RMS EXPRESS AND WINLINK HAVE SOME SIGNIFIGANT CHANGES.

Winlink, the folks that operate the RMS Express Pactor and Packet Digital Systems among others have some major changes. If you use any of their systems please continue reading

CMS Changes to AWS Cluster. Bye-Bye Wien, Perth, Halifax, SanDiego.

The Winlink Team will be migrating the current CMS cluster of servers to the new AWS ‘Cloud’ CMS on Tuesday, October 31, at 1600 UTC (Noon EDT).

All changes should be invisible to users and present no problems. The only exception being that you will not connect using telnet if you have a third party program telnet setting set to an IP-numbered address. You must use a fully qualified domain name in telnet settings. We recommend ‘server.winlink.org‘ as a setting that will transition without negative effects. The new cluster will be named simply ‘cms.winlink.org‘, and that name can be used after the transition is complete on the 31st. Old CMS names will also work for at least one year after the transition, and will be phased out slowly.

Also, the new CMS cluster is sensitive to both upper- and lower-case usernames (call signs) and passwords. The old CMS was not. Your account, if already established on the old CMS cluster, will always use upper case alpha characters in usernames (call signs) and passwords.

Applications that connect to the old CMS, including this web site, often eased the user experience by accepting either, and converting to upper case before submitting them to the CMS. Accordingly, if your account is already established on the old CMS and being transitioned, be sure to use UPPER CASE alpha characters if you find your application is getting rejected when you try using lower case characters. This includes our new webmail app.

Although the new servers have been under Beta test for a very long time, and a full-scale test was successful last summer, we will appreciate users reporting odd behavior to the Winlink-programs-group at google groups. You can navigate there with a click.