After a successful beta-test phase, a FIX17FT1 update is about to be
distributed to all the 1.7f servers registered in PEERS NAMES, including
non-CREN members, but excluding servers that have already been sent 1.8a
but did not load it yet (to prevent the accidental installation of
FIX17FT1 on top of 1.8a).
If for any reason you receive 1.8a before installing FIX17FT1, you can
either load FIX17FT1 and install 1.8a on top of it, or simply discard
FIX17FT1 with an INSTALL CANCEL FIX17FT1 command. It does not matter
since the 1.8a update replaces all the files included in FIX17FT1. But,
whatever you do, do not install FIX17FT1 on top of 1.8a.
Mandatory legal disclaimer: the FIX17FT1 update is being offered by Eric
Thomas, at no charge and on an exceptional basis, pursuant to the
"Program maintenance" section of the electronic licensing agreement that
came with version 1.7 of LISTSERV. L-Soft international Inc. is not
involved in the delivery of this update. L-Soft's only guarantee is that
it will not charge you anything for installing or using the FIX17FT1
update. Note that this disclaimer does not apply to FIX18AT, which was
provided by L-Soft to its customers under the terms of their respective
maintenance agreements.
FIX17FT1 replaces a number of data files, enabling INTPEERS NAMES support
and basic LISTSERV-TCP/IP ("LTCP") exploitation through the use of
"inactive" code in 1.7f. The development of the LTCP exploitation code
started a few months before the release of 1.7f (April 1993), and was
about halfway through on the date of release. Thus, it was possible to
activate basic LTCP exploitation by enabling this inactive code, and
retrofitting all fixes and adjustments made since then to that part of
LISTSERV. Luckily, it turned out that the only module that really needed
changing was LSVBITFD. Consequently, FIX17FT1 does not replace LSWPLIB
and will not overwrite your local modifications.
Unfortunately, the inactive code shipped with 1.7f did not include
support for SERVICE NAMES yet. SERVICE NAMES support required significant
but straightforward changes to one part of LISTSERV, and a number of
small changes to other functions, as the information returned by a
central routine could then take the form of an Internet hostname. The
central change could be retrofitted easily, or it could even be emulated
by feeding 1.7f a specially tailored copy of DOMAIN NAMES. However,
tracking all the small changes was more difficult, especially as some of
them were done in the process of converting a particular function from
REXX to PASCAL. It was felt that implementing SERVICE NAMES support would
require extensive, wide-scale beta-testing (due to the large number of
seldom used, peripheral functions impacted) and could impact robustness.
The FIX17FT1 change, on the other hand, is much safer since the code is
over one year old and presumably all the bugs have already been found.
The fixes for these bugs were available for review, the applicable ones
were retrofitted, and the resulting code was tested on a large server for
several days without problem.
Concretely, this means that FIX17FT1 will provide LTCP exploitation as
follows:
1. Interoperability: full solution. Servers with FIX17FT1 will again know
about the lists hosted by servers which migrated to LTCP, and will
also broadcast information about their own lists to LTCP servers. The
same goes with the other "network wide" functions. Thus, the loss of
end-user functionality caused by the move of other servers to LTCP
will be solved by the application of FIX17FT1 (within a week or two).
There will again be a single LISTSERV network, and not an "old
network" plus a "new network". The fix will also eliminate many of the
error messages about "Server XXX not found in peers table".
2. Performance: partial solution. While the LTCP servers can be used for
DISTRIBUTE purposes upon the application of FIX17FT1, this usage will
remain limited because SERVICE NAMES support is not included. 1.8a
will be required for full DISTRIBUTE exploitation.
A current copy of INTPEERS NAMES will be distributed shortly after the
fix.
Eric
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