If there is no binary available for your particular platform, try downloading a source distribution and compiling it. Please let us know either way how it goes, so we may make Yenta available for additional types of machines.
If you would like to volunteer an account on your machine so that a version may be built for its particular operating system, please let us know; note that this in no way guarantees that we will (or can) build a distribution for that operating system, but it substantially increases the chances. Such an account must allow ssh login and must have at least 200 meg of temporary space available.
Don't even ask about a Windows version, unless you're a Windows developer and are volunteering to port Yenta to that platform; if so, please let us know. Ditto Macintosh versions; if you are a Mac developer and would like to help port, let us know..
Be aware that Yenta binaries and source are export-restricted, and are not available outside of the United States and Canada, due to US law regarding the export of cryptographic products. Recent changes to US export-control law may make Yenta's source code exportable, but we are currently being cautious and will probably follow the lead of the MIT PGP distribution site in this respect; note also that the binaries will still be export-controlled regardless. Please also see Yenta's license and copyright.
For more information about Yenta, including mailing lists you can join, and papers that have been written about the system, start here.
| The most recent stable Yenta is version 0.7.1. If you run this version,
you'll notice that it claims to have expired. Don't panic; you can still use this
version, albeit with that annoying little warning on every page. A new version
(0.7.2) will be out soon and will fix a number of annoying bugs in 0.7.1, and I am
trying to ensure that people upgrade promptly. If you would like to hear about later releases, please send mail to majordomo@media.mit.edu with subscribe yenta-announce your-email-address in the body of the message. Please note that this is alpha-test software, and you should be prepared for what that entails. Beta-test versions will be announced via the yenta-announce list when available. Upcoming versions: 0.7.2 will be primarily a bugfix release. 0.7.3 will fix some more, and will probably also support additional platforms, such as Red Hat 6.x. (It will probably also drop support for RH 4.2, HPUX 9.x, and possibly RH 5.1, due to lack of demand and lack of machines to build on.) 0.8.0 will incorporate a new comparison engine with substantially improved accuracy and performace but will be somewhat incompatible with existing Yentas; you may want to wait for this version (though it may be a while). |
| Special note about Internet Explorer and Yenta. Versions of IE have tended to reject otherwise-valid certificates that Netscape will accept. Until this problem has been addressed (in some later release), you may or may not be able to use Yenta with IE. All versions of Netscape should work fine. If you are using IE and Yenta either succeeds or fails for you, please let us know; if you try a browser other than IE or Netscape, please let us know how it goes. |
Binaries for most architectures are around 7-9 megabytes. They are not compressed in any way, so you can use them immediately. They are also unstripped (they have all their compiled symbol information), so you can use debuggers on them.
Source distributions are available as gzipped tar files, and are about 5 megabytes in this form. The uncompressed size of a source distribution is about 21 megabytes, and you will probably need between 70 and 100 megabytes of disk space, including the source and all intermediate files, to build your own Yenta if you do not use one of the precompiled binaries. If you build Yenta for a platform not listed below, please let us know either way how it goes, so we may make Yenta available for additional types of machines. Be aware that we cannot guarantee support for building on new architectures (debugging via remote control is virtually impossible), but we will do our best.
What the signatures mean and how to use them
| Platform | Version | What's available? | |
|---|---|---|---|
| All | All | Source | Signature |
| Linux x86 | Red Hat 5.1 [glibc 2/libc 6] | Binary | Signature |
| Linux x86 | Red Hat 4.2 [libc 5] | Binary | Signature |
| NetBSD x86 | 1.3.2 | Binary | Signature |
| HPUX pa-risc | 9.05 | Binary | Signature |
| HPUX pa-risc | 10.20 | Binary | Signature |
| Irix | 6.2 | Binary | Signature |
| Solaris | 5.6 | Binary | Signature |
| Alpha | OSF1 V4.0 | Binary | Signature |
Lenny Foner Last modified: Sun Feb 20 19:09:18 EST 2000