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Kplex 1.4 beta

This release is an accumulated bug fix release. Users are encouraged to upgrade as some of the bugs fixed can cause kplex to crash with certain inputs or configurations.

Configuration information for the latest beta release can always be found on the beta configuration page.

What's new?

A number of bugs have been fixed in this release:

  • A crash in checksum checking code with some tyes of input
  • Possible corruption of interface names
  • Crash on some platforms using source filters on output with bi-directional interfaces
  • Broken tcp preamble processing
There are some minor behaviour changes:
  • kplex now only prints a message about lowering file descriptors to log level "debug" to avoid confusion
  • "loose" sentence termination checking is now default for input from "file" interfaces. "strict" remains default for all other types
  • TCP servers will now no longer exit when accept() fails (e.g. on running out of file descriptors).
  • Better error reporting for tcp server
  • Various changes to default queue lengths

Beta Caveats

This is pre-production software. It is more likely to have bugs than a full release. Features may change and options may change if ongoing testing suggests alternatives would be better. Please do leave feedback, if you are using this version, even if only "Works for me".

Obtaining and Installing the Beta Release

Both source and binaries for this beta are now available via the download page.

Or checkout the "1.4 branch on github.

For compiling and installing, just follow the normal kplex installation instructions.

New Features and How to Use Them

New baud rate options

Serial interfaces can now optionally be configured to support baud rates of 230400 and 460800. This was added to support the full data rate of the usb interface on the miniplex 3 usb.

-p option

New in this release if the option to create a pid file which can help with some process control opterations. Specifying -p <pidfile> tells kplex to write a file <pidfile> containing its process id. The PID is that of the background daemon process is kplex is run with -o mode=background.

systemd unit file

This release contains an experimental unit file for use on GNU/Linux systems using systemd. Users on systems using systemd may enable kplex to start at boot time using a command like: 

sudo systemctl enable kplex

New config file locations for OSX

On OSX the per-user config file location ~/Library/Preferences/kplex.ini is deprecated. This location will continue to be used until the next major release but OSX users are encouraged to use ~/.kplex.conf as on other platforms. For this release a config file location of ~/Library/Preferences/kplex.conf is also supported. Feedback on prefered location for this file from Mac users would be appreciated.

Known Issues with Current Beta Version

  • Some async-unsafe code lurks in the signal handler which terminates threads. It could theoretically cause kplex to crash or hang on exit but this has never been reported.

Beta version history

  • 1.4rc3 released December 19th 2018
    • Fixed broken tcp preamble
  • 1.4rc2 released November 18th 2018
    • Updated configuration file locations
    • Fixed timestamping bugs
    • Added minimal manpage
    • Update usage to show -d flag
    • Add systemd unit file to deb
    • Add -p flag to create pid file
  • 1.4rc1 released July 30th 2017
    • First 1.4 release candidate
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