July 2004 - Wine-devel - list.winehq.org

rsabase.dll
by Michael Jung 26 Jul '04

26 Jul '04

Rob, as far as I can tell from looking at your patch, our work is pretty much non overlapping. I worked on the following aspects: - Implementation of "real handles", instead of "address-handles". - Separating OpenSSL dependend code from CSP code. I consider this beneficial, since there seem to be some license issues with OpenSSL (at least for the ReactOS project - there was a short discussion on this on the wine-devel list). If the OpenSSL code is cleanly separated, it will be easier to support GNUTLS or something later. - Basically, my code doesn't do any crypto stuff at all until now (Besides some first lines of code for MD5 hashing). I tried to get the MSDN CryptoAPI examples to compile and run, which only acquire contexts, hash data, derive keys, query CSP params and so on, but which never verify the results. So my code is mainly skin (but elephant skin), no guts. I've attached the current version of my patch. Do you have a certain application, which you want to get running? Would it be ok for you if we proceed as follows: I will wait until you submit your patch (It would be nice if you could add some unit-tests that test for behaviour you depend on). After this you give me a week or two to incorporate my work. Is there any area in rsabase, which you definitely will not implement in the near future and which I could work on until you submit your patch? Greetings, Michael

2 2

Re: WineHQ:service.cgi: fix winrash option
by Ferenc Wagner 26 Jul '04

26 Jul '04

<chmorgan(a)charter.net> writes: > What is the service doing with winrash options btw? The > installer stops, installs and starts the winrash service. > > The installer uses /S for silent installs, otherwise it > will try to popup windows. Are you sure the service isn't > calling the installer with /S? You are right, I was wrong. This patch is rubbish. I can't really understand the errors on wine-test-results. Have you got an idea what may have gone wrong? Aren't any functional winrash instances running? Is something broken in the service script? The documentation is somewhat scarce so I'm doing a slow start... -- Feri.

1 0

problems with lxr setup at winehq?
by Jeroen Janssen 26 Jul '04

26 Jul '04

Hi, I'm trying to use the lxr setup for wine at winehq, but it doesn't seem to work correctly (or I'm doing something wrong). I'm looking for all sourcefiles containing "ClassFactory", following this link: http://source.winehq.org/search?string=ClassFactory . The result I am getting is 'empty'. Does anyone with access to the lxr setup know what the problem is? (and maybe fix it?) --- Jeroen

1 0

Re: Scrollbars, an application bug or a wine regression ? (#2314)
by Dmitry Timoshkov 26 Jul '04

26 Jul '04

"George Marshall" <g.marshall(a)nospam.com> wrote: > > Does reverting of the following patch help? > > Yes it does make the application work as it did before > the June Release :-) Do you have a small application I could test with? -- Dmitry.

4 16

Re: add autodetect audio driver capability to winmm
by Marcus Meissner 26 Jul '04

26 Jul '04

On Sun, Jul 25, 2004 at 05:08:04PM -0500, James Hawkins wrote: > Changelog: > * take audio autodetection out of winecfg and put it in winmm > * if driver is not found in the registry or the driver fails to > load, then autodetect driver This would make artsd the default driver on KDE systems. Most are still using the OSS driver, which might be of a better state. Ciao, Marcus

1 0

Re: add autodetect audio driver capability to winmm
by Robert Shearman 26 Jul '04

26 Jul '04

James Hawkins wrote: >Changelog: > * take audio autodetection out of winecfg and put it in winmm > * if driver is not found in the registry or the driver fails to >load, then autodetect driver > > Thanks for another cool patch. It lessens the burden on the user. CC'ing ros-kernel as explained below. >Index: dlls/winmm/lolvldrv.c >=================================================================== >RCS file: /home/wine/wine/dlls/winmm/lolvldrv.c,v >retrieving revision 1.58 >diff -u -r1.58 lolvldrv.c >--- dlls/winmm/lolvldrv.c 1 Jun 2004 19:40:48 -0000 1.58 >+++ dlls/winmm/lolvldrv.c 25 Jul 2004 22:05:54 -0000 >@@ -30,6 +30,8 @@ > #include "winver.h" > #include "winemm.h" > #include "wine/debug.h" >+#include "config.h" >+#include "wine/port.h" > > WINE_DEFAULT_DEBUG_CHANNEL(winmm); > >@@ -711,6 +713,80 @@ > } > > /************************************************************************** >+ * MMDRV_AutoDetectDriver [internal] >+ * >+ * modified from programs/winecfg/audio.c >+ */ >+BOOL MMDRV_AutoDetectDriver(void) >+{ >+ struct stat buf; >+ const char *argv_new[4]; >+ int fd; >+ >+ char *driversFound[10]; >+ char *name[10]; >+ int numFound = 0; >+ >+ argv_new[0] = "/bin/sh"; > I think the ReactOS people may have a few comments to make on this, now that they are using this DLL in ReactOS. >+ argv_new[1] = "-c"; >+ argv_new[3] = NULL; >+ >+ /* try to detect arts */ >+ argv_new[2] = "ps awx|grep artsd|grep -v grep|grep artsd > /dev/null"; >+ if(!spawnvp(_P_WAIT, "/bin/sh", argv_new)) >+ { >+ driversFound[numFound] = "winearts.drv"; >+ name[numFound] = "aRts"; >+ numFound++; >+ } >+ >+ /* try to detect jack */ >+ argv_new[2] = "ps awx|grep jackd|grep -v grep|grep jackd > /dev/null"; >+ if(!spawnvp(_P_WAIT, "/bin/sh", argv_new)) >+ { >+ driversFound[numFound] = "winejack.drv"; >+ name[numFound] = "jack"; >+ numFound++; >+ } >+ >+ /* try to detect nas */ >+ /* TODO */ >+ >+ /* try to detect audioIO (solaris) */ >+ /* TODO */ >+ >+ /* try to detect alsa */ >+ if(!stat("/proc/asound", &buf)) >+ { >+ driversFound[numFound] = "winealsa.drv"; >+ name[numFound] = "Alsa"; >+ numFound++; >+ } >+ >+ /* try to detect oss */ >+ fd = open("/dev/dsp", O_WRONLY | O_NONBLOCK); >+ if(fd) >+ { >+ close(fd); >+ driversFound[numFound] = "wineoss.drv"; >+ name[numFound] = "OSS"; >+ numFound++; >+ } >+ >+ >+ if (numFound == 0) >+ { >+ TRACE("Could not detect any audio devices/servers"); >+ return FALSE; >+ } >+ >+ /* TODO: possibly smarter handling of multiple drivers? */ >+ TRACE("Found driver %s\n", name[0]); >+ >+ return MMDRV_Install(driversFound[0], driversFound[0], FALSE); >+} >+ >+/************************************************************************** > * MMDRV_InitFromRegistry [internal] > */ > static BOOL MMDRV_InitFromRegistry(void) >@@ -729,7 +805,9 @@ > } > > size = sizeof(buffer); >- if (!RegQueryValueExA(hKey, "Drivers", 0, &type, (LPVOID)buffer, &size)) { >+ BOOL keyQueried = !RegQueryValueExA(hKey, "Drivers", 0, &type, >+ (LPVOID)buffer, &size); > This is only available in C99. We try to make Wine compile with as many C compilers as possible, including gcc 2.95, which doesn't allow this sort of thing. >+ if (keyQueried) { > p1 = buffer; > while (p1) { > p2 = strchr(p1, ';'); >@@ -738,7 +816,11 @@ > p1 = p2; > } > } >- >+ >+ /* if no driver specified in reg or driver fails to load then autodetect */ >+ if (!keyQueried || !ret) >+ ret |= MMDRV_AutoDetectDriver(); >+ > /* finish with mappers */ > size = sizeof(buffer); > if (!RegQueryValueExA(hKey, "WaveMapper", 0, &type, (LPVOID)buffer, &size)) > > Rob

4 6

Support for Palm USB Hotsync
by Harald Milz 25 Jul '04

25 Jul '04

Hi, I am new to this list (albeit not to Wine :-) my Wine usage dates back to 1993 when I interviewed Bob Amstadt in his home... ) Anyway - I have a problem with Palm USB hotsync which could perhaps be solved on the userspace level. As you all know, the Linux USB kernel code creates an in-kernel device (in this case, ttyUSB1) only when a connected device actually talks. With a Palm, this is only the case if one presses the hotsync button. This keeps me from running Hotsync permanently which I need to sync my Palm against Lotus Notes. As soon as I start Hotsync, it complains that the device is not there at all. Even if I press "hotsync" and start Hotsync immediately after that, no communication takes place. (pilot-xfer -p /dev/ttyUSB1 works just fine) Now, for Wine / Cxoffice, ttyUSB is merely a serial device. Wouldn't it be possible to modify the Wine code in a way to fake the open() call and return success to the caller, poll the actual device and open it as soon as it actually comes up? I would be willing to hack this in but I have no real idea where to look regarding the sheer size of the code. I suspect it's in server/serial.c but I am not sure. Any hint is welcome. Or does somebody have an idea how to work around this problem? Until recently, I used a serial hotsync cable but my new notebook has no serial port any more... and carrying an USBserial converter isn't really an option on the road. (IrDA could be an alternative but I couldn't get this to work with my T41 either, at least not with FIR). -- Try to be the best of whatever you are, even if what you are is no good.

2 1

winecfg todo list
by Mike Hearn 25 Jul '04

25 Jul '04

So, I talked with Chris and here are some tasks remaining on winecfg. All of these are *easy* and can be done by anybody who has basic coding ability. For a few of them you don't even really need to know C! So come on lurkers, I know you're out there, step on up. Things that need to be done before we should switch to winecfg IMHO are: * Windows Look has no associated edit control. Who modifies this setting these days anyway? I vote for killing the label rather than adding the edit. * UseTakeFocus (FIXME) - why is this a setting in the UI? I don't even know what the UseTakeFocus protocol does, I've certainly never tweaked it. Does it need to be there? At the very least it needs to be rephrased into terms people can understand and the FIXME needs to be removed. * In the Drives tab, the top half is full of widgetry we probably don't want anymore. In particular "Use real windows drive" etc doesn't make much sense, you can just change the c: mapping to get that effect and it's not something we want to encourage anyway. Especially as most people these days seem to use XP rather than Win98 using a real windows drive is fast way to get an inoperable Wine as well as (possibly) a torched Windows install if it's on FAT32 and you can even pick up viruses from them. I kid you not, the other day I ran a program that had been sitting on my Windows XP partition for a few months and my virtual windows drive (I think the term virtual rather than fake sounds better) ended up infected with some W32.Bagle variant. Anyway the top half of this tab doesn't do anything, never did, doesn't make any sense and should just be removed. * We should probably merge the X11 Driver and Audio tabs together as they both have lots of empty space, and rename it to "Audio and Video" or something. I think the term "X11 Driver" doesn't make much sense to many people anyway. Minor cosmetic fix: remove the groupbox on the "about" tab, it doesn't provide any information at all. We also may want to stick the authors list in there, as it's a bit more visible than in the shell32 about box which is hardly ever shown. But obviously these things should not block us switching to it. Once those things are done we can apply the patch to switch Wine to using the registry entirely. Is it worth writing a migration tool? I'm not really sure, I guess some people would like their settings preserved but most of the settings people tweak are just check boxes in the new UI anyway and would take like 5 seconds to restore. AppDefaults are a bigger issue but do many people have lots of these? Oh, final thing, we need to double check that removing the config doesn't regress things. I've been running with no config file for a few months now and while there are a few minor things I don't think they are critical. I may well have missed things though. thanks -mike

2 2

Invalid path L"c:\\WINDOWS" for L"windows" directory: does not exist
by Andreas Davour 25 Jul '04

25 Jul '04

Hi! I try to use wine v.20040505 on FreeBSD5.2 and I just get the error in the subject line. I found another post about this and that OP was just told to check the "dosdevices" directly, since I have such a directory and I don't get any closer to a solution by staring uncomprehending at the files I thought maybe someone could give a wine newbie some more ideas on what to do? I didn't find any "C:" in that directory mentioned, and tried to make a c: synlink to a new directory without any more success. /andreas

3 3

Marshalling tutorial
by Mike Hearn 25 Jul '04

25 Jul '04

Hi guys, Here is the start of some notes on DCOM and OLE RPC. They're intended to help people like Duane who are hitting problems caused by it, and possibly to form the basis of some decent documentation for the developer guide. Things that only a few people understand make me nervous, getting this stuff into writing will maybe help increase the number of people working on Wine - at the very least it means when people move on we're not left stranded. Firstly, even though this is a reasonably high level overview it's not exactly bed time reading. DCOM is massively complex, and tends to abuse and duplicate terminology rampantly. If you read this and get confused or don't understand it DON'T PANIC! That's perfectly normal. I'll use the term "DCOM" to refer to all aspects of COM and OLE marshalling though other terms could certainly be used too. DCOM is a huge, sprawling part of the Windows API and it's impossible to cover it all in one email. If people find this helpful maybe I'll write some more. I'll assume a basic knowledge of COM (interfaces, IUnknown, refcounts etc). The basics are well documented and there are plenty of tutorials on the net. Secondly, my understanding is not 100% complete and is still improving. There may well be mistakes and omissions here. Hopefully Ove, Marcus, Huw or somebody with a better understanding than I, will review it and correct me. BASICS The basic idea behind DCOM is to take a COM object and make it location transparent. That means you can use it from other threads, processes and machines without having to worry about the fact that you can't just dereference the interface vtable pointer to call methods on it. You might be wondering about putting threads next to processes and machines in that last paragraph. You can access thread safe objects from multiple threads without DCOM normally, right? Why would you need RPC magic to do that? Well, the details of why you'd want to do that can be left until later. For now, suffice it to say that COM lets you "marshal" interfaces into other "apartments". An apartment (you may see it referred to as a context in modern versions of COM) can be thought of as a location, and contains objects. Every thread in a program that uses COM exists in an apartment. If a thread wishes to use an object from another apartment, marshalling and the whole DCOM infrastructure gets involved to make that happen behind the scenes. So. Each COM object resides in an apartment, and each apartment resides in a process, and each process resides in a machine, and each machine resides in a network. Allowing those objects to be used from *any* of these different places is what DCOM is all about. The process of marshalling refers to taking a function call in an apartment and actually performing it in another apartment. Let's say you have two machines, A and B, and on machine B there is an object sitting in a DLL on the hard disk. You want to create an instance of that object (activate it) and use it as if you had compiled it into your own program. This is hard, because the remote object is expecting to be called by code in its own address space - it may do things like accept pointers to linked lists and even return other objects. Very basic marshalling is easy enough to understand. You take a method on a remote interface, copy each of its parameters into a buffer, and send it to the remote computer. On the other end, the remote server reads each parameter from the buffer, calls the method, writes the result into another buffer and sends it back. The tricky part is exactly how to encode those parameters in the buffer, and how to convert standard stdcall/cdecl method calls to network packets and back again. This is the job of the RPCRT4.DLL file - or the Remote Procedure Call Runtime. The backbone of DCOM is this RPC runtime, which is an implementation of DCE RPC [1]. DCE RPC is not naturally object oriented, so this protocol is extended with some new constructs and by assigning new meanings to some of the packet fields, to produce ORPC or Object RPC. You might see it called MS-RPC as well. RPC packets contain a buffer containing marshalled data in NDR format. NDR is short for "Network Data Representation" and is similar the XDR format used in SunRPC (the closest native equivalent on Linux to DCE RPC). NDR/XDR are all based on the idea of graph serialization and were worked out during the 80s, meaning they are very powerful and can do things like marshal doubly linked lists and other rather tricky structures. In Wine, our DCOM implementation is *not* based on the RPC runtime, as while few programs use DCOM even fewer use RPC directly so it was developed some time after OLE32/OLEAUT32 were. Eventually this will have to be fixed, otherwise our DCOM will never be compatible with Microsofts. Bear this in mind as you read through the code however. PROXIES AND STUBS Manually marshalling and unmarshalling each method call using the NDR APIs (NdrConformantArrayMarshall etc) is very tedious work, so the Platform SDK ships with a tool called "midl" which is an IDL compiler. IDL or the "Interface Definition Language" is a tool designed specifically for describing interfaces in a reasonably language neutral fashion, though in reality it bears a close resemblence to C++. By describing the functions you want to expose via RPC in IDL therefore, it becomes possible to pass this file to MIDL which spits out a huge amount of C source code. That code defines functions which have the same prototype as the functions described in your IDL but which internally take each argument, marshal it using Ndr, send the packet, and unmarshal the return. Because this code proxies the code from the client to the server, the functions are called proxies. Easy, right? Of course, in the RPC server process at the other end, you need some way to unmarshal the RPCs, so you have functions also generated by MIDL which are the inverse of the proxies: they accept an NDR buffer, extract the parameters, call the real function then marshal the result back. They are called stubs, and stand in for the real calling code in the client process. The sort of marshalling/unmarshalling code that MIDL spits out can be seen in dlls/oleaut32/oaidl_p.c - it's not exactly what it would look like as that file contains DCOM proxies/stubs which are different, but you get the idea. Proxy functions take the arguments and feel them to the NDR marshallers (or picklers), invoke an NdrProxySendReceive and then convert the out parameters and return code. There's a ton of goop in there for dealing with buffer allocation, exceptions and so on - it's really ugly code. But, this is the basic concept behind DCE RPC. INTERFACE MARSHALLING Standard NDR only knows about C style function calls - they can accept and even return structures, but it has no concept of COM interfaces. Confusingly DCE RPC *does* have a concept of RPC interfaces which are just convenient ways to bundle function calls together into namespaces, but let's ignore that for now as it just muddies the water. The primary extension made by Microsoft to NDR then was the ability to take a COM interface pointer and marshal that into the NDR stream. The basic theory of proxies and stubs and IDL is still here, but it's been modified slightly. Whereas before you could define a bunch of functions in IDL, now a new "object" keyword has appeared. This tells MIDL that you're describing a COM interface, and as a result the proxies/stubs it generates are also COM objects. That's a very important distinction. When you make a call to a remote COM object you do it via a proxy object that COM has constructed on the fly. Likewise, a stub object on the remote end unpacks the RPC packet and makes the call. Because this is object-oriented RPC, there are a few complications: for instance, a call that goes via the same proxies/stubs may end up at a different object instance, so the RPC runtime keeps track of "this" and "that" in the RPC packets. This leads naturally onto the question of how we got those proxy/stub objects in the first place, and where they came from. You can use the CoCreateInstanceEx API to activate COM objects on a remote machine, this works like CoCreateInstance API. Behind the scenes, a lot of stuff is involved to do this (like IRemoteActivation, IOXIDResolver and so on) but let's gloss over that for now. When DCOM creates an object on a remote machine, the DCOM runtime on that machine activates the object in the usual way (by looking it up in the registry etc) and then marshals the requested interface back to the client. Marshalling an interface takes a pointer, and produces a buffer containing all the information DCOM needs to construct a proxy object in the client, a stub object in the server and link the two together. The structure of a marshalled interface pointer is somewhat complex. Let's ignore that too. The important thing is how COM proxies/stubs are loaded. COM PROXY/STUB SYSTEM COM proxies are objects that implement both the interfaces needing to be proxied and also IRpcProxyBuffer. Likewise, COM stubs implement IRpcStubBuffer and understand how to invoke the methods of the requested interface. You may be wondering what the word "buffer" is doing in those interface names. I'm not sure either, except that a running theme in DCOM is that interfaces which have nothing to do with buffers have the word Buffer appended to them, seemingly at random. Ignore it and *don't let it confuse you* :) This stuff is convoluted enough ... The IRpc[Proxy/Stub]Buffer interfaces are used to control the proxy/stub objects and are one of the many semi-public interfaces used in DCOM. DCOM is theoretically an internet RFC [2] and is specced out, but in reality the only implementation of it apart from ours is Microsofts, and as a result there are lots of interfaces which *can* be used if you want to customize or control DCOM but in practice are badly documented or not documented at all, or exist mostly as interfaces between MIDL generated code and COM itself. Don't pay too much attention to the MSDN definitions of these interfaces and APIs. COM proxies and stubs are like any other normal COM object - they are registered in the registry, they can be loaded with CoCreateInstance and so on. They have to be in process (in DLLs) however. They aren't activated directly by COM however, instead the process goes something like this: - COM receives a marshalled interface packet, and retrieves the IID of the marshalled interface from it - COM looks in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/Interface/{whatever-iid}/ProxyStubClsId32 to retrieve the CLSID of another COM object, which implements IPSFactoryBuffer. - IPSFactoryBuffer has only two methods, CreateProxy and CreateStub. COM calls whichever is appropriate: CreateStub for the server, CreateProxy for the client. MIDL will normally provide an implementation of this object for you in the code it generates. Once CreateProxy has been called, the resultant object is QId to IRpcProxyBuffer, which only has 1 method, IRpcProxyBuffer::Connect [4] This method only takes one parameter, the IRpcChannelBuffer object which encapsulates the "RPC Channel" between the client and server. On the server side, a similar process is performed - the PSFactoryBuffer is created, CreateStub is called, result is QId to IRpcStubBuffer, and IRpcStubBuffer::Connect is used to link it to the RPC channel. RPC CHANNELS Remember the RPC runtime? Well, that's not just responsible for marshalling stuff, it also controls the connection and protocols between the client and server. We can ignore the details of this for now, suffice it to say that an RPC Channel is a COM object that implements IRpcChannelBuffer, and it's basically an abstraction of different RPC methods. For instance, in the case of inter-thread marshalling (not covered here) the RPC connection code isn't used, only the NDR marshallers are, so IRpcChannelBuffer in that case isn't actually implemented by RPCRT4 but rather just by the COM/OLE DLLS (fixme: is this actually correct?). RPC channels are constructed on the fly by DCOM as part of the marshalling process. So, when you make a call on a COM proxy, it goes like this: Your code -> COM proxy object -> RPC Channel -> COM stub object -> Their code HOW THIS ACTUALLY WORKS IN WINE Right now, Wine does not use the NDR marshallers or RPC to implement its DCOM. When you marshal an interface in Wine, in the server process a _StubMgrThread thread is started. I haven't gone into the stub manager here. The important thing is that eventually a _StubReaderThread is started which accepts marshalled DCOM RPCs, and then passes them to IRpcStubBuffer::Invoke on the correct stub object which in turn demarshals the packet and performs the call. The threads started by our implementation of DCOM are never terminated, they just hang around until the process dies. Remember that I said our DCOM doesn't use RPC? Well, you might be thinking "but we use IRpcStubBuffer like we're supposed to ... isn't that provided by MIDL which generates code that uses the NDR APIs?". If so pat yourself on the back, you're still with me. Go get a cup of coffee. TYPELIB MARSHALLER In fact, the reason for the PSFactoryBuffer layer of indirection is because you not all interfaces are marshalled using MIDL generated code. Why not? Well, to understand *that* you have to see that one of the driving forces behind OLE and by extension DCOM was the development Visual Basic. Microsoft wanted VB developers to be first class citizens in the COM world, but things like writing IDL and compiling them with a C compiler into DLLs wasn't easy enough. So, type libraries were invented. Actually they were invented as part of a parallel line of COM development known as "OLE Automation", but let's not get into that here. Type libraries are basically binary IDL files, except that despite there being two type library formats neither of them can fully express everything expressable in IDL. Anyway, with a type library (which can be embedded as a resource into a DLL) you have another option beyond compiling MIDL output - you can set the ProxyStubClsId32 registry entry for your interfaces to the CLSID of the "type library marshaller" or "universal marshaller". Both terms are used, but in the Wine source it's called the typelib marshaller. The type library marshaller constructs proxy and stub objects on the fly. It does so by having generic marshalling glue which reads the information from the type libraries, and takes the parameters directly off the stack. The CreateProxy method actually builds a vtable out of blocks of assembly stitched together which pass control to _xCall, which then does the marshalling. You can see all this magic in dlls/oleaut32/tmarshal.c In the case of InstallShield, it actually comes with typelibs for all the interfaces it needs to marshal (fixme: is this right?), but they actually use a mix of MIDL and typelib marshalling. In order to cover up for the fact that we don't really use RPC they're all force to go via the typelib marshaller - that's what the 1 || hack is for and what the "Registering non-automation type library!" warning is about (I think). WRAPUP OK, so there are some (very) basic notes on DCOM. There's a ton of stuff I have not covered: - Format strings/MOPs - Apartments, threading models, inter-thread marshalling - OXIDs/OIDs, etc, IOXIDResolver - IRemoteActivation - Complex/simple pings, distributed garbage collection - Marshalling IDispatch - Structure of marshalled interface pointers (STDOBJREFs etc) - Runtime class object registration (CoRegisterClassObject), ROT - IRemUnknown - Exactly how InstallShield uses DCOM Then there's a bunch of stuff I still don't understand, like ICallFrame, interface pointer swizzling, exactly where and how all this stuff is actually implemented and so on. But for now that's enough. thanks -mike FURTHER READING Most of these documents assume you have knowledge only contained in other documents. You may have to reread them a few times for it all to make sense. Don't feel you need to read these to understand DCOM, you don't, you only need to look at them if you're planning to help implement it. [1] http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009629399/toc.htm [2] http://www.grimes.demon.co.uk/DCOM/DCOMSpec.htm [3] http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/com/htm/cm… [4] http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/com/htm/cm… http://www.microsoft.com/msj/0398/dcom.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/techresources/appserv/COM/DCOM/4_Connecti… http://www.idevresource.com/com/library/articles/comonlinux.asp (unfortunately part 2 of this article does not seem to exist anymore, if it was ever written)

5 8