
MintNet alpha release README
----------------------------

Contents:

0. Disclaimer
1. What is MintNet?
2. Things needed to run MintNet
3. Things needed to recompile MintNet
4. Recompiling MintNet
5. How to install
6. Network programming
7. BSD Unix (in)compatibilities
8. If you have found a bug



0. Disclaimer
-------------

This package should be regarded as experimental. It is quite possible
that it contains bugs that may do the weirdest things to your hard drive
although I believe it is quite stable now. Anyway, make regular backups!

ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
ARE DISCLAIMED.  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT,
INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
(INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND
ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
(INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF
THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.



1. What is MintNet?
-------------------

MintNet is a networking extension for Atari computers running Mint.

It currently implements the suite of networking protocols referred to as
'TCP/IP' and a local interprocess communication mechanism known as 'unix
sockets' that is in principle similar to named pipes. MintNet is prepared
for adding further networking protocol stacks (like Novells IPX/SPX or
Appletalk for instance).

Thus you can use MintNet to intergrate your Atari into a networked environ-
ment that consists of systems supporting TCP/IP (as the Internet).

MintNet consists of four major parts, a loadable device driver for Mint
(sockdev.xdd), several loadable packet drivers (eg. slip.xif), a library
(socket.olb) and some tool programs (in the tool/ subdirectory) to setup
and manage MintNet.

The device driver links to the Mint Kernel when loaded and installs the
device u:/dev/socket through which the services provided by MintNet can
be accessed.

The libary provides you with the usual BSD socket API functionality using
the services of u:/dev/socket. That means porting Unix software to MintNet
using this libary is really easy. In fact many important packages like ftp,
telnet, ... are ported to MintNet using this library.

The packet drivers are responsible for sending and receiving datagrams over
some type of hardware, for instance slip.xif is responsible for sending
datagrams over serial lines using the SLIP or PPP protocol. For every type
of communication hardware such a packet driver is needed. sockdev.xdd calls
the proper packet driver for sending and receiving datagrams and does not
contain communication hardware specific code.

Packet drivers are currently available for SLIP, PPP, PLIP and loopback.

Support for Ethernet is also provided (ie ARP protcol, and eth frame
encapsulation/decapsulation), what is missing are drivers for ethernet
hardware. A sceleton for an ethernet driver is provided in dummyeth.c in
the net/drivers subdirectory.

Please contact me if you wan't to write Ethernet hardware drivers or have
hardware that is worth to write a driver for.



2. Things needed to run MintNet
-------------------------------

There are some (in fact a lot) things needed to get MintNet running:

1) An up to date Mint version. Preferably Mint 1.12, MH-Mint 1.12hX or
newer. A megapatched Mint 1.11h9 will probably work too. This is because
the MintNet device driver needs some features of the Mint Kernel that have
been added recently.
Mint binaries, sources and documentation is available via anonymous FTP
from ftp.uni-muenster.de:/pub/atari/Mint/Kernel.

2) Until there are no easy to use installer program and window system based
applications for MintNet you need some experience with cli's and a Unix-like
setup. That is *not* because MintNet itself needs this, but (un)fortunately
all the currently available applications using MintNet are ports of Unix
programs and they need a basic Unix setup to work.

3) Some networking applications for MintNet. A good starting set is inetd,
ping, telnet, ftp, pppd (if you want to use PPP), dip (if you want to use
SLIP).
These programs are not part of this package. They can be found for instance
at ftp.uni-muenster.de:/pub/atari/Mint/Network.

4) Most of those Networking applications require you to run syslogd, a program
that logs system messages to files or the console. If you want to run telnet
or rlogin *servers* on your host you need the login program, too.
Both programs are part of the MintOS 1.4.1 package which is available via
anonymous ftp from earth.ox.ac.uk:/pub/mintos.

For the unexperienced KGMD (Knarfs German Mint Distribution) will be a good
starting point (to appear in the near future). It will contain install
procedures that provide you with a ready to go MintNet environment.

Another package that contains a basic Mint setup is the Mint distribution kit
MDK (which is a bit outdated), available from phlem.ph.kcl.ac.uk.



3. Things needed for compiling
------------------------------

This package contains already compiled versions of the libraries and the
socket device driver for people who are not willing or able to compile
the stuff. If you are one of them you can ignore the following instructions
about compiling and use the precompiled binaries instead.

1) tar and gzip to unpack the archive (bit silly this one since you are
reading this file).

2) gcc, preferably 2.3.3 or >= 2.5.8, since versions inbetween those have
been reported to be buggy.

3) gmake, preferably 3.6x or later.

4) binutils PL >= 30.

5) MiNTLibs PL >= 41, because as of PL 41 they support the socket library
in errno.h and strerror(). If you don't mind getting messages like 'unknown
error' from perror(), you can use earlier versions too.

6) Minixfs or something similar that supports long filenames. This is not
absolutely neccessary, but there are some filenames that do not fit into
the 8+3 filename scheme.



4. Rebuilding the library and device driver
-------------------------------------------

Edit MakeVars to reflect your setup.

It is easiest to rebuild the whole package by typing
	1) make clean
	2) make depend
	3) make all
into the top level directory. This will rebuild the socket device driver
and all the libraries as necessary. 1) deletes all .o files from previous
compilations. 2) generates the dependency-files that tell make which files
need to be rebuilt when changing one particular file.

Of cource you can 'cd' to one particular subdirectory and remake only parts
of the package. Please have a look at the Makefiles.

You should get the following binaries out of the above steps:

lib/socket.olb		-- 32 bit socket library.
lib/socket16.olb	-- 16 bit socket library.
lib/bsocket.olb		-- 32 bit -mbaserel socket library.
lib/bsocket16.olb	-- 16 bit -mbaserel socket library.

net/sockdev.xdd		-- socket device driver.

net/drivers/plip.xif	-- PLIP packet driver
net/drivers/slip.xif	-- combined SLIP/PPP packet driver
net/drivers/dummy.xif	-- dummy (lookpback) ethernet driver

tool/netstat		-- netstat utility, show active connections.
tool/route		-- route utility, change/show routing table.
tool/ifconfig		-- ifconfig utility, change/show interface config.
tool/slattach		-- slattach utility, attach SLIP interface.
tool/iflink		-- iflink utility, link Mint device to interface.
tool/arp		-- arp utility, change/show ARP table.
tool/ifstats		-- ifstats utility, show interface statistics.



5. Installing the libraries and the device driver
-------------------------------------------------

Type 'make install' into the toplevel MintNet directory. Change to the 'man'
directory and type 'make install' to install the manuals.

Have a close look at the configuration files (for programs using the library)
in etc/. Copy them to /etc on your root directory and edit them to suit your
taste.

The format of the file /etc/resolv.conf is desribed in man/cat5/resolver.5.
The format of the file /etc/host.conf is described in man/cat8/resolv+.8.
The MintNet utilities are desribed by route.8, ifconfig.8, netstat.8 in
the man/cat8/ directory.

Here are some basic hints on what needs to be edited in the /etc files:

Give your host a name by writing it to the file /etc/hostname. Choose an IP
address for this host. Lets say you choose 100.0.0.1 for the address and
kermit for the name. (Note that if you connect to the Internet you must get
a unique IP address from your provider).

Then add the following line to /etc/hosts:

100.0.0.1	kermit

Supposed you are in the domain muppets.org, change the `domain' line in
the file /etc/resolv.conf to

domain muppets.org

Run the /etc/rc.net script from mint.cnf or from /etc/rc or form /etc/rc.local.
 
Puh, thats a lot to do I admit, time to write a nice install program ...



6. Getting information about socket and network programming
-----------------------------------------------------------

Because MintNet providedes you with a BSD socket compatible API (with some
extensions and omissions) through the socket.olb library, any literature on
Unix networking would help alot.

You can obtain information about using the facilities provided by this package
by having a look at the manual pages in the man subdirectory. You could also
get the texinfo manual from the GNU-C library or a good book, like

- Comer, Stevens: `Internetworking with TCP/IP I-III' (for learning)

- Leffler, McKusick, Karels, Quaterman: `4.3 BSD Unix -- Design and
Implementation' (for insiders)

- Santifaller: `TCP/IP und NFS in Theorie und Praxis' (an introduction)

- Loosemore, McGrath, Oram, Stallman: `The GNU C Library Reference Manual'
(for reference)

- RFCs 786(UDP), 790(assigned numbers), 791(IP), 792(ICMP), 793(TCP),
1055(SLIP), 1122(Host Requirements), 1331(PPP), 1144(VJ compression),
894,1042(IP over 802.x), 826(ARP), 903(RARP) (for protcol specifications)



7. BSD Unix (in)compatibility
-----------------------------

Here are some notes on incompatibilities to the BSD Unix programming interface
for the ones familiar with it.

- The socket ioctl's are currently not in the Mint Library. Use the file
sockios.h from the include dir instead or get my portlib.

- Most IP options are not processed like they should.

- Very few (only the most important from my point of view) ICMP message
types are implemented.

- Currently sendmsg() and recvmsg() on AF_UNIX sockets do not support sending
and receiving of access rights. (ie file handles).

- There are lots of new error codes, like ENOTCONN, ... To get meaningful
messages from perror() and strerror() and for support of the new errorcodes
you will need the MiNTLibs patchlevel >= 41.

- On AF_UNIX stream sockets you can set the send buffer size with the
setsockopt() call only if the socket is connected. For AF_UNIX dgram
sockets you can't at all set the send buffer size, only receive buffer size.

- stat(), fstat() on sockets and AF_UNIX socket files return for the file
type S_IFCHR and S_IFREG, respectively (not S_IFSOCK).

- select()ing for writing on dgram sockets will always report that writing
will not block, even if the desriptor is NOT ready for writing.

- The FIONREAD ioctl() call on AF_UNIX/AF_INET dgram sockets returns the
size of the next datagram or zero if none is available.
The FIONWRITE ioctl() call on AF_UNIX dgram sockets returns an infinite
number bytes if you did not specify a destination address for the socket
using connect().
FIONWRITE on UDP sockets returns always `infinity'.

- Sending and receiving of more than one TCP urgent data byte is supported.
Unfortunately this causes some incompatibilities. Read the file net/inet/BUGS
to learn the differences.



8. If you have found a bug
--------------------------

In case you find a bug or incompatibility in MintNet or want me to implement
some feature you need then don't hesitate to contact me at the below given
Email address.

If you report a bug I need a detailed description of your setup, of the
symptoms and the circumstances that caused the bug to appear and if possible
a small peace of code that reproduces the bug.

Keep in mind that I can't do anything to solve problems described by messages
like 'MintNet does not work! What shall I do?'


Have fun with MintNet,
--
Kay Roemer		roemer@informatik.uni-frankfurt.de
			http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/~roemer/
