Please tell me there is a gui now.

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Please tell me there is a gui now.

I could, but I wouldn't be telling the truth.

So far Roadshow has worked well enough without a dedicated user interface. Instead of delaying publication for a fourth time in order for a GUI to come together at last, shipping it in its current form did not cause as much trouble as I had feared.

Setting up Roadshow goes as follows: download the test version, unpack the archive, double-click on the Installer script icon, wait for installation to finish. Next step: pick the network interface file which matches your hardware (Ariadne, X-Surf, etc. - there should be a matching file for everything) and drag it from "SYS:Storage/NetInterfaces" to "DEVS:NetInterfaces". You can now reboot your Amiga, or you can double-click on the network interface file you dragged to "DEVS:NetInterfaces".

And that should be it, provided your router has DHCP support, which it probably does. If you like what you see, you might want to consider spending a little money on the commercial version of Roadshow (and install that in the same manner as you did with the test version).

After that, you probably never ever need to change anything about Roadshow again, except perhaps install a software update.

@Olaf

Is IPV6 planned ?
Awesome work BTW, this is special.

_________________

José

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Is IPV6 planned ?

Not yet. This is a tough nut to crack. I have an idea how it could be implemented, by doing what Holger Kruse did for "Miami".

Given how long it took to get Roadshow this far, please do not expect IPv6 support to materialize quickly. I have no idea yet how I could test IPv6 support right now. My home network is exclusively set to use IPv4, and, frankly, I have doubts about IPv6 interoperability.

@olsen

So, is the OS4 Roadshow developed/updated separately from the 68K version? Or do the 68K updates only implement what the OS4 version already has impemented?

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Just out of curiosity, does Roadshow by any chance sport an Amiga-esque API? When AmiTCP (as well as AS225, I suppose) was first introduced, I was under the impression that the POSIX-inspired API was meant to be a placeholder, and that the plan was to eventually replace it with an API coherent with the rest of the AmigaOS signaling system. To this date, however, I have yet to see a single TCP/IP service implemented as a standard AmigaOS device.

(speaking of which, I should probably see if the Envoy API documentation is available freely from somewhere)

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So, is the OS4 Roadshow developed/updated separately from the 68K version?

No, both are built from exactly the same code. Only that the 68k version uses specially optimized assembly language portions which are not required by the PPC version, which in turn uses assembly language code for the IPv4 checksum calculation/verification that is very different from what the 68k version uses.

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Or do the 68K updates only implement what the OS4 version already has impemented?

No, that is not the case. Both implement the same functionality. Only the bugs in the 68k version needed finding and fixing, which were specific to how the 68k version works. Specifically, the 68000 and 68010 have address alignment restrictions which do not exist on the 68020 and beyond, and the PowerPC. With unaligned addresses, the worst you can get on the 68020, etc. and the PowerPC are performance problems (or alignment exceptions which the kernel will helpfully catch for you). But on the 68000 and 68010 your code will fail.

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Just out of curiosity, does Roadshow by any chance sport an Amiga-esque API?

Some enhancements to the original AmiTCPv3 API are present. The original POSIX APIs are at times a real headache to use, e.g. in the context of the original ifconfig, route and netstat commands. Strange data structures, strange calling procedures. The ifconfig command is particularly twisted.

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When AmiTCP (as well as AS225, I suppose) was first introduced, I was under the impression that the POSIX-inspired API was meant to be a placeholder, and that the plan was to eventually replace it with an API coherent with the rest of the AmigaOS signaling system.

Could be; I didn't really pay attention to the peculiarities of the two dominant TCP/IP APIs until I got involved with the INet-225 product, which was part of the "Amiga surfer" product by Amiga Technologies GmbH.

To have the POSIX API in place can be considered a boon, as its behaviour and features are well-established and documented. Trying something different and succeeding at that is rare in this domain.

Here's an example: the standard textbook which I used when I started out with TCP/IP programming is "Unix network programming - Networking APIs: Sockets and XTI" by the late Richard W. Stevens. You will know what the socket API is, but what is "XTI"? "XTI" is the X/Open Transport Interface, which is a competing networking API design introduced with Unix System V, Release 4, if I remember correctly. How successful was XTI? Well, the book I mentioned is some 1000 pages long. About 120 of which are concerned with XTI...

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To this date, however, I have yet to see a single TCP/IP service implemented as a standard AmigaOS device.

We don't have a uniform I/O model throughout the operating system. That makes implementing such a thing very hard.

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I should probably see if the Envoy API documentation is available freely from somewhere

It's not available? Hm... Something could be done about that.

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We don't have a uniform I/O model throughout the operating system. That makes implementing such a thing very hard.

My idea was to use MsgPort's and guss you can use Lists, as system is based on sheard memory you can insert Nodes from other parts of the system, pasting a address pointer is faster then copying packages. And also sorting Sequence numbers in a List is also quick.

But at the end of every thing it has to be nicely packed into a file description.

InfinityTCP never really made it past the TCP package sequence numbers, and probable will end up being incompatible whit every thing else on Amiga.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 12-Nov-2013 at 08:29 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 12-Nov-2013 at 08:29 PM.

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Does AmigaOS4 get these updates automatically somehow?

I find RoadShow to be quite difficult if it can't get DHCP. You can't just plug in a cable later, and you can't change to a different switch or router and expect RoadShow to find its new way out to the Internet again. It seems very static. Restarting it requires some manual work and often doesn't work since the net won't shut down if it has failed in some way.

Is there a command to force RoadShow to refresh the IP by calling the DHCP again, after changing cable or something? Or do one need to take down the whole interface and adding it again, which as I said doesn't always work.

It's also very slow to get DHCP. Miami usually gets the IP in 1/10s of a second while RoadShow can spend a good 10 seconds (100 times longer time) for an inknown reason.

_________________
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> Amiga Classic and OS4 developer for OnyxSoft.

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Does AmigaOS4 get these updates automatically somehow?

No, the reason being that the problems addressed in this update were restricted to the version which works on all Amigas, specifically those using 68000 and 68010 CPUs. The version for 68020/030/040/060 CPUs did not get any functional changes, just a version bump.

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I find RoadShow to be quite difficult if it can't get DHCP. You can't just plug in a cable later, and you can't change to a different switch or router and expect RoadShow to find its new way out to the Internet again. It seems very static. Restarting it requires some manual work and often doesn't work since the net won't shut down if it has failed in some way.

I know, but the problem resides with the SANA-II standard and how the network drivers implement it. For example, the OS4 Ethernet drivers will detect if an RJ45 plug was removed/inserted and cycle through the offline/online state, which in turn will prompt Roadshow to restart the DHCP negotiation.

As far as I know no Amiga 68k network device driver does this. And it doesn't have to, according to the SANA-II specs, which have no requirements/provisions for disconnect/reconnect events. The closest thing are the offline/online events, which are intended for a completely different purpose.

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Is there a command to force RoadShow to refresh the IP by calling the DHCP again, after changing cable or something? Or do one need to take down the whole interface and adding it again, which as I said doesn't always work.

Right now I do not have a good solution for this problem. Shutting down the stack and starting over by re-adding an interface is what should work, but it's an excessive measure.

I have to do better, but so far I haven't had a smart idea how

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It's also very slow to get DHCP. Miami usually gets the IP in 1/10s of a second while RoadShow can spend a good 10 seconds (100 times longer time) for an inknown reason.

The reason why Roadshow takes longer is because it follows the DHCP requirements for negotiating an IPv4 address assignment, and it takes the recommended precautions to avoid claiming an address which is already in use.

Miami, on the other hand, does something much simpler, which is also less robust. If I remember correctly, Miami takes a shortcut through the address assignment process, and that may be a really bad idea.

Put another way, if a DHCP client takes less than 2-3 seconds to obtain an IPv4 address from a DHCP server, something is wrong. If it's less than 1/10 of a second, something is deeply, deeply wrong. The protocol can't run through all the required steps in that little time, even in a 100GbE network

Olsen

You really mean to tell me that you guys are offering up a commercial tcp/ip stack (when there are free ones around) without a gui? Any amiga programmer can make a small one in a day or two??

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You really mean to tell me that you guys are offering up a commercial tcp/ip stack (when there are free ones around) without a gui?

Yes. Sounds strange, doesn't it?

I suppose you may not know the backstory of this project?

I have been working on Roadshow since Christmas 1999, coming off the AmigaOS 3.9 project, when it had become clear that there probably would be no TCP/IP stack included with the next AmigaOS release. So I bought a few books and ported the 4.4BSD-Lite2 TCP/IP stack to the Amiga in about four weeks.

Since I did not have as much spare time as I used to do, my plan was to split the work of building the TCP/IP stack (and PPP/PPPoE drivers for it) and creating a GUI for it. To this end I created a design draft, breaking the GUI down into functional units and describing the workflow. This was my first attempt to get a GUI written for Roadshow, to save time.

Turns out, this attempt to create a GUI bombed spectacularly.

By this time, the AmigaOS4 project had taken off, and I spent much of my time on it, and on porting Roadshow to the PowerPC platform. A GUI was created for Roadshow, specifically for AmigaOS4, using my design draft.

After that, I tried again to bring Roadshow to the market, for 68k Amigas, and another attempt to get the GUI implemented by another developer.

Turns out, this attempt to create a GUI failed, but not as spectacularly as the first attempt.

Time went by, and Roadshow matured, became more robust. I tried again to get Roadshow published (it's not getting easier to publish software for the Amiga, with the market collapsing and everything), and getting a GUI written for it by another developer.

Turns out, this attempt to create a GUI failed, too.

Now I've been around for a long time. I've written practically all kinds of software for the Amiga, have contributed to the AmigaOS 3.5, 3.9 and 4 projects. I've done user interface design, interaction design, wrote user interface frameworks, built several commercial applications and at least one game.

But I just didn't have the time to write the GUI...

Finally, after receiveing a lot of encouragement to get Roadshow 68k finally published, I put together an installation package, with documentation and everything, and got it published. The question of making a GUI was raised, but given my past experience, I just wanted this whole affair to be over, and Roadshow to be available for purchase.

And that is the story so far, with some of the more boring and more exciting bits left out for brevity.

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Any amiga programmer can make a small one in a day or two??

Your practical experience may be very different from mine. After three failed attempts I just did not have the heart any more to delay publication for a fourth time, or maybe write a GUI myself. I had been working on this project for more than ten years. How much longer for a GUI?

It seems to me that "any" Amiga programm will not do. And a day or two will not be enough.

I'm curious. Are you an Amiga programmer?

Olsen

hi. No i'm not a programmer but i've project managed a few amiga programming projects and know it doesnt take much to make a small gui for a tcp/ip stack. I'm also familar with who you are and the history of "roadshow" Werent you supposed to provide your stack to the morphos guys years ago?

Hello. You have done a lot of time&work and it is appreciated. I hopefully bought RoadShow when buying OS4 and 4,1 (Which is still a" bit" incomplete)

Bought Miami and IB too back then.

With incomplete I mean that there is a need to power up the laptop to call the grandparents with Skype or make some secure banking or even peek a bit of YouTube or.. Printing Made Easy;) A bit sorry to say that the Amiga in the Net? Please give me a bone. Started in 1997, Great times. Now nothing works or "nothing" if You wish so.

Now we only need the... (Please Kill Me;)

All The Best, AmigaRulez Still!

PR

Last edited by PR on 16-Nov-2013 at 02:21 AM.
Last edited by PR on 16-Nov-2013 at 02:21 AM.

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No i'm not a programmer but i've project managed a few amiga programming projects and know it doesnt take much to make a small gui for a tcp/ip stack.

If you put it like that, it seems you had much more luck in making things happen than I did.

It would at some point make sense to go over what made my attempts to bootstrap a GUI for Roadshow fizzle & bang and try again. By now I'm somewhat disinclined to repeat the experiment, though.

The code in Roadshow which was specifically designed for a GUI to use is still in there (e.g. change the contents of the configuration files in "DEVS:Internet", and Roadshow will automatically reread them). The SDK and the manual contain the documentation for making a GUI that interfaces to Roadshow, and the source code to all the tools is provided with the SDK. Anybody is free to give it a shot.

I would expect that the same one-man-company which published Roadshow would be happy to publish a GUI, too, if one were to be made.

But for now, I'm content with what I have. It does not seem to be much of an obstacle for those customers who choose to test-drive and then buy the TCP/IP stack, even if they are not field experts.

Out of curiosity: what would you expect from a simple GUI? My basic requirements would be control over the interfaces, DNS servers, the routes, the host/services configuration and the inetd-style superserver. Not exactly simple, but that would be the basic set of tools that are needed, in my opinion.

Back in 2003 I was most concerned with PPP/PPPoE connectivity, which is very rich in configuration options and opportunities to shoot yourself in the foot. Consequently, offering a GUI tool for connection setup/teardown was a much more challenging task to design and build.

These tools for PPP dialup and PPPoE connection still exist and ship with Roadshow (full source code included), and they do not come with GUIs either. Nobody seems to mind. In fact, until about a month ago nobody (including myself) had even noticed that I had shipped the wrong set of PPP/PPPoE tools with Roadshow by mistake.

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Werent you supposed to provide your stack to the morphos guys years ago?

Different story; the deal was for me to provide my FFS reimplementation to MorphOS and AmigaOS4 both, which came to happen. I was surprised to hear subsequently that there was also interest to find a place for Roadshow in MorphOS, as it already had a TCP/IP stack. The long and the short of it is that the contract to make that happen did not get signed, and it proved again that I am a much worse businessman than programmer

Last edited by olsen on 16-Nov-2013 at 08:27 AM.
Last edited by olsen on 16-Nov-2013 at 08:25 AM.
Last edited by olsen on 16-Nov-2013 at 08:25 AM.