Here are some frequently asked questions and answers ragarding MintNet
installation and use. This file was compiled by Roland Givan.

> MiNT-Net looks great but how is it supposed to be used? Does MintNet
> actually provide a link between several Ataris? If so does use the serial
> port or midi port?

As of version 0.30 it does support linking Ataris with Ataris/Unix
Boxes/whatever stuff running IP software.

For now SLIP (IP over serial lines) and PLIP (IP over parallel lines)
is supported.
SLIP is compatible with (hopefully) all Unix SLIP implementations.
PLIP is nonstandard, but much faster (> 15 kB/sec).

> I realise that mint 1.10 needs to be patched to work - but what about 1.08?
> I've tried MiNT 1.08 and I get the 'non patched MiNT 1.10' error message.

Don't worry about the 1.10 in the message. It just means, that MintNet
will not run with your version of Mint.


> Finally I notice there is a fair bit of other stuff in the same directory
> as net-030-tgz:
> 
> Mint/Network/
>  inetd-01.tgz 45 Pl1 of Internet Super Server.  Needs net-030.tgz 
>  net-030.tgz 321 Ver0.30 of MintNet, a networking extension w/BSD socket 
>  portlib-02.tgz 13 Pl2 of library software for porting unix stuff
>  rpc-01.tgz 450 Pl1 of Sun RPC for Mint + MintNet 
>  term-1.08.tgz 244 A port of term for MiNT+net  
>  tftp-00.tgz 37 Pl0 of trivial ftp for Mint+MintNet
>  tftpd-00.tgz 27 Pl0 of the tftp server program for MiNT+MiNTNet
>  udpprobe.tgz 23 Prg for testing connectivity in M+MN.  Similar to ping
>
> Is any of this other stuff necessary to start with, and does any
> of it superceed the stuff in net-util.tgz?

Some files (those with patchlevel > 0) superseed files in net-util.tgz.
You should get at least inetd and udpprobe to have some stuff to test
if MintNet is working.

If you think you have installed MintNet correctly, try the following:

% inetd
% udpprobe localhost daytime "i"

The last command should give you the current time and date of your
machine.


> I haven't been able to build syslog from the init1.1 package -
> but MiNT-Net seems to work without it.

Mint-Net itself doesn't need it, only inetd, tftp and the other
ported BSD sofware.

> I'm having a bit of trouble with TFTP. After a lot of fiddling I
> managed to GET a file between 2 directories. (I'm playing arround with
> TFTPing between directories on 1 machine so I don't have to keep turning
> on the spare ST ;-)
> 
> I can't get PUT to work however. I've tried dozens of combinations of:
> 
> put <filename> <filename>
> 
> both with and without "localhost:" infront, but no luck. I get "Error X:
> File not found" or similar.
> 
> BTW I'm doing all of this between directories on the U drive. The
> destination dirctory is a MINIX-FS one, while the source is /bin where TFTP
> lives. Any ideas?

First, tftp allows you only to `put' files which already EXIST at the
destination machine and are WRITEABLE by the world. Eg.

put some.file.tar.z remote:/tmp/xyz.tar.z

will only work if the file

remote:/tmp/xyz.tar.z

already exists and looks like

-??????rw?

This stupid behavior is because of missing authentification methods in the
tftp protocol, ie the tftp daemon doesn't know who is putting the file.

> 
> Also I don't understand the entry in inetd.con:
> 
> tftp dgram udp wait root /usr/etc/tftpd tftpd
>                                         ^^^^^

This is the first argument to /usr/ets/tftpd (The one you can access as
argv[0] -- the name of the executing program -- in main() if you are
familiar with C). You must always give it. You can give tftpd further
arguments by writing them after the `tftpd'. If you do so, access is
restricted to the directories they specify. Eg.

tftp dgram udp wait root /usr/etc/tftpd tftpd /tmp/

restricts tftp `put' to the /tmp/ directory.

> Is 'proper' FTP going to be available at some time? TFTP is fine - but
> there is very little I can connect to with it ;-)

This requires to implement the TCP protocol in MintNet. I'm working on it.
But I guess in some days Ulrich Kuehn's NFS will be available. It is quite
stable now, and will give you lots of fun :)

> Also although:
> 
> udpprobe localhost ....
> 
> works. Trying:
> 
> udpprobe <hostname> .....

For the latter to work you have to do several things:

Write your hosts's name into /etc/hostname (suppose `larry').

Choose an IP address for it (suppose 100.0.0.1)

Add the line
100.0.0.1 larry
to /etc/hosts.

Add the line
nameserver 127.0.0.1
to /etc/resolv.conf if it doen't exist.

Do an
ifconfig lo0 addr 100.0.0.1
route add 100.0.0.0 lo0
at startup.

Then you will be able to access your local machine both as `larry' and
`localhost'.

But when doing the above with MintNet 0.30 you won't be able to access
your machine as `localhost` any longer. This is fixed in 0.31.

As a temporary solution you could make your hosts name an alias for
`localhost' by adding `larry' to the 127.0.0.1 line in /etc/hosts:

127.0.0.1 localhost loopback larry


> CAn't seem to format the manual pages. nroff -man <filename> doesn't seem
> to work.

You need groff and the tmac.doc macro package to format them:

groff -mdoc -Tascii filename > filename.formatted

should work.

> Any idea where I can ftp groff from?

try a.a.u.e:/atari/Mint/Utilities/groff*

 
> I'm not too up on internet addressing but the setting up of localhost
> confused me slightly:
> 
> /etc/ifconfig lo0 addr 127.0.0.1 up
> /etc/route add 127.0.0.0 lo0
> 
> Is is right that in the first line the address is 127.0.0.1 and in the
> second 127.0.0.0?

As you probably already know an Internet address consists of a host part
and a Network part. For the class A address 127.0.0.1 127 is the network
part and 0.0.1 is the host part. The host address with the host part all
zero is the address of the Network.

So the second command adds a route for the Network 127, that is for all
hosts in the Network 127. This is necessary so that broadcasts (an
IP address with the host part all 1's, ie 127.255.255.255 for the loopback
net). will get routed to the localhost interface too.

Adding a route to the Network (ie with the host part of the IP address
all zero) is indeed necessary for all non point-to-point interfaces that
support broadcasts.

So the above commands are perfectly right.
 
> I seem to be able to use either address as a loopback address.

That is because 127.0.0.0 is threatet as a broadcast address too. You
probably should be able to use 127.x.y.z where x, y, z are numbers
in between 1 and 254 if you issue the above commands.

> Anyways, can you give me a short description of what the system
> actually does, or allows you to do?  Since it's a "net" software,
> what does it let you network between?  And how do you go about
> connecting the pieces together (i.e. if you're networking a couple
> ST's, what cables/ports are used to get them together; if you're
> hooking into the internet, how are you connected?  via phone line, etc?).

The best starting point would be to get the most up to date MintNet version
and read the files README.SLIP, README.PLIP.
They describe in a compact way, what hardware is supported and how to set
up connections.

But anyway, here is a short list of what does work:

MintNet is a TCP/IP networking software package for Mint. The interface
to the user level are Berkeley sockets. MintNet consists of a Mint load
able device driver (sockdev.xdd) and a library with the networking
functions found in libc.a of most Unixes.

Currently (version 0.3x) MintNet supports the 'File' and the 'Internet'
namespace.

The latter is not yet finished, currently UDP, IP, ICMP are implemented,
TCP is being finished these days.

MintNet supports links between computers using the parallel (PLIP) and
the serial (SLIP) port.

Ethernet support will be added later. I'm also thinking about a Midi
Network as a cheap solution to connect serveral Ataris.

The SLIP protocoll is semi standard in the Unix world, so you can connect
your Atari running MintNet with almost every Unix box directly via nullmodem
or indirectly via modem (dialup).

The PLIP protocoll is non standard and connects MintNet Ataris with one
another at about 15 kB/sec.

The layout of the cable connectors required is desribed in the files
README.SLIP README.PLIP.
