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  Maintenance Log
  In reverse chronological order
January 2008:
  • Added pre-compiled binaries for the ASUS Eee PC. Many thanks go to Monty Dog for re-packaging and contributing the .deb package.
November 2005:
  • Corrected a problem which occured when adding a new ISP entry with an edited PTT database having fewer than the initial number of MAXNUM_PTT PTTs defined. initXisprc() would reset "ISPPTT" to PTT_GR_EPAK, but that sequence number might not be within the valid range as defined by "numPTTs" in the global section of the .xisprc.
June 2004:
  • Increased the total number of digits for the cost input field from 6 to 8, allowing for (rather eccentric IMHO) long fractional values.
  • Fixed bug in PTT editor code whereby the charge period would be forced to 1 even when the PTT in question would charge by unit. The resulting xispPTTs file would be rejected upon the next invocation of xisp since the relevant parsing code requires this parameter to be 0.
June 2003:
  • Migrated all code to using the stdarg interface for variable argument calls; the varargs interface has been recently declared deprecated.

  Changes since version 2.6p1
  In reverse chronological order
  • Converted all varargs calls to stdarg calls; this was needed for most recent Linux distributions. xisp now compiles without problems under gcc v3.x and XForms v1.x.
  • The new xisprccv knows how to read the PTT database and convert old connection totals from version 2.6 to version 2.7.
  • xisp-down is now called twice; a first time when Disconnect is pressed, and a second time after the link is disconnected. A currently hard-coded timeout of 20 seconds exists while waiting for .xisp-down to terminate when it's called the first time.
  • Added a -pidfp parameter for Solaris users that would like to use the pppd distributed from Sun. This release was based on ppp-2.4.0, and the change with regards to the PID file is the prefix used, e.g. for the first PPP interface, the PID file name is sppp0.pid instead of ppp0.pid. Many thanks go to Eberhard Schruefer for the suggestion and subsequent testing.
  • Completed format changes in .xisprc and increase in GUI feedback; the user can now convert .xisprc at startup via GUI dialogs; pop-ups added for cases of abnormal program termination.
  • Inserted patches from Pierre Gaufillet which may be used to share xisp among multiple users, all using the same options and logging files. xisp and xispdial are installed as setuid binaries, the owner being a UID created specially for this purpose. Many thanks Pierre, and sorry for taking so long to merge your idea with the official release.
  • Inserted patches from Váradi István which cure an old problem in the NT-RAS call-back code: xisp (up until now) checked if the first pppd process had exited by trying to read the PID file in /var/run. However, this file is deleted before the serial port is unlocked by the first pppd process. This results in spurious failures when starting the second pppd process since the port is found locked. The code now looks for the lock file (e.g. /var/lock/LCK..ttyS? on Linux) if the PID file is not found in /var/run. Many thanks Váradi!
  • Added new animation icons; the LEDs on the modem now blink when there is network traffic.
  • Fixed bugs in xispdial related to empty lines in the dialing environment file .xispenv or the XISPDIAL environment variable. Such lines would cause erroneous parsing of the dialing parameters. The new method no longer uses bscanf contributed by Andrew Bettison, so it was removed from the source tree.
  • Treated numerous bugs introduced by the changes in the PTT cost logging code described below and its implications in GUI operation.
  • Changed the logging facility so that total cost is saved for both types of PTT charging schemes (by unit and per amount of time). This enables using different PTTs for the various ISPs, without the need to reset log files, making the logging facility much more useful in the modern competitive world :) The only thing examined when the PTT is changed for a particular ISP is the name of the currency used; if it is the same, no resetting of logs takes place. If the currency name differs, a warning is issued before any log resetting takes place.
  • As direct consequence of the above modification, the PTT/Zone selection is no longer global, but is now performed on a per-ISP basis.
  • Corrected minor bug in the logging module whereby the number of PTTs in the database would not be reflected in the .xisprc file if, after a PTT database update, the .xisprc file was not changed and consequently saved anew.
  • Updated the two Hellenic OTE PTT entries, the Italian PTT entry (thanks go to Ezio for the update), and added a new entry for Finland (thanks go to Jari Eskelinen for providing the tariff information).
  • Upgraded /etc/resolv.conf generation in the ip-up/ip-down scripts; local DNS server(s) and domain are now masked by the DNS server(s) and possibly the domain name specified from within the TCP/IP Options form. The name service cache daemon (nscd) is also restarted if it was found running after link connection and disconnection.
  • Completed a series of cosmetic changes: changed the size and appearence of the top-level form, using smaler fonts to the benefit of lower resolution display modes; made menu selection more intuitive and grouped all ISP options in a single tab-folder form; created new static pixmaps -- the animated one still needs work though :) Also corrected various (relatively minor) GUI bugs here and there.
  • Changed defaults in the Makefile section for Red Hat (relevant to version 7.0); many thanks go to Silviu Minut for his suggestions.
  • Brought documentation up to date with regards to code development.
  • Added receive-all option when using NT-RAS callback. This is needed for buggy NT PPP peers. Thanks go to Sundeep Mediratta for pointing out the problem and its solution.
  • Updated Hellenic OTE connection cost information; both normal and EPAK tariffs were converted to per-minute charging from information dated April 2000.
  • Finished (or so it seems) the DNS support enhancements for the TCP/IP Options. Now, for pppd versions 2.3.9 and onwards, the usepeerdns option is employed for automatically retrieving DNS addresses from our peer; modified/enhanced ip-up.xisp and ip-down.xisp accordingly. Furthermore, the option now exists for having ip-up add a domain keyword and value to /etc/resolv.conf; ip-down removes it when the connection is terminated.
  • Corrected minor bug in PTT editor whereby the min units field would not be deactivated for per minute/second charging schemes.
  • Merged patches from Andrew Bettison which do away with the environment file passed to xispdial, implementing parameter passing via an environment variable. Many thanks for the suggestion and the patch Andrew (and sorry for the long delay in responding :))
  • Corrected bug in xispid whereby only the first group ID reported would be checked during pipe file validation. If for some reason that first group did not coincide with the group ownership of the named pipe node, even if the pipe node group existed in the calling user's group membership list, xispid would erroneously return false. The result was that DNS was not setup properly by ip-up/ip-down in glibc2.1 based systems (e.g. SuSE-6.3).
  • Corrected bug in time on-line readout: it would wrap around to 00:00:00 every 24 hours. Now the number of days on-line is properly taken into account. Thanks go to Jason Buszta for catching/reporting the problem.
  • Corrected bug with regards to Connect button text color when pppd failed to start. Thanks go to Peter Denison for reporting it, and for updating me on the recent pppd report codes.
  • Corrected problem with bounds for the COMPLEVEL parameter; the bug was in the .xisprc parsing module. Many thanks go to Michael Klein for reporting it.
  • Removed bogus struct definition in logs.h; many thanks go to John Caradimas for noticing and reporting the problem.
  • Fixed problem in installation Makefile for Solaris binary distributions where a duplicate /dev prefix was generated for the device specification in the peer file created by make install. Thanks go to John Caradimas for reporting the problem.
  Acknowledgements
 

Last update: 30 January 2008 Comments, feedback, suggestions: dbouras@hol.gr Copyright © 1997-2008 Dimitrios P. Bouras

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