home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Columbia Kermit
/
kermit.zip
/
archives
/
kermit11.tar.gz
/
kermit11.tar
/
k11i31.txt
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1988-08-16
|
4KB
|
136 lines
Kermit-11 under IAS
17-Sep-1985
Bruce C. Wright
I. Abstract
Kermit is a program developed at Columbia University for
communication between computers using asynchronous ASCII
protocols. It is designed to be implementable under a
wide variety of machines and operating systems.
This document describes some of the features and restrictions
of Kermit running under the IAS operating system. The IAS
version of Kermit is a modification of the RSX-11 version of
Kermit, but because of differences in the operating systems
not all of the features of RSX Kermit are currently available
under IAS Kermit.
II. Supported features
IAS Kermit supports most of the features of RSX Kermit:
o file transfers
o remote and local commands
o spawning installed tasks
o dial-out lines
o extensive help facility
Some of these features involve procedures not required under
RSX, because of the restrictions placed by the timesharing
executive:
1) Dial-out lines must not be interactive terminals.
That is, if you are going to use a line as a dial-
out line, you must not allocate it to PDS or SCI.
2) Spawning installed tasks is currently done via a
SPWN$ directive rather than via RUN$T. Therefore,
anyone wanting to spawn installed tasks must have
the PR.RTC (real-time) privilege. A workaround is
to exit from Kermit, run the program, and then
run Kermit again. Kermit will first try to run an
installed task named $$$xxx, where xxx is the system
command requested; if that fails, Kermit will try
to run an installed task named ...xxx.
3) Wild-card file operations are supported (for example,
DIR *.DAT, DEL *.TSK, SEND *.MAC). Under RSX, Kermit
uses RMS version 2 to do wild-card operations; this
is available under IAS V3.2 but not under IAS V3.1.
Therefore, on IAS V3.1 (the version that the EPA is
running), there are the following restrictions on file
operations:
a) Wild-cards must be specified for the entire
field or not at all. For example, TEST.*
is OK but TEST*.* is not.
Page 2
b) If a wild-card file operation is executed,
with either the file-name or the file-type
specified as a wild-card, the file version
number is also taken to be a wild-card.
c) Wild-card operations are not allowed on
directories. Therefore, [*,*]*.DAT is not
a legal wild-card operation in Kermit-IAS.
It is legal to use explicit directories, such
as [200,200]*.DAT.
d) RMS Version 2 supports transparent DECNET
remote file operations, while RMS Version 1
does not. Therefore, Kermit-IAS under IAS V3.1
does not support DECNET file transfers.
e) Renaming files within Kermit is not supported
under V3.1 of IAS.
4) Kermit under IAS currently reads packets one character
at a time, and so can use up a fair amount of the CPU
if it is receiving files. If it is sending packets
(sending files or remote command responses), or if it
is reading commands rather than its file transfer packets,
it will use long I/O operations and will not put an
excessive burden on the system.
III. Unsupported Features
The only major unsupported features are related to the use of
RMS Version 1 on IAS V3.1. See the section above on the
supported RMS features for a discussion of RMS and Kermit.
IV. Installation and Required Files
Kermit is built as a multi-user task, with a task name of
$$$KER. It can be run as an installed "foreign command"
task:
PDS> install k11ias
PDS> kermit
Kermit-11 T2.30
Kermit-11>...
You can also specify another name for the installed command:
PDS> install/sys:k11 k11ias
PDS> k11
Kermit-11 T2.30
Kermit-11>...
Page 3
Or you can just run it as a non-installed task:
PDS> run k11ias
16:30:15
Kermit-11 T2.30
Kermit-11>...
The following files are supplied for Kermit-IAS to run:
K11IAS.TSK - The Kermit task image
K11HLP.HLP - The Kermit help file. For this to
be used by Kermit, it must be in the
default directory. Note that it is
not necessary to set the PDS default
directory since you can also specify
a default directory within Kermit.
K11IAS.DOC - This file, describing Kermit on IAS
K11INS.DOC - Documentation on installation of
Kermit