Re: [circle] Windows issues

[Paul Campbell]

On Tue, Jun 15, 2004 at 11:03:18AM +0200, thomasV wrote:
> Paul Campbell wrote:
> 
> >Strangely enough, it doesn't go into "daemon" mode as advertised. The
> >Windows version at least boots both the GUI and the backend regardless
> >of what the settings are.
> 
> there is no daemon mode for windows.
> this is because I do not know how to listen to a socket
> in windows. I do not know if it is possible at all...

Yes, you can do it. The "winsock.dll" library is essentially a direct port
of the BSD 4.2 sockets library for all Windows versions. I fact, the standard
"telnet.exe", "ping.exe", and "ftp.exe" software is literally uneditted
compiles of the originals (and completely baffles Windows users :) ). So
just listen to a port JUST as you do in a *nix-based system.

I have used a BSD-based SSL tunnel program DIRECTLY under Windows. Simply
recompile it using the various EGCC/GNU C compilers with a POSIX compatibility
library, and you're done.

The "trick" for the Windows user is for them to realize what that command
line interface thingie is for instead of simply clicking on an icon. But
then if they got so far as to get circle running already, that shouldn't
be an issue.

The only issue here is that the Windows pipe port, in a word, sucks. The
name space and the entire setup is really awful. Regular INET works fine, so
you can emulate a named pipe interface by simply checking the incoming
host on the socket to be sure that it's from the loopback port (127.0.0.1),
thus using an INET socket instead of a named pipe.

For example, MLDonkey works this way. It defaults to running in "daemon" mode.
It opens 3 ports: 4000, 4001, and 4080. 4000 is a text-mode (telnet-style)
interface. 4001 is a "raw mode" interface for clients. In the case of circle,
this would correspond to the GTK client port. 4080 is the port for a web
server (http://127.0.0.1:4080 gets you a web interface).