--- IPNAT ---

The 64-bit bugs with ipnat have been fixed and patches and instructions
can be found in:

	ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/arch/alpha/ipnatfix/

An example ipnat startup might look like this. For de0 and de1, say,
and if both are already ifconfig'ed:

        sysctl -w net.inet.ip.forwarding=1
        ipf -E
        ipnat -f /etc/ipnat.conf
        dhcpd de1

The contents of ipnat.conf:

        map de0 192.168.1.0/24 -> 0/32 portmap tcp/udp 1024:65535
        map de0 192.168.1.0/24 -> 0/32

--- GENERIC FLOPPY ---

A floppy that boots up a fairly recent 1.3E GENERIC kernel is now available
in:

	ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/arch/alpha/genfloppy

Note that this is the first floppy that supports the Turbochannel alphas.
I hope to also have a ramdisk INSTALL floppy for the 3000/xxx systems soon,
but this one should make installs possible given a dhcp or bootp server
and an NFS root with the base set installed.

--- SERIAL CONSOLES ---

If the keyboard is unplugged SRM will switch to a serial console.
NetBSD will notice this and (continue to) use the serial console
instead of the frame buffer. It's also possible to configure the
serial console even with a keyboard using >>>set console serial.
Go back using >>>set console graphics.

--- BOGUS MAIL MESSAGES ---

Sigh, I have my own home-grown mail system which has worked just
fine since last August on Digital Unix.  (I get a _lot_ of email.)
Three weeks ago I was able to start routing my incoming Avalon mail
to a NetBSD box and run my mail handler under NetBSD. It works
better on NetBSD than on DUh for receiving mail, but there is a
send bug under NetBSD that wasn't there under DUh...it looks like
interrupted (^C'ed) outgoing messages sometimes get sent instead
of aborted, due, I think, to a bug in NetBSD mail(1). (mail(1) is
called by my handler.) I can't reproduce this yet.

Anyway, I just interposed an agent between mail(1) and sendmail(8) that
logs and confirms transmissions, rejects null and excessively >-quoted
messages, and I also set ignoreeof and ignore (^C). With about five
different bullets in this victim I hope the dear list members won't
have to suffer through my mail agent bugs any more. I certainly wouldn't
want people to think I was a clueless f***wit, at least, not without
a better reason than this one. :-)

Ross Harvey