networking tooling and help documentation

[mateuszviste]

Today I installed SvarDOS in 86box with an emulated 8088, but failed to configure networking, ie. pkgnet keeps failing. I am not sure if this is 86box problem, a bad packet driver (although I tried several), a SLiRP incompatibility or a limitation of the WatTCP DHCP/BOOTP code.

Point being - there are no tools to investigate such troubles. Even stupid ping.exe requires a 386.

Hence some network tooling would be very welcome. At least a 16-bit ping, maybe also arping, perhaps some tcpdump-like tool, ideally also a verbose DHCP client.

Also the networking documentation would really need to be extended with some useful debugging tips about what to look for when networking does not work out of the box and which tools to rely on.

[mateuszviste]

this could actually be part of some supplemental "networking" floppy which would include:

• a specialized help about networking
• some debugging tooling
• lots of packet drivers (incl. commercial ones if possible... 3COM for example has very nice setup tools that are necessary for advanced configurations of their cards, a packet driver alone is sometimes not enough)

With a little of extra work such floppy could also solve #20 (so the SvarDOS installer would not need to be bothered with network-related things, it would be a separate step)

[bttrx]

Even stupid ping.exe requires a 386.

http://brutmanlabs.org/mTCP/ should be happy with an 8088.
And what about your own picoTCP for DOS?

[mateuszviste]

Even stupid ping.exe requires a 386.

http://brutmanlabs.org/mTCP/ should be happy with an 8088. And what about your own picoTCP for DOS?

All true, but it's not really the problem. The issue is that "right now" we do not have much in the packages repo to help in such network-debugging situations. So it's part of a wider problem.
About ping - there is also a wattcp 16-bit ping, it just needs to be compiled, checked, packaged, published. :)
(and I'd prefer to stick to wattcp-based things when possible, to avoid cluttering the user with multiple network-configuration files)

Mateusz

[bttrx]

Maybe good for inspiration, although no sources are provided.

PKTDRV

Collection of Network "packet" drivers
 These allow DOS networking via a LOT of NIC types.
 Also includes PCINIC to get information about PCI NIC cards.

You can grab this from https://dunfield.themindfactory.com/sdnld.htm

[bttrx]

About ping - there is also a wattcp 16-bit ping, it just needs to be compiled, checked, packaged, published. :)

Older WATTCP releases already come with 16-bit ping.exe. Just to note.

[mateuszviste]

About ping - there is also a wattcp 16-bit ping, it just needs to be compiled, checked, packaged, published. :)

Older WATTCP releases already come with 16-bit ping.exe. Just to note.

Although IIRC without DHCP support. :) Maybe it had basic BOOTP, but I'm not sure.

I think that what we actually need is the ping from Watt32 (most up to date + DHCP support), but compiled to the 16-bit target. But again, it's just one piece of a larger puzzle.

[bttrx]

December 2000 ping.exe and tcpinfo.exe contain the string "DHCP" at least.

Might not be perfect, but it works good enough for me in VirtualBox in NAT or network bridge mode.

Ping output:

Tcpinfo output:

Tcpinfo output (network bridge):