PLEASE READ THE FILE "README.security" for important information! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Term. version 1.11 Copyright (c) 1992,1993,1994 Michael O'Reilly All Rights Reserved This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --> Read the 'CHANGES' file as this will be more up to date than this readme. --> Please read this entire file if you have any problems. ********************************************************************* --> Please don't send me e-mail telling me you liked it! My mailbox overfloweth! Postcards on the other hand are most welcome. Michael O'Reilly 192 Nicholson Rd Subiaco 6008 Perth, Western Australia Australia I guess this makes this postcardware..... ********************************************************************* ---> For a sample ~/.term/termrc file see TERMRC Term is a program to implement a slip-like connection between 2 *NIX machines. It isn't sl/ip. It runs entirely in user mode. It requires no kernel support on either end, and no root access on either end. It is built to run over a modem to connect a non-internet machine with an internet machine. If this is your situation, and you don't have slip/ppp then term is for you. If you do have slip/ppp, then you should probably use it instead. Term is run at both ends, and does multiplexing, error correction, and compression across the serial link between them. Designed to be as efficient as possible, and have good response time, even over slow modems. (I run it over a 2400 baud modem). [ Well, I used to. Roll on 14.4! M - 7/1/94] Note that it behaves the same from both ends. A user on either machine can connect to the other. The term program runs as a server. A UNIX-domain socket is opened and bound to support communication between client processes and the server. See 'old/PROTOCOL.unix' for the protocol used by clients. See 'old/PROTOCOL.serial' for the protocol used across the serial link. ( Be warned that they are out of date. If in doubt, read the source :) These six clients are the most useful: trsh Runs a shell on the remote end. Like a normal login. (Similar to "rsh" without the need to specify a hostname.) tupload -as Uploads a file. takes the name of the local file and the optional arg is the name of the remote file. This is a bit more robust than "rcp", but at the price of not allowing you to specify a different host or username. txconn Hangs around in the background waiting for X connections. re-directs them to the local X server. Intended to be run on the remote machine. tredir Lets you alias a port on one system to another. I.e. 'tredir 4000 23' run on host 'a' means that anyone telneting to port 4000 on 'a', will get a login prompt of machine 'b'. tshutdown Terminates term. [More up to date information is available in HOWTO.term] By default the program assumes that your modem can transmit data at the same speed as your computer's serial port connection to the modem. To set the proper rate run term as: 'term -s9600' for a 9600 baud modem. Alternatively try : 'setenv BAUDRATE 9600' or specifying: baudrate 9600 in your termrc. The baudrate determines how fast term will try to send data to the modem. I.e. if BAUDRATE is 9600, it will only attempt to send 9600 bits per second to the modem. However, the best way to specify transmission rates is to write a termrc file. Term reads the ~/.term/termrc file if it exists, so you can permanently set this stuff. A system default termrc file may be named /etc/termrc. Look in the file TERMRC. To terminate a term session use the command "tshutdown". If that doesn't work, either end will exit if it gets five zeros. (i.e. "00000") This means that if "tshutdown" fails you can kill the local end, and then type '000000' into your comm program or 'echo 0000000 > /dev/modem'. ---------------------------------------------------------- How to use txconn: (and term for that matter) Login to your remote machine. run "term -r" Break back to your Linux prompt. I.e if you are running xcomm or something similar then type control-A, x (to break back to xcomm prompt). Then run term with stdin/stdout connected to the modem. In xcomm I type "$ term" Alternatively you could exit your comms program altogether and run "term < /dev/ttys1 > /dev/ttys1" from the shell prompt. (assuming that /dev/ttys1 is your modem port). Makes certain your comms program ISN'T running if you try the above, as it will fight with term if it is. Then run 'trsh' from a shell prompt. (I generally run xcomm and term on tty8, and then switch to tty7 to run trsh. You may find it handy to have a entry in /etc/passwd looking like... remote::0:0::/root:/usr/local/bin/trsh as this then enables you to login to your remote machine by logging in as 'remote'). This should give you (in about 2 seconds) a shell on your remote machine. At this point the error correction/compression is on. You can go to another tty to run another trsh giving you multiple shells etc. None of the above needs X-windows to run. ------------------------------------------ To run txconn: Make sure you are running X-windows. txconn will assume you have x-windows running. After running 'trsh', type if you are running tcsh, or csh: "setenv DISPLAY `hostname`:0 ; setenv DISPLAY `txconn`" for csh/tcsh otherwise, if you are running 'sh' , or 'ksh': "export DISPLAY=`hostname`:0 ; export DISPLAY=`txconn`" on the trsh. (i.e. run txconn on your remote machine). It should exit immediately. (This is because it starts a process in the background). Here, `hostname` returns the hostname of your REMOTE machine. (i.e. the machine you ran txconn on. To make that very clear. The local machine is the machine you are typing on, the remote is the one at the other end of the modem link. Run txconn on the remote machine. hostname is set to be the name of your remote machine. DON'T use the hostname of your local machine). Then you can run any x-windows program on your remote machine, and it should appear on your screen. Things that can go wrong compiling.. [See INSTALL for more up to date information.] 1) configure complains about your OS not being define. You'll have to either edit the configure script, or find an OS that is "close enough". 2) config.h gives a message about the OS being undefined. config.h sets up a list of #define's based on what OS you are compiling on. Please (if you can) write support for your OS, and mail me the patches so I can support it. If you can't mail me with details of you machine, and I will see what I can do. If things go wrong, make sure you run the local end with the '-n on' flag. This won't help, but it can give you some clues as to what's going wrong. Things that can go wrong: 1) term giving message like ": timed out at 60 trans 4" This should be read as "A packet got no acknowledgment even though it has been waiting for 60/20th's of a second, so it is being re-transmitted for the 4th time." These errors are normal. Line noise etc will cause packets to be lost and retransmitting is the way they are recovered. Times when it isn't normal: a) Constantly re-transmitting i.e the last number just keeps going up. This indicated one of i) The remote term has died. Shouldn't happen. ii) The line is not an 8 bit line. You can check this by running the linecheck program. Look up 'sevenbit' in TERMRC or term(1) if you have a sevenbit line. iii) Line noise has sent a XOFF character and your terminal server has treated it is a quench signal. You shouldn't be using software flow control with term. turn if off if you can. Look up the -f option in OPTIONS or 'flowcontrol' in TERMRC or term(1). b) Any retransmissions on an error correcting modem. Any of the above, and iv) The BAUDRATE is set too high. Too much data is being buffered by the operating system. c) Term tells you to an old packet has been received and to raise your timeout. v) If this happens rarely, just ignore it. If it happens a lot, then you should follow this advice and raise your timeout to a higher #. d) Lots of errors when you run multiple tasks at once. vi) Try "collisions on" in your termrc files, to tell term to lower its transmission rate when receiving data. 2) Term not doing anything. Everything hangs. i) The clients can't talk to the term socket. Look at client.c. ii) I have stuffed up and left a bug in a released version. iii) The line is really dirty and it is eating one of the characters term is using. See linecheck below. iv) Mail me with LOTS of details. 3) Term constantly giving you the prompt from your remote machine. You have run the remote term in the background. Don't do this. 4) Trsh hangs after you have typed a few keystrokes. You have a dirty line. A terminal server or something like that is eating some characters. Run linecheck. See term_setup.1 for more information. See TERMRC for more information. See below for more information. 5) Term works fine, but if you have tredir's running, and you login from the other end, all the tredirs exit. This is because you are missing the 'remote' keyword. You need "remote" on ONE end only. This keyword should go in your ~/.term/termrc file. Alternatively run ONE term with the '-r' flag, as was shown in the example above. ------------ USAGE OF linecheck.c [ this is probably out of date. Check the start of the linecheck.c file. M - 7/1/94] initially written by Michael O'Reilly *seriously* bashed about by by quarters hell, I wonder if diff would find more than 5 matching lines anymore... jefftep@cs.utexas.edu jeff grills Without term running do the following. (i.e. on a bare serial line. Nothing but your comms program is running.) if you use a csh type shell (csh, or tcsh), then run /bin/sh before you do the following run remotely like: linecheck 2> remote.output locally: linecheck < /dev/modem > /dev/modem 2> local.output if it says something needs escaped, that means it didn't get through okay this time. if you get an invalid packet printed, it means the packet wasn't sent by the linecheck on the other side, and may either be line static, or some very braindead terminal response to a (possibly series) of characters to what was printed over the line. in this case, it's your responsibility to determine which, and escape the previously sent char if needed. There is no way this program can identity a braindead terminal server from line static, so this is the way it has to be. if, for some reason, you get stuck out in lala land, and can't kill the program, try typing "^jexit^j". That should kill it, and restore your terminal. It'll print "### sending char" and "### received valid". Don't worry if these two number are out of sync. That's fine. Just worry, on either side, if you get some "Invalid packet: " lines. Look at them closely, and see if it's line static, or a real problem. At the end, it'll print out a summary of what it thinks you should escape. This just means these chars didn't get received correctly this time. Again, if line static munched something, some of these may be valid. To actually escape them, you have to put them into your termrc file. So if it said to escape 0-31, then on the OTHER end from the one that printed it, you add the line 'escape 0-31' to your ~/.term/termrc file. Please note that the local.output file contains the characters that should be escaped on the REMOTE end, and vice versa. See TERMRC and term(1) for more on escaping characters. *** IF *** your terminal server generates extra responses for odd chars, then you may not be told to escape something, but need to anyway. This will be evident from a "Invalid packet: " on the local side, after attempting to send a character. Again, it may be line static. You have to make the call. if you're running it locally in a xterm, I suggest you turn on logging. if you have problems with this program, and want me to look at it, mail me *both* the local and remote output, and label them appropriately. programmers notes: hopefully, soon, I'll add the ability to skip chars to this program, so you can test out the escapes you want. maybe do a fork() and process the two sides independently, so it never hangs. would cause minor quitting problems, but may be worth it. Any problems, feel free to mail me. Any patches, bug fixes, etc are VERY welcome. Michael (oreillym@tartarus.uwa.edu.au); P.S. Bill Riemers (bcr@physics.purdue.edu) is temporarily maintaining this code, originally written by Michael O'Reilly (oreillym@tartarus.uwa.edu.au). ---------- From michael@iinet.com.au Tue Jul 19 22:33:54 1994 From: michael@iinet.com.au (Michael O'Reilly) Subject: I saw... term 202 go past today. Looks just beautiful. :) Given the awesome mods you've made, it's probably a good idea to change the docs to mention, term, original written by me, now fixed, beautified, made useful, and supported by you. Michael ----------- Hmm, really most of the credit should go to the people listed in CREDITS. Some of these people have probably done a lot more with term development than I have. :-) Originally I started using term because it was the only option for multi- tasking over a modem without remote root support. At this point I think it is quite competitive with SLIP and PPP. Pro's: - Often times term is faster. - Term gives you true firewall security. Users can only access network commands you explicitly allow with a SUID or SGID command. And you will never be sprayed, or have to worry about network users ports you have redirected! - No root support required. Con's: - Programs have to be compiled with term support to work. - Not everything works. Programs like "ping" which normally must be SUID root never will work. Although "rsh" type commands are already an exception to this rule. - "fet" term's equivalent of "dip" isn't nearly as smart as "dip". - It is doubtful NFS mounts over term will ever be supported.