWS, etc etc. - The Areafix system in D'Bridge has been corrected and enhanced to support the automatic updating of the NEWSRC file in VSOUP for Windows and OS/2, and other products that support the NEWSRC file standard. If an Areafix request comes in that is destined for your NNTP/USENET GATEWAY address as defined in the INTERNET CONNECTIVITY SCREEN, D'Bridge will treat that request as either adding or removing areas in the NEWSRC file. So for example, lets say my USENET gateway is 1:229/9999: From: Nick Andre, 1:229/426 To: Areafix, 1:229/9999 Subj: MyPassword --------------------------------------------------------- ALT.BBS.RENEGADE ALT.WORSHIP.WARD-DOSSCHE -COMP.SYS.UNIX -TALK.POLITICS Would make D'Bridge do the following to NEWSRC: alt.bbs.renegade! 0 becomes alt.bbs.renegade: alt.worship.ward-dossche! 0 becomes alt.worship.ward-dossche: comp.sys.unix: 12000-13000 becomes comp.sys.unix! 12000-13000 talk.politics: 22312-25333 becomes talk.politics! 22312-25333 The NEWSRC "standard" is such that a colon (:) indicates that the gateway software is to download the group from your NNTP server or host. An exclaimation point/bang character (!) tells the software not to download. And so forth. Note that if you did not define a NNTP/USENET GATEWAY address, the NEWSRC auto-updating is disabled. - The missing files and sample configurations for SOUPGATE are now shipped with this release for those of you who want to setup a more advanced configuration for EMAIL routing in D'Bridge and SOUPGATE. D'Bridge 2.72 / May 15 2007 --------------------------- This minor release fixes the bug where D'Bridge crashes during the "AutoUpdate" routine if MULTI-LINE SUPPORT is enabled. A new version of DB2RG is also included for those of you running the Renegade BBS software. D'Bridge 2.71 / May 12 2007 --------------------------- This is a minor release which addresses several bugs, and adds one new feature - the ability to run D'Bridge as a shell process. This release was programmed mostly in-flight from Halifax to Toronto at 7AM so no doubt there will be bugs here and there... please test accordingly. Enjoy. - D'Bridge can now co-incide with a Telnet server or other front-end, and be called as a shell process. All you need to do is create a dummy/ semaphore file called LINExxx.OTL (short for "caller on-the-line"), and whenever D'Bridge starts, it will check to see if theres a caller on the line. This can be a "human" (BBS caller) or a Fido mail session. This is how D'Bridge can be used to run via. Telnet on Internet setups. When the call is completed, D'Bridge exits. NOTE THAT THE SEMAPHORE IS DELETED UPON EXIT. If D'Bridge is running from within a DOS batch file, the batch file must explicitly create the LINExxx.OTL file before firing up - ie. "echo Caller On-The-Line > C:\DB\LINE1.OTL" You must also enable MULTI-LINE SUPPORT if you're intending on running D'Bridge as a "Fidonet over Telnet" server AND you intend to serve more than one inbound or outbound Telnet connection at a time. Run one copy of D'Bridge as usual; this will be the "copy" of D'Bridge that runs normally so it can execute events and process mail. Other "lines" would be what is called as a shell process by your Telnet server. Lets take a look at the below batch file for an example. This is what I actually use on my Windows Server 2003 system which runs my BBS and my website. I'm using the Renegade BBS software and Zoob Telnet Server. I can handle up to 4 telnet connections at once; or 4 "lines" if you want to think of it that way. Line 5 is D'Bridge 2.71 running in its own window, 24 hours a day to run events and process mail. It also has a dialup modem connection to it, so if someone wants to connect via. dialup, they would reach my BBS on Line 5. Note that NETFOSS, by PC-Micro & Associates, is required for Zoob Telnet Server to run with D'Bridge. When you download NETFOSS, simply place NETCOM and NETFOSS into your D'Bridge directory, then place the NETFOSS.DLL file in your Windows directory, ie. C:\WINDOWS. When Zoob Telnet Server fires up, the window looks something like this: -------------------------------------------------- LOG | | | | | | | | * Ready to accept connections on port 23... | -------------------------------------------------- | Command to run: D:\DB-TEST\RUNDB.BAT %N %I | | Startup directory: D:\DB-TEST | | Drop file path: (blank) | -------------------------------------------------- The other options in Zoob, such as "Minimize new windows", "Number of nodes" and so forth are up to you. However, the CREATE DROPFILE should be UNCHECKED (blank). The RUNDB.BAT file simply consists of: (start of RUNDB.BAT) CD \DB-TEST ECHO Caller On the line semaphore > LINE%1.OTL NETCOM /n%1 NETFOSS /n%1 /h%2 db.exe /%1 DEL LINE%1.OTL NETCOM /u EXIT (end of file) Note that the "/n" and "/h" are case sensitive, and its NETFOSS that executes D'Bridge as a shell process. With this method, you can now just focus on putting all your BBS- related stuff in the BBS CONFIGURATION window in D'Bridge, instead of writing complicated batch files to handle Telnet connections. - A serious bug in the way that D'Bridge handles inbound connections has been fixed; with regards to CONNECT strings. This bug was probably in the code since the 1.58 days. Whenever D'Bridge can't figure out what baudrate the incoming connection is, it would disable loading any BBS software. I didn't see this problem until I wrote the new code to handle the above-mentioned Telnet connections. I think I remember seeing a post in the DBRIDGE echo a long time ago about this problem. I really don't understand why Chris wrote the code this way, and most BBS software I've seen will handle such condition okay anyway. - The unlink security code in Areafix should be fixed in this release. - The message editor 8000+ messages problem should be fixed. - A cosmetic bug in the XMAIL CONTROL SCREEN has been fixed; with not being able to cycle through the available options for each archiver. D'Bridge 2.70 - March 30 2007 ----------------------------- This is a very minor release which fixes the QUOTE INITIALS IN REPLIES feature. Should be working okay now. D'Bridge 2.69 - March 26 2007 ----------------------------- This is a somewhat major release as it fixes some serious bugs and introduces some long-overdue features. A lot of hard work has gone into this particular release. This version also prepares your system database files for the upcoming Version 3 release due sometime in April. Until then, this should "hold you over" for now. - D'Bridge now supports remote-installation using VNC and Radmin from Famatech Solutions Inc. - The "No Echomail available for your security level" major bug is fixed, and has been tested here on a few workstations. A lot of testing has been done to ensure this problem is not replicated on ANY system (the fix was tested on various operating systems) - There is a new option to allow QUOTE INITIALS IN REPLIES - this allows the internal editor to put the initials of the original poster before the ">" symbol. This feature is shut off by default, including on upgrades. The new feature is located in the EDITOR OPTIONS screen. - A new feature, ENHANCED AREAFIX SUPPORT has been added to PACKET/MAIL CONTROL screen to allow the support of %LIST and %RESCAN commands in the Areafix system. This feature is set to OFF if you are upgrading to this release; you will need to turn it on manually if and when you are ready to test it. Note that these features currently function exactly like the -L and -R subject-line commands. What that means is that if someone sends an Areafix request with a line that says "%RESCAN DBRIDGE", D'Bridge will rescan ALL areas and not just the DBRIDGE echo. This is due to a fundimental design flaw in the way the Areafix system was written - it does NOT support select- scanning of Echomail areas. To add this feature would require a massive rewrite of the existing code. That is not something I'm going to do at this time. However, the %LIST command works okay when you put %LIST on one line and Echomail areas on the others. - D'Bridge is now smart enough to understand that %LIST and %RESCAN are not valid Echomail areas if ENHANCED AREAFIX is enabled. But, if its not turned on and you get those type of requests, they won't be processed and instead will be noted in the system log - a possible way to catch "abuse" or "pinging" of the system. - The ENHANCED AREAFIX feature also supports the %HELP command. - Although the SCHEDULER supports File Sharing and Echofile/TIC processing settings, these will not be offered until the Version 3 release. - Problems with deleting messages in the internal editor and having the "message leafing" system mess up should all be fixed now. - The problem of browsing non-sequential Fido messages and having the display/listing mess up in the internal editor should be fixed now. - The PROCESS XMAIL master-override question has been moved to the XMAIL CONTROL screen where it belongs. - The HUB/ADMINISTRATORS screen is gone forever in this release. I decided that its time for it to go, and that if theres problems with D'Bridge, that you folks will use due diligence in reporting problems, and I have been releasing fixes on a somewhat regular basis... - The RESTART AFTER NODELIST COMPILE question is gone permanently, as nobody has reported anything about it, so I'm assuming its not needed. If it is, let me know ASAP; and I'll put it back in immediately. Note that this feature is effectively useless anyway; if you need to restart after a nodelist compile, you should set the "Auto-compile Nodelists" question to NO (in the NODELIST settings screen), and create an event that runs shortly before midnight that creates a DBRIDGE.FCN (or DBRIDGE.TCN) dummy/semaphore file, to force (or test) the nodelist for compiling. - Anti-SPAM features/configuration is removed permanently, a much better system for anti-SPAM is planned for the future. - The DBRIDGE.MSR file should be deleted if it exists. It's obsolete. I hope you enjoy this release of D'Bridge. Please report all problems ASAP as usual... Nick Andre http://www.nickandre.com D'Bridge 2.68 - March 7 2007 ---------------------------- This is a very minor release, but significant for those of you still running 2.64 because I screwed up the export-code. - Problems upgrading from 2.64 should be finally resolved, but please back up before upgrading just in case. - DBUTIL MOVE now creates unique filenames when moving NETmail packets. - DBUTIL PURGE should properly save bodies of messages when archiving mail. D'Bridge 2.67 - February 24 2007 -------------------------------- This is a very minor release, designed to address some issues with DBUTIL. Nonetheless, please back up prior to installing. - Some minor bugs have been corrected in the PURGE code. I'm assuming its stable - I've yet to hear any complaints... - "Bleed-thru" problems with purging should be resolved. - The total message purge count is now properly reported. - Message renumbering is back; use DBUTIL RENUM to renumber your message directories. You can specify an optional area, ie. DBUTIL RENUM FIDONEWS if you want. Renumbering the NETmail directory is NOT supported, however. It is recommended that the RENUM be called immediately following a PURGE. Note that the renumbering code is CPU intensive and may take awhile to finish for those of you with large Echomail configurations. - The OTHER56K.MCF file has been slightly corrected for new installations. D'Bridge 2.66 - February 9 2007 ------------------------------- This is a very minor release. - Problems with upgrading and having the Echomail database lost should be corrected in this release. I've tested this with both 2.64 and 2.65. - A minor bug in the way the AFIXCTRL directory works with Areafix has been corrected. D'Bridge 2.65 - January 14, 2007 -------------------------------- This is a release designed to address several issues for those of you who are Hubs or co-ordinators of large networks. A lot of hard work has been done, specifically to DBUTIL. Several bugs have also been corrected for ITN/IVM flag support and Areafix not allowing a "master override" to security (ALT+N) to process requests. Please back up accordingly and report any problems. - A major bug has been fixed for ITN and IVM flag support in D'Bridge. The bug was in relation to outgoing calls. - The logic behind the translation has been slightly adjusted. If the nodelist for the network has the IP address for the system in the phone number field already and NO flags like ITN or IVM, D'Bridge will NOT attempt to "call" that system, REGARDLESS of the ITM/IVM flag setting. You will need to manually specify the address of the system in the NODELIST CONFIGURATION screen in FLAG OVERRIDES. For example, if The Titanic Board does not have an ITN/IVM flag with its IP address but its already in the phone number field, you need to add an entry like "25:25/0 ttb.slyip.com" in the FLAG OVERRIDE screen. Note that the ITN/IVM flag translation requires this feature to be turned ON in the INTERNET CONNECTIVITY screen. It is off by default because most of you don't use it. - Problems with the Areafix system not allowing overrides or instant- processing and turnaround should be fixed in this release. - Stability issues with DBUTIL should be corrected in this release, in regards to MOVE-ing mail to directories. - DBUTIL's message purging code has been COMPLETELY REWRITTEN from scratch, to finally attempt to put an end to all the problems that currently exist in purging mail. It should now purge mail much faster now, and displays a much more graphical progress. This should make it easier to diagnose any problems. The purge code also should not touch the date/time stamp of messages. - DBUTIL should no longer choke on any message directory, but if it does, it now terminates gracefully and displays a debug screen that will aide in diagnosis. - DBUTIL now reports which messages have grunged date headers as per Roger. - DBUTIL will check to see if the DBUTIL.BSY flag is over an hour old, if so, it will execute anyway and remove that file. This is to prevent automated systems from being "stuck in limbo" because of an improper DBUTIL shutdown and the busy flag being left over. If you DO NOT want DBUTIL to function this way, create a dummy text file called DBUTIL.DRF (short for Don't Remove Flag file). If this file exists then DBUTIL will not execute if DBUTIL.BSY exists, no matter what scenario happens. - You may now choose to view the hidden "kludge" information of messages by answering yes to the VIEW KLUDGES question in the EDITOR OPTIONS screen. Note that this only affects the internal message editor only. It has no effect for those of you running another message editor or a BBS. - The internal message editor now correctly displays messages that are numbered higher than 8000. It will correctly display messages numbered high, up to 32767. - TAGLINE SUPPORT is no longer enabled by default. You must manually turn on support in the EDITOR OPTIONS screen. - The option to specify the maximum amount of messages able to be read by the internal message editor has been REMOVED. D'Bridge 2.64 - December 29th 2006 ---------------------------------- To wish everyone a happy new year, I whipped up this minor release to finally give D'Bridge support for TAGLINES! (I'm also sick in bed with a major cold thats going around) Taglines are just cute "words of wisdom" appended at the end of each message before the tear line, ie: ... Work fascinates me. I can sit and watch it for hours. ... The Big Bang is only the universe rebooting. ... NO MESSAGES FOUND. [H]it modem. [S]cream at fido gods. [Y]ell profanity ... Death before dishonor, neither before breakfast. You get the idea. - You can now specify in the EDITOR OPTIONS screen, if you wish to have a tagline attached to each message you write in the internal message editor: YES - Append a tagline to all messages. ECHOMAIL ONLY - Append a tagline to Echomail messages only. NETMAIL ONLY - Append a tagline to NETmail messages only. ASK - Ask each time if its okay to add a tagline. DISABLED - Shuts off the tagline support. The default setting is ECHOMAIL ONLY - Taglines will be added only to messages in Echomail areas. - The taglines are saved in a text file called DBTAGS.TXT that is read and indexed by D'Bridge upon starting the internal message editor. Feel free to modify this file to whatever you like. D'Bridge 2.63 - December 29th 2006 ---------------------------------- - Yet another minor release that properly imports the Internet settings and other stuff from earlier releases. This isn't actually done by D'Bridge itself; but by the D'Bridge Update Component (DBUPD) that is part of the Setup Wizard. Once this release is installed, all settings should be properly imported and exported from now on... - The SAVE files created during the nightly AutoUpdate should be properly moved into DBCONFIG.ZIP instead of building up in the directory. - As per the last release notes (incase you didnt bother to download 2.62), DBUTIL only works for the version of DB its released with, and the Setup Wizard does a rather thorough inspection of your setup before upgrading. D'Bridge 2.62 - December 28th 2006 ---------------------------------- - This is a very minor release of D'Bridge, with a correction to DBUTIL to attempt to solve the issue of old Echomail being scanned out after doing a PURGE. DBUTIL should no longer purge the "lastread" pointer file. - The Setup Wizard now examines your entire configuration much more in detail before upgrading and warns you of any potential problems. You may also export the warnings to a text file if you prefer. D'Bridge 2.61 - December 22nd 2006 ---------------------------------- This is a minor release done to correct some issues with 2.60. Merry Christmas everyone, as always, report all problems to me or post in the DBRIDGE echo on Fidonet. - The MSGID kludge is now a unique serial number generated from both the system date and time. No file is necessary to store this information. This should solve any problems with duplicate/unprocessed messages resulting from a miscalculated MSGID kludge. - The Setup Wizard will remove the DBRIDGE.MSG file when upgrading to this release, as its no longer necessary. - The Setup Wizard no longer temporarily unpacks files to drive C. It will unpack to whatever drive has read/write access, from C to Z. And obviously when finished, the temporary files are removed. - Pretty sure that the EDITOR INSERT ON/OFF value is properly saved now. - DBUTIL should no longer "run out of memory" on large systems with thousands of Echomail areas. However, the interactive-mode of DBUTIL will not show all of the areas - Only the first thousand. All of the commands including the CHANGE command will work properly on all areas regardless. D'Bridge 2.6 - December 17th 2006 --------------------------------- WARNING: The format of the DBRIDGE.ADF database has CHANGED. Any 3rd-party utility which makes use of DBRIDGE.ADF will no longer work upon installing this version. Please use only the DBUTIL that is included in this release. Do NOT use any older version with this release otherwise strange and bizarre results WILL happen. A lot of hard work has gone into this particular release. Please test all features and report any problems ASAP. - A critical stability flaw has been corrected in Areafix. The AREAFIX ENABLED option in PACKET/MAIL CONTROL has been enhanced so you can now set a limit on the amount of areas D'Bridge will process at a time in one Areafix request. There is also a new setting, MAX REQUESTS PER NODE PER DAY, to prevent "abuse" of Areafix privileges. So basically, no one system can request thousands of areas and tie up or crash your system entirely. The default value has been set to 50 areas per request with 3 requests per day. The maximum value this can be set to is 1024 and 1024 requests per day. - In addition to this enhancement, I have added several new lines of code in the Areafix system to check for valid requests, bogus entries, and other garbage that may potentially crash the system. But with new code comes possibly new problems, please report any strange or bizarre behavior of the Areafix system immediately. - Tiny database files used to keep track of the daily Areafix limits are stored in the AFIXCTRL (Areafix control) directory off of your QUEUE path. These files begin with the S- prefix. They are erased every night at midnight during the AutoUpdate routine. - D'Bridge now stores the M- files in the QUEUE directory instead of the AFIXCTRL directory, as it used to be. The Setup Wizard program will automatically move any such files back into the Queue directory when you upgrade to this release. - D'Bridge should now be able to handle and process messages up to 32k in size as opposed to 16k. IF ANYONE REPORTS A BUG DUE TO THIS CHANGE, I WILL CHANGE IT BACK AND RELEASE A NEW VERSION IMMEDIATELY. - D'Bridge now supports Internet EMAIL and USENET groups, and is now fully integrated with VSOUP and SOUPGATE. Support can be configured in the newly redesigned INTERNET CONNECTIVITY screen. These tiny programs now allow D'Bridge to fully support Internet E-Mail and USENET groups from the Internet. VSOUP/SOUPGATE is configured via the INTERNET CONNECTIVITY screen, just like BINKD. VSOUP and SOUPGATE now ship with D'Bridge to get you up and running with as little work as possible. Note that in this release, USENET group functionality will require a little more configuring, in the way of scheduled events which call the VSOUP and SOUPGATE programs manually. This release was done to "get the ball rolling" and you are more than welcome to contact me for further assistance regarding USENET configuration. - Although I wrote in the help system that when the VSOUP/SOUPGATE address is specified D'Bridge will adjust the rest of the setup accordingly, THIS IS NOT THE CASE IN THIS VERSION. You will need to manually add whatever gateway address you've decided to use to all of your ROUTING in scheduled events, and the Forced Priorities and Areafix information screens in the PACKET/MAIL CONTROL menu. - The internal message editor now fully supports Internet E-Mail addressing provided that the VSOUP/SOUPGATE information screen in INTERNET CONNECTIVITY is properly configured. The SOUPGATE program is auto- matically called during a Queuescan to "pack" Internet EMAIL messages for further processing by VSOUP. VSOUP is also automatically called to send and receive Internet mail. - In the tradition of the "keep it simple" philosophy of D'Bridge, you can just read and reply to Internet EMAIL as you do Fidonet NETmail. That means, you DO NOT "address" the SOUPGATE software; D'Bridge takes care of that automatically. When you compose an Internet EMAIL message, you just type in the EMAIL address and away you go. For example if you want to send a message to John Doe at his Hotmail account, just type in his address, johndoe@hotmail.com. Gone forever are the days of having to address the gate as "UUCP", put "To:" in the body of the message, and other extra work. And when you receive replies, D'Bridge automatically translates them from SOUPGATE into "non-geek jargon", to keep things as seamless and integrated as possible. - BINKD support will be disabled if you specify 0 (zero) as the BINKD PORT. - BINKD must now be ran as a "server" process (ie. running it in another window on your operating system). For stability reasons D'Bridge no longer starts BINKD to send/receive mail in "client" mode. - DBUTIL will NOT create a log file of any activity if you create a semaphore/dummy file called DBUTIL.NLG. This is to avoid having the log file for DBUTIL grow out-of-hand when purging/processing large amounts of messages. - DBUTIL should properly report now which areas have grunged message headers. I can't exactly duplicate this problem, but I did change one or two things apparently wrong in the code. - Only one "copy" of DBUTIL can execute at a time, this is controlled by the DBUTIL.BSY semaphore file. - The MAKE DBRIDGE.NQS FILE debug feature has been removed - it is now standard that D'Bridge creates the DBRIDGE.NQS file after unpacking mail. - The option to begin tossing messages at 2.MSG has been removed, D'Bridge should now begin unpacking at 2.MSG regardless (except if its NETmail) - XMA/XMAIL DEBUGGING in HUB/ADMINISTRATORS has been moved to the XMAIL CONFIGURATION screen. The long-obsolete "XMAIL ARCHIVE SIZE" feature has been removed, Chris never finished it and it was just simply useless code. - The SCREEN EFFECTS DEBUG option in HUB/ADMINISTRATORS has been removed. - The ROLLBACK/LEGACY SUPPORT feature in HUB/ADMINISTRATORS has been removed to save code and space. If you don't like this 2.6 release, and need to rollback, you will need to "edit out" the extra variables that the earlier releases won't understand. - D'Bridge now supports large drives "natively", as in, it now acts with the LARGE DRIVE SUPPORT permanently enabled. The feature has now been removed from HUB/ADMINISTRATORS and is no longer necessary. - The MAXSRINDEX debug option has been moved to the SETUP EDITOR OPTIONS screen. - The Anti-SPAM and TWIT filters have been moved to the HUB/ADMINISTRATORS screen. There is no more seperate ANTI-SPAM setup screen. That has been entirely removed to reduce code and save space. The Anti-SPAM and TWIT filters are still NOT working, but should be for the next release. - DEBUG QUEUE ERRORS in HUB/ADMINISTRATORS has been removed. - The settings of REBUILD QUEUE and SCAN ECHOMAIL AREAS in the EDITOR OPTIONS screen are now properly saved in this upgrade... they were never saved in ANY release for that matter due to the way Chris wrote the code. - The Setup Wizard can be told to install D'Bridge under a Terminal Server environment or Remote Administrator setup by pressing F4 when the installation begins. - Dozens of other code improvements have been done, mostly minor things. D'Bridge 2.55 - July 5th, 2006 ------------------------------ - This is yet another minor release that addresses some issues in the Setup Wizard. There are no corrections to D'Bridge itself in this release. It is now possible to install D'Bridge from a CD-ROM drive or other read-only media. If you don't care about this feature, you don't need to install this release on your system. D'Bridge 2.54 - June 26th, 2006 ------------------------------- - This is a very minor release. The tagline-fix in 2.53 was not adding the origin line. This should be fixed now... D'Bridge 2.53 - June 25th, 2006 ------------------------------- - This minor release *should* correct the duplicate-tagline problem on messages created by 3rd-party products and then exported out by D'Bridge via an EchoScan. D'Bridge 2.52 - June 24th, 2006 ------------------------------- - This is a very minor release that corrects the "BINKD extensions cannot be loaded" problem some of you are having. - D'Bridge should immediately "turn around" now on completed BINKD sessions. D'Bridge 2.51 - June 13th, 2006 ------------------------------- - This is a minor release which adds the ability to define a "pickup-only" listing in the INTERNET CONNECTIVITY screen for BINKD. If you do not wish to connect with a remote system, but still wish to have the remote system pick up its mail, specify "PICKUPONLY" as its address. For example: 1:229/2000 PICKUPONLY NICKS_PWD NANDRE ^^^^^^^^^^ specifies that Rob's system can call me but I should not call him. - The help screen for the above change has been updated. - It may be necessary to verify the BINKD ENABLED setting in INTERNET CONNECTIVITY once this upgrade has been applied. - Some minor bugs in the Setup Wizard have also been corrected. Nick Andre ANDRE CONSULTING D'Bridge 2.5 - June 12th, 2006 ------------------------------ This is a major release of D'Bridge which now features a working BINKD solution, in addition to a large number of bug fixes and corrections. The auto-addressing features I'm adding are not quite finished - I'd say about 90% done - the other 10% being minor coding. So, the auto-addressing will be delayed until the next release of D'Bridge. Internet EMAIL and Usenet groups are also on the works for the next release. The Anti-SPAM features are DISABLED in this release - I'm not comfortable with the code and feel that its too unstable after some last-minute testing. Anti-SPAM features will be enabled in a future release. I will NOT participate in ANY "political" discussions about the support for Internet nodelist flags. I will leave it up to you to decide if you wish to use that feature and if not, simply shut it off in the setup screen. This was by far the most difficult version to design and compile. Over several thousand new lines of code were written for this release and this by far pushes the limit of what can be done for a DOS-based mailer. Laura and I sincerely hope that all of you enjoy this release and as always we look forward to your comments and suggestions. - The D'Bridge INSTALL program has been enhanced and several dozen improvements were done to the way it works, especially with custom- installations. It is now possible to do a TYPICAL or CUSTOM installation and have the options configured accordingly. - This release has fully-functional BINKP client and server capabilities, and has been designed and tested with fairly large amounts of Queue entries. That being said, I am by no means a major mail "hub" so I would certainly appreciate some testing and feedback with this release. - The INTERNET CONNECTIVITY screen and all work on internal BinkP support has been totally redesigned and rewritten from scratch. Out of respect for those of you who are "hanging on" for this feature to be hard-coded, I have included custom copies of the public-domain BINKD program. Don't be fooled, however. This release of D'Bridge is designed to work hand-in- hand with BinkD and D'Bridge will automatically configure the setup file for this program. The INTERNET CONNECTIVITY screen basically matches the setup file of the BinkD program except that it will specifically write D'Bridge values and settings to the BinkD program setup file. Whenever a change is done to the INTERNET CONNECTIVITY screen, or a Queue entry exists that is defined in BINK SESSIONS, the BinkD configuration is automatically updated. I have included the OS/2 and Windows version of BinkD and there is a setting in INTERNET CONNECTIVITY to choose which one to run. Go check it out. - If you already have an existing BINKD configuration and you are running D'Bridge under OS/2 WARP or Microsoft Windows, you can copy the BINKD executables to the D'Bridge directory and run BINKD with "DBRIDGE.BNK" as the configuration file for daemon (server) usage. YOU WILL NEED TO MIGRATE YOUR EXISTING BINKD CONFIGURATION MANUALLY, as it will take a considerable amount of code to implement an "import" feature... but if you already have a working BINKD setup, chances are you probably don't want to screw around with it until you've tested this one first. - For Windows 95, you will need to install the "Winsock 2 Update" available from Microsoft's website. This update is NOT required if you are running Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000 or XP. - EMX version 0.9D, available from ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/dev/emx, is required for BINKD if you are running the OS/2 WARP operating system. The EMXRT.ZIP file should be unzipped to C:\OS2\APPS\DLL, although it shouldn't be necessary to reboot the computer. - If you already have an existing Linux BINKD configuration, and you are running D'Bridge using Bochs, DOSEMU or DOSBOX, you can simply point your existing BINKD binaries to use the DBRIDGE.BNK configuration file. It may be necessary to "mount" your D'Bridge directory to the appropriate BINKD directory on the Linux filesystem. - BinkD works in one of two ways for D'Bridge, depending on the "server" setting in INTERNET CONNECTIVITY: If running in SERVER mode, D'Bridge will "swap out" and call DBUTIL MOVE to create a mail bundle specifically for BinkD to use. When BinkD detects the mail bundle, it will attempt to dial-out over the Internet and send the mail for the system. It is up to you to ensure that BinkD is running. EVERY TIME THE QUEUE IS RESCANNED, THE BINKD CONFIGURATION IS UPDATED. This may cause more disk access on your computer, but this is normal. When ran in CLIENT mode, D'Bridge will update the BINKD configuration during the QueueScan, but will immediately call the BINKD program to send out the mail. It may take up to a full minute for the BINKD program to exit back to D'Bridge. This is normal. If you're not that patient, you should run in SERVER mode (ie. run BINKD in another "window" on your operating system) NOTE THAT IN CLIENT MODE, INBOUND BINKD CONNECTIONS WILL NOT BE RECEIVED. - Again, D'Bridge maintains the configuration of BINKD automatically. DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, MODIFY ANY CONFIGURATION FILES RELATED TO BINKD. Do NOT examine any configuration files of BINKD while D'Bridge is running at the same time; otherwise a sharing violation may occur. - The DBUTIL component has been updated, redesigned and enhanced to fully integrate itself with the BINKD program, and has been enhanced to operate along with the BINKD configuration file. - Do NOT, under ANY circumstances, specify Domains in the address questions in BASIC CONFIGURATION. You specify the domain matching in the INTERNET CONNECTIVITY screen. - DBUTIL has been enhanced to include support for BINKD and has been designed to interoperate with the BINKD features. Therefore, it is absolutely crucial that you install both the Internet features and DBUTIL if you select CUSTOM INSTALL in the Setup Wizard. - A new option in INTERNET CONNECTIVITY also allows you to translate the IVM and ITN flags in nodelist entries to actual IP addresses to dial for the VMODEM product by Ray Gwinn (or any other Virtual Modem product). You can choose to translate IVM or ITN or both (or none, obviously). The default setting is NONE. When this setting is changed, you will need to rescan the outbound queue. The call will be subject to the same costing as a dialup call as defined in COST/ACCOUNTING and the currently scheduled event. - The D'Bridge INSTALL program now extracts/verifies files almost 300% faster than before. - D'Bridge now fully supports multi-user, multi-tasking environments, by enabling the "MULTI-LINE" feature in the COMM/MODEM SETUP screen. When this feature is enabled, you MUST start D'Bridge with the appropriate line number, ie. DB /1, DB /16, etc etc. Otherwise, D'Bridge will default to line one. You can now run several "copies" of D'Bridge this way, all sharing the same configuration but using different modems or FOSSIL ports. When the MULTI-LINE feature is enabled, each line has its own unique configuration for the COMM/MODEM SETUP screen. The upperleft-hand corner of the screen will show which current line is running. WARNING: It is absolutely crucial that no two lines share the same port. If you attempt to assign the same serial port, strange and bizarre results will happen with your operating system. OS/2 dies. Windows will stop with the infamous "blue screen of death". The only exception to this warning is the NetFOSSIL product by PC Micro Incorporated (www.pcmicro.com) Their virtual COM ports, although they show up as one address and IRQ, are safe to use with D'Bridge. NetFOSSIL is for Windows NT, 2000 and XP only. With NetFOSSIL (and possibly others like it), it is safe to use the same COM ports in multi-line D'Bridge. - Note that although the multi-line features work, they all share the same schedule. Originally I intended to have multi-line scheduling like the way its done in Frontdoor and InterMail, but due to the way Chris designed the code, it is going to take a massive rewrite of the entire way that scheduling is handled in D'Bridge. Multi-schedule events produced a few instability problems in several critical functions during 2.5's testing stages. At the very last minute, much to my displeasure, I had to put the scheduler code back to the way it was in 2.41. Therefore, as a workaround, you will need to ensure that any multi-line DOS events do not "collide" with eachother (ie. use dummy files to check to see if a DOS event is already running). Feel free to post in the DBRIDGE echo on Fidonet for more help and explanation. - D'Bridge should now support DigiBoard ISA and DigiBoard PCI (Intelligent and non-Intelligent) serial ports. The new code has been tested with an older DigiBoard PC/X 8-port card. - The COMM/MODEM SETUP screen in D'Bridge -should- now support non-standard COM ports beyond COM9 (ie. COM10, COM11, etc), up to COM99. - D'Bridge now supports the "2K" releases of Ray Gwinn's SIO serial drivers for OS/2 WARP, including the virtual modem (VMODEM) programs. - D'Bridge should no longer probe the modem/serial hardware in the COMM/MODEM SETUP screen, in order to avoid certain problems with Windows NT, 2000 and XP. - D'Bridge should no longer cause "The COM port request is already in use" problem in OS/2 WARP, when the newcomer installs it for the first time and immediately enables the MULTI-LINE support. - D'Bridge actually should no longer cause ANY "COM port in use" errors in your operating system when you install for the first time, since it is now MANDITORY that the proper COM port address and IRQ is specified. - D'Bridge no longer randomly crashes under Desqview. - D'Bridge should no longer randomly freeze when running on a Tandy 1000 system with DOS 3.3, DOS 5, DOS 6, 6.21 or 6.22. - D'Bridge now gives up more idle-time to the CPU when its doing nothing. - D'Bridge should now co-operate more efficiently with the TameDOS product written by David Thomas. - The method that the modem/serial configuration is stored has now been changed. Modem information is now stored as COMM.1, COMM.2, etc etc, for MULTI-LINE operation. - Modem/serial information is no longer stored in DBRIDGE.PRM or in exported configuration files. If you need this feature, please let me know ASAP. - A new menu option MODEM RESULT CODES in BASIC CONFIGURATION allows you to specify the result codes that your modem reports back to the computer. - The way D'Bridge stores ".DSI" (Daily Schedule Information) files has changed to facilitate the new MULTI-LINE support. Instead of storing the DSI in DBRIDGE.DSI, it stores in LINE1.DSI, LINE2.DSI, and so forth. Please adjust any events and/or 3rd-party utilities that may use the file. - D'Bridge now stores Unevent Event History (DBRIDGE.UEH) and Mail Event History (DBRIDGE.MEH) differently now for MULTI-LINE operation, such as LINE1.UEH, LINE2.MEH, etc etc. The MEH and UEH files are used during creation and maintenance of a QueueScan. 3rd-party utilities should not be affected by this change. - Note that for testing purposes, deleting a DSI file for the appropriate line will cause D'Bridge to run as if it were being run for the first time... ie. all events that ran that day will be ran again. - The way the "AutoUpdate" routine works has been rewritten and updated to facilitate multi-line operation. Instead of having files like SAVE-FRI.DSI, SAVE-SAT.DSI, SAVE-SUN.DSI, and so forth, the filename is now the same except that the .DSI extension is replaced by the number of the line. So, if AutoUpdate exported the DSI on line 3 for Saturday, the result would be SAVE-SAT.3. - If you run batch files that "clean up" the SAVE-*.DSI files, you should modify them as per the above notice. - The INSTALL program will properly upgrade and make adjustments to the D'Bridge directory as per the above multi-line filename changes. *HOWEVER*, if you are ROLLING BACK ("downgrading") to a prior release, you will need to perform the following MANUALLY. If these precautions are NOT followed, then when you install the prior release, you will either experience difficulty in migrating your setup back to the prior release, or the prior release will execute all mail events as if they haven't been ran already. - Delete any *.DSI files in your D'Bridge directory. - Delete any "LINE*.*" files in your D'Bridge DATA directory. - Export a ROLLBACK configuration file (explained below) - Install a version of D'Bridge prior to 2.5. - Manually recompile the nodelist. - Ensure the Queue is rescanned. - A new option in HUB/ADMINISTRATORS allows you to automatically restart D'Bridge after a nodelist compile. This option was once hard-coded and solved some problems for people, but created problems for others. So its back again as an option, and its left as NO (disabled) by default. Do not enable this setting unless restarting-after-compiling solves problems. - A new option in HUB/ADMINISTRATORS enables you to shut off the unnecessary "Unable to write UEH/MEH" messages that may pop up from time to time, by changing the DEBUG QUEUE ERRORS settings. Its not so much an error as it is a limitation with the way the code works under OS/2 or Microsoft Windows environments. D'Bridge eventually recovers from such a condition. - For Ward, you may now specify the maximum number of Fido *.MSG files able to be handled by the internal message editor by changing the new "EDITOR LIMITS" variable in HUB/ADMINISTRATORS. The default is 8000. The maximum that may be specified is 32,766. WARNING: Changing this variable also changes the amount of free memory... - D'Bridge now features ANTI-SPAM features, and those can be configured in the ADVANCED CONFIGURATION screen. You may choose to filter by FROM or SUBJECT. The SPAM filter is very primitive and only checks for the presence of the keywords you specify. When such a keyword is encountered, D'Bridge will NOT toss (process) that message, NETmail or Echomail - ***AND ANY DOWNLINKS WILL NOT RECEIVE THOSE MESSAGES*** When reading a message in the internal editor, you may now press the S key to indicate that the FROM and SUBJ of the message is SPAM. Then D'Bridge will no longer process messages matching that criteria in the future. **** NOTE **** ANTI-SPAM FEATURES ARE DISABLED IN THIS RELEASE - The internal editor now supports a TWIT FILTER. When this option is enabled in the ADVANCED CONFIGURATION screen, messages will NOT be displayed in the internal editor that match the criteria you specify. Note that the TWIT filter does not affect any messages sent to other systems, so a message that arrives from someone on your TWIT list will still be sent to any downlinks. When reading a message in the internal editor, you may press the T key to indicate that the person sending the message (the FROM field) should be marked as TWIT. **** NOTE **** TWIT FILTERING IS DISABLED IN THIS RELEASE - Removing SPAM or TWIT filter criteria is as easy as removing them from the ANTI-SPAM screen. - The ANTI-SPAM and TWIT FILTER options are DISABLED by default. - You may now specify packet files (*.PKT) of unlimited size by changing the XMAIL PACKET SIZE option to zero (0) in the XMAIL CONTROL screen. For those of you that "toss" large amounts of mail, this will cause the D'Bridge XMAIL processor to create one huge .PKT file for a system instead of multiple PKT files. This may improve efficiency, and is a feature found in other "tosser" programs so I'm including it here as well. The help screen for this feature has also been updated. One such use for this feature would be for local LAN use or in situations where it is necessary to decompress the XMAIL bundle in a DOS batch file. WARNING: Under normal use, the XMAIL PACKET SIZE option should NOT be changed unless you are a Hub or administrator whoes setup would benefit from having packets with no "limits". - A stability bug in the way that D'Bridge checks and analyses the Carrier Detect (CD) signal from the serial port/FOSSIL driver has been corrected and totally rewritten. The carrier-detection code is now 100% compatible with both "real" serial ports, and virtual ports such as FOSSIL ports under the OS/2 WARP operating system, or NetModem ports under Windows. WARNING: Ray Gwinn's VMODEM product does NOT report a carrier signal to D'Bridge until the result code has been sent back, and there may be a slight delay (a few milliseconds) between the presence of the carrier signal and the result code. But that few milliseconds is an eternity to D'Bridge. It may result in lost calls when a user connects via. Telnet, because during those few milliseconds delay, VMODEM is allocating memory and system resources to operate the modem port. For this reason I strongly recommend that you use VMODEM on a high-speed Internet connection such as cable or DSL (ie. Bell Sympatico), and make sure your D'Bridge system is running on a Pentium-2 or faster computer. - A minor bug has been fixed in the D'Bridge EMSI code for dialup sessions, and now makes it possible to do EMSI over Telnet, using virtual-modem. Gone forever are the warnings about high-ascii and other such nonsense. - A minor cosmetic bug has been fixed in the SESSION INFORMATION screen during an EMSI session, and D'Bridge now displays "OTHER" instead of "DATA" so newcomers won't be confused what "DATA" means: OTHER means any other file attachments besides NETmail and XMAIL. - A minor cosmetic bug has been fixed in the SYSTEM LOG screen for the EMSI fix mentioned above. - Problems with importing configuration files should now be a thing of the past. Unknown keywords and variables are simply ignored. - You can now export a configuration file that should be 100% backwards compatible with prior releases (including the legacy 1.xx series), by enabling the "ROLLBACK FILE SUPPORT" option in HUB/ADMINISTRATORS. This will tell D'Bridge NOT to export any Internet and multi-line settings. - A new command-line option in the mailer, ROLLBACK, does the same thing as the EXPORT command except it won't export the settings for the new features, same as the feature explained above. ie. DB ROLLBACK DB.CFG will export a compatible CFG file for older releases. It will perform this function no matter if the ROLLBACK FILE SUPPORT option is enabled or not. - The NEW ECHOMAIL LINK and REQUEST ECHOMAIL LINK screens have been slightly enhanced to allow specifying conferences with large Echomail tags, such as Internet Usenet groups... a feature I plan to integrate into D'Bridge in the next release or so. - NETmail messages addressed to SYSOP will now trigger the YOU'VE GOT MAIL option if enabled. - DBUTIL now automatically deletes the message bases in the Renegade BBS software when DBUTIL DELETEDOS is used. It doesn't matter what version of the Renegade BBS software you're using. - Due to a fundimental design flaw in the ECHOMAIL AREA EDITOR, you should NOT delete the very last area from the database, if you plan to later "clean up" your message directories with DBUTIL DELETEDOS. If the last area must be deleted, you should first create a "dummy" area after that record so the first one can be deleted properly. Failure to do so will result in directories not being cleaned up properly in DBUTIL DELETEDOS because the last record is not marked for deletion - its nuked altogether. - Various help screens have been updated, corrected, and in some cases rewritten altogether to keep the help for 2.5 as up to date as possible. - You may now specify the ADDRESS/AKA of an Echomail area to change globally in DBUTIL. This allows DBUTIL to manage multiple Fido-networks properly when used with the GROUP SORT and GROUP ACCESS functions. The ADDRESS/AKA feature only works in the "GUI" portion of DBUTIL only - it will NOT work with the AUTOASSIGN parameter, ie. DBUTIL AUTOASSIGN. Nick Andre ANDRE CONSULTING D'Bridge 2.41 - April 1st 2006 ------------------------------ This is a very minor release, but now includes the entire source code to the DBUTIL program along with the technician's manual for those of you who are interested in my work. DBUTIL is written in Visual BASIC so it should be easy to understand how things work. The source code and technicians manual is now installed by clicking on the "Source code" button in the INSTALL program. - An issue with DBUTIL MOVE not computing the FTSC-name-control file has been corrected. - When more than 36 XMAIL bundles are moved in one day for one node address using DBUTIL MOVE, the archive number is reset back to zero and the counter starts over. D'Bridge 2.4 - March 29th, 2006 ------------------------------- This major release of D'Bridge now bring things "up to snuff" with running DB on more modern computers such as Pentium 3's, 4's, celerons, dual-core chips and on computers with extremely large hard drives. D'Bridge should now function 100% when running under "emulator" environments (such as DosEmu, Bochs or DOSBOX). It also adds support for debugging the system timer. A minor bug in DBUTIL has also been fixed. WARNING: It is absolutely imperative that the "AFIXCTRL" directory exists off of your Queue directory (ie. C:\DBRIDGE\QUEUE\AFIXCTRL). The DBUTIL program makes extensive use of this directory for the MOVE command. If the directory doesn't exist, the MOVE command will FAIL. - D'Bridge will now properly toss mail on partitions larger than 2 gigabyte, by enabling the "Large drive support" option in HUB/ADMINISTRATOR. This option is OFF by default. This option will allow D'Bridge to process mail on hard drive partitions larger than 2 gigabytes. Basically, all disk-space checking is DISABLED regardless of what is defined in DISK SPACE PARAMETERS, but some internal safeguards are turned off as well. Please do not enable this option unless you are running D'Bridge on a computer that has a hard drive partition larger than 2 gigabytes in size, or you are running D'Bridge under an "emulator" such as DosEmu, Bochs or DOSBOX. - It is now possible to disable all the "animations" and other fancy timer stuff in D'Bridge, by disabling the "Screen effects" option in HUB/ ADMINISTRATORS. Its turned on by default. Shutting it off will stop all the animated zooming, screen fades and other screen-related effects, except of course the built-in screen saver. This should solve problems with running D'Bridge under OS/2 WARP or on extremely-fast CPU's, or any DOS environment where the screen effects are obviously causing a problem. - It is now possible to debug the system timer in D'Bridge. D'Bridge computes its own "delay" timer from calculating the number of BIOS ticks per second. By default, this is set to zero, telling D'Bridge to automatically compute the BIOS ticks. But changing this value to anything but zero will manually set the BIOS ticks. Setting the ticks manually may be necessary to correct problems with D'Bridge running on more modern computers such as Pentium 3's, 4's, Celerons, Dual-Core, etc. This option should NOT be changed unless you are an experienced system administrator and you know your hardware "inside-out". Strange and bizarre results may happen if the system timer is incorrectly set. - Under rare circumstances, DBUTIL MOVE would not "move" the mail properly. This has been fixed for good this time. Instead of DBUTIL.DAT, the system will create individual data files in the QUEUE\AFIXCTRL directory that control the FTSC-compliant filenames generated by DBUTIL. - DBUTIL now creates the semaphore (dummy) files DBRIDGE.RSN whenever the MOVE command is used, so that D'Bridge is "forced" to rescan the Queue when completed. - For those of you that use the shareware client/server program Internet Rex, you should be aware that it may be UNSTABLE reading the D'Bridge Queue directly. I highly recommend that you use DBUTIL MOVE to move your mail to individual directories for your nodes. D'Bridge 2.3 - March 25th, 2006 ------------------------------- This is a huge release that fixes a variety of problems, including one major security flaw. Although it doesn't look like it on the outside, there is plenty of new code in this release. This release was one I've wanted to do for weeks, but just haven't had the time to work on it until now. Please upgrade your installation to this release as soon as possible. YOU MUST RUN "DB EXPORT DBRIDGE.AUT" BEFORE RUNNING THE INSTALL PROGRAM. Failure to do so will cause problems. The change was done to ensure that all of you are taking proper precautions and steps to upgrade your systems. WARNING: Rolling back to a prior version once this release is installed is NOT recommended. However, if you must rollback, please move the M- style queue entries from the AFIXCTRL directory back to the QUEUE directory. For example: CD \DBRIDGE\QUEUE\AFIXCTRL COPY *.* .. DEL *.* CD .. RD AFIXCTRL If C:\DBRIDGE\QUEUE is not the directory your Queue files are located in, substitute it for the correct directory. - The Areafix "M-" style Queue entries have been modified to correct a security issue when using D'Bridge with Internet Rex, a shareware Internet client/server program. The security issue affects ALL versions of D'Bridge prior to this one, including the legacy 1.xx series (ie. 1.58, 1.60, 1.70, etc) Internet Rex has the capability of interfacing with the D'Bridge queue. Any entries in this directory will be converted to proper FTSC packet/ archive names for transfer via the Internet. However, if Internet Rex finds any M- style entries, it will also send them out. M- style entries are an essential portion of the Areafix system in D'Bridge. By carefully manipulating Internet Rex, it may be possible to download a list of another system's connected areas. To correct the flaw, the "M-" style Queue entries are now stored in a subdirectory called "AFIXCTRL" off of your Queue directory. So if your Queue directory is C:\DBRIDGE\QUEUE, you will now find a new directory called C:\DBRIDGE\QUEUE\AFIXCTRL where all of the M- stuff is located. - Because this is a fundimental change to the way the Queue system works in D'Bridge, this may render some 3rd-party utilities useless. Please let me know if this is the case and an alternate solution will be designed. - The DEBUG/SUPPORT menu is now called HUB/ADMINISTRATOR OPTIONS, and the previous XMAIL debugging options from the 2.2 release have been moved into this menu screen. - The INSTALL program has been vastly improved, and will scan your Queue directory for any M- style Queue entries and move them to the above- mentioned AFIXCTRL directory accordingly. I'm pretty sure that all of the bugs in the install program are gone now. If theres any, let me know. - Work has begun on support for Return Receipt Requests (RRQ's), although the option is there now in SETUP -> EDITOR OPTIONS, this feature will not be completed until the next release of D'Bridge. A Return Receipt Request (RRQ) kludge is a flag on a NETmail message to trigger D'Bridge to send the sender of the message a "receipt" acknowledging that the message has been read by the receiver. When a RRQ kludge is encountered, D'Bridge will write a "receipt" NETmail to the sending system indicating that the original message has been read for the first time by the receiver. The receipt that gets sent back is a simple NETmail message indicating the time and date that the message was read, along with a copy of the original message. The receipt is sent back to the receiver during the next QueueScan, and is subject to the routing defined in the SCHEDULER. Note that the RRQ kludge feature only works for the built-in internal message editor. It will NOT work with GoldED or any external editors. The RRQ kludge feature has three options: RRQ KLUDGE: Yes, Ask, No YES - The editor will acknowledge RRQ's automatically without your consent. ASK (Default) - The editor will display a pop-up window when it encounters a message with the RRQ kludge and ask you if you wish to acknowledge receipt. NO - The editor will not acknowledge RRQ's. The internal editor's "Add Return Receipt" option will only show up in the menu when you are writing a NETmail message only. It will not be shown when writing Echomail messages or if the RRQ kludge feature is turned off altogether in EDITOR OPTIONS. The help screen for the RRQ kludge and the internal editor menu commands have been updated accordingly. - D'Bridge now creates a new semaphore file called DBRIDGE.NQS whenever a new QueueScan has just been performed (manually or automatically). This new semaphore file can be used by 3rd-party Internet clients (like Internet Rexx) to indicate that D'Bridge has finished scanning the outbound Queue. This feature is triggered ON or OFF (ON by default) in the HUB/ADMINISTRATOR menu. - D'Bridge no longer unpacks Echomail starting at message 1 if there are no messages in the directory. It will now start at message 2. This change was done, again, to allow 3rd-party programs to properly import mail from D'Bridge. This feature is triggered ON or OFF (Off by default) in the HUB/ADMINISTRATOR menu. - D'Bridge does not fill in "201:ALL" for Automatic Session Passwords in the SECURITY screen for newcomers. - DBUTIL PURGE no longer renumbers messages. Nobody likes this feature so I got rid of it. Delete the DBRIDGE.NRN or DBUTIL.NRN files if they exist. - And the MOVE command in DBUTIL has been rewritten from scratch. There should be no more issues with moving any mail whatsoever. - DBUTIL MOVE now works with files up to 2 gigabytes in size. - The unpack/upgrade/copying process in the INSTALL program has been rewritten from scratch. Again, you MUST export your configuration BEFORE upgrading to this release. This is MANDITORY. I hope you enjoy this version and look forward to your feedback. Version 2.2 - March 5th, 2006 ----------------------------- This minor release adds two new features for XMAIL: "Process XMAIL Yes/No" and "Debug XMAIL Yes/No" to the DEBUG/SUPPORT screen. PROCESS XMAIL - If this is set to YES, any Netmail that contains the XMA/ (default: YES) XMAIL flag will be packed out as an XMAIL bundle; otherwise if the option is set to NO, it gets treated as a normal "Queue" entry, subject to the routing conditions set up in the SCHEDULER. DEBUG XMAIL - Any Netmail messages with the XMA/XMAIL flag that are (default: NO) processed by your D'Bridge system, will now display the current message number, from/to/subj/address as well as the archive name in the system log if this set to YES. Note that this WILL cause the system log to grow quite a bit in size. Note that these two new features are only provided for those of you who wish to diagnose/troubleshoot in-transit NETmail that is processed. DO NOT change these parameters unless you are an experienced D'Bridge administrator. - The help screens for these two features has also been updated accordingly. - Cleaned up some code in the internal editor, please test all functions. Version 2.1 - February 27th, 2006 --------------------------------- This interim release corrects some minor issues with stability and security. As usual, please back up your D'Bridge directory before installing. - Pretty sure I figured out the large-message crash problem. - Dozens of minor corrections have been done to the mailer source code. - Rewrote the entire routine for handling modem hangup/constant carrier signal errors (when the system starts up or is idle) The CD mask can no longer be set or changed via. a DOS variable; this was a debugging feature that Chris left in from the non-FOSSIl days and I thought it was utterly useless. Several "+++" escape sequences, along with DTR dropping and ATZ'ing are now done to help eliminate the rare CD error problem. - Fixed a problem where under rare circumstances, the "You've Got Mail" feature may randomly crash D'Bridge if you receive a large amount of personal mail. - D'Bridge no longer performs a timesync on startup if the system date is earlier than the release date - didn't want to scare newcomers. :-) - You can now force a system restart/recycle every time the nodelist is compiled by creating a semaphore (dummy) file called DBRIDGE.RNC in your directory. D'Bridge will always restart after a nodelist compile if that dummy text file is there. - DBIS developement is currently on hold due to lack of personal time. - A newer DBNET file has been included in this release. Version 2.00 Beta Release #9 - January 24th, 2006 ------------------------------------------------- This is a MINOR release, containing the same code as Beta Release #8 but recompiled using a slightly different method of initializing TCP/IP sockets and stacks. The web server is enabled but BinkP, FTP, Telnet and DynDNS are still disabled. It may not be necessary for you to install this update. PLEASE NOTE: My work schedule is busy again, folks. Updates after BR#9 will be few and far between. Expect a 2.1 release sometime next month which will have all Internet features enabled. We're moving to a new apartment on the first of the month. I will not be able to answer home telephone calls about D'Bridge for the first week or so. - DBIS has been recompiled to NOT require Winsock-2 specific code while running under Windows 95 (A, B and C). It is no longer necessary to have a Winsock-2 compliant update from Microsoft if you are running Windows 95. Note that Windows 98 and higher already have the Winsock-2 extensions. - With the above update, it may be possible to run DBIS under Windows For WorkGroups 3.11 with Microsoft TCP/IP Services installed. And if that works, then it is possible to run DBIS under OS/2 Warp Connect or Warp 4. - This is the first release that Laura compiled herself.....(with Nick's step by step directions) Version 2.00 Beta Release #8 - January 18th, 2006 ------------------------------------------------- A lot of hard work has gone into Beta Release #8. Please test thoroughly. This beta tests the web server function of DBIS only. BinkP, FTP, Telnet and the DynDNS client are presently disabled. To test the web server code of DBIS, do the following: - Ensure your operating system is capable of running DBIS (see notes) - Confirm proper configuration of DBIS via INTERNET CONNECTIVITY. - Create a text file called INDEX.HTM in the WWWROOT directory with just one word - "test". - Start DBIS in another window on your operating system. - When the DBIS program says its ready, make note of the IP address. - Type "http://[that IP address]" into your browser. So for example if your computer's address is 192.168.2.101, type http://192.168.2.101 into your web browser. - The word "test" should now appear in your browser. - You should now disable the web server feature, unless you wish to keep on testing it with more elaborate HTML files. Note that the web server does NOT support LFN's (long file names). You must limit your files to standard DOS 8.3 format... for now. - The help system and configuration screen has been updated for the DBIS component. However, in order to make space for all of the new features, some sections in the help system had to be REMOVED: - References to setting up different BBS types. (obsolete) - The detailed discussions on time zones and the US Naval Observatory. - DBIS has been rewritten (yet again) to pipe output to STDIO so you can redirect the output of DBIS to anything you want. Note that DBIS creates a log file called DBIS.LOG in the directory. - Note that DBIS will require Windows 95/98/ME, or NT4 with Service Pack 6, 2000 with Service Pack 4, or XP with Service Pack 1A or higher. Testing the DBIS component under Linux/FreeBSD WINE is encouraged; please let me know how it works out. - Note that the upcoming Telnet server feature of DBIS requires that you be running either Windows NT4, 2000 or XP. The Telnet server WILL NOT FUNCTION properly on any other platform. - If you are running Windows NT4, 2000 or 2003 Server, and are using the Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), you will need to DISABLE the server BEFORE testing DBIS, otherwise the code will not work. - The "Modem required for dialup" bug in D'Bridge is gone forever. - A brand new setup screen has been added to D'Bridge - DEBUG & SUPPORT. Look for it underneith the ADVANCED menu. The purpose of this screen is to allow you to change certain internal variables used by D'Bridge. DO NOT under ANY circumstances, change any of these. This screen is provided in the event that technical support is needed. If you request support and we deem that its necessary to change an internal variable, we will tell you to do it. If the change in the variable fixes the problem or at least makes D'Bridge more stable for you, we will note the change and then permanently change that variable in the next release of D'Bridge. - Several outstanding bugs have been corrected in the way D'Bridge imports and exports configuration files (*.CFG or DBRIDGE.AUT). It should be noted that although this version is 100% backwards compatible with older versions (minus the Internet support obviously), you should only "rollback" to 2.xx releases, THEN rollback to 1.xx releases if so desired. Rolling back from 2.1 to lets say, 1.58, 1.60 or 1.70 is NOT recommended. - A bug where the INSTALL program may crash when upgrading an installation on another drive has been corrected. - Other miscellaneous bugs have been corrected in the mailer and tosser, again none worth noting or even trying to explain. - The INSTALL program now performs several stability checks before even starting; to avoid "problems" for newcomers. Version 2 - Beta Release 7 (BR7) - 13 December 2005 --------------------------------------------------- - This release corrects various minor issues with my new INSTALL program. - Screenshots will be made available this week of the new Internet subsystem. Version 2 - Beta Release 6 (BR6) - 10 December 2005 --------------------------------------------------- WARNING: This release contains major code updates. Use with caution. - The entire code for installing/upgrading D'Bridge has been rewritten from scratch. D'Bridge is now installed using INSTALL.EXE. - D'Bridge no longer gives cryptic error messages. All error messages in the program should now display a more detailed explanation of what went wrong as well as ways to fix the problem, sortof like what I did for error 202 and 203. - Although I can't exactly replicate the large-Areafix request problem that Ward was having, I did go through the Areafix code and cleaned up some things that may of caused problems... - This should be the final Beta release. Assuming no serious problems with this one, the next will be 2.1 with BinkP features enabled, in a multi- user, multi-tasking Internet subsystem that will handle BinkP, FTP and simple Web/HTTP connections. Version 2 - Beta Release 5 (BR5) - 1 December 2005 -------------------------------------------------- This is only a minor release designed to correct some issues in Beta Release #4. It is NOT necessary to upgrade unless the following concerns you: - This release was compiled on an HP NetServer E45 platform. If you decide to upgrade to this release, please test all features, etc etc. This new server I have now, compiled BR5 in less than 15 *seconds*. My notebook can take up to a full minute to compile the code. I could never understand why SCSI never caught on... - This release corrects "frozen" sessions under Windows NT Workstation and Windows NT Server running the TAMEDOS product by David G. Thomas. If you are running Windows 2000 or Windows XP Home/Professional/Server or .NET Enterprise, this *may* cause problems if you run D'Bridge inside of a batch file. You MUST include the line "TAME-MON /UNINSTALL" right before D'Bridge is loaded up. - D'Bridge should now support DigiBoard multi-port serial boards such as the PC/X, MC/X, and most newer PCI boards. - D'Bridge should now detect and adjust its timeslicing for Linux/BSD operating systems (Tested with NetBSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD 5.1 and 6.0 with Linux binaries and the Boches virtual computer system) The code really just checks for Boches version info but you get the idea. :-) - In case you didn't get it, DBUTIL 1.9G is included in this release. - BinkP is still DISABLED in this release. Please be patient. Version 2 - Beta Release 4 (BR4) - 24 November 2005 --------------------------------------------------- - This is a minor release that corrects another one of my screwups. Try to guess where it was, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised! - Another programmer is looking at the assembly-language code to help me get this BinkP feature underway. Its a problem that I can't solve myself. Therefore, this may be the last release for a little while until then... - This release includes the updated DBUTIL (1.9d) that corrects the "access error" when using the DELETEDOS command to purge old Fido directories. - BinkP is still DISABLED in this release. Please be patient. Version 2 - Beta Release 3 (BR3) - 21 November 2005 --------------------------------------------------- - This is a minor beta that features an improved "You've Got Mail" system, that now notifies you which Echomail areas have personal mail for you. - The LOG window now displays any new personal mail to you. - Some minor corrections done to DBUTIL; the current version is now 1.9c. - Problems with "corrupt DBRIDGE.PRM" files should now be fixed. - BinkP is still DISABLED in this release. Please be patient. Version 2 - Beta Release 2 (BR2) - 20 November 2005 --------------------------------------------------- WARNING: Beta Release 2 contains major code updates to your D'Bridge system. PLEASE READ THIS ENTIRE DOCUMENT before proceeding. Please BACK UP your D'Bridge directory before installing. A lot of hard work has gone into Beta Release 2. Please test all features of D'Bridge upon installing. Any problems or bugs, please report ASAP. - BinkP is still DISABLED in this release. - Compiled while watching "Freddy Versus Jason", yes, we like to have our horror-movie-marathons here at the house. - Special thanks to Bjorn Felten for his help with object code compiling and some assembly stuff that was a little over my head. Thanks a lot! Without his help and direction, this beta would have never been finished. - D'Bridge now requires at least a 386 processor in order to function. - The Internet features in D'Bridge will not run under Windows 95 unless Microsoft Winsock 2 Update has been installed. Windows 98 and ME already have the Winsock 2 update; therefore disregard this warning if you are running Windows 98 or ME. - The Internet features in D'Bridge will not run under Windows NT unless Service Pack 6A (standard or high encryption) has been installed. - For Windows 2000, you should have Service Pack 4 installed. - For Windows XP, Service Pack 2 should be installed. - If you're going to use the Internet features of D'Bridge under IBM OS/2, please make sure you have applied the latest MPTS update (for Warp Connect systems), and/or the latest TCP/IP Stack Update, both of which can be obtained from ftp://hobbs.nmsu.edu (New Mexico State University). It may also be necessary to apply Fixpaks to your operating system as well. - This beta may cause problems with ProtectorPlus 2000 7.2.G06 (an anti- virus program). The "real-time scanner" may cause significant "slowdowns" during mail tossing and reading messages in the editor. You may need to temporarily disable Protector Plus's real-time scanner in order to correct "slowdown" issues. (Tested on a Dell Pentium 133 system) - This beta may cause problems with DialUp Networking in Windows 95/98/ME when Windows first boots, if "Connect Automatically" has been enabled in your network settings and you've put D'Bridge in your Startup folder. - In order for this beta to work, some of Chris Irwin's original assembly language routines had to either be rewritten, re-arranged, and in some cases, deleted altogether. The code in question deals with "swapping to DOS", also referred to in the help file as "PUSH" and "DROP" (ALT+Y,Z) PLEASE RUN A FULL TEST OF THE FOLLOWING: - DOS EVENTS - FUNCTION KEYS THAT CALL DOS PROGRAMS - EXTERNAL RECEIVERS - FUNCTION REQUESTS - XMAIL COMPRESS/DECOMPRESS COMMANDS - "DOS COMMANDS TO RUN" IN ALL MAIL EVENTS. - Anything else that D'Bridge may have to "swap out" for. IF ALL TESTS PASS, CONDUCT THE FOLLOWING TEST: - Start D'Bridge and Shell to DOS from the mailer (ALT+Z) - Do something to "crash" D'Bridge (or close the DOS window) - Restart D'Bridge. - Shell to DOS again (ALT+Z) - Type DIR /A:H *.DRO and verify that there are no *.DRO files. - Start D'Bridge and fire up the editor (or type DB EDIT) - Shell to DOS by typing ALT+Z. - Do something to "crash" D'Bridge (or close the DOS window) - Restart D'Bridge. - Shell to DOS again (ALT+Z) - Type DIR /A:H *.DRO and verify that there are no *.DRO files. IF THAT TEST PASSES, RUN THE FOLLOWING TEST: - Start D'Bridge and Shell to DOS from the mailer (ALT+Z) - At the DOS prompt, try starting D'Bridge by typing "DB". - If the computer says "D'Bridge is already loaded", you have successfully completed the tests. - More modifications will be done to the underlining assembly language code in the next few releases to accomodate the Internet features. New "goodies" added: - You can now specify your own "tear line" in outgoing Echomail, by going into SETUP -> EDITOR OPTIONS. Do not include the "---" part in your custom tearline. The help system (F1) will tell you more about it. - By the way, D'Bridge no longer reports the license key on tear lines, and this was actually corrected in Beta Release 1. Beta Release 3, already in the works, should finally do away with the license key files altogether. - Beta Release 3 will have an option to include "cookies", or "taglines" in outgoing mail. - D'Bridge can now notify you if it's tossed Netmail or Echomail addressed to you! This is a handy feature, one that Laura requested I add in there. Go into SETUP -> EDITOR OPTIONS and answer Yes or No to the "You've Got Mail" option. And the help system (F1) will tell you more about it. See, when she nags me enough, I get it done. :-) - The "You've got Mail" system works on both Fido and QuickBBS systems. - Beta Release 3 will have a more elaborate and detailed "You've Got Mail" system. Please be patient - I'm working on it. - This beta also corrects a minor security issue, and all of the license- key checking code should finally be gone now. Version 2 - Beta 1 - 14 November 2005, 10:00pm EST -------------------------------------------------- Welcome to version 2 of D'Bridge! A lot of hard work has gone into this release to prepare D'Bridge for the addition of BinkP support. Please be patient. Its coming. WARNING: Do NOT run the WSLOADER.EXE program, as mentioned in the help file. It is not necessary to run that program in this Beta release. - This release of D'Bridge now has an INTERNET CONNECTIVITY menu, please configure your BinkP settings there, verify the help file system, etc etc. BinkP connectivity is DISABLED in this beta, due to a problem with one of the libraries I'm using. But again, you may go ahead and configure the sites you need to communicate with. Again, do NOT run the WSLOADER application... at this time. - You no longer need a modem to use D'Bridge. If you want to use D'Bridge in an "Internet-only" environment, just go into the COMM/MODEM setup screen and erase your settings there. However, if D'Bridge is configured for BinkP "Receive only", outbound calls will still require a modem. - Confirm the installation of the following files: WSLOADER.EXE, NTWSOCK.DLL, and WSOCKXS.VXD. - This release should corrects a security issue; any mail and file attachments that come in from unknown systems will be renamed BAD-MAIL and BAD-FILES respectively, provided that RENAME UNAUTHORIZED FILES is set to YES. - The installation problem of always defaulting to C:\DBRIDGE should be corrected. - The installation program should now automatically remove any old copies of the DBNET nodelist. DBNET.005 is included in this release. - Because this is a Beta release, please report problems ASAP. 1.96 / 12 November 2005 ----------------------- WARNING: This release contains major updates. Please backup before upgrading. WARNING 2: Backup the following files to a temporary directory: - DBRIDGE.PRM - DBRIDGE.ADF - DBRIDGE.DSI - Contents of your Netmail directory. - All of your queue and packets. WARNING 3: Do NOT use DBUTIL DELETEDOS unless your system has been backed up and you are prepared to restore/rollback in the event of problems. - A very serious problem with EMSI has been corrected in this version. Under rare circumstances, the *lack* of the anti-piracy code in DB would cause a system crash. The problem has been corrected by rewriting part of the EMSI code so it does not report (and compare) certain statistics of the report system. *** YOU MUST UPGRADE TO THIS VERSION TO ENSURE A STABLE EMSI SYSTEM *** - A serious problem with DBUTIL SORT AREAS has been fixed. Please check your Echomail database for any duplicate areas. If any exist, please follow these instructions, "to the tee": - Backup the DBRIDGE.ADF and BACKUP.ADF file (if it exists) - Run DB SETUP and manually remove the duplicate areas. - Make a second backup of DBRIDGE.ADF. - Run DBUTIL SORT. - Run DB SETUP again and confirm the Echomail database is accurate. - A serious bug in DBUTIL DELETEDOS has been fixed, however, please do NOT use the DELETEDOS command in DBUTIL unless you have backed up your system first. DBUTIL DELETEDOS should only be used if you want to run a "system-wide" cleanup of your message directories. It should NOT be ran as part of any regular maintainence, due to the fact that if something happens to your Echomail database (DBRIDGE.ADF), you can really mess things up. Again, you should NOT run DBUTIL DELETEDOS unless you have backed up your entire DB directory first. - This release also includes a new command for DBUTIL: MOVE. MOVE will take any address you specify, and "move" it to a directory of your choice. It should replace Khile Klock's entire DBQ2FTP utility, and requires no external configuration at all. MOVE should obviously be used *after* any queue-manipulating commands such as POLL and SEND. It also works on point systems, something DBQ2FTP wasn't able to do properly. MOVE creates a tiny database called DBUTIL.DAT that contains the current day-of-the-week increment that FTSC calls for, ie. Tu1, We2, Sa7. It also takes NETmail queue entries and converts them to PKT files, including XMA-marked messages. And obviously, any queue/packet moving is recorded to DBUTIL.LOG for your inspection. *NOTE* DBUTIL MOVE will NOT move Packets, only Queue entries. This will be corrected in the next release of DBUTIL. If you wish to use the MOVE command in this release, please "pack out" your Netmail into Queue bundles by adding the XMAIL flag to each of your Netmails; and enable the "Xmail" option in EDITOR -> EDITOR OPTIONS. Note that MOVE is NOT present in the "interface" portion of DBUTIL. It must be called from the command-line. MOVE [address] [directory] ie. C:\DB> DBUTIL MOVE 1:229/426.1 F:\LAN\LAURA C:\DB> DBUTIL MOVE 1:229/2000 C:\IREX\ROBERT C:\DB> DBUTIL MOVE 201:3000/1 C:\IREX\WARD - Because of the above feature, Khile Klock's DBQ2FTP utility is no longer included in this release, or any future versions for that matter. - The DB help system has been updated accordingly for the new MOVE command. - DBUTIL now has "startup screen", and performs a small check on critical system files before executing any commands. Nothing is modified or changed during the startup sequence. If the check fails, DBUTIL now halts back to DOS, as a safeguard against commands running only to have it fail. - Also, some last minute changes have been made to DBUTIL to NOT purge any areas without criteria, and some other minor bugs have been corrected. *** YOU MUST SPECIFY PURGE CRITERIA FOR AN AREA TO BE PURGED! *** - Internal code that calls PKZIP to create configuration and history archives (ie. DBCONFIG.ZIP), now creates them with maximum compression. Not really a big deal; just something that I felt needed updating. - On new installations, several corrections have been made to the default compress/decompress options in the XMAIL CONFIGURATION screen. The most bizarre (yet important) change was adding ".EXE" to the ends of all the compress/decompress commands. For some reason, new installations don't have this problem when installing in "pure DOS". But on Windows 95/98/ME systems, the .EXE must be added. Anyways, thats all fixed now so the new user doesn't have to worry about that. If you are upgrading your installation, the above compress/decompress corrections will NOT be applied. Check your configuration just in case. - The same fix has been applied to the COMM/MODEM SETUP screen to ensure that PKUNZIP.EXE (*not* just "pkunzip") is called if D'Bridge needs to extract any MCF or PCF files. Theres only one in there... for now. - Its now possible to change the dialup number of the United States Naval Observatory Atomic Clock by creating a text file called DBRIDGE.CLK with the proper phone number. If D'Bridge encounters this file, it will dial whatever number is in there. I didn't change it in the code itself for two reasons: (1) I don't even know what the new number is, and (2) Just in case it changes again in the future. - ENVVARS.TXT has been renamed to TECHSPEC.TXT and now contains a history of ongoing work to D'Bridge from 1.80 up to now. TECHSPEC.TXT also contains the D'Bridge technician's manual if someone out there wants to start writing 3rd-party stuff for D'Bridge. - HISTORY.TXT contains a history of D'Bridge developement since 1.80, and I will go back to the CD-R archives to find older stuff that Chris wrote. - Some corrections were done to the OTHER56K.MCF INIT and DELAY strings to speed things up a little bit. - Some minor things were fixed up in the source code; no big deal. - Newcomers are warned against installing DB into the current directory as well as making sure they have read/write access if D'Bridge is being installed onto a LAN server, such as Windows 2003 Advanced Server. - DBUTIL's version level as of this release, is 1.9a. 1.95 / 10 November 2005 ----------------------- WARNING: Due to major code updates, please BACKUP your existing installation. - This release of D'Bridge has been recompiled in Borland Pascal 5.5. 1.94 / 7 November 2005 ---------------------- - Minor corrections done to post-startup operations. - Removed an EMSI limitation that affects "Freeware" keys, was supposed to be fixed back in Alpha5000-4 (A4) but apparently I didn't fix all of it... - Help for DBUTIL has been updated in D'Bridge. (Refer to Section 7.00) - DBUTIL is brought up to 1.9, and so far runs stable with no apparent bugs. - Got Laura running her own copy of D'Bridge (1:229/426.1 & 201:1000/3) - Nick Mackechnie runs DBNET Aust/NZ (201:2000/1) 1.93 / 7 November 2005 ---------------------- - This release corrects a minor memory leak. - This release brings DBUTIL to version 1.6. In case you didn't know, there have been several fixes and updates to DBUTIL in the past week alone. I may design and include "history" files for D'Bridge and DBUTIL just to keep everyone up to par on whats going on. - A text file called DB193ENV.TXT is included, explains all the environment settings used by D'Bridge. - Release notes are going to have a TXT extension from now on, to keep Ward happy... (or as happy as Ward can be!) 1.92 / 2 November 2005 ---------------------- WARNING: This is yet another release that contains major updates or source code changes. Install with caution. - First of all, I would like to take a moment to thank all of you for your continued help and support. D'Bridge has come a long way, and dozens of problems have been corrected since 1.58. With your continued help, we can finally have ourselves a mailer that is rock-solid stable and reliable. - The old code from Alpha5000-3 (A3) has been recycled and put back into place, to correct the issue of not being able to have multiple "DB EDIT" windows running at once, or over a local network. Because this change affects the underlining database routines, please run the following tests. This checklist should be ran on *ALL* of my new releases: (1) Recompile the nodelist. (2) Recompile the nodelist, then perform a queuescan. (3) Perform a queuescan, then poll a system. (4) Poll a system immediately on startup. (5) Run DB EDIT first, then poll system via. UTILITIES menu. (6) Create a "dummy" Netmail message with the XMAIL flag. (7) Take that dummy Netmail and then perform a queuescan. (8) On a queue entry, "view" it's details. (9) Display "details" on any nodelist entry. Confirm accuracy. If *ANY* of those database tests fail, either with error 202 or 203 or messages such as "COSTBASE", do the following: (1) "Export" your configuration or backup your entire DB directory. (2) Erase the contents of the DATA directory. (3) Begin the checklist again. If the system still fails at this point, drop Laura a line indicating which checklist number it fails on. For example, if the system fails to generate a proper poll request when selected immediately on startup, indicate problem #4 in an email. Also be sure to tell Laura the following: - The last 5 or 6 lines of your system log. - The contents of your Queue directory. (ie. the QUEUE window) - The list of files in the Queue directory. - I've added several new commands to DBUTIL, as follows: AUTOASSIGN [option] A-[matching address] OR T-[matching area] The AUTOASSIGN keyword, will automatically change/update your Echomail database whenever a new area is added by D'Bridge that has an uplink address (the A- parameter), or that has a matching area name (the T- paramter). Multiple entries are okay, seperated by commas. The following options are available: ALERTFLAG [value] - The "Alert" status flag. 0-9, A-Z. GROUPACCESS [value] - The group access character. 0-9, A-Z GROUPSORT [value] - The group sort character, usually 0-9. GROUPSECURITY [value] - The security level. 0 to 5000. PURGE [value] - Purge except OR purge after days. If you are purging in days, specify a negative value, ie. 7 days should be "-7" PRESERVE [value] - Messages to preserve. Examples: AUTOASSIGN ALERTFLAG A A-1:229/2000 Assigns alert-flag "A" to new areas from my 1:229/2000 uplink. AUTOASSIGN GROUPACCESS B A-2:2/0,2:282/153,4:500/13 Assigns group access "B" from the specified addresses. AUTOASSIGN PURGE -14 T-ALT.*,REC.* New areas from the "ALT" and "REC" Usenet groups will be purged after 14 days. AUTOASSIGN GROUPACCESS A-1:229/2000 AUTOASSIGN GROUPSECURITY 5000 A-1:229/2000 AUTOASSIGN PRESERVE 200 A-1:229/2000 Assigns group A, security level 5000 and a preserve of 200 messages to everything auto-added from my 1:229/2000 uplink. CHANGE [option] [newvalue] The CHANGE command tells DBUTIL to make mass-changes to your Echomail setup, based on the option you select: ALERTFLAG [value] - The "Alert" status flag. 0-9, A-Z. GROUPACCESS [value] - The group access character. 0-9, A-Z. GROUPSORT [value] - The group sort character, usually 0-9. GROUPSECURITY [value] - The security level. 0 to 5000. PURGE [value] - Purge except OR purge after days. If you are purging in days, specify a negative value, ie. 7 days should be "-7" PRESERVE [value] - Messages to preserve. Examples: CHANGE ALERTFLAG A ALERTFLAG B Changes all areas with alert flag "A" to alert flag "B" CHANGE GROUPACCESS A GROUPACCESS Z Changes all areas in group "A" to group "Z" CHANGE PURGE -14 PRESERVE 50 Changes all areas with a 14 day purge value to also have a preserve value of 50. DELETE [option] Deletes areas from your Echomail database based on your criteria. Use with caution. If you make a mistake, use the UNDELETE command mentioned later. ALERTFLAG [value] - The "Alert" status flag. 0-9, A-Z. GROUPACCESS [value] - The group access character. 0-9, A-Z. GROUPSORT [value] - The group sort character, usually 0-9. GROUPSECURITY [value] - The security level. 0 to 5000. PURGE [value] - Purge except OR purge after days. If you are purging in days, specify a negative value, ie. 7 days should be "-7" PRESERVE [value] - Messages to preserve. Examples: DELETE ALERTFLAG A Deletes all Echomail areas that have alert flag "A" DELETE GROUPSECURITY 5000 Deletes all Echomail areas that have a group security of 5000. DESCFILE [file] The DESCFILE command tells DBUTIL to change all the descriptions of the Echomail database to match those found in a text file. The text file should be in ".NA" format, meaning the area tag, at least one space, and then the description. Example: DESCFILE C:\DBRIDGE\FIDONET.NA DELETEDOS (No options) If the DELETEDOS command is executed, then whenever a DBUTIL PURGE is ran and DBUTIL encounteres a "deleted" area (either from another script operation or from DB SETUP), if the area is a Fido *.MSG area, the directory is also deleted. So if you deleted FN_SYSOP, and DBUTIL PURGE is ran again, whatever you specified as your FN_SYSOP message directory, will be erased. Note that if you plan to use the UNDELETE feature mentioned below, you should not use the DELETEDOS command. UNDELETE If UNDELETE is ran, any previous DELETE operations will be "rolled back". Any deleted records in your Echomail database will be restored. - The GUI (full-screen mode) of DBUTIL has been updated accordingly. 1.91 / 31 October 2005 ---------------------- ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ v^v ▄▀▀ ▀▀▄ v^v █ ▄▄ ▄▄ █ █ █ v^v ▀▄▄█ █ █ █▄▄▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ .....woooooOOOOOOOOOOOooooooo..... This is the Halloween edition of D'Bridge. And for your "treats", the following issues have been resolved: - Internet code has been temporarily removed, was causing a problem with memory allocation under certain "rare" conditions under Windows 95. - DBUTIL has been enhanced with a full-screen GUI to access its features, if you don't use any parameters. And the current issues should be resolved with purging and whatnot. The GUI's mini-windows can be played around with your mouse, and the keyboard shortcuts should work as well. Try it out! - Renumbering messages during DBUTIL purge is disabled in this release. - DBUTIL can also be ran in another window on multi-tasking operating systems if you want to purge/archive mail without "tying up" your DB session. It uses file-sharing and record-locking code to ensure safe operations. - DB2RG is no longer included; support for BBS types is planned for a future release in addition to other message formats. - Laura will continue to handle technical support for now. We are in the process of moving so it may take us some time to reply to your emails... 1.90 / 17 October 2005 ---------------------- Warning: This release contains major updates; please BACK UP your system in the event you need to rollback to 1.89sl. - The maximum amount of Netmails able to be processed in a Queuescan has been REDUCED from 2048 down to 1024, to allow the Xmail-on-Netmail packing to function properly. The help system has been updated for "Xmail" in the SETUP EDITOR OPTIONS screen accordingly. - D'Bridge now adds the "PID", "TID" and "CHRS" kludges to all messages created in the internal editor, in the event that someone needs to debug a message from your system (although yes, its obvious from the tear line what generated the message) PID and TID are product identification data kludges, which simply state DB-version-whatever. CHRS is a character set kludge, which defaults to "IBMPC 2", I plan to add support later on for custom kludges and possibly move all kludging to some sort of script language, so you guys can add whatever you want to outgoing mail. - DBUTIL has been completely rewritten from scratch. All of the purging problems should now finally be solved. It was tested with several thousand *.MSG files, both Netmail and Echomail. It also gives detailed reports about its activities, and logs everything to DBUTIL.LOG for your inspection. This log file can be deleted whenever you want. - DBUTIL automatically "renumbers" Fido MSG files during purge processing. - DBUTIL PURGE called on its own will process all areas EXCLUDING Netmail. You must specifically run DBUTIL PURGE NETMAIL to purge/archive Netmail. This was done as a precaution/failsafe. - DBUTIL SORT AREAS now scans your Echomail configuration for deleted areas. If it finds any, and if they are of the Fido *.MSG type, DBUTIL will now automatically remove any old files as well as the old directory. - "DBUTIL.OLD" is Chris Irwin's DBUTIL program, in case you need to rollback or you need both mine and his for some reason. - Preparations are also under way for Internet connectivity, in fact, this version already contains menu and help code for the "big event", if you browse the help system you'll see what I mean. 1.89 / 15 October 2005 ---------------------- - Look at the Help file, and go through the first few sections. I think you'll like it. I wrote some very thorough, detailed information about running D'Bridge under Windows. Mostly geared towards newcomers. I felt that the Help system was due for some updating. I had some free time to spare, and that doesn't happen often! The following help topics have been added: NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR NOTE FROM NICK ANDRE HARDWARE / SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS RUNNING DBRIDGE UNDER MICROSOFT WINDOWS RUNNING DBRIDGE UNDER IBM OS/2 WARP RUNNING DBRIDGE UNDER LINUX THE INTERNET AND DBRIDGE - Thanks to Ward, and a few Russians, I think this MSGID/REPLY nonsense should finally be solved. What I've done was change the code so the entire message is scanned for a MSGID kludge. And obviously a REPLY kludge is added if one exists. Before, my code was only checking the first line of a message. The other problem of only getting REPLY kludges when you reply after the first message should also be solved. Leave it to me to really screw up the way I open/close files. :-) 1.88 / 14 October 2005 ---------------------- - In this version, in-transit Areafix messages are IGNORED and treated as regular Netmail, and subject to the routing specified in the current running event. Areafix requests will NOT be processed unless it has been specifically addressed to your system's primary address or AKA's. Even if you use the FOR keyword in the ALIAS ADDRESSES screen in the BASIC CONFIGURATION menu, you *MUST* specify the alias addresses for the Areafix system to work properly. So if you have a "2:2/1000 for 2:ALL" as an alias entry, "2:2/1000" must be specified again for Areafix to work. - The Help system has been updated accordingly for the above Areafix change. - Problems with no REPLY: kludge being added should be fixed now, hopefully. - My work schedule with IBM is hectic, but please continue to inform me of any bugs or problems. 1.87 / 10 October 2005 ---------------------- I recommend BACKING UP your current installation, or at least installing this version in a new directory... just in case. - "REPLY:" kludges are now added to all replies done in D'Bridge, and that includes BOTH Netmail and Echomail, as well as "Normal" and "Quoted" replies. The REPLY: kludge immediately follows the MSGID: kludge. A tiny text file, DBRIDGE.MSR (in addition to DBRIDGE.MSG) is now created during a message edit, containing the MSGID: kludge from the original message. DBRIDGE.MSR gets erased when D'Bridge saves the reply. Please double-check your DOS events that nothing touches these two files. NOTE: If a MSGID kludge didn't exist in the original message, the REPLY kludge is NOT added. 1.86 / 10 October 2005 --------------------- I recommend BACKING UP your current installation, or at least installing this version in a new directory... just in case. - MSGID apparently calls for a colon, so now it gets one! 1.85 / 9 October 2005 --------------------- I recommend BACKING UP your current installation, or at least installing this version in a new directory... just in case. - A slight correction in the new MSGID code was done for Echomail. 1.84 / 8 October 2005 --------------------- I recommend BACKING UP your current installation, or at least installing this version in a new directory... just in case. (1) The MSGID kludge is now added to all messages originating from D'Bridge according to the FTS-0009 standard by Jim Nutt, and FSP-1029 by Michiel van der Vlist. This kludge is added to all "new" messages, "edited" ones, and copying/forwarding mail in the internal editor. Please be aware of a new, tiny database file called DBRIDGE.MSG, this file keeps track of the next serial number to be used in adding a MSGID. (2) Newcomers can now specify the color scheme they want on installation. 1.83 / 2 October 2005 --------------------- I recommend BACKING UP your current installation, or at least installing this version in a new directory... just in case. (1) This release should start to address the error 202 and 203 bugs that have plagued DB for years. Some code has been rewritten, changed, moved around, and in some cases removed altogether to address the 202/203 problems. (2) In the event of a 202 or 203 error, D'Bridge now politely explains what went wrong and suggests ways to solve the problem before reporting the matter to myself... so 202/203 won't scare away newcomers. :-) (3) DBNET is back... the inclusion of the DBNET nodelist has been done to facilitate hassle-free installations for newcomers. If you have an address in DBNET already, please let me know so I can update the list. (4) The OTHER56K.MCF file has been slightly corrected. (5) Miscellaneous code has been cleaned up for stability reasons. 1.82 / 24 September 2005 ------------------------ I recommend BACKING UP your current installation, or at least installing this version in a new directory... just in case. (1) Khile Klock's DBQ2FTP utility is included (and installed) in this release. This utility translates and moves Queue packets in D'Bridge into standard FTSC files that can be uploaded to FTP servers or local LAN server directories, or whatever you want. Look for DB2FTP94.ZIP installed in your DB directory. (2) Minor miscellaneous code has been cleaned up; nothing overtly special. (3) The next version of DB will address the Error 203 problems with the COMM/MODEM setup screen... I just didn't have time for that right now. Its going to take some work to get that one figured out. (4) I screwed up the release number; this was not supposed to come out until October, but I figured I'd do this one a little early. 1.81 / 1 October 2005 --------------------- I recommend BACKING UP your current installation, or at least installing this version in a new directory... just in case. (1) A free license key is included (and installed) in this release. However, if D'Bridge complains of multiple license keys (it shouldn't), you can delete the file DB100000.KEE and use your old one. (2) Gone are the 200-some-odd MCF files forever, most of them were for anchient 2400 baud modems and the like... the 56k generic MCF file is now the only selection. Its easy to edit and most modems shouldn't have any trouble running it... even if they aren't 56k. Note that the COM port locks at 57600 in this MCF file. Under RARE, and I *do* mean *RARE* circumstances, running D'Bridge with TAME under Windows NT/2000/XP environments may cause a COM port "baud error" (yet another fantastic feature by Microsoft), that the port can't be opened higher than 38400 baud. If this happens, simply change the rate in the MCF file. (3) If you decide to change the MCF (Modem Control File) in the COMM/MODEM setup screen and DB crashes with an Error 203, you will need to manually edit the DBRIDGE.PRM file and change the MCF name in Line 30. I still can't figure out why it crashes here, its got something to do with memory allocation. This will be addressed in a future release. This bug only seems to appear on Windows 95/98/ME systems... doesn't happen on my Windows 2000 workstation; I can change the MCF just fine. (4) XMAIL packet statistics are always shown now during mail processing. Please let me know if this isn't what you want... I like it because I can see real-time stats for any outbound mail created during tossing. (5) Pretty sure I nailed queuescan bugs for large Echomail systems that hub thousands of areas (ie. Usenet groups from the Internet) (6) X00 version 1.53a, the last stable release from Ray Gwinn, is included. (7) D'Bridge now adds the "DV" (Desqview Timeslice) command if it needs to execute the X00 driver. The DV command causes X00 to relenquish timeslicing back to the operating system. In theory, this should work on operating systems other than Desqview... if you run TAME, please let me know what your CPU statistics are when DB is running. (8) D'Bridge now "restarts" itself (does an IPL) after any nodelist compiling, to completely flush out any open arrays or variables in the code. I simply don't have the time right now to address the issues with the memory allocation, probably for a future release. This originally was removed in the 1.80 release, but now its back, for stability reasons. (9) Various internal code has been cleaned up, for the next release which will start to address some performance issues, timeslicing, etc etc. (10) D'Bridge no longer checks for disk space or integrity on archives on new installations... really; who can't afford 2 megabytes of space? (11) The integrity check was removed in order to some some rare bugs when installing D'Bridge under Windows 95/98/ME. (12) This release was CC'd to Chris Irwin, hopefully he can play around with it and tell me if I missed anything... I hope you enjoy this long-awaited release and any suggestions or feedback is welcome, either on the DBRIDGE echo on Fido (preferrably), or email to nick@nickandre.com 1.80 / 20 September 2005 ------------------------ I recommend BACKING UP your current installation, or at least installing this version in a new directory... just in case. (1) This version is a "rollback" to the old 1.70 code, with one exception - the low-level SHARE code detection is changed to always report that the SHARE portion of DOS is present... so in other words, this release should function exactly like the 1.70 code. The license key checking is removed but please place your key files in your directory anyway... just incase. (2) The latest version of DB2RG is included for those of you running D'Bridge with the Renegade BBS software. It takes your Echomail database in DB and "mirrors" it with your message base configuration in Renegade. (3) All of the fixes that worked in the Alpha5000 series are now consolidated into this version. Major changes since 1.54 ------------------------ - Add file-sharing support for multiple DBEDIT executions on a LAN - Fixed problem where DB would answer the phone, then process mail, start an event or other such nonsense. - Fixed the bug where sometimes DB wouldn't load at all unless a parameter (even blank) was specified. Please let me know if this is not the case. - As a side-effect of beta 2101, my system was locked-up all night because of a modem timeout while answering the phone. "Oops." This solves that... - If you want DB to leave your file and directory pathnames alone and not expand them, set the environment variable DB-NOEXPAND to YES. This will allow invalid DOS paths (such as are used by many network OS's...) - A couple of modem control issues have been resolved. The environment variables DB-MODEM-ANSWER and DB-MODEM-OFFHOOK have been eliminated. They have been replaced with function within the MCF file to accomplish the same thing. The DOCS have been updated, but since they don't come with beta releases, here's the new keywords in the MCF file: OFFHOOK <modem string> This defines the command to take the modem offhook. - Default ATH1M0S0=0 ANSWER <modem string> This defines the command to answer the phone if Hardware or Software answer modes are selected. - Default ATA - A new "unsecured" inbound files directory is now supported for systems which want to review all unsecured mail and files before processing. To specify that all data from unpassworded systems should be placed in a certain inbound directory, set the following environment variable: SET DB-UNSECURED-PATH=C:\DB\UNSECUR If the directory does not exist, it will be created. Set like this, D'Bridge will only process mail from secured links or mail picked-up from an outbound call. (Outbound sessions are defined as "Secured.") For D'Bridge to process .PKTs and XMAIL, it must first be moved to the standard INBOUND FILES DIRECTORY (on the DIRECTORY PATHS screen.) Setting this variable causes D'Bridge to treat the normal inbound files directory as a secured file area and using the path specified in DB-UNSECURED-PATH as a holding area for unsolicited mail. - The way in which outbound mail is transmitted has been changed. Due to popular request, the way NETmail packets with file-attaches has been re- designed. Now, for a given priority, attached files are transmitted BEFORE the corresponding .PKT file. This causes the NETmail to not arrive at all unless the attached files are first sent OK. If carrier drops, D'Bridge will try to retransmit ALL queued files, not just the ones that weren't already sent (as before.) Now we are counting on the ZMODEM skip feature to bypass already transmitted files. - Of course, no beta release involving structural changes is complete without a bug (or a could in this case.) FrontDoor added a couple new flags: TFS (truncate file when sent) KFS (Kill file when sent.) These flags were not honored in Beta 2105 and that problem is now fixed. Thanks to the people at PlanetConnect and Arthur Greenberg for pointing out that problem... - A new modem control file (MCF) keyword has been added. According to Wilma Morgel, many new modems are coming out with multi-line responses before the "CONNECT" string. This new feature allows D'Bridge to ignore these messages and (in this beta version ONLY) display them in the log for debugging. IGNORE <MODEM RESPONSE> ie. IGNORE DATA <MODEM RESPONSE> is a unimportant code returned from the modem to be ignored completely. - A new activation file has been added: If DBRIDGE.AMR exists in the D'Bridge root directory, mail will be unpacked and the "after mail received" commands will be executed. This was added to facilitate mail processing from external receivers such as PlanetConnect, etc. Thanks to Martin Belcke for his suggestion. - New MCF files have been added. 272 modems are now supported directly. Thanks to Wilma Morgel for compiling the new list! Changes since version 1.52: 1. D'Bridge now requires a FOSSIL driver. (X00.EXE is supplied) WARNING: X00.SYS "might" not work as a device driver. The "suggested" way of installing the FOSSIL is to run X00.EXE from your AUTOEXEC.BAT file on startup. 2. A serious security problem has been fixed. Let's not discuss what that was... 3. View/Modify queue now has more options for holding mail. 4. The error at byte zero while sending the first file should be gone. 5. Turnaround/pickup problems should be solved wiht all known mailers! 6. Using RingMaster<sm> to detect voice calls has been changed to NOT re-init the modem after a voice call. I can't test this, so let me know if all is well... Changes since version 1.51: 1. DBUTIL PURGE NETMAIL now functions correctly. Only INBOUND messages are purged with this function. 2. D'Bridge has been modified to use the new license keys exclusively as of 1 January 1994. New keys sold will be in the .KEE format and must be registered within 30 days of purchase. If you do not have one, contact Miriam Irwin at Mosaic Press, 1-513-821-1270. 3. Multi-zone support has been totally rewritten. Now, D'Bridge performs the way I had always wanted it to, completely automatic aliasing always. The changes involve the "alias address" field. The field is now in the same format as the routing language; each alias may contain a "filter" controlling when it is used. For example, my primary address is 1:110/68, but I have a zone 201 alias: Alias addresses: 201:201/0 FOR 201:ALL This means that anytime that a zone 201 address is used, the origin or "active" address will be 201:201/0. If my system calls or is called by a zone 201 system, it will act as if its primary address is 201:201/0 for EMSI, YOOHOO, AREAFIX processing and messages. Because of this global change, event aliases are no longer possible or needed; also, there is no command to manually change aliases. It is completely automatic and transparent. You set up how you want to alias by defining the rules in the alias addresses field. 4. Problems with file-forwarding to points have been resolved. Now all file-attach messages will have the inbound files directory added to the subject line so utilities can use find them. As a side effect, all mail received will have the Kill/Sent flag on it if applicable for in-transit messages. 5. Upgrade/Import problems have been found and corrected. This explains a few of the "mystery bugs" we've experienced over the last few years such as the "NET" number disappearing, etc... 6. The editor has been restored to the 1.36 version. It seems to be stable and this release needs to be out by the end of the year. I will be re- writing the editor from "scratch" in the coming months. 7. New COMM drivers have been installed. These are the latest versions of Ray Gwinn's SIO library. Modifications have been made to improve performance under OS/2. 8. ZMODEM has been changed to flush buffers and pause a quarter second before resuming transmission after an error. 9. PKZIP v2.04c is now supported. A plus sign (+) is required before both the PKZIP and PKUNZIP commands to prevent screen corruption. It is not added automatically, but is the default for new installations. 10. ARJ mail should now function properly. 11. You will need to set the environment variable LASTCALL=Y if you wish to use that diagnostic feature. The default has been changed to "disabled." 12. It is no longer possible to use the zonegate option for ZONE 201 mail. There is and never will be a zonegate. 13. There was a problem with date-stamps of received files. This version has fixed a UNIX time bug. 14. DB SETUP should now work fine remotely with such programs as PC-ANYWHERE. 15. MODEM communication problems should be fixed. Please let me know if I'm wrong... 16. KFS (Kill File/Sent) and TFS (Truncate File/Sent) have been added after many years of putting it off. This makes D'Bridge work with programs such as FrontDoor's TossScan and other ECHOmail processors. 17. Two more new flags have been added to the editor: PRN (Print) URG (Urgent) These are for future use. 18. The cost on forwarded messages should now correctly reflect the table. 19. A ZMODEM problem with Binkley "might" be fixed. Please report all the "DEBUG" messages directly to Chris Irwin if there's any trouble. It seemed that Binkley sends a ZRPOS for the EOF position and that was making D'Bridge a bit flustered. That should now be treated correctly. 20. Messages are no longer deleted if a session fails. Please let me know if you find this undesirable. This will result in duplicate NETmail messages in the event of a session failure. Changes since version 1.50: 1. DBUTIL PURGE NETMAIL now functions correctly. Only INBOUND messages are purged with this function. 2. D'Bridge has been modified to use the new license keys exclusively as of 1 January 1994. New keys sold will be in the .KEE format and must be registered within 30 days of purchase. If you do not have one, contact Miriam Irwin at Mosaic Press, 1-513-821-1270. 3. Multi-zone support has been totally rewritten. Now, D'Bridge performs the way I had always wanted it to, completely automatic aliasing always. The changes involve the "alias address" field. The field is now in the same format as the routing language; each alias may contain a "filter" controlling when it is used. For example, my primary address is 1:110/68, but I have a zone 201 alias: Alias addresses: 201:201/0 FOR 201:ALL This means that anytime that a zone 201 address is used, the origin or "active" address will be 201:201/0. If my system calls or is called by a zone 201 system, it will act as if its primary address is 201:201/0 for EMSI, YOOHOO, AREAFIX processing and messages. Because of this global change, event aliases are no longer possible or needed; also, there is no command to manually change aliases. It is completely automatic and transparent. You set up how you want to alias by defining the rules in the alias addresses field. 4. Problems with file-forwarding to points have been resolved. Now all file-attach messages will have the inbound files directory added to the subject line so utilities can use find them. As a side effect, all mail received will have the Kill/Sent flag on it if applicable for in-transit messages. 5. Upgrade/Import problems have been found and corrected. This explains a few of the "mystery bugs" we've experienced over the last few years such as the "NET" number disappearing, etc... 6. The editor has been restored to the 1.36 version. It seems to be stable and this release needs to be out by the end of the year. I will be re- writing the editor from "scratch" in the coming months. 7. New COMM drivers have been installed. These are the latest versions of Ray Gwinn's SIO library. Modifications have been made to improve performance under OS/2. D'Bridge Pre-release 1.35 ------------------------- 27 July 1992 - This pre-release version ABSOLUTELY is obsolete after 30 September 92. - Message size limit has been increased to 16k. - Accounting/translation "Find" no longer causes an infinite loop. - Multiple-addressing (F8 in editor) has been fixed. - The enviroment variable DBFREEMEM no longer has the same effect. The minimum is now 40, preventing people from causing their own problems. - Cyrillic characters previously reserved for internal use in the editor may now be used in text. (The Eastern Bloc should appreciate this) - New license keys will be issued ONLY to those users in the United States and Canada. This is being done to test the registration system before extending it to Europe and Australia. No registrations from Europe will be accepted before the official release. The new keys make no difference in this version, so it shouldn't upset anyone. - For 3 days only, I will be available personally to answer your questions about D'Bridge. Call 1-513-821-1270 from 10:00 AM until 4:00 PM, July 27, 28 and 29, 1992. (That's Monday through Wednesday...) - Next version... THE LONG-AWAITED 1.40 RELEASE!!! Chris Irwin 1:110/68@fidonet.org D'Bridge 1.32 Custom ------------------- 31 January 1992 - Custom for Health Computing Services, Australia - Help system temporarely re-activated, but not complete. PRINT works on true HP Laserjet printers only. Chris, 1:110/68 (Fidonet) D'Bridge Gamma 1.31 ------------------- 25 December 1991 - Packet header structures modified to support the antiquated standard. - Setting the environment variable "RUSSIAN" to any non-blank value will cause the soft-return characters to be displayed. (8A, 8D hex) - Merry Christmas and so forth... Chris, 1:108/68.1 (Fidonet) D'Bridge Alpha 1064 ------------------ 30 March 1992 - This pre-release beta version ABSOLUTELY is obsolete 1 May 92. - There have been enhancements in the online help system. Chris Irwin 1:110/68@fidonet.org D'Bridge Beta 1063 ------------------ 25 March 1992 - This pre-release beta version ABSOLUTELY is obsolete 1 May 92. - AREAFIX has been changed to allow more flexible security. Each ECHOmail area has both a group code (a single letter or number) and the security level (0-9999) as before. Each system with an AREAFIX password also has the groups allowed and security level in its information field. The third parameter on the AREAFIX INFORMATION window has changed; press F1 for documentation of the change. Instead of LEVEL, it's now GROUPS,LEVEL. ie. ABC,501 (means groups A, B and C, level 501) *,9999 (means all groups, all levels) On upgrade, the fields will all be blank. An area without a group code may be access by all systems with an AREAFIX password. (The group may be blank for open access) The 4-digit SORT code for use with DBUTIL SORT has been changed to a single character field. This change was made so that the file-structure of the ADF file didn't have to be altered. The new file format is: EMAIL_address = record zone, net, node, point : integer; Domain : string[12]; end; area_definition_file = record allocated : boolean; alert_flag : char; tag : string[16]; area_name : string[56]; description : string[40]; group_access, group_sort, storage : char; directory_path : string[48]; kind : char; quick_area : integer; default_private, strip_seenbys : boolean; origin_line : string[56]; default_priority : char; org_ADDR : EMAIL_address; area_purge, area_preserve, area_security : integer; area_archive : string[56]; forward_to : array [1..5] of string[56]; end; Chris Irwin 1:110/68@fidonet.org D'Bridge Beta 1062 ------------------- 21 March 1992 - This pre-release beta version ABSOLUTELY is obsolete 1 May 92. - The following changes have been made to "Auto-add ECHO areas:" o If QuickBBS method is selected and area #200 is used, D'Bridge will automatically change to Fido storage format, rather than lose messages or abort processsing. o Fido format now uses the first 8 characters of the conference name for the directory. If there are duplicates, the last digit will be sequenced: DBRIDGE_, DBRIDGE1, DBRIDGE2, etc. o If a file named AREAS.TXT exists, it will be searched for the ECHO area description for new areas. (Fidonet users can rename FIDONET.NA to AREAS.TXT for this purpose!) - Stay tuned for more advances in the processing of large amounts of mail and hundreds of conferences; this is the area currently being testing and revised... - A bug where an AREAFIX rescan would lock-up the system, awaiting console input has been resolved. It was related to the changes for file-locking. Chris Irwin 1:110/68@fidonet.org D'Bridge Alpha 1062 ------------------- 13 March 1992 - This pre-release beta version ABSOLUTELY is obsolete 1 May 92. - The following changes have been made to "Auto-add ECHO areas:" o If QuickBBS method is selected and area #200 is used, D'Bridge will automatically change to Fido storage format, rather than lose messages or abort processsing. o Fido format now uses the first 8 characters of the conference name for the directory. If there are duplicates, the last digit will be sequenced: DBRIDGE_, DBRIDGE1, DBRIDGE2, etc. o If a file named AREAS.TXT exists, it will be searched for the ECHO area description for new areas. (Fidonet users can rename FIDONET.NA to AREAS.TXT for this purpose!) - Stay tuned for more advances in the processing of large amounts of mail and hundreds of conferences; this is the area currently being testing and revised... Chris Irwin 1:110/68@fidonet.org D'Bridge Beta 1061 ------------------- 10 March 1992 - This pre-release beta version ABSOLUTELY is obsolete 1 May 92. - WorkRAM overflow during QueueScan has been fixed. - Lost clusters due to LASTCALL feature should no longer be a problem. If you wish to completely disable the LASTCALL feature, set the LASTCALL environment variable to "N." (SET LASTCALL=N) - With many thanks to our friends in Europe, an old bug with point support and AREAFIX has been resolved. It seemed that an AREAFIX "-" for a point would cause an accidental NET translation in the area manager. This is no longer a problem. Sorry for the trouble it may have caused... Chris Irwin 1:110/68@fidonet.org D'Bridge Beta 1060 ------------------- 9 March 1992 - This pre-release beta version ABSOLUTELY is obsolete 1 May 92. - Full QuickBBS/RemoteAccess message-base locking is in place for use with DESQview or LANs. During ECHOmail unpacking, the message base is unlocked between each packet for one second to allow other tasks to write to the QuickBase. This means that you can read and enter mail in another partition without regard for what the mailer or BBS is doing. - Now, up to 2048 NETmail messages are allowed. The previous limit was 1024 and was exceeded by some file-echo hubs. - Proper recognition of SQUISH-generated packets is now in place. This was an oversight on our end in compliance with the FSC-0039 specification. This bug caused all secure-mode ECHOmail to be tossed to "BADECHO." - Some AREAFIX problems (involving forwarding requests) have been resolved. Chris Irwin 1:110/68@fidonet.org D'Bridge Alpha 1060 ------------------- 4 March 1992 - This pre-release beta version ABSOLUTELY is obsolete 1 May 92. - Full QuickBBS/RemoteAccess message-base locking is in place for use with DESQview or LANs. During ECHOmail unpacking, the message base is unlocked between each packet for one second to allow other tasks to write to the QuickBase. Please report any problems that you find with this logic. It is not well-tested yet. This means that you can read and enter mail in another partition without regard for what the mailer or BBS is doing. Chris Irwin 1:110/68@fidonet.org D'Bridge Alpha 1059 ------------------- 3 March 1992 - This pre-release beta version ABSOLUTELY is obsolete 1 May 92. - Leap day (February 29th) exposed an incredibly stupid bug throughout the code. Sorry about that. - I recently learned (from my father) that I had a misconception about which half of the year is Daylight Savings Time. It is now Standard time, and you should change the start and end dates to refelect this year. (Daylight time starts sometime in April and ends in October) - The FSC-0039 compliant headers are now in place (again.) - The bad session password reply packet now contains ???????? where the password should go. A bad error in Beta 1058 along those lines. Chris Irwin 1:110/68@fidonet.org D'Bridge Beta 1058 ------------------ 25 February 1992 - This pre-release beta version ABSOLUTELY is obsolete 1 May 92. - A new security envelope has been added to the D'Bridge release ZIP file. This prevents unauthorized changes to the release by third parties. When the install is run, you will be asked if you wish to test the release for integrity. It is unwise to continue with the installation if the test fails; aquire a new copy from an official D'Bridge release site (as listed in the DBNET nodelist.) *NOT in place in this alpha. - Baud rates are no longer limited to standard values. Any value that your hardware can handle will be accepted. Make sure you specify the exact baud rate that your modem will handle. (If you say 69220 baud, D'Bridge will actually send data at that speed.) - A new option in the MCF files: TIMEOUT <seconds> (defaults to TIMEOUT 60) This controls the absolute modem timeout when answering or dialing. Actually, the S7 register controls this, but D'Bridge has a failsafe timeout "just in case..." - Xport configuration is back in the advanced menu. - The LOG display now reflects the correct day of the week. (Oops!) Chris Irwin 1:110/68@fidonet.org D'Bridge Beta 1057 ------------------ 19 February 1992 - Help system temporarly re-activated, but not complete. PRINT works on true HP Laserjet printers only. - New field allowing external receivers (FAX, etc.) to be invoked. This is based on modem response codes such as "CONNECT FAX" or "VOICEMAIL." This is located on the ADVANCED - SECURITY/MISCELLANEOUS screen. - Modem initialization strings may now contain the following non-transmitted control codes: ^ Raise DTR v Lower DTR ~ One second pause | Carriage return ie. v~^ATZ - GoldED and other external EMAIL editors are now supported. - Serial I/O and modem control logic have been reworked. - This pre-release beta version ABSOLUTELY is obsolete 1 May 92. Chris Irwin 1:110/68@fidonet.org D'Bridge Beta 1056 ------------------- 7 January 1992 - UTC/UnixTime problem fixed. - New MCF file structure / files renamed. - New file-request status messages will be written to the log. - A text file called FREQ.TXT will be added to the end of file-request status messages instead of the standard signature. (If it exists) - A text file called BADPWD.TXT will be added to the end of "Bad session password" messages instead of the standard signature. (If it exists) - Set environment variable COUNTOVR to YES to analyse overlay performance. - Help system temporarely re-activated, but not complete. PRINT works on true HP Laserjet printers only. - New MCF directive: DELAY <milliseconds> Default is 25; this is the inter-character delay when sending commands to the modem. - Secured ECHOmail fixed. Chris, 1:108/68.1 (Fidonet) D'Bridge Alpha 1055 ------------------- 3 January 1992 - For authorized alpha sites ONLY. (No applications currently being accepted) - New MCF directive: DELAY <milliseconds> Default is 25; this is the inter-character delay when sending commands to the modem. - Help system removed again. Chris, 1:108/68.1 (Fidonet) D'Bridge Beta/1052 ------------------ 10 December 1991 - Point support now functions correctly in all tested cases. - COMM/MODEM SETUP has been completely revised. All fields on this screen must be re-configured. This screen should be self-explanatory. If you are confused, maybe you should wait for the general release including the full documentation. MCFILES.LST contains a directory of MCFILES.ZIP. Do not unZIP this... Modem Control Files will be unZIPped as needed be D'Bridge. Please report problems directly to 1:108/68.1! - The default security level for new areas has been changed to 5000. Chris, 1:108/68.1 (Fidonet) D'Bridge Beta/1051 ------------------ 13 November 1991 - Several problems have been resolved. Chris, 1:108/68.1 (Fidonet) D'Bridge Beta/1050 ------------------ 3 November 1991 - Nodelist problem repaired... Sorry! - There might be a mystery feature. Then again, maybe not. If you find any problems, remember: ONE MAN'S BUG IS ANOTHER'S FEATURE. It's all a matter of perspective. Look at it this way, because the nodelist in 1049 didn't work, you couldn't make outbound calls. Inbound calls are almost always cheaper, so I saved you money. DEFINATELY a feature from my point-of-view. - This has been another version produced entirely while driving down the road at high velocity. Well, I wasn't driving at the time, but when I did drive, I didn't use the computer. "Don't Debug and drive... You might hit a bump and erase a line accidently!" Chris, 1:108/68.1 (Fidonet) D'Bridge Beta/1049 ------------------ 31 October 1991 - This is the HALLOWEEN edition of D'Bridge beta. - Point support, XMAIL and assorted problems have been addressed. - Trick or treat! Chris, 1:108/68.1 (Fidonet) D'Bridge Beta/1048 ------------------ 14 October 1991 - This is literally an "on-the-road" version as it was created while driving down interstate 40 in our motor home. (Yea, we bought one of those 110 volt inverters that lets my PC run anywhere we go. Only $250... Such a deal!! - Bugs are fixed, I think. Enjoy - P.S. The rumors are true. I'm getting married to my best friend, Nancy Jo Smith on the 4th of April. (She's my hero... She was on the world's record for largest all-female skydiving formation, an 88-way) Chris, 1:108/68.1 (Fidonet) Following is a history of the alpha versions that came to create BETA 1048! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.29 ---------------------- 16 September 1991 - An on-the-road fix made while at Arthur's. Hope it works. (I heard that NETmail was broken - sorry for the trouble, but "IT'S AN ALPHA!" Chris, 1:??/?? (Fidonet) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.28 ---------------------- 14 September 1991 - Don't start believing in old superstitions or anything, but the "Friday D'Thirteenth was similar to a version that stepped on a crack in a sidewalk while walking under a ladder with a black cat crossing in front of you. No, the number 13 is indeed lucky, usually. - Saturday D'Fourteenth should make up for yesterday. (Let's hope) "How low can you go?" - All database files have been erased and renamed. They appear in the sub- directory DATA in the DB root. If you ran the program before reading this, you will lose all ACCOUNTING/TRANSLATION information since midnight. If you did change anything, EXPORT the data to COSTING.XDC first! - Problems with machines 30mhz+ should be resolved - Point support "might" be fixed - Fido-style NETmail should now scan 500% faster after the initial scan in each event. - There was an error in the LHA decompression command. It should use the "E" option rather than "X." Press CTL-Y on that field to accept the default. - Smaller... Faster... eh? - I'm on the road. I got my computer out of the trunk of my car because I heard there was trouble. Simple fix. I tried to save too much memory. Chris, 1:??/?? (Fidonet) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.27 ---------------------- 13 September 1991 - Well, I'm on the road as of tommorrow. You may reach me at my parents' until my apartment is ready, October first. - This might be a good version. If you need help, call Arthur. - Dup checking changed out of necessity. You may pass some duplicate mail through during the transition... but hey - it's not your fault. Nobody should send you duped mail in a perfect world. (It is perfect, right?) Chris, 1:??/?? (Fidonet) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.26 ---------------------- 4 September 1991 - Did you ever have a feeling that you just caused lots of trouble? - Now go in to the editor and tell all your echolinks that Professor Irwin is quite sorry... Remind them that mail is like Doritos; they'll make more, lots more. Chris, 1:18/68 (Fidonet) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.25 ---------------------- 3 September 1991 - Complete compliance with all documented and political standards for message packet creation. The correct zone will not be used everywhere. There may still be a potential problem with point support, but I need somebody to show me exactly what the problem is, based on the actions of this version. There will be differences. - Session passwords should not have any security leaks like reported to exist in previous versions. ALL or 1:18/ALL is no longer valid in the session password fields... but then again, I suspect that nobody at all used that feature. - There's a new key in the editor (CTL-K) that will show you how absolutely ridiculous this CTL-A kludge business is becoming. As a courtesy to our customers, the editor now allows you to create your own "hidden messages" by starting a line with CTL-A (a smiley face) and ending it with a hard CR. Only 74-column or less kludges will display nicely, but they certainly will stand out in our editor. - In preparation for the upcoming beta, we will quite soon begin license key registration procedures. Stay tuned to all channels for more details. It seems that we might be rushed to get a public gamma release out becuase of the building pressures at hand... - Also, I'm collecting nodelists. If everyone would do me a big favor and send me a copy of DBNL.AUT and any alternate network lists they have, I am quite curious as to how large the consolidation of all our automatic lists are. Please ZIP DBNL.AUT inside an archive called NLnnnnnn.ZIP, where n's are your key number. Thanks in advance for this help. 1:18/68 is now listed in the Fidonet nodelist. Please send direct and save a stamp! - Oh yea, there's a new log file. I like it, you will too. Chris, 1:18/68 (Fidonet) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.24 ---------------------- 31 August 1991 ** READ THIS FIRST... AT LEAST THE FIRST PARAGRAPH... REALLY! ** - Here's a test to catch those who don't read the DOC file before upgrading. The XMAIL setup screen has been re-written. All previous XMAIL CREATE / EXTRACT commands WILL NOT BE IMPORTED from your previous setup. This is to make sure that it is done right. D'Bridge now REQUIRES the use of the "MOVE" option that all archives have implemented. When DB creates a new XMAIL archive, the move option deletes the packets, saving the entire step where the archive is validated. It only checks to make sure that no of the source files still exist in the queue directory. Defaults have been established for all archive formats supported and you may re-select the default by erasing the entire line in the setup screen for compress / decompress programs. (CTL-Y restores the suggested command format.) The XMAIL commands may not be located in the D'Bridge root for several reasons. I assume you have a path to C:\UTIL or some such thing. There are several new formats for XMAIL, limits on archive and packet size and a different method for selecting default and specific formats used by your mail links. All in all, no big deal - just a cleanup badly needed. ARJ compression requires about 300K of available memory. If you find that it doesn't work, add a plus (+) to the commands to make them DROP instead of PUSH. Actually, ARJ is a special case where I free up as much memory as possible by performing a mini-drop, let's call it a SLIDE. NOTE: The XMAIL archive size limit is currently disabled. A structural change is in the works to make multiple outbound XMAIL files work. - There are several fields missing. In fact, there's a blank line in the middle of PACKET/MAIL control. We don't need those fields. - Point support has been modified. Hopefully it will function better. - Systems running 2400 baud or less will no longer have the modem init string going randomly to your printer. It didn't always print - sometimes the data got written to another file, causing who-knows-what. - This version either takes more or less memory and runs either faster or slower than .23 - let me know what you find. - The COSTING database has changed. It is not located inside DATABASE.DAT/IX, a new, integrated database system that will contain virtually all of the operational data currently scattered around other files and screens. It is possible that changes to ACCOUNTING/TRANSLATION might be lost and the DXC file created at midnight will import. - There were files called SAVE-MON.DXC (SAVE-TUE... etc.) that may be erased; this was supposed to happen automatically. - Let's try this again... This is hopefully the predecessor to a "beta" release! ] You have until 18:00 SMDT (South Miami daylight time) to tell me to "hold the presses" on a beta. The next change I need to make should come after the beta, so I need to get it out there. - This offer isn't void where not prohibited, usually. Chris, 1:18/68 (Fidonet) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.23 ---------------------- 10 August 1991 - What? Nobody found the hotkey in the last version? It's still there, but the "horse of a different color" is history. - This version is hopefully the predecessor to an actual "beta" release! Let me know what you think. - Dynamic events and polling during events have both been fixed to work the way I designed them. If you still have trouble, tell me about it. These events (tagged dynamic) will end as soon as no more mail is outbound - the instant you HOLD the last entry or kill it. - Other things are fixed / different. Intercom mode will not function after the mail session when online with any previous versions. The protocols have changed for a reason you will soon find out about. - Be sure to change the battery inside the DBUTIL.EXE file at least once every six months. (Nicad OK, but Alkaline preferable. DO NOT USE LITHIUM OR ANY FORM OF BROMIUM-TRIOXULATED-SODIUM-DECARBOXILATED GELL-CELLS. THIS COULD CAUSE PERMENANT DAMAGE. You will find a spare battery under the ENTER key on IBM-style keyboards manufactured after December '89. Chris, 1:18/68 (renegade Fidonet) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.22 ---------------------- 1 August 1991 - Congratulations to Bernd Hinkmann and Karim Ashur. Both were crazy enough to look for the hidden hotkey. I said crazy, because if they were wrong, that key would have rebooted their computer. What a time-consuming price for a wrong guess! (Wie die Arbeit, so der lohn...) - I would classify this as a version with nothing really new, just a lot of general clean-up work. There is one thing that you must be aware of: The DBCOST.DAT and DBCOST.IX files are no longer used. Neither will the exported cost file "*.COS" continue being supported. There are new files and exports: COSTING.DAT / COSTING.IX and COSTING.XDC is a default export file. You will need to import your cost file in this upgrade. It should happen automatically before the actual upgrade of the DBRIDGE.AUT... Please let me know if there's trouble. - That's about all... Oh, you may notice a small change to the ACCOUNTING / TRANSLATION screen. Please let me know if you have any complaints about its mode of operation or "ergonomics." That screen template is about to become a standard for all scrolling windows - THIS WEEK. Make sure you let me know about any problems in look and feel or otherwise. I'm still making refinments to it before moving the next database into that format. Please don't mention the fact that the colors are locked in. I'm working on that this evening - I wansted to get this release out for testing ASAP. - The SET ZMODEM=OLD is no longer required. - Black tie optional. - Have fun... Oh yea, there's another secret hotkey. This one involves some new keys and is guarenteed not to boot your computer. (Unless you get it wrong) Chris, 201:201/0 1:18/68 (renegade Fidonet address) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.21 ---------------------- 29 July 1991 TWENTY DAYS since the last alpha? Is that true? Sorry, but I got lots done even though it might not look like it. (The changes are internal structure changes for the most-part.) Before the ALPHA story, I've got something off-the-subject to ask: ------------------------------------------------------ "If you know anyone who has a Yamaha SY-77 Synthesizer, I would be interested in cooresponding with them using NETmail..." ------------------------------------------------------ - There's now a buglist, but you know that. Request BUGLIST.ZIP from your favorite uplink for D'Bridge ALPHA goodies for details. - Many of you tried desperately to find some hidden key sequence in .20 that never existed. Sorry, but I didn't mislead you, there was (and is) a way to activate that new feature, but it wasn't a keyboard action. It seemed like some people like a puzzle, so... CHALLENGE: There is a hidden HOTKEY in D'Bridge that has no other purpose than to simply be discoverd. When the secret HOTKEY is pressed, you will be notified that you found it... First person to tell us what that HOTKEY was will be the winner. For a prize, you will receive no-expsense-paid trip absolutely nowhere. (We're on a limited budget this week...) The prize might not be so hot, but think of it... You'll be famous and maybe even get a movie contract out of the fame you aquire! Na... HINT: It is not a series of keystrokes, but a single combination of keys pressed, maybe with CTLs and ALTs and so forth, Maybe not. - First, addressing high-priority BugList reports: 1. <*> BELL David Wurz 10 Jul 91 18:52 Mailer sounds bell and goes out to lunch if phone rings while it doing anything else. IRWIN: Well, tell your wife I'm sorry. It finally happened to me and I was able to isolate the problem. I hope it's gone and not a multi-dimensional bug. 2. <*> Lockup Ken Irwin 11 Jul 91 00:10 Confirming Robert Vanburkleo's problem. Total system lockup after mail session. IRWIN: Sorry, Dad. The lack of an EMS driver was the cause of this one. I neglected to test to see if an EMS driver was loaded before I tried to use it. This happened generating the LASTCALL report. 3. <*> DBRIDGE_LOG Sir Dep 11 Jul 91 19:04 After upgrading to 1047.19, I found that using wordstar 5.5 I was having trouble editing the DBRIDGE.LOG file. Parts of the file would be missing, and when saving changes, the first part of the log would get lost. IRWIN: Jim, I'm not sure about that problem. It may have been caused by the lack of an EOF character or editing the log while pushed to DOS or in DESQview. Also, a crash of D'Bridge might give the log a fragmented appearance as a full 512 bytes are buffered before being committed to disk. I've made a slight change debuffering that may or may not fix the problem. (if it was as I assumed...) 4. <*> UTC Sir Dep 11 Jul 91 19:31 The UTC time variable won't remain constant. It looses the confidence percentage, and doesn't work properly. This has been a problem since Beta 1046. (Beta 1046 kept the reliability part). A system calling in with a time variation would reset the local TZ from correct to +0. The allow/sync system statement (set to NONE) doesn't work all the way back to 1046. IRWIN: The UTC and CLOCK system has had a few errors resolved. As to whether it's fixed as you need, "time will tell." Bad pun... 5. <*> QKey_Error Scott Munhollon 12 Jul 91 00:37 When scanning the queue returns 'DEBUG: Queue Key Not Valid' and writes this entry to the LOG file repetively until it is manually interfered with or the disk gets full (!). Dean Laviolette 14 Jul 91 05:16 Also ran into the "DEBUG: Queue Key Not Valid" today. The log was over two megabytes when I noticed. No details as to why at this time. IRWIN: Well, I was awaken the other night by the sound of the "HELP ME, MY DISK IS FULL!" alarm that D'Bridge uses. It's desperate plea for attention worked as it was supposed to and I got up to check it out. I had just deleted my log file an hour earlier and it had grown to over a megabyte in just a few minutes. Luckily it was just before midnight and AutoUpdate was the only thing that caused it to stop before completely filling the disk with that debug message. I put it there for a reason and I'm glad that people noticed; it wasn't intended to get your attention in that manner... I think it's fixed. The message (WHEN it occurs,) should only happen once, so please try to notice if it appears in your log. It will now go into a TERSE log. 6. <*> Wait_Screen Bob Wingender 12 Jul 91 07:34 The Fossils copyright notice is corrupting the wait/idle screen. When I use any ESC key menu or exit to the editor/external program and then return to the Idle/Wait screen, I'll have the Fossil's Copyright notice overlaying part of the screen, at the top. I have seen, at one time, three Fossil notices overlaying the Main screen. IRWIN: Yea, I guess it would. I forgot about the "Quiet" option in the open call. D'Bridge no longer access the FOSSIL at all, as it is my understanding that there is no problem, whether the FOSSIL is HOT old COLD upon startup. 7. <*> NoModemLights Mitch Williams 14 Jul 91 12:54 With a Hercules monochrome addapter, the operator has no idea what the the modem is doing. This feature did work in 1046. Current solution: VGA! IRWIN: I guess I neglected to mention that ALPHA versions don't work on monochrome systems. Sorry. I'll attack the color problem all in one pass near the end of testing. Maybe some colored plastic you could tape to the screen would trick DB into thinking it's a CGA monitor. (On second thought, it might not work, but who knows?) 8. <*> NORING Bryan Curry 22 Jul 91 14:17 The audible ring alarm is not happening all the time IRWIN: Try it now. - There's nothing new that I'm going to officially tell you about it. Those in-development feature that you have figured out can be activated by setting an environment variable are not complete. Please... not a single bug report about a feature that you activate by a secret environement string. - I have made an experimental change in ZMODEM to try to solve the long delay that occurs when calling a Binkley system who has no pickup mail for you. I've know about this delay for about a year, and I've known the cause. I firmly believe that it's Binkley's fault for not following the ZMODEM spec in this case, but I've tried to make a work-around. I could be wrong about saying it's not a D'Bridge bug, but I don't think so. The drawback from this Binkley patch is that it is possible that this fix may cause the old "Can't pick-up mail from a FrontDoor system" problem. It seemed like when one was fixed, the other was broken... If you find that there is trouble with picking up mail on an outbound call, you can disable the ZMODEM change by setting the environment variable "ZMODEM" to "OLD" in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file: SET ZMODEM=OLD (if you have trouble) Please report all cases where this is needed! - PLEASE READ THE BUG REPORT BEFORE ADDING A NEW BUG TO THIS LIST THAT IS THERE ALREADY! - ZMODEM file-transfers have been limited to daylight hours only. Between sunset and sunrise, XMODEM must be used or you are in violation of some obscure Fidonet policy (in some regions.) You can get around this limit by setting the environment variable "ZMODEM-AFTER-DARK" to "ENABLE" in your AUTOEXEC.BAT. Chris, 201:201/0 1:18/68 (renegade Fidonet address) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.20 ---------------------- 9 July 1991 - I'm not going to go into great detail because I'm rather tired; I've been working three-straight days, with only food and sleep to break up the excitement. - ZMODEM problems are, if not solved, different. (That's a good way to put it, eh?) - I don't want to make anyone angry by telling you about the new features, so I decided that I would wait a few days and see how rumors travel. I'll give you this hint: There are three new features, two of which are closely related. The first person that figures out how to activate the new screen wins. (what I don't know...) - There is still a known problem in point support. I didn't even begin to address that; there were other pressing problems that warranted a release this evening. - D'Bridge will no longer walk your dog; due to a lack of interest in the dog-walking feature, the hardware was discontinued. I'm sorry, but this time it's just not my fault. - All in all, this release has not been put to the test that the last one had, but I'll stand behind it (to duck!) Enjoy, Chris, 201:201/0 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.19 ---------------------- 6 July 1991 - This release was essential because the FROM and SUBJECT fields of NETmail messages packed by D'Bridge had random character preceding the actual data. Because of this problem, I had to release this version with only two bytes of code modified because I couldn't produce a patch - I wasted about 1/2 hour trying. Sorry for the wasted phone time. - Another bug was that ALT-T, ALT-F and ALT-P did not function properly in the editor. - The letter "G" is no longer allowed in ECHOmail messages. Please another mailer to send messages containing the letter "G." Next week, "Q" will be replaced with "B." (It gets better...) Later, Chris, 201:201/0 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.18 ---------------------- 6 July 1991 First of all, the news: [a message from my now former NET host, edited for brevity] Msg # 1014 Private, Immediate, Rcvd Date: 04 Jul 91 07:13:00 From: Scott Samet on 1:135/990 Friends of Dorothy in Miami FL To: Chris Irwin on 1:135/303 Unlisted node in Miami Area & Florida Keys Subj: Sorry about that... ____________________________________________________________________________ > Because I didn't have a deposit on file, I got a rapid-fire series of > five interrum [telephone] bills in a 9 day period... All due the day > before they arrived! > Anyway, if you could be so kind as to remove the "DOWN" flag for the > next cutoff period (12 July, I assume,) I would appriciate it. On June 17, your system appeared on my undialable list, and I discovered that your data and voice numbers were disconnected. I placed your node in DOWN status. After two weeks in DOWN status without contact, I removed your node from the nodelist. That was submitted to RC18 yesterday morning as part of the routine weekly update. As a commercial software vendor, you receive a large amount of mail. When you went down without notice, and stayed down without contact, I had to return that mail, on my time and my expense. Two or three weeks before this incident, you used node number 135/303 without making netmail application, contrary to my explict telephone instructions. Mail for 135/303 was routed to my system in reply to your traffic using that address. Since this was not a listed node, the mail was orphaned, and I had to redirect it manually. In the past, you have tested D'Bridge by sending larges files to my system, filling my inbound file area and making it unavailable for legitimate purposes. Your conduct suggests a complete disregard for Fidonet rules and procedures and an inconsiderate abuse of the hardware, time and money that I donate to Fidonet in my service as NC. It is for these reasons that I decline to reinstate you. You may contact 18/0 to apply for an independent node number, or appeal my decision. Scott Samet *EOF - I've been kicked out of Net 135... - Alpha .17 was never released. - ECHOmail problems are resolved, hopefully. - TRY ALT-D while reading ECHOmail in the editor. You might like it. - Because of the ALT-D feature, the PATH line will be stored by D'Bridge when unpacking mail - EVEN if you have SAVE SEEN-BYs set to NO. - The format of the .ADF file has changed. If you use any utilities that rely on the 1.30 file structures, watch out. It will change again within the next week or so. - Mail waiting is back. The default is that you will not be notified about any ECHOmail received. To enable notification of ECHOmail, use the setup screen for LOCAL/ECHOMAIL AREAS and add an "ALERT FLAG" for each conference you wish to know about. Since a limited number of flags can be displayed on the status line, you should group the areas logically. Flags may be any ASCII character greater than space. HINT: for the BETA echo, hold down the ALT key and press 225 on your numeric keypad. That enters a beta symbol. If you don't use D'Bridge to unpack ECHOmail, you may want to have your batch file or mail processor create a DBRIDGE.EMW file. A small number of characters from the file will be displayed on the status line for "ECHOmail waiting." - Unpacking/forwarding has a logic for operations with limited disk space. Let me know if it doesn't do what you think it should. - Please don't complain about terminal mode. I'll get to it soon. - Modems over 1200 baud are no longer supported. - Just kidding, have fun and don't go skydiving without me. Ciao, Chris, 201:201/0 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.17 ---------------------- 4 July 1991 - This version was never released. Take care, Chris, 201:201/0 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.16 ---------------------- 24 June 1991 Well, there are certainly some bugs fixed in this one. However, I didn't receive enough feedback on .15 to really know what its problems were. I've also been finalizing the new nodelist format. More details will be coming soon... I don't feel like typing a whole lot of details right now, I'm tired and have been working hard on it all day! Take care, Chris, 1:135/303 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.15 ---------------------- 15 June 1991 This is yet another version that will either work GREAT or cause you lots of grief. Be sure to keep a copy of what you previously used. - Problems have been corrected. - New problems have been added. - Most old bugs remain. Take care, Chris, 1:135/303 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.14 ---------------------- 4 June 1991 This is one of those versions that will either work GREAT or cause you lots of grief. Beware and hang-on to Alpha .13! - D'Bridge may now be run from another directory (with a PATH to the root directory for DB) It changes to the DB directory, then changes back on exit. - The editor will now run for MANY more configurations using the PUSH method. I can PUSH to the editor, then PUSH to DOS and still have 50K free (starting in a 550K environment.) - DB EDIT takes only 200K. - DB EDIT has different operational commands now, though the old ones are still supported. I need to get away from Function keys for commands as I later will have F1 for help, etc. - New editor functions: MARK Marks the current message with the LASTREAD pointer. Along the same lines, only reading the next message advances the MARK, if you just go to the last message with LIST mode, the MARK is not moved. Press RIGHT ARROW and read the next message and the mark will be changed. NEXT These options simply switch to the next or previous message area PREVIOUS without using the AREAS selection screen. Don't worry - I'll soon have modes where it will advance to the next area with un- read mail, etc. - Overall, the editor has a slightly new look and feel. I'll try not to sue myself for the similarity! :-) - A bug that caused the display of "PLACE?" and a crash is gone. Take care, Chris, 1:135/303 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.13 ---------------------- 2 June 1991 Nothing new, just better. - Sessions with TIMS and SEAdog should be improved. - Running the editor or DROPping to DOS shouldn't crash the system. Take care, Chris, 1:135/303 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.12 ---------------------- 31 May 1991 For purely personal reasons, this will be the last release until Tuesday, at the earliest. This fixes the fact that D'Bridge didn't like to send files to any other system that wasn't also an ALPHA! Take care, Chris, 1:135/303 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.11 ---------------------- 30 May 1991 I guess you guys want your session passwords to work again... ...Well, OK. Take care, Chris, 1:135/303 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.10 ---------------------- 30 May 1991 I finally experienced two problems that people were talking about... ZMODEM LOCKUP -and- ANSWERING-A-MILLION-TIMES-A-MINUTE ...I hope I have at least one of these solved! *NEW FEATURE* (Yes, I couldn't help it.) On the NODELIST CONFIGURATION screen, you will find a new field called "SYNONYMS." This allows D'Bridge to translate a handy codeword to a fully qualified address. For example, anywhere I need to list a node number, I type "TOM" and instead of the nodelist alpha-search, I immediately get the address 2:280/280; in the editor, I get his full name as well. You can use short codes like "C" for Chris or "JOHO" for Joaquim. This is very handy. Take care, Chris, 1:135/303 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.9 -------------------- 29 May 1991 This should be a good one (or a bad one.) It could go either way. I've spent HOURS cleaning up some memory stuff and now it should definately use less memory. You make think it is using more, but the truth is that the previous versions were liars. When you told it "380K" total memory, it used about 430K or so! The solution to this problem was obvious. I'm tired of explaining what are the best memory settings, so I've eliminated the decision. D'Bridge now allocates memory automatically, providing the optimal settings and the most available DOS memory. I think that EVERYONE will find that their memory stats are better than before - it's in the LOG when it comes up. Also, take a look at DB-ALPHA.LOG that this one creates. If any of the numbers get critically low, I'd like to know about it. Here's what I am seeing as "normal." START: STK = 983b I8STK = 1800 910529 12:31:10 END: STK = 1621 I8STK = 0bb0 LOW = 004270 MEM = 00845a These numbers are "cool." Let's compare the lowest numbers you experience in the BETA echo. Don't send them too me netmail unless they're under 0100 (hex.) ---- Q. What's fixed? A. Lots of stuff: AREAFIX UNPACKING ABORT / RESUME PACKET ZMODEM LOCKUP PROBLEMS ? (I hope I squashed it) I'm sure there's more, but I forget what. Have fun with this one and if anyone can't import their configuration due to the new memory subsystem, please let me know via NETmail. I think all will go well. Sincere thanks go out to Arthur Greenberg for helping test this one just hours before its release. His configuration was a good one to test as it was quite a bit larger than mine. Take care, Chris, 1:135/303 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.8 -------------------- 27 May 1991 Looks like Binkleyterm-syncs and non-D'Bridge mail-pickup were a couple problems that justified this release. Viele Gluck, (did I spell that right? Entschuldigung, if not) Chris, 1:135/303 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.7 -------------------- 27 May 1991 I got lots of sleep while the world was having lots of EMSI/A1 sync failures. I'm awake now... Later, Chris, 1:135/303 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.6 -------------------- 27 May 1991 It's been a great day! Lots of bugs squashed in this one, many remain, no doubt. My voice number leaked out to the world, so I got quite a bit less done than normal, but it also gave me some more input as to the bugs I didn't understand. BTW, if you got my voice number, please try to only call for important matters. When I release an alpha that has a major bug, I seem to spend the day on the phone listening to the same complaint over and over. I will make a system whereas you know whether I am aware of a bug already... Here's what's fixed: - ZMODEM... Shouldn't lock-up anymore and should be stable and fast. - PICKUP from Binkley and FrontDoor should once-again work. Let me know if this isn't the case. - AREAFIX problems have been cured, tell me what's still wrong with it. - LOCAL/ECHOMAIL AREAS had a problem with the sort routine whereas points would screw up the NET or ZONE number of the whole listing. Thanks to John Rafuse for pin-pointing this problem as the pattern wasn't obvious. - There are many other little fixes here and there, so I can't think of all the details. My appreciation goes out to Steve and Richard, QuickBBS gurus and authors for their excellent attention to detail and spending a fortune on long-distance. One pre-alpha managed to trash their entire message base, and I didn't even get yelled-at. That's pretty understanding of Mr. Gabrillowitz. Anyway, this is the best I can do for a late-night release, .5 had problems that you guys/ladies don't deserve to live with. Later, Chris, 1:135/303 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.5 -------------------- 25 May 1991 Oops... EMSI -Chris ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.4 -------------------- 25 May 1991 Looks like I'm working out the bugs. This version is to save those people who are stuck with the problems in the last few alphas. There are still known bugs, such as AREAFIX problems. I will address those on Sunday. The Intercom seems to work fairly well now. It will continue past the end of a session, provided there is no more than 60 seconds on inactivity on either end of the line. It's true that you can add another minute to an inbound caller's phone bill, so please let me know what security arrangements should be added. Once in the intercom, there is no way to exit other than letting the call complete or hanging-up with CTL-A. When there are other interactive options, I will change that. Please don't report bugs in terminal mode. I know. When telling me about a problem, MAKE SURE TO INCLUDE THE EXACT VERSION #. -Chris ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.3 -------------------- 25 May 1991 More problems caused me to only release the last version to a few unlucky people. This one has a rather nifty addition. It has to do with ZMODEM. Let's see if you can find the new feature. This one's SURE to win us some supporters. BTW - The new feature is in its infancy and definately needs some work, like when the mail is over, D'Bridge hangs up, whereas you might want to continue what you are doing... It is possible that you will witness bad performance from ZMODEM. Let me know. I can only test here at 2400 baud... You'll see. BTW - it only works between new alpha systems. When telling me about a problem, MAKE SURE TO INCLUDE THE EXACT VERSION #. -Chris ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.2 -------------------- 24 May 1991 One more time. The ".1" version had a bug which made the system address have a random point number attached. Oops. -------- The last two alpha versions had a bad problem with DBUTIL - The address was not read correctly from DBRIDGE.PRM. -------- Other minor changes, too small to mention. When telling me about a problem, MAKE SURE TO INCLUDE THE EXACT VERSION #. -Chris ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.1 -------------------- 24 May 1991 Oops - I forgot to warn the people using the previous 1047 alpha versions... The install will run "DB EXPORT" which (in error) runs DBEDIT. Just exit the editor - make sure that DBRIDGE.AUT is current! -------- There's some new modem handling with answering and collisions. Let me know if it causes trouble. -------- Hopefully, some of the strange problems with ZONES will be solved. -------- Just so this doesn't catch you off guard. CTL-A to abort an outbound call now causes the "next call" pointer NOT to advance. This is so you can type "CTL-A, H" to hold the current call. I like it better - hope you do too. -------- I think that's all that is different. Feedback, please. -Chris ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- D'Bridge Alpha/1047.0 -------------------- 24 May 1991 What's new? -------- Well, the installation procedure should now be obvious. Run the EXE file in your D'Bridge root directory. WARNING: The release file (DB1047A0.EXE) will self-destruct after the installation has completed. To save an un-installed copy, save the ZIP file. -------- NODELIST.AUT is now created automatically by EMSIs with unlisted systems. You will notice that it adds all a system's alias addresses as well as those nodes not in any of your nodelists. You can now reply to the renegade nodes that aren't really in a network - providing they supply the phone number in the EMSI-IDENT packet. (DB ad FD both do...) -------- BBS: *T should now pass the time until the next event properly. I had "X-Y" when I really meant "Y-X." That will do it every time. *L now passes the line on which the call came in. DATA/1, 2 or 3. This is translated as a single digit, 1-3. RINGMASTER or DISTINCTIVE RING may be available from your phone company. If so, you can use D'Bridge on a shared VOICE/DATA line or run up to three BBS systems on one phone line. The users will not know that you don't have three separate systems. -------- FIXED: - Session passwords, I hope. - Events and scheduling. WOW! This was really messed-up! -------- Please make all bug reports reference version 1047-a0 so I understand what you're talking about. BTW - I'm in this week's DBNET nodelist, so you can reach me! Take care, Chris