[Xorp-hackers] XORP 1.7 update

[Ray Soucy]

I know that a lot of talk on list has been surrounding XORP.CT, but I
was wondering what the state of the official XORP project is.

There was activity up until mid-2010 and then everything just stopped.

After preparing build notes for 1.6 today, I started looking through
the list archive and saw some discussion about 1.7.

I did a svn checkout of the project as it stands on sf.net, but there
hasn't been much activity there either.  Is the project still using
sf.net, or has it migrated to something else?

I see a few changes in 1.7 that stand out without digging into the
commit logs or source yet:

* The build system has changed to scons
* XORP is now using Boost in a few places
* Directory structure for installed system has been cleaned up a bit,
xorp_rtrmgr and xorpsh now in xorp/sbin rather than xorp/bin, etc
* Some clean-up is needed with sockets in /var/tmp

Are there any other big changes or are these mostly the highlights?

I was pretty surprised that the current SVN checkout is in a state
that actually builds, and without the need to patch anything to get
around GCC 4 changes.

The only hang-up I ran into was with trying to run xorpsh as any user
but root.  XORP creates its socket files as root:root with only owner
write permissions.  When xorpsh is run by a non-root user it's unable
to get access to them.  I think the sane thing would be to make them
group writable and set the group to xorp, or perhaps change xorpsh so
that the "root" user, rather than the "xorp" user has access to enter
configuration mode.

I adjusted my rc script for XORP to sleep for 1 second after starting
xorp_rtrmgr, then do a chmod 775 and a chown root:xorp on
/var/tmp/xrl.* which seems to work.  I'll need to play with it more to
see if these files ever get created or removed after the initial
startup.  I also noticed they were adding up, so I have a rm
/var/tmp/xrl.* at the end of the stop function.

Aside from adjusting to those changes, everything I've tested so far
seems to be working.

I added instructions for the 1.7 build to http://www.soucy.org/xorp/
along side the 1.6 ones I put up today.

In the archives I saw some exchanges a few months ago about a 1.7
release.  How far is that from happening (if at all), and what needs
to be done before it does?

I think the thing that's holding the project down right now is that
from the outside it appears to be dead. It's been a while since a new
release, and that certainly makes people avoid the project.  The
current releases are in a state that makes it hard for new users to
pick XORP up and give it a spin with a reasonable chance of success.
If we can get the user numbers up, the developer numbers will follow.

P.S. Is Mark still alive?

-- 
Ray Soucy

Epic Communications Specialist

Phone: +1 (207) 561-3526

Networkmaine, a Unit of the University of Maine System
http://www.networkmaine.net/