Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!nuchat!texbell!bellcore!ka9q.bellcore.com!karn
From: karn@ka9q.bellcore.com (Phil Karn)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
Subject: Re: Anomalies with KA9Q
Message-ID: <11560@bellcore.bellcore.com>
Date: 5 Nov 88 15:50:04 GMT
References: <8811042341.AA29382@opus.cs.mcgill.ca>
Sender: news@bellcore.bellcore.com
Reply-To: karn@ka9q.bellcore.com.UUCP (Phil Karn)
Organization: Home for Burned-out Hackers
Lines: 27


I am currently working on a major rewrite of the KA9Q package. It is
organized around a non-preemptive multitasking kernel (i.e., "lightweight
processes") instead of the simple commutator loop used until now. Applications
are still linked into a single program (net.exe), so by no means have I
implemented a full-blown timesharing system; other than changes in the
applications themselves, externally net.exe appears to run much as before.

This has made it possible to implement a Berkeley-style socket interface for
the application program, and I have rewritten the FTP, Telnet and finger
applications to use it (the author of the SMTP stuff is working on that
part). As part of the rewrite, the FTP client is completely new and it is
*much* better than the old one. To make a long story short, the problem you
report with the completion message coming out in the middle of a directory
transfer is just one of the problems that have been solved.

I am still working on the release (except for the past few days -- you can
probably guess what I've been spending all my time on :-(). I hope to have
it out in a month or so. The Internet stuff works pretty well, but there are
some design issues having to do with the semantics of AX.25 sockets I have
to think through.  I recently added domain client support. It works pretty
well, although I would like to improve the performance of the domain cache I
keep on disk. Is there a public domain database management subroutine
package available anywhere for MS-DOS? Something equivalent to UNIX dbm(3)
would be ideal.

Phil