[B.A.T.M.A.N.] batman-adv 2010.1.0 released

[B.A.T.M.A.N.] batman-adv 2010.1.0 released

[Marek Lindner]

New versions of the batman-adv kernel module and batctl are released today 
with the version number 2010.1.0. The B.A.T.M.A.N. team's main focus was on 
new features, Linux kernel compliance and a bunch of bug fixes. As the kernel 
module always depends on the Linux kernel it was compiled against, it does not 
make sense to provide binaries on our website. As usual, you will find the 
signed tarballs in our download section:
http://downloads.open-mesh.net/batman/releases/batman-adv-2010.1.0/ 
as well as prepackaged binaries in your distribution.


Important changes
----------------

As part of the ongoing kernel interface restructuring all remaining tables and 
debug output was migrated from the proc filesystem to the debug filesystem. 
Also, some tables which went into sysfs followed this example as well as the 
layer 2 icmp socket which resided in /dev. All programs / scripts accessing 
these files directly need to be adjusted. Scripts using batctl are not affected 
by this transition as the batctl command line parameters are unchanged. More 
details can be found below as well as in our documentation. 


Thanks
----------------

Thanks to all people sending in patches:

 * Antonio Quartulli <ordex@ritirata.org>
 * Dan Carpenter <error27@gmail.com>
 * Daniel Seither <post@tiwoc.de>
 * Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@gmail.com>
 * Jiri Pirko <jpirko@redhat.com>
 * Joe Perches <joe@perches.com>
 * Linus Lüssing <linus.luessing@web.de>
 * Marek Lindner <lindner_marek@yahoo.de>
 * Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com>
 * Simon Wunderlich <siwu@hrz.tu-chemnitz.de>
 * Sven Eckelmann <sven.eckelmann@gmx.de>
 * Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>


batman-adv
----------------

The first B.A.T.M.A.N. V features left the experimental stage and went into 
this release: interface alternating (formerly known as incoming interface 
based routing) & bonding mode. These are optimizations for scenarios in which 
mesh nodes possess several WiFi cards to run the mesh on. In alternating mode 
batman-adv will switch the WiFi interface to forward the traffic with each hop, 
thereby avoiding store & forward (which would half the bandwidth with each 
forwarding node). Bonding mode will use all available interfaces at the same 
time to forward the traffic. Both modes do not require the whole network to have 
the same hardware configuration - the available interfaces are automatically 
detected and used if possible. Per default batman-adv operates in the 
alternating mode, bonding mode can be activated.

To achieve Linux kernel compliance all tables and debug information have been 
concentrated in the debug filesystem (all configuration options remain in 
sysfs). Make sure your kernel has the debug filesystem compiled in if you want 
to access those information. The user space API is now considered clean and 
won't require significant changes in the future. The originator table outputs 
the "last seen" field to allow observing originator outages in real time. The 
batman-adv debug log returned with the debugfs changes, after it had been 
removed in previous releases. The batman icmp socket left the /dev directory 
to join the other debug facilities in debugfs (before it was not possible to 
create a socket for each configured mesh). This release also contains numerous 
bug fixes regarding stability, broadcast flood protection through 32Bit sequence 
numbers, supporting newer kernel versions, multiple interface bugs, rounding 
issues and more.


batctl
----------------

Batctl has been adapted to retrieve the tables and other information from the 
debug filesystem. To provide a smooth user experience batctl automatically 
mounts the debug filesystem whenever necessary. As the debug log output moved 
from the standard kernel logging to the batman-adv log file, batctl re-
introduces the convenience features to retrieve the logs and replace mac 
addresses with names. Batctl also followed the icmp socket move and is 
prepared for the multiple mesh support. The ping utility received the "record 
route" ability which allows to monitor route changes. The originator table 
viewer gained some additional options to filter for "fresh" entries (using the 
"last seen" field) and allows to specify a refresh interval to continuously 
print the table. 


Happy routing,
The B.A.T.M.A.N. team