• 1 Introduction
• 2 Contacting me about plptools
• 3 Contacting me about plp
• 4 Obtaining plptools
  • 4.1 Fritz' Releases
  • 4.2 Patches Collection
  • 4.3 Applying the patches
• 5 What These Patches Do
  • 5.1 Earlier work

I started writing a Linux-based User-Space PLP/NCP/RFSV stack, and also started investigating a kernel-based implementation. While working on this, Philip Proudman beat me to a working implementation (plp), which Fritz Elfert improved by merging with Rudolf Koenig's p3nfs/p5nfs, to produce plptools.

My initial efforts spawned scope, an RS-232 line analyser and capture tool, and ncpscope, a tool which takes this data, and interprets it as a PLP/NCP/RFSV data protocol trace.

Fritz removed the RFSV16 (Psion Series 3) support from plptools, and so I'm adding it back in.

I'm also investigating proxying - discussions about this are taking place on the linux-psion@geekstuff.co.uk mailing list. It will allow processes on the Psion to connect to processes on the UNIX system (and vice versa) via NCP, provided by plptools' ncpd NCP daemon.

(Sorry I can't use mailto addresses, they're too easily harvested by imbeciles)

The latest version (as I write this) is 0.6.

4.2 Patches Collection

4.3 Applying the patches

• Download plptools-0.6.tar.gz from Fritz, into some directory.
• Uncompress this:
  tar xzvf plptools-0.6.tar.gz
• This will create a plptools-0.6 directory.
• Download the latest patch using the link above into your directory, and uncompress it:
  gunzip mjg-0.6.diff.gz
• Apply the patch:
  patch -d plptools-0.6 -p1 < mjg-0.6.diff
  (That's dash pee one, not dash pee ell)
• With luck, this will display a list of files it is creating/patching, in your plptools-0.6 directory.
• Rename the plptools-0.6 directory to plptools-0.6-mjg, just to remind you that you're using a non-official version!
• Change into your plptools-0.6-mjg directory
• Run:
  autoconf
  automake
• (You may not have autoconf / automake on your system - if this is the case, you'll be better off downloading the full source archive, from the link above. )
• Run ./configure with whatever options you require, then make, make install, etc.

Patches to plptools-0.6, collected by Matt Gumbley
--------------------------------------------------

1) Compilation patches to enable builds on Solaris. ftp.cc and ppsocket.cc
2) Christof Meerwald's patches so that ncpd can autoterminate (-e option), and
   patch for mgetty PLP autodetection (in the new patches directory), also a
   patch to make the connection more stable.
3) Peter Cherriman's patch which fixes the "one hour out" bug, which "...is that
   a file timestamp is sometimes different when you do a "ls -l" on a mounted
   psion, than the timestamp listed by the properties box on the psion.

   My previous fix, no longer worked when the daylight saving changed. Linux 
   stores timestamps internally as the number of seconds since the EPOC in 
   UTC(GMT). However the psion seems stores timestamps as the number of seconds 
   since the EPOC. However the EPOC in defined relative to the currently set 
   timezone on the psion.

   My new fix takes into account the timezone and DST status provided by the 
   linux system, it now works in by GMT(UTC+0) and BST(UTC+0+DST), but I 
   haven't tested it very much in other timezones, but I think it works. 

   It provides the correct timestamps apart from files created within a hour 
   of a DST change, however this can't be helped due to the strange way the 
   psion stores timestamps and handles timezone and DST."
4) Added --with-mountdir option to configure to allow the plpnfsd mount point
   to be specified at build time. Default is /mnt/psion.
5) Added /dev/psion at the start of the serial ports probed for.
6) Peter Cherriman's patch that fixes compilation of ftp.cc on some platforms.
7) Jim Hague's patches for SIBO, and later Linux Kernels, from Feb 2000. 
   My apologies to Jim for not merging these sooner.  He says:

   "I've been doing a little work on getting plptools working with my 3a. ...
    I have plpftp working for file transfer and plpnsfd also working, at least 
    sufficiently to back up my 3a.

    I have also modified the include files required for the Linux build so 
    that it works with a 2.2 series kernels with the NFSv3 patch applied; 
    actually, all I've done is copy the relevant bits of the old NFSv2 headers.

    It all seems to work with my 3a, though compared to p3nfsd plpnsfd seems 
    very slow at listing directories - when time permits I shall take a 
    closer look.

    In addition to my English 3a (v3.22F) I have also tried it on an Italian 3a
    (v3.40F). The latter exhibits some curious behaviour - if you start ncpd, 
    run up plpftp and quit plpftp, the 3a closes its serial port down (drops 
    CTS and DSR) and seems to need a reset before it will re-open the serial 
    port. Again, when time permits I shall see if it does this when using 
    PsiWin."

    Other parts of Jim's patch:
    "Which reminds me - 0.6 doesn't seem to have working copyFromPsion and
     copyToPsion. I've fixed it up and tidied up the retrieval of Owner 
     Infomation a little - 3as anyway send lots of \0\0\0\0\0, each of which 
     was being displayed in plpftp as a blank line. "

    Jim's patch removes lots of diagnostics in the rfsv16 code, and looks like
    it fixes lots of stuff I hadn't got round to .
    Splendid.

Last patch update: 18/07/00.

RFSV16 support is still unfinished, but it moderately useable. Although I'm releasing a patch against Fritz' 0.4, it isn't quite ready to be merged (unless Fritz thinks otherwise!)

Until it's finished, you'll have to make do with these development snapshots:

plptools-0.4-mjg1.tar.gz, 23/09/99, 193598 bytes.
plptools-0.4-mjg2.tar.gz, 04/10/99, 198728 bytes.
plptools-0.4-mjg3.tar.gz, 07/10/99, 196654 bytes.
plptools-0.4-mjg4.tar.gz, 10/10/99, 186607 bytes.
plptools-0.4-mjg5.tar.gz, 21/10/99, 189843 bytes, and plptools-0.4-mjg5.patch.gz, 19222 bytes.

My changes are documented in the README.mjg file, reproduced below. This might be more up-to-date than the one in the above snapshot, as it gets built into this page from my development tree whenever my website gets autoregenerated.

(C) Matt J. Gumbley 1998-2005 - All Tights Reversed