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 ║            v2026.1.0 - by Tony Mattke aka tonhE              ║
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Playground Plus v2026.1.0 Patch

Modernization patches for Playground+. Takes v1.0.11 talkers to v2026.1.0, builds on modern Linux, fixes security holes, and keeps your customizations.

Playground+ is a C-based telnet talker server popular in the late 1990s. Stock Playground+ (circa 1995-2000) won't build on modern 64-bit systems, and if you do get it running there are several bugs that make it run terribly. These patches fix all of that: compiler errors, security vulnerabilities, and deprecated API usage. They're small enough to apply to talkers that have been modified over the years.

Note

This patch is specifically designed to bring Playground+ v1.0.11 up to date with the v2026.1.0 release. Neither this repository nor playground-plus/playground-plus on GitHub are official repositories maintained by the original Playground+ developers.

---

Quick Start

# 1. CD into the root directory of your talker
cd /path/to/your/talker/directory

# 2. Make a backup of your src directory
cp -a src src-backup-pre-2026-update

# 3. Clone the patch release alongside your talker source
git clone --branch v2026.1.0 https://github.com/playground-plus/playground-plus-patches.git playground-plus-patches-v2026.1.0

# 4. Test what applies cleanly
./playground-plus-patches-v2026.1.0/apply.sh --dry-run ./src

# 5. Apply everything
./playground-plus-patches-v2026.1.0/apply.sh ./src

# 6. Build and verify (expect 0 errors, 0 warnings)
cd src
make clean && make

To apply just one category instead of everything:

./playground-plus-patches-v2026.1.0/apply.sh --category 03-security ./src

Note

You can apply patches before or after the PG+ first-run setup (make → make newos → make config → make dep). If you patch before, the OOBE runs normally and generates a correct Makefile from the patched template. If you patch after, apply.sh detects the generated Makefile and fixes it automatically.

---

Patch Categories

Each category is independent. Apply only the ones you need. Within a category, patches must be applied in order.

00-version

Version bump (optional)

Patch	What it fixes
0001-version-bump	Updates PG_VERSION to 2026.1.0 and INTERCOM_VERSION to 1.2.0

01-compiler-warnings

Required to build on GCC 10+

Patch	What it fixes
0001-sprintf-wrestrict-overlapping-buffers	-Wrestrict warnings from sprintf() writing into its own source buffer
0002-strncpy-truncation-null-termination	-Wstringop-truncation warnings; adds explicit null terminators after strncpy()
0003-ignore-ret-unchecked-returns	-Wunused-result warnings for intentionally unchecked write() calls; adds IGNORE_RET macro to config.h
0004-zero-warnings-final-pass	Remaining warnings: unused variables, address-of-array, operator precedence, misleading indentation
0005-unused-params-sa-mask	Unused parameter warnings, sigemptyset() for signal mask init

Per-file sub-patches are provided in 0002-strncpy-per-file/, 0003-ignore-ret-per-file/, and 0004-zero-warnings-per-file/ for when the combined patch doesn't apply to your modified files. Apply individual file patches instead. The robot_int sub-patch in 0004-zero-warnings-per-file/ fixes the remaining -Waddress warnings in robot_int.c and is included in the default apply.sh series.

02-buffer-hardening

Prevents buffer overflow exploits

Patch	What it fixes
0001-sprintf-to-snprintf	Replaces sprintf() with snprintf() in admin2.c, commands.c, glue.c, plists.c, room.c

03-security

Fixes exploitable vulnerabilities

Patch	What it fixes
0001-command-injection-email-welcome	Replaces system() shell call with fork()/execlp() in the email welcome feature to prevent shell injection via crafted email addresses

04-network

Replaces deprecated network APIs. Required on some modern systems.

Patch	What it fixes
0001-getaddrinfo-getnameinfo	gethostbyname()/gethostbyaddr() to getaddrinfo()/getnameinfo(). The old functions are removed in some modern libc
0002-bulk-socket-reads	Replaces byte-at-a-time read() with 4KB bulk reads for a massive performance improvement
0003-select-to-poll	select() to poll(), removing the FD_SETSIZE (1024) file descriptor limit

Important

All three patches in this category modify socket.c. If your socket.c is heavily modified, you may need to apply these manually.

05-password

Upgrades password security from DES to SHA-512

Patch	What it fixes
0001-des-to-sha512	New passwords use SHA-512 via crypt(); existing DES passwords still work for login
0002-des-upgrade-prompt	Prompts users with old DES passwords to set a new one on login
0003-fix-login-hang-after-upgrade	Fixes a state machine bug that caused login to hang after the upgrade prompt

Important

Apply all three patches in this category or none. 0002 and 0003 depend on 0001.

06-intercom

Hardening for the intercom server binary

Patch	What it fixes
0001-sigchld-handler-crash	Fixes crash: fatal_error() called inside signal handler (async-signal-unsafe)
0002-getaddrinfo	gethostbyname()/gethostbyaddr() → getaddrinfo() in intercom
0003-audit-fixes	Buffer overflows, strcpy → strncpy, division-by-zero guard, vsprintf → vsnprintf
0004-packet-null-termination	Fixes non-null-terminated packet data (strcpy → memcpy + explicit terminator)
0005-list-output-formatting	Adds leading newline before intercom list output

Note

If you don't use intercom, skip this entire category.

07-build

Build system fixes

Patch	What it fixes
0001-makefile-wc-display-fix	Fixes wc -l display in build output (Makefile.template)
0002-makefile-template-modern-gcc	Removes obsolete -Wl,-qmagic linker flag; adds -fcommon for GCC 10+ (Makefile.template)

Note

These patch Makefile.template. See the Quick Start note above for OOBE timing details.

08-modern-compat

Required for modern Linux (glibc 2.34+, 64-bit)

Patch	What it fixes
0001-rename-log-to-pg_log	Renames custom log() to pg_log() to avoid collision with glibc log() from <math.h>
0002-rename-strcasestr-to-pg_strcasestr	Renames custom strcasestr() to pg_strcasestr() to avoid collision with POSIX strcasestr()
0003-include-modernization	Removes obsolete <memory.h> / <malloc.h>; adds missing <time.h>, <stdlib.h>, <string.h>, <sys/types.h>
0004-platform-portability	Removes HAVE_SOCKLEN_T / HAVE_BZERO ifdefs; bzero → memset; simplifies <sys/un.h> includes; removes sigpause(), RLIMIT_RSS, sys_errlist

09-code-quality

64-bit safety, bug fixes, and cleanup

Patch	What it fixes
0001-code-quality-fixes	Pointer arithmetic casts for 64-bit ((int)ptr - (int)ptr → (int)(ptr - ptr)); execlp() sentinel 0 → (char *)NULL; format-string security (printf(var) → printf("%s", var)); unused variable removal; operator precedence bug in tag.c; semicolon-after-if bug in admin.c; sizeof() format specifiers %d → %zu

---

ctl Management Script

A drop-in server management script installed to bin/ctl by apply.sh.

bin/ctl start     # Start the server stack (angel + talker)
bin/ctl stop      # Stop everything gracefully
bin/ctl restart   # Full restart (stop + start)
bin/ctl status    # Show running processes and uptime
bin/ctl reboot    # Seamless reboot via angel
bin/ctl log error # Tail a log file (angel|error|boot|connection|intercom)

The script auto-detects its location relative to your talker's directory structure. No configuration needed. If proxy support is enabled (HAVE_PROXY in autoconfig.h or a proxy binary in bin/), proxy management is automatically included.

---

Applying to Modified Talkers

Most PG+ talkers have been customized. Here's how to deal with patches that don't apply cleanly:

1. Dry-run first

./playground-plus-patches-v2026.1.0/apply.sh --dry-run ./src

This shows which patches will apply and which won't, without changing anything.

2. Use per-file sub-patches

The three largest patches (0002-strncpy, 0003-ignore-ret, 0004-zero-warnings) have per-file sub-patches. If the combined patch fails because you modified socket.c, apply the sub-patches for the files you haven't changed:

# Apply strncpy fix only for admin.c and room.c (from your talker root)
patch -p1 -d ./src < ./playground-plus-patches-v2026.1.0/patches/01-compiler-warnings/0002-strncpy-per-file/admin.patch
patch -p1 -d ./src < ./playground-plus-patches-v2026.1.0/patches/01-compiler-warnings/0002-strncpy-per-file/room.patch

3. Use fuzz and rejects

# More permissive matching (allows offset line numbers)
./playground-plus-patches-v2026.1.0/apply.sh --fuzz 3 ./src

# Collect all reject files in one place for review
./playground-plus-patches-v2026.1.0/apply.sh --reject-dir /tmp/pgplus-rejects ./src

4. Manual application

For heavily modified files, read the .patch file. They're standard unified diffs, easy to read. The changes are typically mechanical (add a null terminator, change sprintf to snprintf, etc.) and straightforward to apply by hand.

---

Build Environment

These patches were developed and tested against:

• Base: Stock Playground+ v1.0.11
• Compiler: GCC 13.3.0
• OS: Linux 6.8.0 x86_64, glibc 2.39
• Result: 0 errors, 0 warnings across all 4 binaries (talker, angel, ident_server, intercom)

---

License

These patches are released under the MIT License. The patches apply to Playground+ source code, which is distributed under its own Playground Plus licence.