The aim of this hobby project was to make DECnet for Linux work again under recent (4.x.y) kernels, not to make it perfect.
Updated materials by John Forecast may be found at GitHub.
Kernel module source: dflkm.zip
The current source has been tested under Linux kernels 4.4.14 and 4.9.77. At the time of writing, it has been running continuously for two weeks without any problems. The patches for "No buffer space available" and the kernel BUG_ON panic are the most important. The changes for "mtu" are experimental; the issues with respect to performance should perhaps be solved in another way.
Changes to the kernel module are outlined here.
User programs and daemons: dnprogs-2-67.zip
With additional changes to support TOPS-10 by John Forecast: dnprogs-2-68.zip
Based on version 2.65 in Ubuntu. Possibly, a next version 2.67 becomes available in Ubuntu, so this version "2-67" may lead to confusion. Probably, if the DECnet kernel module code is removed from the Linux source tree, the dnprogs and related packages will be removed from Ubuntu as well...
The changes outlined here:
The kernel module may be installed under Ubuntu according to for example this tutorial at Make Tech Easier. Of course, after the step to have the kernel source ready, for example in "kernelbuild", cd to "kernelbuild/net" and unzip the dflkm.zip file. Note: the new kernel will be the new default, until an automatic update. This may be prevented by "apt-mark hold" commands.
The user programs and utilities may be installed with the "make; make install" sequence, rather than with "apt"; uninstalling was not tested. So DECnet will not be automatically started, but just a few commands are needed: "modprobe decnet; echo -n area.node > /proc/sys/net/decnet/node_address; dnetd; phoned"; unloading the kernel module probably doesn't work well.
1-MAR-2018
