[HECnet] Announcing TCP/IP V2.8 for RSX-11M-PLUS

[Johnny Billquist]

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

This is version 2.8 of BQTCP/IP.


It's been four months since the last official update, and there been 
various smaller improvements.


Highlights:

. Several smaller issues have been fixed which could cause crashes under 
certain circumstances.
. Improvements in ICMP error handling.
. Performance improvements in TCP, telnetd and Multinet.
. Improved behavior in the DNS resolver.
. Improved handling of many things in MAIL.
. More patches for issues in RSX and LAT.



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


TCP:
. Bugfix. In some special circumstances, TCP could crash out with an odd 
address trap when doing an IO.REJ.
. Fixed TCP handling at close, which could sometimes cause a spurios 
retransmit.
. Fixed TCP behavior at large packet loss, which could lead to very bad 
performance. We now reset the delayed ACK handling when we get to a 
delayed transmit.
. In Time wait state in TCP, a probe caused RST. It should be ignored.
. Improved window update handling in TCP when we have lost packets.


ICMP:
. Improved ICMP time exceeded error handling. Also affected PING and 
TRACERT.
. Improved ICMP error return value for destination unreachable to have 
IE.NRJ with subcode in high byte. Second word of IOSB now contain 
possible additional information. Also affected PING.
. Bugfix. ICMP error generation could corrupt the IP pool in some 
circumstances.
. ICMP errors returned for destination unreachable failed to include the 
correct subcode.


DNS:
. Improved resolver to ignore leading spaces in hostnames.
. Improved name resolver to have more randomness in returning a random 
result to a name lookup with multiple answers.


MAIL:
. Changed mail back to using MAILDN for new mail delivery.
. Improved MAILD. Refuse connections from hosts with no reverse DNS, or 
who claim to be someone else at EHLO/HELO.
. Fixed maild. If outgoing mail have format=flowed, the mail was missing 
an extra space on lines starting with space.
. Added mail blocking based on from address.
. Improved MAILD memory usage.
. Improved MAILRD handling of LAST keyword.
. Improved MAILRD handling of reading current/next/previous mail.
. Improved MAIL11 address rewriting in MAILD.


HTTPD:
. Bugfix in HTTPD. CGI execution could cause a spurious error.


RSX:
. Added patched LAT, DCL, RMSDSP, RMSDAP
. Changed TT: driver patch. Updated MCR.



Some additional notes:

As usual, I would recommend people to update as soon as possible.
The changes are not critical, but will lead to a much better experience.

The patches to the TT: driver cannot be applied automatically, but 
requires users to apply the patches themselves, and then run SYSGEN to 
generate a new system.
Once added, the TNC2 task can be run at login, and will define logical 
names for the user telling where he is connected from, if using telnet.
The TT: driver patches also allows the updated MCR to give more 
information with the DEV command (SHOW TERMINAL in DCL).

The other patches to RSX can be applied automatically by IPGEN, either 
if used interactively when answering YES to the question about applying
RSX patches, or by running IPGEN explicitly to do the patches, with the
command:

@IPGEN PATCH

Specific information about the patches:
LAT: Fixes a memory leak, and adds the ability to read where a terminal 
connection comes from when using LAT, using SF.GMC.
RMSDAP: Fixes a bug in getting the file protection, so the XAB gets 
filled in correctly for remote files.
RMSDSP: Fixes that some numbers were displayed in signed octal, which 
should have been displayed in decimal or unsigned octal, depending on 
number.
DCL: Added terminal attributes for COLOR.
MCR: Too many fixes to be listed here...


As usual, the distribution is available from:
ftp://mim.update.uu.se/bqtcp.dsk
ftp://mim.update.uu.se/bqtcp.tap

!!! BQTCP is also available through RPM !!!


(As an additional note, if there are any problems communicating with Mim 
using port 21, the ftp service is also available at port 10021)

The documentation is also available through ftp on Mim, or also at 
http://mim.update.uu.se/tcpipdoc

I hope people find this update useful.


On a final note, Mim have moved. Mim.Update.UU.SE still points to the 
machine, but the actual name is now Mim.Stupi.NET, and in case 
Update.UU.SE cease to work at some point, Stupi.NET should still be fine.


	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol