RIPE Database software beta release

[Chris Fletcher <]

A beta release of the RIPE Database software Version 2.1 is now
available from

  ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/dbase/software/beta/ripe-dbase-2.0.11.tar.gz

The release notes are included below. There a some new features
including a new installation procedure and conversion to perl5.

Please try this release and let us know if you have problems. Replies
to ripe-dbm@localhost.

Unless people find major problems we hope to make it a full release on
Monday.

Regards,

Chris Fletcher
RIPE NCC

RELEASE NOTES for RIPE Database 2.1

SUPPORTED SYSTEMS

	This release has been tested with perl5.00401 on bsdi2.1 and
	GNU/linux systems. Please let us know if you have problems
	running it on other systems.

FEATURES

	When an update sends an acknowledgement and a notification
	to the same mail address one or the other can be suppressed
	see SUPPRESSMESS in the config file.

	New concise format for acknowledgements and notifications.

	'-v' provides detailed object descriptions.

	Re-implemented Makefiles and package configuration for ease of
        use. Includes an 'uninstall' target to carefully remove the 
	executable and libraries when upgrading.

	Now two help files, one about the whois interface delivered by
	whois and one about the mail interface delivered by mail.

	Notifications are sent when an object is created with a notify:
	attrib.

	Whole package runs under perl5.004 with DB_File interface to Berkley
	db. Perl5 hides a lot of platform specific things from scripts so
	various configuration options have been made obsolete and removed.
	DB_File allows you to increase the size of the in memory db file cache
	which greatly improves indexing performance. see DBCACHESIZE We have
	not tried it with other DBM packages but it should not be hard to
	change if you want to use GDBM_File. This could become a configuration
	option (or maybe use AnyDBM_File) if there is demand for it.

	Changed syntax of 'changed:' & 'withdrawn:' to allow a 4 digits in the
	year part of the date (8 digits in total rather than 6). Automatically
	added dates are 8 digits. Existing 6 digit date fields are left
	unchanged.

BUG FIXES

	added word boundary matches to subject line parsing now matches 'new
	object' and not 'My Apple Newton'.

	added 'i' to regexp check of MAIL-FROM so is not case-sensitive

	changed code to match comments in ripedb.config won't log incoming
	serial updates to files if SERIALINCOMINGDIR is not defined.
	
MISC	

	Added copyright message to all source files to better assert our
	rights but licence has not changed from previous versions.

	I have had problems with bitwise operations on the large
	integers used to represent IP addresses. With some versions of
	perl5 a bitwise '&' returns a signed result. This causes
	classless lookups to fail. See comments about iprightzeromask
	in misc.pl. It seems to work with perl5.00401

	Changes to ripedb.config

	The following values have been removed...
	  HELP      (replaced by WHOISHELP & AUTODBMHELP)
	  RENICECMD (optional - will use setpriority(2) if not set)

	The following values have been added...
	  WHOISHELP
	  AUTODBMHELP
	  ATTDESC
	  OBJDESC
	  DBCACHESIZE
	  SUCCESSTXT
	  HELPHEADER
	  FAILURETXT