IPDial is designed especially for creating a SLIP connection via the modem to a remote host: It can dial the remote hosts number, login into the host and initilize a SLIP connection. Configuring IPDial is rather easy, as it reads its command from a textfile.
1.) Disclaimer: Copyrights, (No) Warranty
-----------------------------------------
This program is Copyright (C) 1994
Jochen Wiedmann
Am Eisteich 9
72555 Metzingen
Germany
Phone: (0049) +7123 / 14881
Mail: wiedmann@neckar-alb.de
Modified with Jochen's OK
R. William Askew
askew@neosoft.com // I found this easier to use than Rexx scripts
// once the DSR error was corrected (I like it!!)
Permission is granted to make and distribute either verbatim and modified copies of this documentation and the program IPDial provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies and the "GNU General Public License" (in the file COPYING) is distributed as well.
The author gives ABSOLUTELY NO warranty that the program described in this documentation and the results produced by them are correct. The author cannot be held responsible for ANY damage resulting from the use of this software.
2.) Installation
----------------
Rather simple. Just copy the program to a place in your path and edit the two files "login.script" and "hangup.script". (See Script file syntax below for details.)
You might want to enter the line
IPDial login.script
at the beginning of AmiTCP's startnet script. Thus you get a SLIP connection by simply typing startnet.
What IPDial does, depends on the TERMINAL switch: If this is active, the arguments DEVICE, UNIT, BAUD and PROTOCOL are used to open the serial.device. Once it is opened, the program acts as a very simple terminal program. See the "terminal" command for an explanation of the RAW argument.
If TERMINAL is omitted, the given SCRIPT is read and the commands of the script are executed line by line. (See below) The argument ECHO instructs IPDial to print the modems replies to stdout, while VERBOSE is used to show what the program's doing.
4.) Script file syntax
----------------------
- Any line of the script file may contain only one command. In general command
arguments are parsed with ReadArgs(), thus they may look like CLI command line
arguments: The characters "" may surround a string which contains blanks.
Note, that ReadArgs() treats the character '*' as an escape sequence: Thus you
have to write
ECHO "**"
if you want to print a single '*'.
- Empty lines or lines beginning with a semicolon are assumed to be comments and
thus ignored.
- Lines may begin with a label, an alphanumeric word followed by a colon. Labels
are ignored, except that they may be used as destinations for "goto"
instructions. (Anyone said BASIC? Yes, it is. :-) Labels are case-sensitive.
- This is the list of possible commands:
DEVICE NAME/A,PROTOCOL,UNIT/K/N
Opens the given device NAME with unit UNIT (Default 0).
This must be compatible to the serial.device. PROTOCOL
may be one of XONXOFF, RTSCTS, 7WIRE (Synonym for RTSCTS)
or NONE. Note that explicitly requesting a protocol
overwrites the defaults set by the Derial preferences
program.
The DEVICE command should in general be the first command
of each script.
SET BAUD/N/K,DATABITS/N/K,STOPBITS/N/K,BUFSIZE/N/K,PARITY/K
This command is used to modify the serial.device parameters.
Note, that these overwrite the Serial preferences. Possible
parameters are:
BAUD baud rate
DATABITS number of databits
STOPBITS number of stopbits
BUFSIZE read buffer size
PARITY one of ODD, EVEN or NONE
SHOWPARMS
Writes the current serial.device settings to stdout.
ECHO ARGS/M
This will write the given ARGS to stdout. Note, that these
strings may contain patterns like \r (Carriage Return),
\n (Line Feed), \\ (Backslash :-) or \037 (octal digits,
representing the character ASCII 31.) The arguments are
separated by blanks, when they are printed.
Sequences like $VAR or ${VAR} will be replaced with the value of the environment variable VAR. (Empty string, if VAR doesn't exist.) Use $$ to get the $ character itself. Note, that $VAR will only work, if the name VAR consists of alphanumeric characters only and the name is separated with a non-alphanumeric character from the following. For example, $VAR+NAME means $VAR and not $VAR+NAME. On the other hand $VARNAME means $VARNAME and not $VAR. (Obvious reason. :-)
Note that ECHO does not write any Line Feeds or Carriage Returns unless you explicitly request it with the respective patterns.
SEND ARGS/M
This command sends the given strings to the serial.device
using DoIO(). These strings may contain the same patterns
as described with the ECHO command. Unlike ECHO the arguments
aren't separeted by blanks.
See ECHO for a description of patterns that may be inserted
into SEND arguments.
DELAY SECS/A
Delays the given number of seconds. The value may contain a
fraction of seconds which is rounded to ticks: 0.5 means
25 ticks.
WAIT TIMEOUT/K/N/A,ARGS/M
This command waits until either one of the given strings
is read from the serial.device or the number of seconds
given by TIMEOUT has gone.
A variable called STATUS indicates what happened: It contains
either -1 for timeout or the number of the string that was
read, beginning with 0. This variable may be used by the
ON statement.
WAIT arguments are parsed like ECHO arguments. (See above.)
SCAN FORMAT/A,GLOBAL/S,SAVE/S
Used to scan the buffer read by the last "WAIT" command for
certain words. These may be used set environment variables.
The format string may contain the following patterns:
%{WORD%} Ignores any characters until WORD is found in
the buffer. Use %% to insert the '%' character
into WORD.
' ' Ignores any number (including 0) and kind (blank,
tab, line feed, carriage return, form feed) of
white space characters.
%[VAR%]%(SUFFIX%) Reads the next word from the buffer until
the first white space character and stores it into
the environment variable VAR.
The optional SUFFIX is a sequence of characters
to be removed from the end of the word.
Any other characters in the format string are simply
ignored.
Usually environment variables are local (for IPDial and child processes only). Use the GLOBAL and SAVE keywords to store them in ENV: and ENVARC:, respectively. Note, that SAVE implies GLOBAL.
Note, that you can use the SCAN command more than once on the same buffer.
Example:
SCAN "%{Your IP address is%} %[IPADDRESS]%%(.%)"
Scans the buffer for a sentence like
Your IP address is 145.2.1.34.
and stores the value 145.2.1.34 into the variable IPADDRESS. Note, that the
character '.' is removed.
The SCAN command stores the number of created environment variables in the STATUS variable, which can later be used by the ON command. Note, that the value -1 is never stored in the STATUS variable, you have to use a dummy label in the
ON command.
ON STATUS GOTO LABELS/M
There's currently only one version of the ON command.
An ON command must follow a WAIT or SCAN command. ON reads
the value of the STATUS variable and jumps to the first
label, if STATUS is -1, to the second label, if STATUS is 0
and so on. A typical use of WAIT/ON looks like this:
WAIT TIMEOUT=10 "Login:" "Busy"
ON STATUS GOTO TimeOut Login Busy
TimeOut:
ECHO "Timeout happened, aborting.\n"
EXIT 10
Busy:
ECHO "Remote busy, delaying...\n"
DELAY 25
ECHO "Trying again.\n"
GOTO DialAgain
Login:
; Execute the login procedure
You do not need to supply a label for any wait string: This will suppress jumping and instead continue on the next line.
GOTO LABEL/A
Jumps to the given label
TERMINAL NOECHO/S,RAW/S,EOF
Enters terminal mode: What you enter at the keyboard will
be sent to the serial.device and likewise the program will
display any input from the serial.device to you. The
TERMINAL command will be finished, if you enter EOF
(Ctrl-\).
The NOECHO and EOF options can be used to enter a password,
if you don't like to include it into your login file: NOECHO
makes your input invisible and the EOF string terminates
terminal mode as soon, as you type in the first character
of the string. Thus you can do something like
WAIT TIMEOUT=10 "Password:"
ON STATUS GOTO TimeOut Password
Password:
ECHO "Enter login password: "
TERMINAL EOF="\n" NOECHO
Usually you can send only complete lines to the modem,
especially this means that you have all editing capabilities
of the shell available. This is not the case in RAW mode:
Every character you type will be sent immediately to the
modem without any buffering or conversions.
Notes:
- You probably must put your modem into NOECHO mode too,
if you use the "terminal" command for entering a password.
- NOECHO mode implies RAW mode
SYSTEM ARGS/M
Executes the command given by ARGS. The arguments will be
parsed like ECHO and SEND arguments (you may insert
\ and $ patterns) and separated by blanks. The resulting
string will be executed. For example
SYSTEM "Echo" "Hello!"
will execute the command "Echo Hello!" and not "EchoHello!".
EXIT RESULT
Terminates the program, returns the given RESULT. (Defaults
to 0.)
SETVAR NAME/A,VALUE/A,LOCALONLY/S,GLOBAL/S,SAVE/S
Sets environment variable NAME to VALUE. If you set the
GLOBAL switch, your variable will be set in ENV: and not
in the programs local environment. The SAVE switch forces
copying to ENVARC:.
Note, that SAVE implies GLOBAL.
Commands are case-insensitive.
See the scripts Login.IPDial and Hangup.IPDial as examples.
5.) How to create a script file?
--------------------------------
Enter the terminal mode. You should now be able to type commands like
ATZ<return>
If all goes well, the modem should reply
ATZ
OK
provided, that it is in echo mode. Now try to dial into your remote host with something like
ATDP07071927920<return>
If the remote host's phone line isn't busy, you should eventually see the remote's login message. This message should explain what to do. Try it and log out. Now have a look at Login.IPDial, in general you should understand how to edit it.
6.) Recommended Usage
---------------------
Each time you reconfigure AmiTCP, it will destroy your startnet script. Thus it is not a good idea to modify the startnet script. Instead create a scriptfile, say "neton", which could look as follows:
.key ECHO/S,VERBOSE/S
IPDial Work:lib/Login.script <ECHO> <VERBOSE>
If NOT WARN
startnet
EndIf
Likewise, create a script "netoff" like this
stopnet
IPDial Work:lib/Hangup.IPDial
And, from now on, use "neton" and "netoff" instead of "startnet" and "stopnet".
7.) History
-----------
I never expected IPDial to become a little bit popular. However, the number of questions and/or enhancement requests forced new versions: This is 1.6 now. Time for a history, as people might like to know what's different.
V 1.1 23.11.94 Initial version
V 1.2 27.02.95 Added terminal mode
Now using ReadArgs() for command line parsing.
V 1.3 09.03.95 Added environment variable aupport to "send"
command. Added unit support.
Suggested by Quarvon (Jürgen Lang)
V 1.4 21.04.95 Added "system" command.
Suggested by Gutgolf (Michael Bauer)
Added environment variable support to "echo"
command. Terminal mode now converts
LF to CR/LF, so that modem
recognizes commands.
(Let's hope, that will still
work for entering passwords. :-(
V 1.5 30.04.95 Added "scan" command.
V 1.6 26.06.95 "delay" command supporting ticks; ParseString()
supporting octal characters; "wait" command using
ParseString()
Suggested by Will Bow.
Fixed bug in SerialSend():
*.io_Device = *.io_Unit
V 1.7 21.07.95 Added NOECHO, RAW and EOF options to "terminal"
command.
Suggested by Klaus Heinz
Added BAUD option to command line.
Added "setvar" command.
V 1.8 24.11.95 Added a delay() in the DeviceIODo() routine
I have a A2500 with a GVP I/O card connected to a USR sportster v32.bis
modem.
I kept getting a no DSR error.
This appears to be a timing problem.
status = DoIO(req->Req);
Delay(10); /* delay 10 ticks so modem has a chance */
return(status);
Converted to compiled with SAS/C 6.xx
Added some more VERBOSE ( for better or worse )
R. William Askew A Harley Ride a Day
Helps Drive the Blues Away
V 1.9 29.11.95 Fixed the DELAY command ( oops I broke it in v1.8
