2 Changes to WvDial since the initial release:
6 - Synchronize with libwvstreams v3.69
8 - WvDialConf actually works with this release
10 - Applied some patches from Andrew W. Nosenko <awn@bcs.zp.ua> that
11 fix a couple of typos, and which makes sure that the wvdialconf man page
14 - Applied some patches from RedHat to make sure that WvDial and
15 WvStreams compile clean on 64 bit architectures. Also did some cleanup
16 to make sure that the goofy GCC that RedHat ships doesn't complain on
19 - Applied patches from SuSE to ensure that WvDial compiles cleanly
20 using GCC 3.1, as well, adapt a patch to make sure that wvdialconf
21 creates the wvdial.conf file mode 660. Also applied their multi-phone
22 number patch (so it will dial several phone numbers in order if you ask it
23 nicely), as well as their check to make sure inherited sections actually
26 - Applied a mega patch from SuSE that added better ISDN support, added USB
27 modem support, added a "--no-syslog" option, inactivity timeouts,
28 interactive passwords (WvDial will now prompt you for passwords if you
29 ask it to), Connection checking once you're online (which can probably be
30 adapted to run your copy of retchmail (or if you are still using fetchmail..
31 I guess you could run that as well) once you are online. It also reputedly
32 works better with DialD.
34 - Applied patch from Dushyanth Harinath <dushy@symonds.net> to implement
35 the "Dial Attempts" option, which will now cause WvDial to stop trying
36 to dial after the number in this option is exceeded.
38 - It should be mentioned somewhere that all of these nifty new features
39 are pretty much completely untested. So please bang at them, look at them,
40 and please send the bug reports to wvdial-list@lists.nit.ca. That's where
41 all of the cool wvdial hackers hang out ;)
46 - Added handling of Configuration Files in other places than
48 - Added support for Lucent WinModem devices (/dev/ttyLT)
49 - Added support for command line options (you can now do cool things like:
50 wvdial password=currentSecureIDNumber HeadOffice
51 - Changed so that WvStreams is now not included in the base distribution
52 so you need WvStreams installed as a separate package in order for WvDial
53 to do anything intelligent.
57 - There were some changes - not sure what they were anymore, but there were
58 some changes between 1.41 and 1.42
63 - Some internal changes to wvstreams for compatibility with non-gcc
64 compilers. Nothing much that will interest most people, but anyone
65 hacking on wvdial should hack on this version.
70 - Lots of changes to the underlying wvstreams library and API; you probably
71 won't notice, but it's much cleaner/faster/better now.
72 - '%' is now a valid prompt character.
73 - The wvdial/MENUS file documents login menu types that we currently
74 do/don't support. Patches to fix any of the unsupported ones are
75 (VERY!) welcome, but try to make sure you don't break any supported
76 ones while you're at it.
77 - After wvdial guesses at a login menu, it now reverts to default_reply.
78 That means if menu guessing doesn't quite work the first time, you
79 have a chance to recover and send 'ppp' instead.
80 - Michael K. Johnson from Red Hat fixed a bug with baud rate detection:
81 we weren't actually checking if the kernel allowed us to set the
82 new rate, so wvdialconf choose the wrong one sometimes.
83 - mkj also added support for a "--chat" option to wvdial: this will allow
84 you to use wvdial as a drop-in replacement for the "chat" program,
85 because wvdial will talk on stdin/stdout and log messages to syslog.
86 Try something like this:
87 pppd connect 'wvdial --chat' /dev/ttyS2 115200
89 - If you have the liblockdev library installed, we use that instead of our
90 own routines to create lock files in /var/lock. Among other things,
91 that makes /dev/modem symlinks safe! (But _everybody_ has to use
92 liblockdev on your system if you really want it to be useful.)
93 - "New PPPD = yes" is now the default, because nearly everyone has the new
94 pppd nowadays. You can still turn it off if you want.
97 1.30 and 1.31 (never released)
99 - These were pre-release versions distributed to Patrick Patterson (author
100 of kwvdial) and Red Hat, respectively, to help them integrate their
101 packages with wvdial.
106 - Auto Reconnect is on by default. It was supposed to be before. Oops.
107 Changed some of the delays, too.
108 - WvDial is now smarter with short menus that arrive at the same time as
109 their prompts. Previously, the prompt would get lost, and so the
110 prompt wouldn't get answered even if wvdial successfully found the
112 - We can now read menus such as "Press P for PPP, R for shell" correctly.
113 - Now using the latest WvStreams library, with several bugfixes and
115 - New autodependency mechanism is MUCH faster.
120 - The '$' character is now a valid prompt character. (So the bash$ prompt
122 - WvDial keeps track of how many times it has tried to connect during
123 the current session. It also auto-redials if your ISP hangs up
124 on you, and has an exponential backoff timer (delay doubles each
125 time) if it simply can't connect for some reason.
126 - wvdialconf was setting Init, not Init1 in /etc/wvdial.conf.
127 Unfortunately, there is no such option, so people wanting to change
128 the ATZ were getting confused.
133 - "Remote Name" option now defaults to '*' instead of 'wvdial' -- this
134 should help people using CHAP.
135 - People with 7e1 connections (ie. certain Compuserve dial-ins) should now
136 be able to connect, because WvDial ignores the incoming parity bit.
137 - WvDial no longer re-initializes the modem on exit. 1.00 did sometimes,
138 for a rather silly reason.
139 - Because of another silly error (capitalization of the word 'Modem')
140 WvDial 1.00 was printing the "-->" arrow for _all_ lines, not just
141 informational messages.
142 - There was an obscure bug that caused crashing with certain very specific
148 - There really wasn't much wrong with it! This version is 0.41 with
149 patches for a few build problems, the latest WvStreams library, and
150 up-to-date documentation.
155 - Now works better with pppd 2.3.x: you don't need "noauth" in
156 /etc/ppp/options. Set the option "New PPPD = yes" in wvdial.conf.
157 - Cleaned up some compile problems with the egcs compiler.
158 - Longer delay between TERMinating and KILLing pppd.
163 - WvDial now aborts a connection sequence if it sees that the modem has
164 dropped carrier. You can disable this with the "Carrier Check" config
166 - Boolean (on/off) options in wvdial.conf can now be set to 1/0,
167 on/off, yes/no, and true/false.
168 - Much cleaner prompt detection code. Now wvdial can understand any of the
169 following menu formats:
175 If you press "1", you get PPP.
176 - An all-new "stupid mode" disables prompt responses entirely and just runs
177 pppd immediately when you connect, using PAP. This is for (you
178 guessed it) "stupid" ISP's that give a login: prompt but don't let
179 you actually log in, but work fine anyway if you just use PAP. Just
180 set "Stupid Mode = yes" in wvdial.conf.
181 - Up to 9 different init strings, via the config options Init1 through Init9.
182 - Change your dial prefix and dial command separately from the phone number,
183 possibly even in a separate [Dialer] section of wvdial.conf. WvDial
184 now dials the modem like this:
185 "Dial Command" "Dial Prefix" "Phone"
186 Where by default, "Dial Command" is ATDT and "Dial Prefix" is blank.
187 - Didn't update the manpages, again.
192 - WvDial would segfault for some people if pppd died. Thanks to
193 <davidw@cks.com> and <dsb3@earthlink.net> for pointing this out.
194 The problem was caused by referring to WvDialer::modem after it
195 had been deleted after a disconnect.
196 - Debian package no longer redirects pon/poff to pon.wvdial/poff.wvdial; it
197 was too dangerous and done incorrectly. Also changed postinst to
198 only create wvdial.conf at the "configuration" phase of
200 - Included a fix from <dsb3@earthlink.net> to search for ISP "welcome"
201 messages and avoid the 5-second "don't know what to do" delay. The
202 implementation of this may change later.
203 - WvDial now isn't quite as eager to respond to login prompts; it waits
204 100ms first. That way, if a server prints several login prompts in
205 a row, wvdial won't try to answer all of them.
210 - We now use the modem's carrier detect to notice when, during login, the
211 connection has dropped.
212 - login and password prompt override, with the "Login Prompt" and
213 "Password Prompt" options.
214 - Some fixes to prompt detection: "sign*on" is detected, and "~" doesn't
215 count as a prompt string. We don't do blank-line prompts yet since
216 they're still a bit suspicious.
217 - Added --help and --version command-line options.
218 - We now warn when you specify a non-existent wvdial.conf section on the
220 - Some minor changes to the output display.
225 - wvdial now has a mailing list! Send a message (subject: subscribe) to
226 wvdial-list-request@worldvisions.ca if you want to get in on all the
227 latest action. All new releases will be announced here.
228 - Added support for pppd 2.3.x, by editing pap-secrets instead of using the
229 "deprecated" +ua option. This unfortunately means that you will
230 need to run wvdial as root at least the first time after you
231 set/change your password in /etc/wvdial.conf. (The +ua option was
232 removed from pppd for security reasons, and most people agree that
233 setting a PPP password is an "administrative" task to be done by
235 - You can now supply an arbitrary number of config file sections on the
236 wvdial command line and wvdial will take options out of them in
237 order. For example: "wvdial uwaterloo quiet" might take the phone
238 number from the [Dialer uwaterloo] section, the init string from the
239 [Dialer Quiet] section, and the rest of the information from the
240 [Dialer Defaults] section.
241 - Removed various unneeded files from the source tree. Some of it was
242 Linux-specific, and getting compiled for no reason. WvDial should
243 _hopefully_ build with very few changes on other systems, now.
244 - "&c0" init string problem fixed -- "CLOCAL" mode should have been enabled
250 - Debian package now uses debhelper instead of debmake.
251 - Much-improved WvLog class produces cleaner and more readable screen
252 output. (And provides room to grow into nice features like syslog.)
253 - Simplified WvDialer class by using the new WvLog stuff, fixing several
255 - Much better prompt detection / response, now officially tested at least
257 - Slightly better ppp negotiation string detection. It's still stupid, but
259 - Thanks to Stephen P. Molnar <smolnar@postbox.acs.ohio-state.edu> for
260 noticing some horrible bugs in the config file parser, which may
262 - The return code of pppd is now reported correctly.
267 - Quick change to search /dev/ttyI* (ISDN) as well as /dev/ttyS*. This MAY
268 be all that's necessary to support ISDN... but we're probably not
269 so lucky. Let us know!
274 - Tiny fix to rules.mk in the source code archive so that non-Debian
275 (actually, non-bash2) users can compile WvDial.