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000200_news@columbia.edu _Sat Apr 15 16:06:53 2000.msg
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From: fdc@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Frank da Cruz)
Subject: Re: "terminal" app?
Date: 15 Apr 2000 19:48:25 GMT
Organization: Columbia University
Message-ID: <8dah29$s7j$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu>
To: kermit.misc@columbia.edu
In article <8d88vs$kp0$1@sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de>,
Christoph Weber-Fahr <weber@rhrk.uni-kl.de> wrote:
: peter@icke-reklam.manet.dot..nu. writes:
: >jomor <jomor@ahpcns.com> wrote:
: >> What's a good, simple terminal emulator to use on my 4.0-RELEASE laptop
: >> for serial /console connections to to routers and switches?
: >
: >kermit wins here hands down!
:
: I beg to differ. Consider minicom.
:
: If you come from the dos world, you will feel at home with minicom, which
: is modelled after Telix' user interface.
:
: Also, it has the habit to do the right thing in quite a number of
: situations (but don't press alt-b, when you're connected to your
: company's sun server console :-)
:
: If you need All bells and whistles, scripting, you name it, of course
: kermit is the software of choice, but for simple task I found
: it too awkward to get running most of the time. Too much set this
: and configure that before it starts to do anything. No comfortable
: dialer configuration, automatic phonebook and whatnot...
:
Well, C-Kermit has all that too -- just not in "GUI" or curses form, so
you have to put in a little effort to learn it.
The tradeoff is as follows...
Some tools like Minicom do just one thing (in the UNIX spirit). So to do
that thing, you have to learn how to use that tool (Minicom in this case).
But the thing that Minicom does is very similar to the things that Telnet
and Rlogin do, except on different kinds of connections. So if you make
network connections too, you also have to learn Telnet and/or Rlogin.
But Kermit does both things: it makes both serial (direct or dialed) and
network connections. But this means you have to tell it which thing to do
("set this, configure that"). The advantage is: everything else is the
same on both kinds of connections, whereas it can be very different with
the other packages (e.g. Rlogin quoting rules, Telnet escaping rules,
sending BREAK, etc).
Of course we can carry this further. Maybe you want to transfer files
with the same computers you connect to with minicom, cu, tip, seyon, telnet,
or rlogin. For this you would need Zmodem, FTP, rcp, etc etc -- again, lots
more programs and interfaces to learn. Or you can use Kermit to transfer
files on all these kinds of connections, using just one interface -- the
same one you were already using.
Then maybe you're not an American, so you might need to have character
sets translated on your connection -- telnet, rlogin, dialout, whatever.
Here you're getting into deeper water. Where are the Telnet, Rlogin, and
dialout clients that do this? I don't know. But Kermit does it. Plus it
can also convert character sets of local files, just like iconv or recode
(oops, more user interfaces to learn!).
And on and on. Now, suppose you want to automate some complicated task,
like dialing out, logging in, checking for some new files, downloading
them if they are there, uploading some other files, etc. Maybe you could
do this with some combination of expect, Perl, Tcl, cu, Zmodem, etc
(more interfaces!), or you could just do it with Kermit, using the same
commands you already learned.
Now suppose you want to do the same thing, but this time on a network
connection. No worries: Just use the same script, but change a line or two
to tell it to make a network connection instead of a dialout one.
Everything else stays the same.
Now suppose your boss tells you to stop using FreeBSD (boo!) and move all
your applications to some other operating system: AIX, Solaris, VMS, even
Windows. No problem. The same script runs on all those platforms and lots
more too; just change a line here and there to account for different file
and device name formats.
Now suppose you have all these wonderful scripts, dialing directories,
and so forth, but then you have fly to another state and demo them there.
Will they still work? After all, you're dialing from another area code.
Again, no problem: Kermit takes care all that. How about another country?
Same thing. Kermit knows all about area codes, country codes, and dialing
rules.
These days I suppose Kermit is something like EMACS. You have to put some
effort into learning it, but once you do, it saves you huge amounts of work
from then on.
- Frank