February 2002   

MKS is the leading provider of Windows automation tools for system administration and development in a pure Windows or mixed UNIX/Linux and Windows environment.



MKS Inc.

 12701 Fair Lakes Circle, Suite 350
Fairfax VA 22033-3831 USA

Main:
  +1-703-803-3343

Support:
  +1-703-803-7660
  tk_support@mkssoftware.com

 www.mkssoftware.com

MKS Toolkit™ Release Notes

Version 8.1

May 2002

MKS Toolkit 8.1

In addition to being a maintenance release for MKS Toolkit 8.0, MKS Toolkit 8.1 contains many enhancements that we think you will find useful. The enhancements fall largely into the following categories: major improvements to our extensive suite of connectivity utilities, improved monitors in AlertCentre, significant modifications to our Web and HTML utilities, ongoing support for new releases of Windows and Visual Studio, and ongoing enhancements to improve usability of MKS Toolkit. The Fixed Problems section discusses the problems resolved in this release. The following section discusses the specific enhancements in much greater detail.

Improvements to Connectivity Suite

  • Upgraded Secure Shell. We have upgraded our secure shell to the latest version, which fixes many bugs. In addition, we have made several other customer-requested enhancements to secure shell. Note: it is not currently possible to adequately secure key files and other data, if you install the secure shell server (secshd) onto a FAT file system. Therefore, we do not support use of the server on such a file system; however, the secure clients are all still usable in this case.

  • Configuration of Connectivity Utilities. All configurable connectivity utilities (secure shell, remote utilities, and telnet) are now configurable from the MKS Toolkit control panel applet. We have provided context help for all configuration items.

  • Easier Launch of Connectivity Utilities. There are now Start menu entries to connect to a remote machine using the secure shell, remote login, and xterm. All Connectivity Utility menu entries are now grouped onto a single submenu.

  • New Cryptography Utility. We have added the openssl utility to let you perform various cryptography functions. This utility is useful for creating a variety of keys and certificates, and for understanding the origin and validity of keys and certificates acquired from other sources. Using openssl, you can set up certificates and keys so others can securely access your servers using SSL-protected protocols such as HTTPS and those in MKS secure shell. You can also use it to handle signed or encrypted mail, and you can even use it as a server or client for sending and receiving encrypted information using those certificates and keys. This is especially useful in testing that secure connections are working correctly.

  • Connectivity Solutions Guide. MKS Toolkit 8.1 contains the first version of this new guide discussing our suite of connectivity tools and how to solve problems with them. Future releases will add more and more information to this guide. Your suggestions are welcome.

Enhancements to AlertCentre

  • Improved Ping Monitor. We made several improvements to the ping monitor, including making it more robust and having it notify you when two devices on your network are configured with the same IP address.

  • Monitor Timeouts. We have added timeouts to many monitors, such that you will be alerted if a monitor times out before completing. This may be indicative of a network latency problem, processor overcommit, an unreachable resource, or other problem.

  • Improved Browser Support. AlertCentre now has much better support for browsers other than Internet Explorer, such as Netscape and Opera.

  • SSL Certificate Monitoring. In this release, you can now monitor for SSL certificate errors, such as expired certificates, invalid certificates, or certificates whose issuing authority cannot be verified.

  • Secure Web Page Monitoring. There is now full support for monitoring secure pages and sites reachable via HTTPS (SSL).

  • Web Form Monitoring. We have enhanced the Web Page Monitor so that you can now post data to a form to ensure that the form is working correctly and returning the correct results.

  • Redirector Monitoring. It is now possible to more fully monitor Web pages that redirect. You can now choose whether to be alerted if a page redirects unexpectedly or whether to let the redirection proceed such that you are monitoring the redirected page.

Modifications to Web and HTML Utilities

  • HTTPS Support for Web Documents. We have enhanced the web utility to let you transfer files to and from a Web server over a secure HTTPS (SSL) connection. The web utility also now handles POSTs and redirectors better. This will make it significantly easier to retrieve and maintain secure sites, especially those containing forms, such as Web stores.

  • Proxy Server and Firewall Support for Web Documents. We have enhanced the web utility to let you transfer files through an authenticating proxy server or firewall. Web access through a proxy server makes it faster to access common sites as the proxy server caches page requests from outside servers. Accessing pages through an authenticating proxy provides controlled, secure, anonymous access to Web services from behind firewalls.

  • XML Support in HTML Utilities. We have enhanced our HTML processing utilities to support processing of documents containing XML. The htsplit utility parses HTML/XML code and the htdiff utility shows differences between two versions of an HTML/XML document.

  • New HTML Parsing Options. The htsplit utility now preserves comments (including scripts) by default. Comments may be excluded optionally. We have also added a new parsing option (-b) to htsplit. By default, htsplit parses HTML source such that the output from htsplit would appear in a browser as did the original HTML source, rather than breaking the HTML into the smallest possible tokens, which could introduce white space that was not in the HTML source. The -b option yields output that is easier to parse with another program, but which may not look exactly as the original source did, when rendered by a browser. Compare the following two examples: 

    	[C:/mydir] echo "<b>hello</b>there" | htsplit
	<b>
	hello</b>there

	[C:/mydir] echo "<b>hello</b>there" | htsplit -b
	<b>
	hello
	</b>
	there

Support for New Versions of Windows and Visual Studio

  • Windows XP for IA64. MKS Toolkit for System Administrators and MKS Toolkit for Developers are now certified to run on the 64-bit Windows operating system. However, it is not possible to run 64-bit applications from xterm windows or telnetd/sshd sessions.

  • Visual Studio.NET. MKS Toolkit 8.1 has been retested with the released version of Visual Studio.NET, which shipped just after MKS Toolkit 8.0. MKS Toolkit 8.0 was tested with the final beta version of Visual Studio.NET.

  • Japanese XVision for Windows XP. In Japanese versions of MKS Toolkit 8.1, the XVision X server has been upgraded to version 7.31, which is the officially supported version for Windows XP.

Usability Enhancements

  • Start Menu Changes. We have added new entries to the Start menu for such things as initiating a secure shell connection to a remote machine and establishing an rlogin session. We have also reorganized the Start menu entries slightly to group related items more closely.

  • More Central Configuration. We have moved much more configuration of MKS Toolkit into the MKS Toolkit control panel applet. You can now control all services from the Services tab on the applet and you will find several new tabs for configuring other things.

  • New Icons. In keeping with the new standards set by Windows XP, we have redesigned our icons for consistency with the operating system look and feel.

  • File Association Scripts. Files are associated with applications via file extensions, for example, if you double click my_script.ksh, the application associated with the .ksh extension (the MKS KornShell) would run. We have provided a script in $ROOTDIR/etc called setupassocs.sh that documents the associations that MKS Toolkit sets up by default. This script is useful in restoring associations that have been overwritten by installing other applications and for demonstrating the use of the assoc and ftype utilities.

    Likewise, if you type the name of a program without an extension at a shell or command prompt, the shell or command processor looks for a file of that name. If that file does not exist, the shell or command processor looks for a file of that name with various extensions in the order specified by the PATHEXT environment variable. We have provided a script in $ROOTDIR/etc called setuppathext.sh that will add all of the MKS Toolkit extensions to PATHEXT. PATHEXT is not supported by Windows 95/98/Me.

Various Other Enhancements

  • New Version of the Backup Solutions Guide. This is our third revision of the Backup Solutions Guide, expanded to discuss our compression and decompression technology, in addition to our backup, archival, and tape utilities discussed in the previous version.

  • Timeouts for Utilities. We have added timeouts to various utilities that have the potential to access unavailable resources across a network and which might therefore hang. The utilities with timeouts (the -timeout option) are df (display free disk space), ls (list files), web (transfer files to or from a Web server), service (manipulate a Win32 service), eventlog (manipulate a Windows event log), db (work with an ODBC database), and smtpmail (send mail via SMTP).

  • Microsoft Exchange Compatiblity. The mailx command is enhanced with a Microsoft Exchange header compatibility mode.

  • Enhanced Time Zone Handling for smtpmail. The smtpmail utility now has a -o option for sending time zones as a numeric offset from GMT (UTC) as an alternative to sending the time zone abbreviation.

New Features in Previous Releases

Hardware and Software Requirements

  • Processors. All MKS Toolkit products run on Windows systems with Intel 32-bit processors. MKS Toolkit for System Administrators and MKS Toolkit for Developers also run on Intel 64-bit processors.

  • Platforms. You can install all MKS Toolkit products on:
    • Windows 95
    • Windows 98
    • Windows Me
    • Windows NT 4.0 (Workstation, Server, or Terminal Server) with Service Pack 6+ (Service Pack 6a is recommended)
    • Windows 2000 (Professional, Server, or Advanced Server)
    • Windows XP (Home or Professional)

    Applications migrated from UNIX systems with either MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers or MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers will run on any 32-bit version of these platforms.

  • FAT File Systems. It is not currently possible to adequately secure key files and other data, if you install the secure shell server (secshd) onto a FAT file system. Therefore, we do not support use of the server on such a file system; however, the secure clients are all still usable in this case.

  • Limitations for Windows 95, 98, and Me. Many MKS Toolkit utilities are Windows NT/2000/XP-specific. These are clearly documented in the reference pages in the MKS Toolkit Utilities Reference, available from the Start menu.

    In addition, because of the lack of certain operating features on Windows 95/98/Me, some MKS Toolkit UNIX APIs run in degraded mode (or return without doing anything) on those platforms. These are discussed in the MKS Toolkit Cross-Platform Developer's Guide and in great detail in the reference page for each API in the online MKS Toolkit UNIX APIs Reference which you can access via the Start menu.

  • Compilers. The MKS Toolkit development products work with Microsoft Visual C/C++ versions 5.0 and 6.0 as well as Visual Studio.NET.

    MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers and for Enterprise Developers support both versions of the Standard Template Library. In addition, they both support the Absoft Pro Fortran f90/f77 compiler, versions 5.0, 6.0, and 7.0 (http://www.absoft.com/).

  • Windows Task Scheduler. The MKS Toolkit Scheduler, the command-line scheduling utilities (at, batch, crontab, and wts), and AlertCentre require Internet Explorer 4 (or later) and the Windows Task Scheduler. On Windows 98, Me, 2000, and XP, these are already installed. On Windows 95 and NT 4, you should follow these steps to install the Windows Task Scheduler:

    1. Select Add/Remove Programs from the Control Panel. The list of currently installed programs appears.

    2. Select Microsoft Internet Explorer and click Add/Remove. A dialog appears prompting you for action.

    3. Select Add a component to Internet Explorer. A list of additional Internet Explorer components appears.

    4. If you are running Internet Explorer 5+, select Offline Browsing Pack. If you are running Internet Explorer 4, select Additional Explorer Enhancements.

    Alternatively, you can download Internet Explorer 5 or 6 and their add-ons from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie.

  • AlertCentre Requirements. AlertCentre has additional requirements. For details, see the Getting Started with AlertCentre section of these release notes.

Without the AlertCentre add-on, MKS Toolkit products do not have any particular hardware requirements. Any machine that is sufficient to run the underlying operating system is sufficient. AlertCentre, however, does have additional hardware requirements. These are listed in the Getting Started with AlertCentre section of this document.

Installing MKS Toolkit

Before installing MKS Toolkit 8.1, we recommend that you uninstall all full or demo versions of MKS Toolkit older than version 8.0. If you have a previous version of MKS NuTCRACKER Professional, we recommend that you uninstall it, or install MKS Toolkit 8.1 on another machine.

When installing MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers or MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers, the following additional requirements apply:

  • Microsoft Visual C/C++ (version 5.0 or later) must already be installed on your system.

  • You must install from an account with local or domain administrator privileges. You do not need to be an Administrator, but your login ID must be a member of the local or domain Windows Administrators group before you can install.

All MKS Toolkit products share a common installer. If you are installing from a CD, insert the MKS Toolkit distribution CD; the installer should start automatically. If you are installing from an electronic distribution, run the self-extracting installer.

If you purchased MKS Toolkit and AlertCentre together, AlertCentre is installed as part of the normal MKS Toolkit installation procedure.

To install MKS Toolkit, click the Install Toolkit button and follow the instructions on the dialogs that appear.

If you purchased the AlertCentre add-on separately from MKS Toolkit, you must already have MKS Toolkit installed on a machine before you can install AlertCentre. Once MKS Toolkit is installed, you can install AlertCentre by clicking the Install AlertCentre Add-on button on the installer's opening dialog. When prompted for a serial number, you should enter the one provided with your AlertCentre.

For more information on installing the AlertCentre add-on, see Getting Started with AlertCentre.

Silent and Administrative Installations

For step-by-step installation instructions and information on administrative and silent installations for both MKS Toolkit and the AlertCentre add-on, see http://www.mkssoftware.com/support/install.asp.

Additional Components on the MKS Toolkit CD

The MKS Toolkit CD also includes several items that are not installed as part of the normal installation procedure. These are:

  • The samples directory. This directory contains a collection of sample source code for use with MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers and MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers.

  • The redist directory. This directory contains a collection of utilities and drivers that may be needed to get full use out of MKS Toolkit. This includes the most recent versions of the Jet Database driver, Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC), and Microsoft Management Console (MMC) as well as Adobe® Acrobat® Reader.

Uninstalling MKS Toolkit

Uninstalling MKS Toolkit 8.x

To uninstall MKS Toolkit, use the following procedure:

  1. From the Control Panel, run Add/Remove Programs.

  2. Remove MKS Toolkit 8.x.

  3. Remove SCO XVision Eclipse (if the XVision X server is installed)

You must reboot your system before reinstalling MKS Toolkit.

Uninstalling Previous Versions of MKS Toolkit

To uninstall a 7.x version of MKS Toolkit, run the TKUninstall utility found in your system directory (you can find your system directory with the windir -s command).

Alternatively, you can uninstall the components manually with the following procedure:

  • From the Control Panel, run Add/Remove Programs.

  • Remove, in order, each of the following (if present):

    MKS Evaluation Guide
    MKS Toolkit 7.x
    MKS Platform Components 7.x

    You must reboot your system before reinstalling MKS Toolkit.

    Known Issues

    The following known issues exist in MKS Toolkit 8.1:

    • The MKS Toolkit Product Overview & Solutions Guide states that the xterm utility does not require an X server. This is incorrect. To use the xterm utility, you must have an X server, (for example, the XVision X server provided with MKS Toolkit for Interoperability and MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers) installed on your system.

    • When using the secsh secure shell to connect to the secshd service, you may find yourself working in cmd.exe rather than one of the MKS Toolkit shells. This occurs when the SHELL environment variable is not set on the system running secshd. Normally, SHELL determines which shell is used. When it is not set, the COMPSPEC environment variable (which is normally set to cmd.exe) is used instead.

    • Under some rare conditions, Internet Explorer 5.x may either refuse to submit data on a button push (typically a save) or display a message that it cannot find the server. Testing has shown that if you experience this, upgrading to Internet Explorer 6 solves the problem.

    • When installing AlertCentre on an NT 4 system, a dialog may appear indicating that _lc_collate is not in MSVCRT.dll when the installer attempts to start the MKS Simple Web Server near the end of the installation procedure. If you see this dialog, restart your system and try running the MKS Toolkit (or AlertCentre Add-On) installer again.

      The likely cause of this error is that version 4.2 or earlier of MSVCRT.dll was installed on your system and you needed to update the Jet drivers. While the installer for the Jet Drivers updates MSVCRT.dll to version 5.0, it does not inform you that you need to restart your system.

    • In AlertCentre, do not uncheck Run in Hidden Window for a schedule when running as LocalSystem. Doing so causes the schedule to never run.

    Getting Started with AlertCentre

    AlertCentre is a monitoring solution for System Administrators and other IT professionals that need to ensure the high availability of network-based resources such as Web sites and email servers as well as disk space and remote access facilities. AlertCentre enables System Administrators to define monitors that can observe, report on, and control the activities of other programs or devices on your network so that you can be sure that mission-critical applications are up and running at all times. AlertCentre gives you and your colleagues the ability to be notified in a timely fashion if anything on your network is malfunctioning.

    System Requirements

    • Windows NT/2000/XP Professional, Server, Advanced Server or Terminal Server editions. AlertCentre is not supported on Windows 95/98/Me and XP Home.
    • Additional memory of 32-64 MB over operating system requirements is recommended. Memory requirements vary depending on the number of simultaneous monitors running and the frequency of the polling interval.
    • A minimum CPU speed of 500 MHz is recommended.
    • Network connection.
    • MKS Toolkit for System Administrators (or other MKS Toolkit product) Version 8.0 or higher.
    • Internet Explorer Version 4.0 or later (for Windows Task Scheduler).
    • An HTTP 1.1 enabled Browser with JavaScript 1.2 enabled.
    • Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) AlertCentre has been tested against Version 2.6, although earlier versions are likely to work, 2.6 or later is recommended.
    • Microsoft Jet Database support.
    • Optional Microsoft Management Console (MMC) version 1.0 or later.
    • Optional similarly configured machine as a replication partner.
    • Optional phone modem for contacting pagers.

    Most versions of Windows 2000 and XP come with Internet Explorer 4 (or later), MDAC, Jet, and MMC pre-installed. If these are not installed, they are available on the MKS Toolkit distribution CD (in the redist directory) or can be downloaded from the Microsoft web site. The installation of these components is not integrated into the AlertCentre installer. The installer does, however, list all the missing pieces. These pieces can then be installed from the MKS Toolkit CD (or the Microsoft web site) before resuming the AlertCentre installation.

    While not required, we recommend installing AlertCentre on a server and using a dedicated machine for the Primary.

    Installation

    Before installing AlertCentre, make sure that you have up-to-date versions of the MDAC and Jet drivers installed. The versions that shipped with Office 97 are not sufficiently up-to-date; the Office 2000 versions are. Up-to-date versions of these drivers are provided in the redist directory of the MKS Toolkit distribution CD.

    If you are installing from a CD, insert the MKS Toolkit distribution CD; the installer should start automatically. If you are installing from an electronic distribution, run the self-extracting installer.

    If you purchased MKS Toolkit and AlertCentre together, AlertCentre is installed as part of the normal MKS Toolkit installation procedure (see Installing MKS Toolkit).

    If you purchased the AlertCentre add-on separately from MKS Toolkit, you must already have MKS Toolkit installed on a machine before you can install AlertCentre. Once MKS Toolkit is installed, you can install AlertCentre by clicking the Install AlertCentre Add-on button on the installer's opening dialog and following the instructions on the dialogs that appear. When prompted for a serial number, you should enter the one provided with your AlertCentre.

    As part of AlertCenter installation, the installer creates three standard schedules, secures access to the configuration console and the components, creates a local group called AlertCentre Administrators, and creates an empty configuration database ready to use the AlertCentre.

    Once the installation of AlertCentre is complete, the AlertCentre User Guide will be available from the Start menu. Chapter 3 of this document, "Getting Started", gives complete instructions for configuring AlertCentre and creating a simple monitor.

    For step-by-step installation instructions for AlertCentre and information on administrative and silent installations, see http://www.mkssoftware.com/support/install.asp.

    Customer Support

    Contact MKS customer support at:

    Web Site: http://www.mkssoftware.com/support
    Online Request Form: http://www.mkssoftware.com/support/support.asp
    E-mail: tk_support@mkssoftware.com
    Telephone: +1-703-803-7660
    (9:00am to 7:00pm ET, Mon-Fri, except holidays)
    Fax: +1-703-803-3344

    Windows 95/98/Me Support

    MKS Toolkit 8 is the final version of the MKS Toolkit that will be supported on Windows 95. Support for Windows 95 will be available until January 31, 2003.

    As of MKS Toolkit 8.0, MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers and MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers no longer install the Application Packaging Wizard on Windows 95/98/Me systems. You can still use the Application Packaging Wizard on Windows NT/2000/XP to package your application for deployment on all supported platforms.

    Additional MKS Toolkit Resources

    There are several other sources for additional information about our MKS Toolkit products.

    We have general product information, including technical specifications, detailed utility listings, and datasheets at:

    We offer a resource kit including example scripts, additional utilities, more tutorials, and a wide variety of other useful information at:

    We have several additional articles, tutorials, and white papers about using features of the MKS Toolkit at:

    Through the years, we have accumulated a lot of technical details about the MKS Toolkit products and have put this information in a searchable database at:

    Our customers commonly ask certain questions. These questions and their answers are in our Frequently Asked Questions pages at:

    Fixed Problems

    Several problems were fixed in MKS Toolkit 8.1. These are listed at:

    Fixed Problems in Previous Releases


    • ©2002 MKS Inc. All rights reserved.