PeerBlock r65 Interim Release

The next Interim Release of PeerBlock - r65 - is now ready. My intent for this one is to give it a quick "sanity test" cycle, and if no serious issues are found to then release this as a Public Release 0.9.1.66 (after bumping up the rev-number to remove the "Internal Testing Release" designation).


What's Changed

Here's the list of what's different since the last Interim Release, r61:

DisCoStu has updated the installer to fix all the reported installer issues. This should resolve the first five items on the "Known Issues" list for r61. Removed the "Uninstall PG2" option, since the PG2 installer will complain if PeerBlock is running at the same time . . . and since we can now successfully run PeerBlock after install, it should be.

The tracelogging functionality was implicated in the majority of the crashes that have been seen recently. I believe I've resolved those issues now.

The one unresolved crash I've seen occurred in the "UpdateProgress" routine called while we're updating lists. I've added some additional tracelogging code in here to help track where in the process it's dying. This can significantly bloat the peerblock.log file (my install grows up to 60-70kb for a single update of just the p2p list!), but even at that it shouldn't grow too large too quickly, and it zips up very well so sending me those logfiles shouldn't be too much of a burden. That said, for this release at least please make sure you're running at TraceLog Level=5 in peerblock.conf, and make sure you zip up those .log and .dmp files prior to sending them to me!


Things to Test

As always, I have a list of some things I'd like for us all to make sure we test with this release. Before testing out the installer-changes, make sure you save aside a copy of your peerblock.conf file and any custom lists you've generated, so you don't lose them!

1. Installer, Upgrade - Revert to a base r52 install (running the r61/r65 uninstaller, then manually cleaning out the install-directory, then install r52 back on your system. Make a configuration-file change (say, changing the color of logged entries or something). After this, run the r65 installer to upgrade the installation. Verify that the program is working correctly, that your pg2.conf file did NOT get overwritten (e.g. that the color of your logged entries remains how you set it up in your temporary install of r52), and (after exitting PeerBlock) that peerblock.conf contains the TraceLog section with Enabled=yes and Level=5. Again, this is how a large part of our user base will be introduced to r65 - let's make sure it's a pleasant one.
2. Installer, Fresh - Uninstall PeerBlock via its uninstaller, then manually clean out the install-directory. Run the r65 installer, make sure everything seems to work, that it's correctly-imported your PG2 .conf file (if PG2 is present and installed in the default directory on your system), and after exiting PeerBlock verify that the .conf file has a TraceLog section with Enabled=yes and Level=5.
3. Uninstall - Run the PeerBlock uninstaller, and make sure it deleted all the files in its install-dir this time.
   
4. Update Lists - This is still a bit of a sore spot, though crashes have become increasingly rare. Try closing down PeerBlock, deleting your lists and/or cache.p2b file (don't do this last one while PeerBlock is running!), and restarting PeerBlock. If you experience any crashes here, again, please zip up those peerblock.log and .dmp files and send them to me ASAP!
   

Get it Here

PeerBlock r65 Installer


Thanks!

Thanks again for helping test out PeerBlock! Without your help, we probably would have "publicly released" r61, with all the bugs it contained. Thanks to the work you're all putting in, our users will (hopefully) be able to trust that what we publicly release are generally in pretty darn good shape.

        --- Mark ---