# $Id: README,v 1.3 2000/06/20 21:47:10 gjhurlbu Exp $

All comments, bug reports would be appreciated.



License Crap:
=============
	This project is licensed under the terms of the GNU Public License,
version 2.  For more details (as in the actual license agreement), please read
the COPYING file in this directory.


SourceForge:
============
	Diald-top now lives on sourceforge.net.  There is a web page for the
project at:	http://diald-top.sourceforge.net/

	The project's development page can be found at:
		http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/diald-top/

	On the development page, there is access to bug tracking, technical
support, public surveys, our CVS Repository, and also a patch submission area.
This should be the primary point of contact for diald-top's development team.
If you have found a bug, have a feature request, or have a patch to contribute,
please visit the development page to do so.

	There is a public survey on the development page that all users are
requested to participate in.  This survey is to find out what Linux kernel (or
other OS), libc version and diald version that diald-top is being used with.
This in part will be used to determine the level of support to maintain for
differing setups.

	There are also two mailing lists for diald-top.  One is for the users,
and one is for the developers (although these aren't mutually exclusive).  They
can be found by visiting the project development page.  All users would be
advised to join the diald-top-users list to keep on top of other users'
problems, and the fixes for them :)  Mailing list archives are maintained on
geocrawler.com (which is also linked off the development page), and it would
be a good idea to visit the archives.

	New developers are always welcome.  If you wish to actively develop
diald-top, please contact a project admin (once again, using the development
page).

	Sourceforge rules.


Installation:
=============

Read the INSTALL file for instructions on how to install diald-top.



Concept:
========

The concept behind diald-top is rather simple.  I got sick of trying to read
a monitor pipe flying by on an extra VC, so I lusted after a more user
friendly interface.  As I like the interface in top, I decided to start with
that kind of look.  Fortunately, the designers of diald made my life rather
easy by making the monitor pipe with an easy structure to implement. 

I used ncurses for the interface to make my life simpler.  This also has the
additional effect of making this possible to run on any type of terminal.  I
have a VC4404 hooked up and this works great on it.  As ncurses uses the
terminfo database, it SHOULD work fine on any terminal with correct terminfo
entries.

As of Version 0.0.1.1, I have added a limited command structure to diald-top.
It is now possible to send diald commands to force/unforce, block/unblock and
to bring the link up/down, and also to quit diald (immediately or when the
link comes down) all from within diald-top.  This makes the program a lot more
useful.

The program also now reports the status of the link (UP, DOWN, CONNECT,
START_LINK, STOP_LINK, DISCONNECT, CLOSE, etc).  This can still use some work
but it is there now...

As of v2.0, diald-top now has the capability to run remotely, communicating to
a custom server (also included in the package) that farms the contents of the
monitor FIFO out to the remotely running clients.  The communication is done
using TCP/IP on port 1313 on the server.  The identity of the user that is 
remotely running diald-top is verified using identd, and is then looked up in 
a configuration file (by userid, IP address, netmask).

So far, diald-top has been tested in the following configurations:
	Server:
	Linux 2.0.30

	Client:
	Linux 2.0.30		remote client, local client
	BSDi 3.0		remote client

If you get the client up and running on other platforms, please let me know
the particulars and if you had to hack on the sources to get it to compile.
For the platforms above, the only changes were in the Makefile.def as outlined
in the INSTALL file.




Future:
=======

I still would like to get the link status more useful.  There still are some
more things that can be reported (blocked, forced) which should be possible 
to do.

Any suggestions would be useful  :)


Bug Reports, Comments, etc
==========================
All email should be directed at:
	gjhurlbu@beirdo.ott.uplink.on.ca

Please DO send me email.  I enjoy reading email, and it would be nice to
know that one of my little beastly programs is being used for something... :)


------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I will now list the suggestions I have received.  I am not sure how many of
these will (or should) be implemented.


ToDo Contibutors:
=================
		(sewilco@fieldday.mn.org)	12/06/95
	o if packets with long TTL, do not display short TTL packets (< 1 min)
	o decrease screen updates to once every 5 seconds when long time TTL
	   packets abound
	o perhaps show the number of short TTL packets

C.J. Beck	(cjb@cjb.ico.net)		11/27/95
	now	()				06/11/00
	o show how long link has been up/down (in current state)
	o show how much traffic has flowed through
	    {ed. not very likely}

Jan Fure	(jan_fure@io.com)		11/06/95
	now	(janfure@home.com)		06/11/00
	o sort display on priority of packets
	    {ed. more likely on TTL}


Patch Contributors:
===================
Jeff Epler	(jepler@inetnebr.com)		12/31/95
	o Patches to resolve IP addresses and port numbers to services in an
	   intelligent manner (will not bring the link up to resolve!)
	o (based on Rev 0.0.1.1)
	o patches incorporated into 0.0.1.2, then 0.0.1.3 (he sent two
	   incremental patches)

Dan Poirer	(poirer@pobox.com)		02/21/97
	now	()				06/11/00
	o Created a man page
	o thank you very much :)
	o based on Rev 0.7 - incorporated into Rev 0.8 release

Mike Laster	(mlaster@galstar.com)		11/17/96
	now	(mlaster@metavillage.com)	06/11/00
	o truncation of local domain names (-l command line)
	o based on Rev 0.6 - FINALLY incorporated into Rev 1.1 release with
	   modifications

Petr Hubeny	(psh@milada.troja.mff.cuni.cz)	01/04/97
	now	(psh@capitol.cz)		06/11/00
	o Removed ugly $ from the version number (modified from his code)
	o Added interface and message displays
	o based on Rev 0.6 - FINALLY incorporated into Rev 1.1 release with
	   modifications

Carl D. Roth	(roth@cse.ucsc.edu)		04/02/97
	o Added message display
	o based on Rev 1.0 - incorporated into Rev 1.1 release

Steffen Ullrich	(ccrlphr@xensei.com)		08/06/97
	o Nonblocking open of the control FIFO
	o based on Rev 1.0 - incorporated into Rev 1.1 release

Ian T Zimmerman	(itz@rahul.net)			08/27/97
	now	(itz@speakeasy.org)		06/11/00
	o improvements to lex/yacc parser
	o added some command line options and runtime commands
	o added glibc obstack support (-DUSE_OBSTACKS)
	o added timeout after opening monitor FIFO (I moved it slightly)
	o minor fixes of resolve usage
	o based on Rev 1.0 - incorporated into Rev 1.1 release

Steffen Ullrich	(ccrlphr@xensei.com)		09/10/97
	o use of select rather than timeouts
	o added -L command line argument to log the monitor data to a file
	  with timestamps to aid in debugging
	o fixed some local allocation problems
	o based on Rev 1.1 - incorporated into Rev 2.0 release

Ian T Zimmerman (itz@transbay.net)		01/18/99
	now	(itz@speakeasy.org)		06/11/00
	o DNS request throttled on LOAD information from the fifo
	o based on Rev 2.0 - incorporated into sourceforge CVS stream 06/11/00
