RELEASE NOTES

Changes from 036 to 037

Removed /etc/mtab support because this information is duplicated in /proc/mounts.

Repaired the long delay when shutting down when the send logs is enabled and there is no email server available. Thanks to Dingetje for creating the new smtpchk binary and making this possible.

Repaired the firewall so that VPN packages can use encryption. This specifically relates to the PoPToP package. This repair should also resolve problems with Internet phone services. If you run the PoPToP package you should upgrade to poptop-1.1.3i-lightning to be compatible with 0.3.7.

Repaired the long-standing problem of the login timeout when running in setup mode or during the first time boot procedure. The flying penguin screen saver is also automatically activated in this mode with two minutes of keyboard inactivity and "ile" command line history is also loaded.

Repaired the date problem in the "smtpclient" email header.

Repaired the "dyndns" client to update correctly the first fifteen days of the year rather than every day the first fifteen days.

Repaired a problem with "rmlogs" when dealing with cross yearly logs that caused all logs to be removed when matching the previous year.

Repaired a long standing bug in the "pkg" command when mis typing a package name or URL, there would be a random number of different errors without a clear statement of the problem.

Repaired a bug in the control panel un-ban function that did not allow the use of spaces and reporting entries as being removed when they did not exist.

Repaired a visual bug in the rmlogs script that allowed it to run a floppy or ramdisk installs when no logs are present and an error message was produced.

Repaired bug in the control panel that prevented the use of commas when matching entries for removal in port forwarding.

Changed "busybox" from version 0.26 to 0.60.5 with a lot of changes to the source code to a revision of 0.60.5f. Thanks to justdave for a number of repairs and changes to the code. There have also been a lot of changes to keep backward compatibility and additional source code for enhanced new features.

Changed the "runchk" script to use the "pidof" binary instead of checking the /proc directory for running processes so it runs more efficiently.

Changed the "killall" script to use the "pidof" binary instead of checking the /proc directory for running processes so it runs more efficiently.

Changed the "cp" binary to now support recursive copies with the -R flag.

Changed the initial animated boot logo to provide a much smoother animation and "lightning" ;-)

Changed all of the saver times into minutes rather than each function being in a different time format.

Changed "init" to run as control for the login ttys instead of a daemon agetty shell.

Changed the shutdown process to use a single script ("rc_stop") during shutdown as well as an extra option when un-mounting the drive so that a primary ext2 partition can be remounted read-only if it is unable to unmount.

Changed the "touch" binary so it now creates files if they don't exist.

Changed "umount" which repairs a bug when unmounting drives or loop devices multiple times so that devices are released.

Changed the "klogd" binary so that time zones can be used and kernel logs are displayed with the correct time zone offset.

Changed the "mv2hd" command so that multiple backups can be created or restored using different backup names. There is also a test so that previous backups will not be over written with new backups unless the user wants to overwrite it.

Changed the "shell" boot mode to now require a user-name and password. "ile" is also automatically loaded for command line history. This is a less convenient method but it does add a lot to the system with regards to security for systems that might be in a compromised environment.

Changed the control panel so services that are disabled in the setup are shown as being disabled, and their control functions are removed.

Changed the advanced network setup auto configure option to now have a disable option for the DHCP pool.

Changed "uptime" from a script to a binary so that it now can use the time zone file and shows uptime accurately with the new time zone feature.

Changed the "ls" command to now sort in alphabetical order as well as some color enhancements for directories and symlink directories to show the difference.

Changed "synctime" to now show its output on the command line as well as in the logs. There is also a test at boot time to restart the firewall after it has synchronized the correct time if there are any time restrictions in the restrict.cfg

Changed the control panel so that ALL colors and fonts can be changed in the style.css file.

Changed "ping" so it now returns an exit code of 1 if the ping fails.

Changed the report.txt format from line feeds to line feeds and carriage returns so that DOS/Windows machines can view them in the correct format.

Added the "echo" binary so it now supports the -e flag and supports all of the normal inline commands.

Added the "traceroute" binary to track routing problems.

Added the "cmp" binary to compare text files for differences.

Added the "pidof" binary to efficiently return the pid(s) of running programs.

Added a telnet client.

Added the ICMP patch to ipfwadm 2.3.0 so that ICMP packets can be masqueraded and reduced the code size.

Added uptime information such as the number of days the system has been up and the system load average into the initial control panel startup screen.

Added the flying penguin screen saver so that there is now two built in screen savers as well as an option to enable any type of third party screen saver that you have installed.

Added static and custom DNS support into the dynamic DNS client for dyndns.org users as well as a new domain-dns client and a special new mode called "unsupported". This means that you can create your own client command line for the update with unsupported services. There has also been a rewrite of the dyndns script for a more modular design which should be simpler to make modifications and add other features. Added an smtp check so that if the mail server is not available an email of the current IP is not sent when the option is enabled.

Added the "random" binary.

Added the "gunzip" binary.

Added disabling web control panel add-ons when disabling a package in the advanced package setup.

Added an option into the firewall so that symmetric masquerading can be done on internal networks the same as Internet traffic is done. This feature is actually the way the internal network worked in previous versions of FREESCO v0.3.4 and less. This option can be enabled by using an "s" flag when enabling the firewall.

Added time zone capabilities. Included in the modules-037.zip are all of the available time zone files. All that is required is to copy the correct time zone file for your region to the floppy in the a:\router\tmz directory and FREESCO can automatically adjust for daylight savings time. If disk space is very limited you optionally can still use the old method of manually setting the UTC time offset in the setup and manually adjusting it for daylight savings twice a year.

Added an option to check a URL for patches as well as install them in the advanced setup package menu. The default is set to www.freesco.org, but there is an option to change it if necessary.

Added "nslookup" to lookup names and IP addresses.

Added a new directory to the floppy. The directory is a:\router\cpc and it is used for making permanent changes to the web control panel. This is primarily intended for color changes and for adding images as well as other enhancements or changes to the control panel login page, but it can be used for much more complex changes to the control panel as well.

Added authentication to the SMTP client so that if a users email server requires authentication to email the logs, report.txt, or external IP the client will still work. Thanks to Antoine Megens a.k.a Dingetje for adding this to the smtpclient.

Added ISP dial-up connection statistics. This separates connection time, bytes sent, and bytes received for each ISP account on a monthly basis. This is a control panel item as well as a command line item with "ispstats".

Added RAS user connection statistics. Time, bytes sent, and bytes received are shown for each RAS user as a monthly total. This is a control panel item as well as a command line item with "rasstats".

Added the "setleds" binary.

Added turning NumLock on by default at boot time and an option in the advanced extra settings menu to disable this feature if the behavior is not wanted.

Added a link monitor that turns the keyboard caps lock LED on when an Internet connection is up on ethernet PPP and dialup routers and off when the connection is down.

Added an editor option to choose the system editor in the advanced setup. This option is by default set to /bin/edt, but it can be changed to any other editor you have installed.

Added an image to the control panel login along with a completely new color scheme and additional items in the default style.css file.

Added an option to activate and preview screen savers in the primary and advanced setup when the screen saver is enabled. Added a warning and code to prevent the screen saver from activating when any keyboard LED application is active.

Added an SFTP server.

Added an option in the advanced package menu to install the Official ext2 package from the default patch/ext2 URL.

Added a configuration option for internal Oidentd clients that are masqueraded through the firewall when enabling the Ident server.

Added new event sounds for internal DHCP leases, external PPP connection down, failed ISP DHCP leases, and firewall logged hits.

Added sound samples to the advanced setup when diagnostic beeps are enabled so that each sound is played with a text description of the event.

50K free on the floppy disk.