This Document is the AmiTCP/IP Frequently Asked Questions and their answers (I hope ;-). I decided to create this after I got my Amiga connected through AmiTCP/IP, and I found the same questions being asked again and again, I also found myself to be answering some of them :-)

This FAQ will be posted semimonthly to: news.answers, comp.answers, comp.sys.amiga.datacomm, comp.sys.amiga.applications and comp.sys.amiga.networking.

The current version of this FAQ is available via the World Wide Web, in either ascii text or HTML formats.

If you obtain this FAQ from any source other than those listed, there is a chance that it is out of date, and you should try the listed sources for a current version.

I have prepared a brief description of how the FAQ is prepared, and a searchable version is in the works.

If you have any suggestions, queries or corrections please send email to me and I will do my best to answer it. I hope this document is helpful to new people and experienced people alike and answers some queries that they may have.

This FAQ is not a guide to TCP/IP. If you want that look for TCP/IP books in your bookstore or search the Internet for Information, which is where most of the information in this document came from. Also, this FAQ is also not a guide to the Internet.

I have explained briefly some of the Internet protocols but they are very basic explanations and I have only included them because they bear some relevance to AmiTCP/IP.

Throughout this FAQ, AmiTCP/IP is refered to as AmiTCP, and "SLIP/PPP or other dialup protocol" will commonly be referred to as "dialup".

This document is copyright Mike W. Meyer. Permission is granted for this document to be freely distributed complete and unaltered. In addition, any portion of this document may be distributed on USENET, so long as the credits are included in any portion that includes more than two answers. For the purposes of this license, USENET is any data stream or file collection which uses all documents posted to any newsgroup I post this article to

The document is derived from a work that was copyright Neil J. McRae.

If you screw up, it's your fault and not mine. This information is provided "as is" and any damage occuring to you or your equipment is your own fault. Neil J. McRae and Mike W. Meyer disclaim any liability of any kind for damages that may occur from use of the information within this FAQ.

Mike W. Meyer also disclaims any liability as to the informations accuracy. While much effort has gone into providing accurate data, there is no guarantee.

Neil J. McRae deserves much credit for creating and maintaining version 1 of this document.

Just a few thanks to a few people who helped me in some way while creating this document.

I'd like to thank the the AmiTCP group who are:

Pekka Pessi&BR; Jarno Rajahalme&BR; Markus Peuhkuri&BR; Tomi Ollila

Thanks for doing this, guys! Keep up the good work on AmiTCP.

And thanks also to:

Oliver Smith&BR; Michael B. Smith&BR; Jake Dias&BR; James R Grinter&BR; Graham Walter&BR; Wyrd Synapse&BR; Leslie Orchard&BR; Dan Murrell Jnr.&BR; Matthew Zeier&BR; Douglas Scott&BR; Demon Internet&BR; Holger Kruse

TCP/IP stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. TCP/IP is a protocol that allows any system on a network to talk "directly" to any other system, by passing packets of information back and forth. TCP/IP (and its later relative OSI) is usually used over networks built on top of Ethernet, Token-Ring, Starlan and other LANS. The Internet uses TCP/IP. What is the Internet?

An "internet" is a network comprised of computers that talk to each other using TCP/IP. The "Internet" is a vast network of hundreds of thousands of machines using TCP/IP to communicate. The Internet grew out of a US government funded project in inter-computer communications that grew into an enormous network of systems. One of the principle characteristics of this network is that machines are addressed by domain names which identify the destination, rather than addresses that are constructed out of the route from machine to machine to machine. What is C/SLIP?

SLIP is Serial Line Internet Protocol. SLIP is used, most commonly, for connecting a computer to a TCP/IP network using a modem. SLIP lets IP packets be sent up and down a serial line. CSLIP is an extension of the SLIP protocol, which reduces the typical TCP/IP packet-overhead of 40 bytes per packet to 3 or 5 bytes by "remembering" a number of active connections, not resending unused fields, and only sending changes to the headers. Since a compression algorithm is not used, it does not impair any compression added by your modem, and thus presents a significant improvement in packet throughput! CSLIP gives much better response in interactive applications such as Telnet. (Thanks Oliver and Markus) If your providers don't have SLIP, or if you are your provider, and you don't have SLIP, it is publically available. Ask you System Administrator for more information. Existing AmiTCP CSLIP drivers will only use CSLIP if it is available on the remote end. Otherwise they will gracefully degrade to using ordinary SLIP. For a detailed description of SLIP and CSLIP consult a book on TCP/IP protocols. There is a SLIP faq available in comp.protocols.tcp-ip newsgroup. SLIP is described in RFC 1055. CSLIP is described in RFCs 1055 & 1144 What is PPP?

PPP is Point to Point Protocol, another way of connecting to your network. It is a more robust protocol than SLIP, and addresses many of SLIP's weaknesses. However it is much more difficult than SLIP to implement, but the advantage over SLIP make it the serial protocol of the future. (this is my opinion ;-) For a detailed description of PPP consult a book on TCP/IP or get the PPP faq available via anonymous FTP. PPP is described in RFCs 1332, 1333, 1334, 1376, 1377, 1552, 1570, 1598, 1619,1638 and 1663 phew! A SANA-II PPP driver is available from Aminet. This is a non registered version. A shareware version with many more features is also on Aminet but requires a key file, which you must pay the author $15. Consult the documentation for more details on this. What is Ethernet?

(thanks to wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk :) A coaxial cable local area network first described by Metcalfe & Boggs of Xerox PARC in 1976. Specified by DEC, INTEL & XEROX (DIX), it's now recognised as the industry standard. Data is broken into packets, and packets are transmitted using the CSMA/CD algorithm until they arrive at the destination without colliding with any other. The coaxial cable form of ethernet is commonly called 10Base2 or thinnet. Other forms included a twisted pair cable with modular plugs knows as 10BaseT, which is currently more popular than 10Base2. 10Base% connets to a hub instead of along a line. An even older form of cable is a half-inch shielded cable known as thicknet. Ethernet usage is described in lots of RFCs. Read the index if you're that keen to find out. What is an RFC?

RFCs are documents that are used to define the Internet standards. RFC stands for Request For Comments. De facto: Requirement For Conformance. (thanks Michael) RFC are available from many FTP sites including ftp.wustl.edu, ftp.doc.ic.ac.uk and ftp.demon.co.uk. NIC is the official place in the United States. UUNet is the best connected place to get them in the USA. The file "rfc-index.txt" (which should be available on every RFC repository) contains an index of all published RFC's What is NFS?

(From the Sun NFS documentation:) NFS is a network file system developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. The Sun Network Filesystem (NFS) protocol provides transparent remote access to shared filesystems over local area networks. The NFS protocol is designed to be machine, operating system, network architecture, and transport protocol independent. For a detailed description of NFS, consult a TCP/IP book. The NFS Client by Carsten Heyl is included info the AmiTCP distribution. See the ch_nfs documentation in AmiTCP:help. There is also an Amiga to Amiga NetFS implemetation that is included with AmiTCP. This is NOT NFS but lets the Amiga share other Amiga's Disk Drives. What is a domain name server, and how do I get one?

A domain name server (DNS), put simply, is a massive address book of the Internet, It enables the user to use hostnames while not having the hostname listed in their Amitcp:db/hosts file. A partial named implementation is on ftp.demon.co.uk. However, as someone who has set up his own name server, I would recommend that you use someone else's. :-) DNS is quite a complex system, and unless you are running a massive network, you don't really need your own. For more information on DNS, consult a TCP/IP book.

These are available from gopher and the World Wide Web Updates to this list should be mailed to Markus. What mail and news clients can I use with AmiTCP?

One package is INetUtils by Michael B. Smith. I use these and I recommend them to all. These utilities work as drop in commands for AUUCP and let you use UUCP compatible newsreaders such as TIN and UUCP compatible mail readers such as AmigaELM. The faq was posted to USENET using InetUtils. GRn is also available for AMITCP, which allows direct connection with your news server. AmiPOP by Scott Ellis is also included with InetUtils for users who can connect to POP mail servers. Pine is a port of a standalone mail and news system written for Unix. All the above mentioned programs are available on Aminet in one of the news, mail or net directories. Also Gnus can be used with GNU Emacs (albeit a tad slow) for reading news. Mail with emacs still requires an external transport unit such as InetUtils. Gnus was one of the first applications used to test AmiTCP. Thor is a very popular package that does both mail and news. Is there an IRC client for AmiTCP?

There is one written Emacs LISP, which requires Emacs. This is available from kampi.hut.fi. However, there are some functions that cause normal irc clients to display error messages (so if people moan at you you know why :-) :-) Emacs is available on Aminet. The Grapevine Amiga IRC works with AmiTCP. It has a nice graphic interface and DCC su. The latest version is available on the support site, ftp.cryogenic.com. on AmiNet, but the support site is always current. AmIRC is another possibility. What is NapsaTerm used for?

Napsaterm is an rlogin program which can emulate a VT terminal. It lets you login to a host that uses the rlogin protocol, Napsaterm 38.b now also is now a telnet client. Consult the NapsaTerm documentation for more information. NB: If you wish to specify a port number for telnet, use the -s command; e.g. 1.> telnet auntie.bbcnc.org.uk 9999 is replaced with 1.> napsaterm -d TELNET -s 9999 auntie.bbcnc.org.uk Is there a telnet daemon?

Yes, tnserv on Aminet. However it is an active daemon and also does not use the AmiTCP passwd file for password information.

If you need a telnetd that uses the AmiTCP or MUFS passwords, check out ttyhandler.lha on Aminet. Do I need MultiUser?

No. However, MultiUser is very handy if you plan to have your machine on the net all the time. Unfortunately, MultiUser and AmiTCP don't use the same format for the password file. There is a replacement for usergroup.library that uses the MultiUser password file. It may be found on in the util/libs directorory on Aminet. MultiUser is on Aminet. I thought Emacs was just a text editor. I've seen it mentioned in a few posts. What is it used for?

Emacs is the GOD of all editors :-). It has its own programming language that lets the user run programs on it. Emacs has gopher, IRC and WWW programs that can be used with AmiTCP. Emacs includes Gnus for news reading. Where can I find more programs for use with AmiTCP?

Aminet is always the place to look, usually in the comm directory, Also look in comm/tcp directory on demon this site dedicated to the Internet. Also look in the applications list available via gopher and on the World Wide Web.

Check it in the c.s.a.networking newsgroup before taking it to the authors; make sure they spend their time working on our beloved AmiTCP, rather than repeatedly answering the same questions by mail. Then once you are SURE that it is a bug and you can reproduce it several times mail the AmiTCP bugs list giving as much information regarding your hardware and software setup as possible, with an accurate description of the bug and the steps needed to take show the bug's performance ;-) What does "resource allocation failure" mean?

(Thanks Oliver) This means your particular SANA-II Driver (RHCSlip, GWCSlip, Slip, PPP) cannot fire itself up; this can often be due to an error in your configuration file (usually in (env|envarc):sana2 ... slip0.config or ppp0.config or similar) or may be that some resource on which the driver relies (e.g. serial.device) is missing, wrongly configured or not working. With GWCSlip this is usually because you've omitted something like the "DialScript=AmiTCP:DB/DialScript" parameter. What is the problem with SLIP and the A2232 board?

The problem is with EOFMODE. The A2232 does not handle this feature properly. The rhcslip.device V38.8 or 38.9 works also with A2232. Availible from Aminet. I get a message "could not open serial device unit 0" when I run AmiTCP after I connect to my SLIP server. I tried quitting Term but my connection to my server is terminated. a) Why is this?, b) How can I fix it? and c) How do I stay online?

a) There are many reasons for this problem. The most common is that the serial device in use by another program, for example your comms package. (Term, Terminus etc). If you are using a terminal package to dial into your TCP/IP server this will give this error. And your modem is not set to ignore DTR, so when you quit term the modem hangs up the phone, thus ending your Connection. b) There are many solutions to avoid this problem. I am going to suggest 2. The first is to use the Dial in arexx script that in on Aminet, this automates the entire connection process, Arexx is used to dial up your Server enter your account details and startup AmiTCP when it has connected and logged in. The script is very flexible and also handles Dynamic IP assign, you may need to modify the script depending on your setup, however this is a very straightforward process. The script is available from Aminet. Also there is another dialer program caller dialer. This program acts as a go between serial.device and your PPP/SLIP driver. This program dials up your hosts and logs the user in and then puts the SANA-II driver online. This is available from Demon. A similar type program is gwcslip, by Graham Walter. This is a CSLIP SANA-II driver which dials into your host. It works very much like to the above program. This program is available from Demon in gwslip#?.lha. Look for the revision number which is part of the filename. c) The other is to set you modem to ignore DTR. For most modems, "AT&D0" will work; if it doesn't, consult your modem manual. After doing that, start your terminal program, dial into your server, login in as normal and issue what commands you need to start up your TCP/IP connection (e.g. sliplogin). When you have started up your serving program QUIT your terminal program leaving the call running and THEN start AmiTCP by executing AmiTCP:bin/startnet NOTE: You &EMO;must&EMC; ensure that the baud rate your terminal program is using is the &EMO;same as&EMC; the baud rate you have configured your SLIP/CSLIP/PPP driver to use. &EMO;Please&EMC;, remember to set your baud rate to the configuration file of the SANA-II device driver you are using. See the documentation inluded with your SANA-II driver for more information on this file. Can I use AmiTCP with a dynamic IP address?

Yes. You can use the Arexx script on Aminet or follow the above steps, but before you start AmiTCP you must change your startnet script to your assigned IP number. This goes for any other dynamic addresses (such as your hostname). Also, the PPP driver on Aminet has special options for connecting to dialup hosts. Consult the excellent documentation within the archive. I have connected to my host fine but I cannot connect to any hosts outside my University or Network. How can I fix this?

This is a routing problem. Add a route to your default gateway using the command: AmiTCP:bin/route add default your.default.gateways.number 140.174.153.10 is my default gateway. Ask your system administrator for this number. This command should be already in your startnet script if you have followed the Install procedure correctly. This could also be because of a firewall (the IP traffic from your hosts is not passed to the Internet). Your Network provider will be able to give you more information on this. How can I see what's happening with my network connection?

The command AmiTCP:bin/netstat will show you all the active connections to your machine, where they are from, and which port they are connected to. For example, if you have a connection to port 25, your Amiga is getting new mail. AmigaELM uses the HOSTNAME but AmiTCP seems to want the fully qualified domain name. How can I resolve this problem? (Thanks to Jarno and Michael)

You could probably set the variable to "name only", since AmiTCP/IP itself does not use the variable at all. Some application programs (such as e-mail) might have problems, though. The current standard on the various Unix versions is that the HOSTNAME is the fully qualified host name (with the domain). AmiTCP 3.0 and 4.0 fix this by implementing the gethostname() function differently (the name is taken from the name server/host database instead of the HOSTNAME variable if possible). What is the WaitForPort command in bin/startnet doing?

The purpose of the WaitForPort command in bin/startnet is to prevent execution of the forthcoming commands before AmiTCP has fully initialized itself. WaitForPort is part of the Rexx package that was bundled with AmigaDOS 2.0 and later, and can be found in sys:rexxc. How do I set up other hosts to reach the internet via my SLIP line?

Before you do anything else, get IP address(es) for the other hosts from your service provider. Your service provider has to arrange to send packets for those IP addresses to your Amiga, so that it can forward them to the appropriate hosts. Unless your provider is forwarding those packets to your Amiga, nothing else will work, so don't even try. Note that your provider is not obligated to provide this service to you, unless you have a contract that says they are. Some providers will refuse to do so. Next, install TCP/IP on your other hosts. The default gateway address should be the IP address of the gateway Amiga (the one that is connected to the external SLIP line). For a SLIP connection, the destination IP address should also be the gateway Amiga. Finally, configure the gateway Amiga. For SLIP interfaces, you can use the same IP address for each line, with the destination address being the address of the host on the other end of the line. Presumably, you're going to use the same SLIP driver, so configure the second interface similar to the first, changing only the device name and unit number. You may want to turn off carrier detect. Copy the ifconfig line in amitcp:bin/startnet, changing the destination IP address and SLIP device and unit to the values for the SLIP connection you are adding. Last - but not least - edit amitcp:db/amitcp.config to set gateway=YES instead of NO. Assuming that everything was done properly - by both you and your network provider - you should be able to reboot the gateway and internal machines, and have everything work. Testing should proceed along the same lines as setting up an initial SLIP line: make sure your machines can talk to each other, then try talking to the first external destination, then try reaching the internet at large. I can ping/traceroute to various places via my SLIP connection, but nothing else works. What's wrong?

The most likely reason is that you are using SLIP and your provider is using CSLIP, or vice versa. Traceroute uses the same packet type as ping, an ICMP packet. These aren't compressed on a CSLIP line, and so work properly. Other IP packets will be compressed, and will fail. When I try and run an internet application (or a command from AmiTCP), I get the error message "Cannot open bsdsocket.library". How do I fix this (thanks to Scott Norton).

First, you must understand that "bsdsocket.library" is a library that is created within the operating system by the AmiTCP program. It is not loaded from LIBS: and it is not a separate file. So, if you get the message that a program can not open bsdsocket.library, that means that AmiTCP is not running. It may have failed to load, or may have been unloaded. Another possibility is that in the startnet command file, the command "WaitForPort AMITCP" didn't run. In startnet, right after the command "run AmiTCP:AmiTCP" is the WaitForPort command, which ensures that AmiTCP can finish setting up before the script goes on. If you don't have Workbench:Rexxc in your search path, or don't have the file WaitForPort, that command might fail, and the script will charge ahead, and execute a command before AmiTCP has created bsdsocket.library (See the FAQ about WaitForPort for more information on WaitForPort.)

SANA-II is the software interface between AmiTCP and your network interface. There are freely available SANA-II drivers for SLIP. CSLIP, the A2060 card and the A2065 card and PPP. If you are purchasing a card to connect your Amiga to a network such as Ethernet, make sure that the card has a SANA-II driver if you want to use AmiTCP with the card. The SANA-II is the standard Amiga network device driver specification released by Commodore-Amiga. The SANA-II specification is available on the Aminet, fish disks and other forums. (Thanks Jarno) My internet provider offers SLIP accounts for a small extra charge. If I change my account to a SLIP account, can I still access it the "old" way, in case I just want to quickly check my mail or something?

The only people who can answer that are your Network providers.

Yes, it is meant for developers of software for AmiTCP. Please consult the file AmiTCP:README.FIRST. ;-) Where are the archives of the AmiTCP Mailing List?

(thanks Markus :) These are available in from gopher and also via Anonymous FTP in amitcp-listYYYY-MM.gz where YYYY-MM is the year and month. What should I do if I have a question that is not answered here?

Your best option is to post to USENET in the comp.sys.amiga.networking newsgroup. Include as much information as possible, what system your running, what version of AmiTCP your running, and what the problem is. The more info you give the better the chance you have of your question being answered. Alternatively mail me or the amitcp group and we will try to answer your questions. This is of course after you have read all the AmiTCP documentation and any additional documentation that comes with the software that you use :-) &ref;