TransSys PNI Beta 1.9 release 15 May 1994 Software and Documentation is Copyright 1993, 1994 by TransSys, Inc. and Louis A. Mamakos All rights reserved. This software distribution is an interim release of the TransSys PNI Software package. TransSys PNI is a very flexible and configurable networking product for Motorola- and Intel-based NeXTSTEP platforms. TransSys PNI is intended to be run on Release 3.1 and 3.2 NeXTSTEP systems. TransSys PNI will allow your NeXTSTEP system to communicate with remote systems using SLIP (Serial Line IP) over serial ports and other virtual devices. It has sophisticated packet filtering abilities as well to control access to various services on your system. It is is available via anonymous FTP from: sonata.cc.purdue.edu: /pub/next/submissions/TransSys-PNI-1.9-beta.tar.gz cs.orst.edu: /pub/next/submissions/TransSys-PNI-1.9-beta.tar.gz ftp.uu.net: /tmp/TransSys-PNI-1.9-beta.tar.gz the copy on ftp.uu.net will only exist for a short time; the ones on the Purdue and Oregon State archives will likely move to their final resting places fairly quickly. Archive maintainers: please remove any earlier versions you might have. The PNI Beta 1.9 version mainly repairs a few bugs in the PNI Beta 1.8 release. Note, however, that previous license key strings and installed keyfiles will not be compatible with this version. It will be necessary to use the license key strings included in this distribution with this version (and later) of this software package. One of the bugs fixed caused this incompatibility. The following bugs have been repaired in this version: - Bug that prevented 1.8 from running: missing /usr/local/tclX/7.3a/TclInit.tcl file problem. This file is now, correctly, not required by the software. - The pnirun shell script deals better with the /etc/pni/config/pni0.config-auto file naming convention. - The SLIP-only license key didn't work due to code that checked the wrong bits. It works now. - The demo license key strings no longer include the "PPP" feature, since there is no PPP encapsulator right now, and this got many peoples hopes up for no good reason. - The kernel driver had a bug fixed where it didn't correctly queue interactive traffic to the high priority interface queue on Intel-based (little endian) platforms. We convert to host byte order when doing comparisons. - TclX has been upgraded to 7.3a patchlevel 2 from patchlevel 0. - The Tcl and TclX man pages are no longer provided in PostScript format; rather the are in the "raw" format to save space. It will be necessary to format them with "nroff -man" or "ptroff -man" to read them. - Many, many spelling errors in the documentation have been fixed. I look foward to any suggestions and comments on improving the documentation. The Beta 1.8 release was mainly bug fixes, with few new features. The exception is that the Tcl and TclX libraries have been updated to Tcl version 7.3 (and the associated TclX version). Most notable in bugs fixed is in the inactivity timeout logic in the Filter encapsulator. TransSys recommends that only those users that are already familiar with SLIP and IP networking in general attempt to install and use the package. At this time, support is very limited and cannot include configuration or local issues. You should be willing to invest a little bit of time installing this software. The bright side is that it should be easier to install than TransSys DialUp-IP, so don't despair completely! The beta version of TransSys PNI is available free of charge, and will implement SLIP and CSLIP as well as IP packet filtering and IP tunnels. A license to use these features is included for 90 days. When the release version of this software is available, a base-SLIP only version will be free of charge, just like TransSys DialUp-IP. Other capabilities (CSLIP, filtering, etc) will be licensed at an additional charge. Also included is a SLIP-only license key string with no expiration date. Users of TransSys DialUp-IP who have purchased a license for the CSLIP version will have a free (or nominal cost if media is required) upgrade to TransSys PNI. Details on the mechanics of the upgrade process will follow with the first non-beta version. Please read the doc/pni.ps.Z file which contains the documentation which exists to date for TransSys PNI. You should uncompress it and either print the file (about 90 pages) or view it using the NeXTSTEP Preview application. There are also a set of ASCII files (in doc/info-files.tar.Z) which can be extracted and read using the GNU emacs "info" hypertext package or by just paging through it with a text editor. Alternatively, if you have Internet connectivity and a WorldWideWeb browser application, you can examine the URL http://WWW.TransSys.COM/TransSys/pni-info.html to examine the manual without having to fetch the entire package. This WWW service is experimental, and could change without notice. Additional information on TCL and TCL extensions are available in the files doc/Tcl.ps.Z and doc/TclX.ps.Z. This is an beta release of software. Rather than run a small, limited beta program, TransSys has decided to open it to anyone due to the great desire for some sort of SLIP solution for Intel platforms. Extensive support is just not available at this stage - there is still development to be done, and little time available to do it in. If you've never tried to install SLIP software before and are not sure what it even is, you probably don't want to find out using this beta-quality software at this early stage. It is anticipated that this will be the final beta release, barring any horrible errors or bugs that are found. The next release will include pricing information for the non-SLIP-only licenses. Comments, suggestions and feature requests can be sent via email to pni-beta@TransSys.COM. Users of the PNI package that would like to be notified of new release and other occasional information should also drop a message to pni-beta@TransSys.COM to get added to a distribution list for announcements. Louis Mamakos TransSys, Inc. ($Id: README,v 1.8 1994/05/16 04:52:44 louie Exp $)