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NETSCAPE/UNIX News

  M. Liébana and M. Marquina CN/DCI

Release of Version 2.01

Since the last CNL there have been some changes in the UNIX versions of Netscape accessed through the ASIS repository. The most important one is the release of Netscape 2.01, containing many bug fixes including the closure of several security holes related to Java.

Netscape 2.01 has been available in ASIS since its official release on 15 March 1996.

Changes to the CERN wrapper

Along with this new release, there have been some modifications to the Netscape wrapper and to the CERN default configuration of Netscape that are summarised below:

• A bug in Netscape time-stamps calculations makes the reload button retrieve a page from not its origin but from the cache, under some specific conditions. This problem resulted in the impossibility of seeing the modifications made to a page as it is being created/modified. Netscape Corp. suggested a workaround to the problem by setting the TZ environment variable according to the format expected by Netscape. The Netscape wrapper sets this variable properly to avoid the problem.
• A bug in the automatic configuration of Netscape MAIL was fixed. The bug caused the wrong guessing of the user name and e-mail address in very particular cases.
• The WWW_HOME environment variable is used to initialise the Home Page Location property on the Netscape preferences.
• After several user reports on problems when accessing Netscape from ASIS/NFS, but having also an /afs directory, it was decided to make a more clever search of the Netscape executable using the /asis link when available.
• A requirement from the WGS and PLUS services (hpplus and cernsp) was implemented, making Netscape use a separate temporary directory per user (/tmp/netscape/<loginid>). This allows selective clean-up of dead files which Netscape leaves after its execution.

User Requests

Any query related to the above may be sent to Netscape.Support@cern.ch. We have just placed this support line under the Gnats problem tracking system which will allow a better follow-up of the user requests

We remind you that the WWW page

http://consult.cern.ch/uco/netscape

contains up to date information about Netscape/UNIX.