Re: [VANILLA-CLIENTS:9] [COW] Kurt, Carlos

[eric john olson <ejolson@indiana.edu>]

Dear Kurt,

        This is Eric Olson.  I am the one who compiled and uploaded the 
binaries under discussion.  Thanks for copying me on the email.  I compiled 
a small screen binary because the existing ones didn't work on my system.
In particular, networking system calls involving DNS in the small screen 
clients doesn't work properly.  This apparently a problem with the version 
of libc5 they were compiled with.  

The cow client COW.2.02pl3.linux.libc5 at bigbang.astro.indiana.edu works 
on my system.  The problem with this client are that it was not compiled 
for small screen, and its public key is currently not on the metaserver.  
This binary was apparently statically linked against clib version 5.4.33.
The binary COW.3.00pl0.linux.libc5 also works but not for small screens.

I have tried the following binaries from bigbang.astro.indiana.edu:

MD5 (taken on gunzipped file)     Filename
----------------------------------------------------------------------
df7fab194dcbd4dd2a553255c198ceee  COW.2.02pl3.linux-glibc
b089bb231f616263f6374efafd6592ec  COW.2.02pl3.linux-glibc.Small.Screen
4a845bf982dfbf4e68d4a89b9858a597  COW.2.02pl3.linux.libc5
42b3cfdc31796cedabc08546dde9eb20  COW.2.02pl3.linux.libc5.Small.Screen
1e60946f0c2538419197d3568f2a0f27  COW.3.00pl0.linux
47a22753e2ce4439823feb05a1bbb72a  COW.3.00pl0.linux-glibc
4349fdd7cc0ef84e1f00e249efdd0506  COW.3.00pl0.linux-glibc.Small.Screen
fd56deef44cdceaaa011e588e2567c9d  COW.3.00pl0.linux.libc5
1b0c05ce281adf7ddd126b185ef6b054  COW.3.00pl0.linux.libc5.Small.Screen
9146bcc5ab7148b277df96dc8e3721fa  COW.3.00pl0.linux.small.screen

The results are

Filename                                Result
----------------------------------------------------------------------
COW.2.02pl3.linux-glibc               I can't open your display, twink!
COW.2.02pl3.linux-glibc.Small.Screen  I can't open your display, twink!
COW.2.02pl3.linux.libc5               Works, but RSA key not recognized
COW.2.02pl3.linux.libc5.Small.Screen  Works, broken DNS and metaserver
COW.3.00pl0.linux                     I can't open your display, twink!
COW.3.00pl0.linux-glibc               Expired Mar 3, 1999
COW.3.00pl0.linux-glibc.Small.Screen  Expired Mar 3, 1999
COW.3.00pl0.linux.libc5               Works, expires Apr 8, 1999
COW.3.00pl0.linux.libc5.Small.Screen  Works, broken DNS and metaserver,
                                      Expires Mar 16, 1999
COW.3.00pl0.linux.small.screen        I can't open your display, twink!

All the above binaries were statically linked.  The ones using glibc are
incompatible with my system.  The rest fall into two categories:  those
that are statically linked against libc 5.4.33 which work but are not for
small screens, and those that were linked against 5.3.12 which have bugs 
involving metaserver and DNS services on my machine.  Others are expired.  
There are no small screen versions that worked well on my system.

If you prefer to compile a new libc5 small screen binary yourself, I would 
gladly check if it works on my system.  

Since COW.2.02pl3.linux.libc5 and COW.3.00pl0.linux.libc5 work fine on my
system, building small screen versions in the same environment as these 
should result in a binary I can use.

Thanks for such serious consideration,
Eric Olson

PS.

> Clients which don't follow the official naming convention generated
> automatically by the make, should never be uploaded anyway.

I was unaware of an official naming convention.  I intentionally changed 
the names of the keys I generated away from the defaults so they would not 
collide with any already in use.  I hope this has not caused any problems.
Also, I noticed some keys have a comment line like

   :cm=reserved.c blessed. Located at http://cow.netrek.org/:\

I think one should not put a : into the comment since that is the delimiter
for the entries.  The above comment field will be parsed as

    cm=reserved.c blessed. Located at http

If this problem has already been noticed and addressed, then my appoligies.