XPLAN -- AUTOMATE UPDATING OF .PLAN FILE XPlan version 0.6 Built day: Aug. 21, 1995 What's New? What's XPlan? If you are using dynamic address, it's real hard for your friends to find out what address you are using or even if your are online or not. You can use XPlan to upload your dynamic address to your .plan file in an account in a permanent host(like your shell account in your Internet Service Provider) everytime you login or logout of a SLIP/PPP section. Requirement: You need VBRUN300.DLL to run this program, also MS-Windows3.1(or up) running Winsock 1.1 or up. Installation: After unzip xplan package into a directory, run setup.exe from that directory under MS-Windows. Windows will take care of the rest. Command Line Options: XPlan receives three command line options: -now, log_in and log_out. (I must be very busy lately. -now and log_in seem to do the same thing, don't they? oh well... ) What do they do? read on for more details. Running: You can ask xplan to update your .plan file immediately after it is fired by specifying "-now" option in command line(e.g. xplan.exe -now). If you do now specify this option, you have to select Action|Log_In menu to start updating process. If you run XPlan for the first time, it will need some information about you and your remote account. These include the name of remote host you want to put the .plan file, your login ID on that host, your password on that host, and the name you prefer to be called. Next time, you can click on Option|setup to change these fields. For your password, you have an option of saving it as encrypted text, as original text, or not saving it at all. This option is required because some people complain that my encryption routine does not work on some passwords, and also it's good for people who do not want to save anything about their passwords in a text file(not even encrypted). For your name, you can enter any name you like. You enter these only once. XPlan will save this to a file and load them next time you run XPlan again. If XPlan successfully updates your remote .plan file, your .plan file will look like this: [You regular .plan texts go here] My local address is your_name@your_local_host_name Warning: xplan will replace your old .plan file on your account with the new one. It will not backup your old .plan file. So if you want your new plan file looks the same as the old one, first download it to your local disk and rename it as xplan.txt and put it into the directory where you put xplan.exe. For compatible reason, you shouldn't specify your name longer than 12 characters. Your friends who finger(using any finger client, e.g. my Xfinger) your UNIX account can know if you are online or not, and where are you. Then he/she can talk to you by typing talk your_name@your_local_host_name. (I also have a talk client/server, not surprisingly xtalk.) If you want to add more texts on top of that one line message in the same .plan file, you can put them in a file called xplan.txt in the directory where you installed xplan. XPlan.txt along with the above message will be your .plan file. I provided a simple xplan.txt with this package. You should modify it to suit your need. Script File: I am using trumpet winsock. The following example is done in that script language. Other Winsock script language should have similar functions. In trumpet, you can execute a program using "exec" command in you script. To automate updating of your .plan file, you can put an "exec" right after the part that winsock fires up SLIP function. exec "c:\xplan\xplan.exe log_in" Of course, you should modify the path if you installed xplan in a different path. This will put that magic message(your_name@your_local_host_name) in your remote .plan file. For some reasons, you can not execute a program in Trumpet's bye.cmd. Therefore, to update .plan file when you logout of a section, you have to click on Logout option in XPlan. XPlan will first upload a new .plan file to remote host without magic message. Then it will disconnect Trumpet for you automatically. If you use other Winsock stacks, XPlan does not disconnect winsock connection automatically(it still updates your .plan file). I will revise this limitation when I have time. Of course, if you don't want to run xplan from your script file, you still can launch it from program manager. Problems? Before you use XPlan, you should make sure that the permission of your original .plan file is 644, i.e. world readable. To change permission of this file, type chmod 644 ~/.plan in your UNIX account. You should make a .plan file and set it to that permission if you do not have one already, because the permission of new .plan will be the same as the permission of old one. Some users reported that their ftp daemons do not allow overwritten of an existing file! Tough! One problem that I couldn't reproduce is "Invalid property value". If someone had this problem before and managed to get xplan working, I would like to know what you did. To report bugs, I will be appreciate that you give as many details as possible. Security Issue: This program needs your password to run. The reason is obvious. It needs to gain access to your account in order to update your .plan file. I try the best I can to hide your password(using encryption). Some things you should know: 1. Never get this package(XPlan) from unknown sites. The best place to get up to date version is at my WWW page(http://www.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca/spider/q7f192/tools.html). I will also upload major update to SimTel and CICA if I have time. 2. Never expose xplan.ini to anyone. That file contains encrypted password. Somebody might try to decrypt it. 3. Change your password often. 4. If in doubt, you can always instruct xplan not saving your password at all! Availability XPlan version 0.6, xplan06.zip Did I mention that this program is FREE! DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE THAT THIS PROGRAM MAY CAUSE. YOU USE IT ON YOUR OWN RISK! All brand names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners _________________________________________________________________ XPlan Copyright(C) 1995 George Xie / q7f192@ugrad.cs.ubc.ca File_ID.DIZ --------------------------------------------- (V0.3) XPlan - Win File/Winsock Xplan can update your .plan file everytime you log into your SLIP/PPP connection. XPlan adds a a message at the end of your .plan file indicating what's your current internet address. When you logout, the .plan file is also updated to get rid of that message. It's freeware. George Xie, q7f192@ugrad.cs.ubc.ca http://www.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca/spider/q7f192 ----------------------------------------------