Roadshow 1.14 is out

[Olaf Barthel]

Originally Posted by E-Penguin

What would it take to make this work on KS1.3? (other than a miracle!)

A massive rewrite from scratch, prolonged and extensive testing and the result would likely achieve only a fraction of what the Kickstart 2.x/3.x compatible version could do. Roadshow and its tools rely upon the operating system to be more reliable and dependable than what Kickstart 1.3 could provide. Also, the Kickstart 2.x/3.x operating system enables Roadshow features which cannot be recreated using the building blocks available under Kickstart 1.3.

You also have dependencies in the software which uses the bsdsocket.library, such as the utility.libray TagItem list support. That would have to be provided in some form. Launching shell commands robustly was very hard under Kickstart 1.3, so there probably would be no inetd-style superserver.

It's just too much work to throw a large part of the bsdsocket.library away and then cut down the CLI commands which are needed to set up the network interfaces and the TCP/IP configuration.

[E-Penguin]

Thanks for the detailed answer. Looks like I'm not getting the vanilla A500 online any time soon!

[npagonis73]

Originally Posted by indigolemon

Glad you like it! I really need to find more time to expand Roadie a bit more (and add error checking for the config stuff).

Didn’t know it was you who wrote it!! Well done for that!! And yes if you could find some more time to expand its capabilities, that would be amazing news!!

[Olaf Barthel]

Originally Posted by E-Penguin

Thanks for the detailed answer. Looks like I'm not getting the vanilla A500 online any time soon!

It could happen, but you'd likely need a fully self-contained TCP/IP stack and network interface driver, with a subset of the AmiTCP V4 library functions available as a shared library in memory.

I reckon that's doable if one can "mock" the function behaviour which cannot be fully implemented. Mind you, there would still have to be Kickstart 1.3 compatible TCP/IP client software to make use of this peculiar, restricted TCP/IP stack.

[npagonis73]

Originally Posted by Olaf Barthel

Roadshow 1.14 is mostly about bug fixes, but the rsh command which had been in the making since 2017 made me want to explore if the corresponding Amiga-native shell service was feasible. With rsh and the shell service Roadshow 1.14 achieves what Envoy could already do in 1992

The most important change, in my opinion, is the updated update process: it's no longer quite so hard to make another Roadshow update and ship it. The new update script also takes care of all existing Roadshow versions 1.9-1.13 and is no longer restricted to just the last release version. Finding a good way to make this work took a lot time and led me through numerous embarrassing false starts and dead ends. The Installer scripting language lacked the kind of features which would have made automating the update process easier.

The commercial release also has an updated installation script which will upgrade the demo version to the commercial version if you launch it. It's no longer necessary to perform this process manually.

Glad to talk to the Roadshow creator!! Once you use Roadshow, you can’t go back to anything else you used in Amiga. Indeed the update process has been improved dramatically and it is a breeze now to make updates!!! There are very few pieces of software nowadays in amiga environment that are professionally done and is worth paying for!!! One of those is your program!! Well done

[Olaf Barthel]

Originally Posted by npagonis73

Glad to talk to the Roadshow creator!! Once you use Roadshow, you can’t go back to anything else you used in Amiga. Indeed the update process has been improved dramatically and it is a breeze now to make updates!!! There are very few pieces of software nowadays in amiga environment that are professionally done and is worth paying for!!! One of those is your program!! Well done

Well, it wasn't planned that way, it just happened. Frustratingly, publishing AmigaOS 68k software became harder after the AmigaOS 3.9 release came to market, and it took a long time for the Roadshow 68k version to be published. This included numerous doomed attempts to build a graphical user interface for managing the slightly more numerous settings which Roadshow supports. I appreciate that "Roadie" exists, although looking at it, it makes me feel even more burned out about the failed attempts to make a user interface for Roadshow

Roadshow was the TCP/IP stack I wanted to use myself, which is why it's designed like it is (although not all the design decisions have aged well over the past 18 years).

A good part of what makes strange people such as myself keep working on Amiga software like Roadshow is to improve it, teach the old dog new tricks Amiga software development can be fun, even after all those 30+ years

[crazyc]

Originally Posted by indigolemon

Glad you like it! I really need to find more time to expand Roadie a bit more (and add error checking for the config stuff).

When I click connect on my setup I then have a couple of other requesters come up - the option to just hit connect and then just be told 'all done' would be neat. Even better just an icon to leave out on the workbench with a green light for online and red light of offline for example with a click on it switching between?

[apex]

Roadshow is really a fantastic piece of software, a must have! :-)

[S0ulA55a551n]

Originally Posted by Olaf Barthel

Well, it wasn't planned that way, it just happened. Frustratingly, publishing AmigaOS 68k software became harder after the AmigaOS 3.9 release came to market, and it took a long time for the Roadshow 68k version to be published. This included numerous doomed attempts to build a graphical user interface for managing the slightly more numerous settings which Roadshow supports. I appreciate that "Roadie" exists, although looking at it, it makes me feel even more burned out about the failed attempts to make a user interface for Roadshow

Roadshow was the TCP/IP stack I wanted to use myself, which is why it's designed like it is (although not all the design decisions have aged well over the past 18 years).

A good part of what makes strange people such as myself keep working on Amiga software like Roadshow is to improve it, teach the old dog new tricks Amiga software development can be fun, even after all those 30+ years

To be fair, it's nor exactly difficult to get up and running, in most common set-ups, your editing 3 files with details you would need to know via a GUI anyway

[crazyc]

I actually just use Roadie to connect and disconnect, not really to configure (and yes I could do this other ways). I did have Roadshow running from my startup but it seemed to add ages to my boot time so I dropped it off there and only run it when required.

[nikosidis]

I do not want to get online every time I start my Amiga. If it is something if there is a card in PCMCIA slot that can cause software to fail.
If this software had a GUI like MiamiDX I would have bought it long time ago.
I have to look into Roadie, if that does the job and then I can buy this software.
I would recommend you either bundle this software with Roadie or make some simple GUI for it.
Online, Offline is really only what is needed.

[npagonis73]

Yes Roadie does exactly this job plus 2-3 other functions. It is exactly what people need. Before roadie I had added those functions through ToolsDaemon in a small drop down menu. Now I actually use both!! Couldn’t be simpler.

The luck of GUI is too small of an issue to solve and not loose the incredible speed difference roadshow provides compared with the rest of the tcp/ip stacks.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by crazyc

I actually just use Roadie to connect and disconnect, not really to configure (and yes I could do this other ways). I did have Roadshow running from my startup but it seemed to add ages to my boot time so I dropped it off there and only run it when required.

Why wait around? It can do its thing in the background.

My user startup has:
run >nil: <nil: execute s:network-startup

WB boots up before everything in my network-startup is done (it does ntp sync and mounts a samba share after the interface is up).

When I happen to do WHDLoad gaming, my whdload config runs netshutdown.. I start my networking back up from toolsdaemon if I need it again.

[crazyc]

Originally Posted by Jope

Why wait around? It can do its thing in the background.

My user startup has:
run >nil: <nil: execute s:network-startup

WB boots up before everything in my network-startup is done (it does ntp sync and mounts a samba share after the interface is up).

When I happen to do WHDLoad gaming, my whdload config runs netshutdown.. I start my networking back up from toolsdaemon if I need it again.

For some reason with my tower setup in CWB 3.9 it doesn't finish loading everything until the network is done. simply removing it from the startup made a noticeable difference. I will check whether I put all the necessary NILs in later though......

[Marlon_]

Originally Posted by Olaf Barthel

The mind boggles - I didn't actually test this when I built the server-side code. Thank you for checking out if it worked.

The new rsh service in Roadshow 1.14 was intended to be used really just for executing series of CLI commands, like this:

rsh amiga "if exists s:user-startup ; type s:user-startup ; endif"

Because you cannot conveniently insert line feed characters into a single line of text, I reworked the command line interpretation so that it is more Unix-like. This makes it more readable and easier to use when building scripts that link AmigaDOS and Unix.

If you have ADE installed, you can launch sh as well:

rsh amiga "ADE:bin/sh"

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by nikosidis

I do not want to get online every time I start my Amiga. If it is something if there is a card in PCMCIA slot that can cause software to fail.

Same here. I don't use the network much, and I prefer not having stuff using up memory for no reason. It only takes a second to start the network when I need it.

If this software had a GUI like MiamiDX I would have bought it long time ago.
I have to look into Roadie, if that does the job and then I can buy this software.
I would recommend you either bundle this software with Roadie or make some simple GUI for it.
Online, Offline is really only what is needed.

Just create a script for each function, and execute it using your favorite method (IconX, Toolsdeamon etc.). I don't even bother with 'offline', instead I just reboot my Amiga.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Olaf Barthel

Frustratingly, publishing AmigaOS 68k software became harder after the AmigaOS 3.9 release came to market, and it took a long time for the Roadshow 68k version to be published. This included numerous doomed attempts to build a graphical user interface for managing the slightly more numerous settings which Roadshow supports.

Interesting. I don't even use Gadtools in my GUIs, because I want them to be 1.3 compatible if possible.

For Roadshow I would have been satisfied with an installation script that asked for the basic network settings required (IP address, netmask, gateway etc.). Having to hunt down the configuration files and manually edit them was a pain, and the documentation didn't do a good job of explaining what needed to be done.

Then when I installed the commercial version it overwrote all my configuration files. Definitely not for beginners! Has this behavior changed in the latest version?

Roadshow was the TCP/IP stack I wanted to use myself, which is why it's designed like it is

My only reason for using Roadshow is that it is about 5 times faster than AmiTCP at downloading files in IBrowse. That's quite an impressive speedup - can you tell us how you did it?

[Jax]

Originally Posted by Olaf Barthel

No, this is just an update for the AmigaOS 2.x/3.x 68k operating system versions (and it might also still work on MorphOS if you want to give it a shot).

Oh, good. Thank you.

[patrik]

Originally Posted by crazyc

I actually just use Roadie to connect and disconnect, not really to configure (and yes I could do this other ways). I did have Roadshow running from my startup but it seemed to add ages to my boot time so I dropped it off there and only run it when required.

Try using a static IP address for your network card if you are not.

[crazyc]

I already do use static ips for almost everything on my home network. Will dig back into roadshow and check I have that configured properly though when I get a minute.