blocks-development — Main mailing list for Blocks

[Blocks-development] SNAKE Key Exchange Algorithm

[Blat F. <pet...@ho...>]

SNAKE is an authenticating key exchange algorithm I
created some time ago, and is very much in the same
vein as SPEKE or SRP-3, except that it is unpatented
and in the public domain.

Benjamin has kindly offered to host the SNAKE home
page on http://www.kripto.org/snake

This doesnt have much to do with Blocks other
than the fact that Blocks borrowed some of the
crypto and netcode from SNAKE, but I thought you
guys might be interested anyway :)

SNAKE can guarantee a secure network session based
soley on a short password such as a single word
like 'dog', 'cat' or 'secret'. This allows secure
transactions without a PKI, and could even be used
for things like anonymous payment schemes or
the downloading on-the-fly of large private keys.

To reiterate, the key length of the password is
not directly relevant to security of the session.
This goes against popular crypto teachings.

There are no known attacks other than online
guessing and that can be minimised using denial
of service after a suitable number of failures.
SNAKE is immune to dictionary attacks and all
other offline attacks that I know of, and offers
perfect forward secrecy and authentication.

ttfn

PG.





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Re: [Blocks-development] Benjamins email?

[Benjamin M. B. <br...@kr...>]

Hey guys, sorry about that outage. I don't even know how long it lasted
for - I'm in Rochester, NY and the server is in Topsham, Maine.

Alternate email addresses are as follows:
tid...@su...
bm...@ri...
ben...@on...

After Thanksgiving, I should have the server locally in the dorm room on a
OC-3 connection. Which will be a) faster than the current cable modem
b) Local - when it goes down, I can physically fix it, as opposed to the
current system of calling my friend back in Maine.

If it is down a lot, I do apologize - The cable modem service that the
server is on works most of the time, but it occasionally dies. The server
itself is pretty stable, after we tinkered with it for a month or two :)

Again, sorry for the troubles.

-Ben Brewer

On Thu, 5 Oct 2000, Erik Moeller wrote:

> On 5 Oct 2000, at 18:37, Blat Froop wrote:
> 
> > Im trying to email Benjamin about kripto.org
> > being down, but all the mail just bounces.
> > 
> > Does anyone have an alternaive email address
> > for him?
> 
> Nope, only br...@kr... -- if all else fails, I can provide 
> space for Blocks on my site (scireview.de).
> 
> Regards,
> Erik
> 
> -- 
> Scientific Reviewer, Freelancer, Humanist -- Berlin/Germany
> Phone: +49-30-45491008 - Web: <http://www.humanist.de/erik>
> The Origins of Peace and Violence: <http://www.violence.de>
> _______________________________________________
> Blocks-development mailing list
> Blo...@li...
> http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/blocks-development
> 

Re: [Blocks-development] Benjamins email?

[Erik M. <mo...@sc...>]

On 5 Oct 2000, at 18:37, Blat Froop wrote:

> Im trying to email Benjamin about kripto.org
> being down, but all the mail just bounces.
> 
> Does anyone have an alternaive email address
> for him?

Nope, only br...@kr... -- if all else fails, I can provide 
space for Blocks on my site (scireview.de).

Regards,
Erik

-- 
Scientific Reviewer, Freelancer, Humanist -- Berlin/Germany
Phone: +49-30-45491008 - Web: <http://www.humanist.de/erik>
The Origins of Peace and Violence: <http://www.violence.de>

[Blocks-development] Benjamins email?

[Blat F. <pet...@ho...>]

Im trying to email Benjamin about kripto.org
being down, but all the mail just bounces.

Does anyone have an alternaive email address
for him?

thanks

PG.

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[Blocks-development] web page down

[Blat F. <pet...@ho...>]

The web page seems to be down. Ive mailed Benjamin
at his kripto.org email, but kripto.org seems to
be down as well?

The sourceforge page is still there so I guess
we're not an entry in the X-files just yet :-)

ttfn

PG.

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Re: [Blocks-development] bug or feature?

[Blat F. <pet...@ho...>]

>From: cap...@su...
>To: Blocks <blo...@li...>
>Subject: [Blocks-development] bug or feature?
>Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 01:48:10 +0200
>
>When uploading files to a remote server blocks uses up huge amounts of
>memory. As uploading to a remote server is as fast as uploading to the
>local cache I assume it puts the files in memory first before uploading
>them. Is this correct or is there an ugly memory leak in blocks?
>If it's a feature I'm not sure I'm happy with it. This way it's
>impossible to upload a movie or .iso .

Its shouldnt use more than about 200K extra when uploading
files to remote servers. There is logic to stop this.
It could be a leak... I'll investigate.

Remote uploading was an unplanned feature that I just thought
would be fun to add in (originally it was just for testing stuff).
What does everyone think about this? Can you see any major
issues wit this functionality? Its implicit in being able to
proxy files into cache anyway. Should it be extended?

ttfn

PG.







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[Blocks-development] bug or feature?

[<cap...@su...>]

When uploading files to a remote server blocks uses up huge amounts of
memory. As uploading to a remote server is as fast as uploading to the
local cache I assume it puts the files in memory first before uploading
them. Is this correct or is there an ugly memory leak in blocks?
If it's a feature I'm not sure I'm happy with it. This way it's
impossible to upload a movie or .iso .
-- 
Casper Gielen                       mailto:cap...@su...
--
Linux: Assimilating the Borg.

Re: [Blocks-development] Some Thoughts on 0.18+ (was V0.17)

[Blat F. <pet...@ho...>]

The intended iminent release of V0.17 would have been
better named V0.16.2 since it mainly fixes V0.16.1 bugs,
but since the inclusion of long filenames was in popular
demand and this violates the protocol, V0.17 it is.

So, most of the comments below relate to V0.18 or later.

>From: "Erik Moeller" <mo...@sc...>
>To: blo...@li...
>Subject: [Blocks-development] Some Thoughts on 0.17
>Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 04:26:22 +0200
>
>Please discuss:
>
>	Possible Bugs in 0.16:
>		- I try to download file X and I get "connection not
>		  available". OK, but shouldn't the route then be removed
>		  from adverts.dat? It isn't.

Blocks uses a very lazy method of maintaining adverts.dat that
can lead to some unavailable files being listed. I think it
works better than I expected tho :)

adverts.dat can contain upto 100,000 adverts (~12Mb) and its stored
on disk. It would be very inefficient to have to scan and modify
this file everytime a node anywhere on the Blocknet disconnects.

Instead Blocks maintains a 'blacklist' of bad routes in memory
each with its own timestamp. All adverts matching the search
pattern which are not blacklisted or are newer than the
blacklist timestamp get listed. This is much more efficient.

>
>	General Ideas:
>
>		- Speed Requirements. Once the maximum number of nodes is
>		  reached, every 5 minutes, the node with the lowest average
>		  transfer speed (if transfers have occurred) is eliminated
>		  from the connections list.
>		  Desired effect: High speed nodes carry much data. Low
>		  speed nodes carry little data.
>		  (I had some other ideas for this, but this seems the most
>		  elegant solution. It doesn't rely on user-provided data
>		  but uses the actual real-life values as a base.)

Hmmm... in a large Blocknet you would see a *lot* of
disconnections being advertised. High speed nodes are
only really relevant if you have a direct connection to
them, and replication might mean to you dont actually
get the data from source anyway. I think this idea
will have to wait until we have larger Blocknets so that
we can get a better idea of the effect this would have.

>
>	Suggestions for 0.17:
>
>	Fixes:
>		- 85 char limit
>		  128 chars should be sufficient, even I don't have longer
>		  names than that. Don't forget that these also have to be
>		  routed in the adverts.

Fixed. New 132 limit.

>		- Large files still trample over small caches.

Fixed. (definately this time, I nope :-)
This was actually much more complex to do than I first
imagined.

>
>	New Features:
>		- Error Message Queue. The main window should have a button
>		  "0 Errors". Whenever something goes wrong, the counter
>		  is increased. When you click on it, you get a list of
>		  the errors with a "Clear All" option. This should take
>		  the place of the current message boxes.
>		  Reason: Errors no longer stop the operation of the program.
>		  Example: Download timeouts -- automatically proceeds to
>		  the next files without asking the user for acknowledgment.

Yes, this is a very good idea. I think it will appear in the
near future, but as a useability feature it has a slightly
lower priority than core stuff. I'd say the chances are better
than 50/50 on it making it into the next release tho.

>
>		- Bogus Routes. Sticky files get a bogus letter attached at
>		  the end and the TTL increased by 1 before they are
>		  advertised. Cached files don't.
>		  Reason: Prevent my neighbours from finding out which
>	 	  files I am serving directly.
>		  Example: Search for Britney*. Result has route AB. I
>		  don't know whether the file is cached on A and coming
>		  from B or whether A is the true owner. Result has
>		  route A. I know that A just caches the file.

Sticky files. My thoughts on sticky files change almost daily.
Certainly the completely transient cache used by Blocks is
a limitation that will probably deter people from using Blocks,
but on the other hand its a big part of what makes Blocks
secure.

Certainly, adding a bogus routing letter at all adverts
for files stored locally(sticky or otherwise) seems like a
good idea. We couldnt add it for every file though, or
you could assume all ads with 2 chars had a bogus one
on the end. Perhaps they should only be added to files
which are directly uploaded rather than proxied into
cache?? That sounds a bit dangerous tho.

ttfn

PG.


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Re: [Blocks-development] Blocks V0.17

[Erik M. <mo...@sc...>]

On 18 Sep 2000, at 23:36, Blat Froop wrote:

> And best of all, its already been done. Im just doing
> it should be out this weekend unless anyone has a
> 'must have' request that can be implemented quickly.
> 
> I know that we havent gone very far down the path of
> our long term goals, and that discussion on WoT etc
> seems to have dried up a bit. I think this is due to
> the time of year and the lack of available free time
> for projects like this rather than a lack of interest.

Great! Can you write a bit about the list of suggestions I have 
posted a couple of weeks ago? I have not seen a reply from you.

I don't see a lack of interest either. I think we're progressing nicely. 
I'll try to do some coding when I get back from vacation. I expect 
the announcements on infoAnarchy and elsewhere to attract new 
people to the project. When we are confident that the BlockNet can 
handle thousands of users, we should notify Slashdot.

Regards,
Erik

[Blocks-development] Blocks V0.17

[Blat F. <pet...@ho...>]

Well, the intermittent crash bug of V0.16.1 was pretty
nasty, so I decided that given that there were a couple
of requests for long filename support I would bump
everything up to V0.17.

So here is a preliminary list of whats new...

* Long filename support... upto 132 chars each
* You can now 'upload' to remote servers as well
  as your own.
* Routing chars are now allocated randomly, this
  should thwart most statistical analysis attacks.
* A few major bugs fixes... fixed the memory corruption,
  so hopefully we will be stable again, fixed the
  readvertisement logic, big files really wont trample
  small caches now (honest :-)

And best of all, its already been done. Im just doing
a bit of testing and tweaking and its ready to go. So,
it should be out this weekend unless anyone has a
'must have' request that can be implemented quickly.

I know that we havent gone very far down the path of
our long term goals, and that discussion on WoT etc
seems to have dried up a bit. I think this is due to
the time of year and the lack of available free time
for projects like this rather than a lack of interest.

ttfn

PG.

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[Blocks-development] RIAA busts student

[Blat F. <pet...@ho...>]

I read the following...

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-2783386.html?tag=st.ne.1002.tgif.ni

it tells the story of a student who gets his dorm room door
kicked in by the police and his computer equipment confiscated
due to him operating an FTP server full copyrighted
MP3s and movies.

Now, although you might ask yourself "I wonder what would have
happened if he'd been running a Blocks server?", this has
obviously nothing to do with Blocks because people who
run Blocks servers are responsibile individuals who would
never get involved in activity like this.

Still, it seems obvious that the outcome of this sort of
activity will result in administrative behaviour which
may affect people who would like to run Blocks servers,
for example blocking incoming connections, or filtering
all traffic through proxy servers and firewalls.

You can already run a Blocks server and connect to a
Blocknet with the listening port disabled, which should
allow you to run a Blocks node on networks which
disallow public servers, but proxy servers would seem
to pose a larger challenge.

Having done some investigation, this doesnt look to
be an issue. Tunnelling Blocks traffic over HTTP doesnt
look like to big a challenge, though it would take some
time to integrate and would be a bit bandwidth
inefficient.

I was considering the recent requests to allow
advertisement of 'out of cache' files, so that people
could advertise files in a similar fashion to FTP or
Napster, but I think that although Blocks is currently
a little ahead of its time and disk space is still an
issue, there will be need for secure anonymous file
distribution that covers the seisure of equipment.
So, at this point in time, I dont intend to start
adding useability features that might encourage
comprimising the original design.

All comments welcome :-)

ttfn

PG.

PS yes, bugs will be fixed soon.



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Re: [Blocks-development] Blocks mentioned in wired?

[Blat F. <pet...@ho...>]

>From: "Benjamin M. Brewer" <br...@kr...>
>To: blo...@li...
>Subject: [Blocks-development] Blocks mentioned in wired?
>Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 10:35:10 -0400 (EDT)
>
>Sup guys, sorry I havn't been too talkative lately - been getting
>accustomed to college life (frat partys).
>
>I think blocks is mentioned in this months print edition of wired, but I
>will be able to confirm on Saturday or Monday - for now,
>
>http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.10/p2p_pages.html?pg=5
>
>This is from the '/wired/ dir, meaning it's the printed issue. I just
>found this to be neat, can anyone confirm?

Doh! I'd better fix the V0.16.1 bug this weekend then,
which is going to be difficult with parties Tonight,
Tomorrow and Sunday. Still, beer improves programs right? :-)

ttfn

PG.

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[Blocks-development] RE: Blocks-development digest, Vol 1 #35 - 2 msgs

[Daniel H. <dh...@em...>]

Yes, a brief listing in their Peer-2-Peer article.
------Original Message------
From: blo...@li...
To: blo...@li...
Sent: September 15, 2000 7:56:11 PM GMT
Subject: Blocks-development digest, Vol 1 #35 - 2 msgs


Send Blocks-development mailing list submissions to
	blo...@li...

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
	http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/blocks-development
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
	blo...@li...

You can reach the person managing the list at
	blo...@li...

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Blocks-development digest..."


Today's Topics:

  1. Avoiding local cache (cap...@su...)
  2. Blocks mentioned in wired? (Benjamin M. Brewer)

--__--__--

Message: 1
From: cap...@su...
Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 01:32:54 +0200
To: Blocks <blo...@li...>
Subject: [Blocks-development] Avoiding local cache

Is there a way to avoid the local cache? I've quite some stuff I could
share but I don't have the diskspace to keep 2 copies (one normal and one
uploaded into the cache). The best would be to only insert the headers
and wait with inserting the real data until it is requested.
-- 
Casper Gielen                       mailto:cap...@su...
--
It was a user's "club", ... in the sense of the "club" being
a large stick usefull for beating IBM about the head with.
						

--__--__--

Message: 2
Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 10:35:10 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Benjamin M. Brewer" <br...@kr...>
To: blo...@li...
Subject: [Blocks-development] Blocks mentioned in wired?

Sup guys, sorry I havn't been too talkative lately - been getting
accustomed to college life (frat partys).

I think blocks is mentioned in this months print edition of wired, but I
will be able to confirm on Saturday or Monday - for now,

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.10/p2p_pages.html?pg=5

This is from the '/wired/ dir, meaning it's the printed issue. I just
found this to be neat, can anyone confirm?

-ben



--__--__--

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[Blocks-development] Blocks mentioned in wired?

[Benjamin M. B. <br...@kr...>]

Sup guys, sorry I havn't been too talkative lately - been getting
accustomed to college life (frat partys).

I think blocks is mentioned in this months print edition of wired, but I
will be able to confirm on Saturday or Monday - for now,

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.10/p2p_pages.html?pg=5

This is from the '/wired/ dir, meaning it's the printed issue. I just
found this to be neat, can anyone confirm?

-ben

[Blocks-development] Avoiding local cache

[<cap...@su...>]

Is there a way to avoid the local cache? I've quite some stuff I could
share but I don't have the diskspace to keep 2 copies (one normal and one
uploaded into the cache). The best would be to only insert the headers
and wait with inserting the real data until it is requested.
-- 
Casper Gielen                       mailto:cap...@su...
--
It was a user's "club", ... in the sense of the "club" being
a large stick usefull for beating IBM about the head with.
						

[Blocks-development] V0.16.1 bug - unexpected recursion

[Blat F. <pet...@ho...>]

Looks like Michael managed to catch the obscure bug
that looks to be the cause of the infrequent
intermittent crashing problem on all platforms.

Heres what happens...

When blockgui/blockd checks its network connections
and one breaks for exceptional reasons, this causes
a callback so that the library and GUI can remove the
connection from the active list. The GUI refreshes and
calls the default FLTK idle process, which I have set
up to check the network connections. Round and round
we go until something breaks. Its actually a little
more obscure than this, but you get the idea :-)

I'll investigate further and create a patch soon, or
if anyone has a preference, I could up the length of
filenames to 128 and release V0.17. That might give
people a little more incentive to upgrade.

ttfn

PG.

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Re: [Blocks-development] newbie questions

[Michael S. Jr. <bl...@ms...>]

The server on mspencer.net is run through a VNC session anyway.

I do recommend editing /usr/bin/vncserver and customizing some things --
like, comment out the -auth line somewhere around line 139...set the
resolution and bit depth in lines 35 and 36 to something just less than your
desktop resolution...

Other than that, just type vncserver to get started.  It's very easy to use,
especially over a home network.

--Michael Spencer
bl...@ms...


----- Original Message -----
From: "Blat Froop" <pet...@ho...>
To: <blo...@li...>
Cc: <cap...@su...>
Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2000 12:45 PM
Subject: Re: [Blocks-development] newbie questions


> >From: cap...@su...
> >To: blo...@li...
> >Subject: [Blocks-development] newbie questions
> >Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 13:45:01 +0200
> >
> >Hi, I've got some questions about Blocks. FYI I run Linux.
> >
> >The binary package contains two files, blockgui and blockd.
> >Blockgui works according to my expectations, about blockd I'm not sure.
> >Where does it fit in? Is it just a text-based version of the gui-client?
> >If so, how do I upload files. Or is it just a caching/routing server?
>
> Its just a caching/routing server daemon. If you wanted to run
> your own private Blocknet you would simply run blockd and tell
> people the IP/port to connect to. Your block net would be
> seperate from any other Blocknets. Or, you could create a
> regional connection point to an existing Blocknet by pointing
> your blockd at the main connection point. It should be possible
> to use this simple mechanism to design a core structure to
> the Blocknet, perhaps with the predesigned interconnections
> representing high speed long haul pipes.
>
> blockgui does everything blockd does. One day there might even
> be clients apps as well :)
>
> >Otherwise, am I supposed to keep the gui client running to export any
> >files? This would be a PITA for me as my server has no X display
> >capabilities, and I reboot my clients all the time, so redirecting output
> >to a non local X-server won't work either.
>
> Yes, the current situation is far from ideal. My recommendation
> is to run blockgui in a a VNC virtual X session and just
> connect to that when you want to upload/download using
> vncviewer.
>
> You can get VNC from http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/
> or it may well be included as standard with many Linux
> distributions.
>
> >
> >Secondly, how big is the network?
> >I've been connected throug mspencer.net for a couple of hours and I can't
> >see anything but my own files.
>
> Yes, the main test network is really just there for testing,
> there may well be other 'private' Blocknets out there for
> distributing different types of files and media but those
> wont usually get advertised very much ;)
>
> Blocks hasnt really been advertised enough to gain mass
> support, and there is still a little confusion about what
> Blocks is being targetted at. IMHO this isnt really a
> problem since Blocks is still in early development and
> we really dont have the resources to deal with 20,000
> screaming AOLers at the moment anyway.
>
> ttfn
>
> PG.
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________________
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>
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> http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/blocks-development

Re: [Blocks-development] newbie questions

[Blat F. <pet...@ho...>]

>From: cap...@su...
>To: blo...@li...
>Subject: [Blocks-development] newbie questions
>Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 13:45:01 +0200
>
>Hi, I've got some questions about Blocks. FYI I run Linux.
>
>The binary package contains two files, blockgui and blockd.
>Blockgui works according to my expectations, about blockd I'm not sure.
>Where does it fit in? Is it just a text-based version of the gui-client?
>If so, how do I upload files. Or is it just a caching/routing server?

Its just a caching/routing server daemon. If you wanted to run
your own private Blocknet you would simply run blockd and tell
people the IP/port to connect to. Your block net would be
seperate from any other Blocknets. Or, you could create a
regional connection point to an existing Blocknet by pointing
your blockd at the main connection point. It should be possible
to use this simple mechanism to design a core structure to
the Blocknet, perhaps with the predesigned interconnections
representing high speed long haul pipes.

blockgui does everything blockd does. One day there might even
be clients apps as well :)

>Otherwise, am I supposed to keep the gui client running to export any
>files? This would be a PITA for me as my server has no X display
>capabilities, and I reboot my clients all the time, so redirecting output
>to a non local X-server won't work either.

Yes, the current situation is far from ideal. My recommendation
is to run blockgui in a a VNC virtual X session and just
connect to that when you want to upload/download using
vncviewer.

You can get VNC from http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/
or it may well be included as standard with many Linux
distributions.

>
>Secondly, how big is the network?
>I've been connected throug mspencer.net for a couple of hours and I can't
>see anything but my own files.

Yes, the main test network is really just there for testing,
there may well be other 'private' Blocknets out there for
distributing different types of files and media but those
wont usually get advertised very much ;)

Blocks hasnt really been advertised enough to gain mass
support, and there is still a little confusion about what
Blocks is being targetted at. IMHO this isnt really a
problem since Blocks is still in early development and
we really dont have the resources to deal with 20,000
screaming AOLers at the moment anyway.

ttfn

PG.


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[Blocks-development] newbie questions

[<cap...@su...>]

Hi, I've got some questions about Blocks. FYI I run Linux.

The binary package contains two files, blockgui and blockd.
Blockgui works according to my expectations, about blockd I'm not sure.
Where does it fit in? Is it just a text-based version of the gui-client?
If so, how do I upload files. Or is it just a caching/routing server?
Otherwise, am I supposed to keep the gui client running to export any
files? This would be a PITA for me as my server has no X display
capabilities, and I reboot my clients all the time, so redirecting output
to a non local X-server won't work either.

Secondly, how big is the network?
I've been connected throug mspencer.net for a couple of hours and I can't
see anything but my own files.

-- 
Casper Gielen                       mailto:cap...@su...
--
It was a user's "club", ... in the sense of the "club" being
a large stick usefull for beating IBM about the head with.
                                                Frank Wagner
						

Re: [Blocks-development] V0.16.1 update

[Benjamin M. B. <br...@kr...>]

Sorry, been getting situated at college. The page was updated 5 minutes
ago. 

:)

On Wed, 6 Sep 2000, Erik Moeller wrote:

> On 7 Sep 2000, at 21:39, Blat Froop wrote:
> 
> > Soon, Erik will update the web page with the V0.16.1 patch.
> 
> I sent the files to Benjamin yesterday.
> 
> Regards,
> Erik
> (currently on vacation)
> _______________________________________________
> Blocks-development mailing list
> Blo...@li...
> http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/blocks-development
> 

Re: [Blocks-development] V0.16.1 update

[Erik M. <mo...@sc...>]

On 7 Sep 2000, at 21:39, Blat Froop wrote:

> Soon, Erik will update the web page with the V0.16.1 patch.

I sent the files to Benjamin yesterday.

Regards,
Erik
(currently on vacation)

[Blocks-development] V0.16.1 update

[Blat F. <pet...@ho...>]

Soon, Erik will update the web page with the V0.16.1 patch.
This is a minor upgrade that fixes a few annoying bugs,
and a couple of enhancements. It is completely compatible
with V0.16.

Here is whats new...

V0.16.1 update...

1) Fixed slow downloads bug introduced in V0.16

2) Fixed bug which allowed large files to trample small caches.

3) Includes patch to allow compilation on Unixware 7.
   Supplied by rr...@sc...

4) Servers now remember the last 10 server ads and pass the
   lists to new servers when they connect. This allows
   servers without listening ports to build up a connection
   list much faster.

Enjoy!

PG.

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Re: [Blocks-development] Blocks for UnixWare 7

[Blat F. <pet...@ho...>]

>From: rr...@sc...
>To: blo...@li...
>Subject: [Blocks-development] Blocks for UnixWare 7
>Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 11:40 PDT
>
>Greetings Blockheads [:>
>
>I've recently compiled Blocks V0.16 for UnixWare 7.
>I don't believe any of the fairly trivial mods will
>affect compilation on any other platform.

Thanks. I will apply the changes within the next
couple of days and they should become part of the
planned V0.16.1 patch.

Im currently waiting on more info on a couple of
recent Win2K crashes before the patch gets released
and V0.16 formally announced, but all the other
platforms havent had any problems. Guess I'll give
the Win2K'ers a couple more days then simply blame
M$ :-)

ttfn

PG.

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[Blocks-development] Blocks for UnixWare 7

[<rr...@sc...>]

Greetings Blockheads [:>

I've recently compiled Blocks V0.16 for UnixWare 7.
I don't believe any of the fairly trivial mods will
affect compilation on any other platform.

I found i needed to modify the Makefiles and libsock/sock.h.
I made the following modifications (diff -c output):

All Makefiles (add -lnsl -lsocket to LIB):

*** Makefile.00	Wed Aug  9 10:16:56 2000
--- Makefile	Fri Sep  1 11:44:54 2000
***************
*** 27,35 ****
  FLAGS=-fpic
  AR=ar
  
! # fix standard libs for Solaris
  ARCH:=$(shell arch)
  ifeq ($(ARCH),sun4)
          LIB:=$(LIB) -lnsl -lsocket
  endif
  
--- 27,39 ----
  FLAGS=-fpic
  AR=ar
  
! # fix standard libs for Solaris and UnixWare
  ARCH:=$(shell arch)
  ifeq ($(ARCH),sun4)
+         LIB:=$(LIB) -lnsl -lsocket
+ endif
+ SYST:=$(shell uname -s)
+ ifeq ($(SYST),UnixWare)
          LIB:=$(LIB) -lnsl -lsocket
  endif
  

libsock/sock.h (define socklen_t to be size_t):

*** sock.h.00	Thu Aug  3 10:08:22 2000
--- sock.h	Thu Aug 31 15:39:34 2000
***************
*** 44,49 ****
--- 44,53 ----
  #include <errno.h>
  #endif
  
+ #if defined(__USLC__)
+ #define socklen_t size_t
+ #endif
+ 
  long NET_initiate();
  long NET_terminate();
  long NET_service_to_port(const char *service);

I also needed to modify fltk-1.0.9/fluid/factory.cxx slightly
(pull in strings.h to get strcasecmp defined and redefine index
 so it doesn't clash with what fltk does):

*** factory.cxx.00	Mon Jun  5 14:20:42 2000
--- factory.cxx	Thu Aug 31 15:21:59 2000
***************
*** 35,40 ****
--- 35,44 ----
  #include <FL/Fl_Group.H>
  #include <FL/Fl_Menu_Item.H>
  #include <string.h>
+ #if defined(__USLC__)
+ #include <strings.h>
+ #define index foo
+ #endif
  #include <stdio.h>
  
  #if defined(WIN32) || defined(__EMX__)

[Blocks-development] Some Thoughts on 0.17

[Erik M. <mo...@sc...>]

Please discuss:

	Possible Bugs in 0.16:
		- I try to download file X and I get "connection not 
		  available". OK, but shouldn't the route then be removed
		  from adverts.dat? It isn't.

	General Ideas:

		- Speed Requirements. Once the maximum number of nodes is
		  reached, every 5 minutes, the node with the lowest average
		  transfer speed (if transfers have occurred) is eliminated
		  from the connections list.
		  Desired effect: High speed nodes carry much data. Low 
		  speed nodes carry little data.
		  (I had some other ideas for this, but this seems the most
		  elegant solution. It doesn't rely on user-provided data
		  but uses the actual real-life values as a base.)
	  
	Suggestions for 0.17:

	Fixes:
		- 85 char limit
		  128 chars should be sufficient, even I don't have longer
		  names than that. Don't forget that these also have to be
		  routed in the adverts. 
		- Large files still trample over small caches.

	New Features:
		- Error Message Queue. The main window should have a button
		  "0 Errors". Whenever something goes wrong, the counter
		  is increased. When you click on it, you get a list of 
		  the errors with a "Clear All" option. This should take
		  the place of the current message boxes. 
		  Reason: Errors no longer stop the operation of the program.
		  Example: Download timeouts -- automatically proceeds to
		  the next files without asking the user for acknowledgment.

		- Bogus Routes. Sticky files get a bogus letter attached at
		  the end and the TTL increased by 1 before they are 
		  advertised. Cached files don't. 
		  Reason: Prevent my neighbours from finding out which
	 	  files I am serving directly.
		  Example: Search for Britney*. Result has route AB. I
		  don't know whether the file is cached on A and coming
		  from B or whether A is the true owner. Result has
		  route A. I know that A just caches the file.

Regards,
Erik

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