[Imap-uw] 2004f release question

[Mark Crispin]

On Thu, 1 Sep 2005, Michael Russell wrote:
>  Based on one of the other postings, I see that 2004f is out.  I didn't see 
> any announcement (do you normally make release announcements on this list or 
> is there another list?)

If you are only building imapd and/or ipop3d, the 2004f update has nothing 
of value to you and can be disregarded.  If I felt that the update was 
important, I certainly would have announced it.

> and the release notes are not very specific as to 
> what changed.  Could you comment on whether you think updating from 2004e is 
> worthwhile and give a few specifics on the "bugfix to the TCP code"?

The only change between 2004e and 2004f affects client code that uses TCP, 
not server code.  The servers use stdio, so aren't affected by the 
problem.

The bug was in a change, introduced earlier this year, that had the effect 
of causing a TCP I/O timeout to be misinterpreted as a "connection closed" 
event.  This only affects clients which set up TCP I/O timeouts (most 
notably, it affects Pine) and only sessions which are stuck for at least 
15 seconds.

Although imapd can be a client (as an NNTP/POP/IMAP proxy) too, it does 
not set up TCP I/O timeouts and thus is NOT affected by the bug.

Unless you build clients that use the c-client library and use timeouts, 
the 2004f minor release is of no consequence to you and you can stay with 
2004e.

People who build Pine may want to replace the pine4.63/imap directory 
(which is 2004e) with 2004f in order to get this bugfix; but we expect 
that we will release Pine 4.64 in the not-too-distance future as a bugfix 
release that has this fixes (and other fixes).

> please note that the page:
>  http://www.washington.edu/imap/
> points to release notes:
>  http://www.washington.edu/imap/documentation/RELNOTES.html
> which are actually from the 2004d release.

We'll fix that, thanks.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
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