RIPE Database software release 2.1

[Chris Fletcher <]

RIPE Database software Version 2.1 is now available from:

  ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/dbase/software/ripe-dbase-2.1.tar.gz

The release notes are included below. There a some new features
including a new installation procedure and conversion to perl5.

Please let us know if you have problems. Replies to ripe-dbm@localhost.

Regards,

Chris Fletcher - RIPE NCC

RELEASE NOTES for RIPE Database 2.1

SUPPORTED SYSTEMS

        This release has been tested with perl5.00401 on bsdi2.1 and
        GNU/linux systems. Please let us know if you have problems
        running it on other systems.

FEATURES

        When an update sends an acknowledgement and a notification
        to the same mail address one or the other can be suppressed
        see SUPPRESSMESS in the config file.

        New concise format for acknowledgements and notifications.

        '-v' provides detailed object descriptions.

        Re-implemented Makefiles and package configuration for ease of
        use. Includes an 'uninstall' target to carefully remove the 
        executable and libraries when upgrading.

        Now two help files, one about the whois interface delivered by
        whois and one about the mail interface delivered by mail.

        Notifications are sent when an object is created with a notify:
        attrib.

        Whole package runs under perl5.004 with DB_File interface to Berkley
        db. Perl5 hides a lot of platform specific things from scripts so
        various configuration options have been made obsolete and removed.
        DB_File allows you to increase the size of the in memory db file cache
        which greatly improves indexing performance. see DBCACHESIZE We have
        not tried it with other DBM packages but it should not be hard to
        change if you want to use GDBM_File. This could become a configuration
        option (or maybe use AnyDBM_File) if there is demand for it.
        Changed syntax of 'changed:' & 'withdrawn:' to allow a 4 digits in the
        year part of the date (8 digits in total rather than 6). Automatically
        added dates are 8 digits. Existing 6 digit date fields are left
        unchanged.

BUG FIXES

        added word boundary matches to subject line parsing now matches 'new
        object' and not 'My Apple Newton'.

        added 'i' to regexp check of MAIL-FROM so is not case-sensitive

        changed code to match comments in ripedb.config won't log incoming
        serial updates to files if SERIALINCOMINGDIR is not defined.
        
MISC    

        Added copyright message to all source files to better assert our
        rights but licence has not changed from previous versions.

        I have had problems with bitwise operations on the large
        integers used to represent IP addresses. With some versions of
        perl5 a bitwise '&' returns a signed result. This causes
        classless lookups to fail. See comments about iprightzeromask
        in misc.pl. It seems to work with perl5.00401

        Changes to ripedb.config

        The following values have been removed...
          HELP      (replaced by WHOISHELP & AUTODBMHELP)
          RENICECMD (optional - will use setpriority(2) if not set)

        The following values have been added...
          WHOISHELP
          AUTODBMHELP
          ATTDESC
          OBJDESC
          DBCACHESIZE
          SUCCESSTXT
          HELPHEADER
          FAILURETXT