I need a bash shell terminal emulation program that does the following:

VT100 or VT220 or VT370

SSL Version SSL3

Zmodem Transfers


I have found a M$ windows solution: PowerTerm® Pro/Enterprise
and there is a X-windows program for sale: PowerTerm® InterConnect (Linux Edition)

But I don't have x-windows and I want to be able to do this in the shell. It seems like something I should be able to do quite easily.

I can't believe finding a solution to this is so difficult.

Have you checked into minicom? It lists most of these requirements.

Out of curiosity, why the need for one program? Most Linux installations have cmdline programs that offer these features independantly (like zmodem, OpenSSL, etc).

Tobin

Thanks for the minicom, I never knew my distro had it and it looks pretty cool. I'll let you know if it works out for me.

I am connecting to an old unix system and ssh and telnet don't seem to be working for me. I guess maybe I don't know how to use telnet or I don't know of the other cmdline programs that offer the features I need?

Ok, so I have run into a wall.

I need to do this over a TCP/IP eth0 connection, not a PPP modem or serial.

How do I configure that with minicom or kermit?

There should also be a program called modemu or mtelnet that comes with minicom. This should allow minicom's terminal emulation to work over ethernet. Unfortunately, the documentation I'm seing is particularly vague. There are other programs out there, but I have no way of really testing them to see if they fit your needs.

Could you be a little more specific with your needs? What distro are you using? What is the intended application? I'm assuming that you want a Linux server to run some automated tasks of connecting and downloading/uploading data to/from a mainframe of some sort?

This kind of specific information would be helpful, in that myself or someone else may be able to get you into a different solution, like an automated perl script or something.

One of the reasons that something like this doesn't exist in the open source community, is it is very specialized, and not exactly an environment that most people could get access to. There may exist other programs, but they may be very limited in scope, or not available externally. I wrote several programs on top of Linux for specific applications in one of my previous jobs, that will never be seen in public, as they were very specific to a task involving in-house designed equipment on a limited scale. I'm willing to bet that there are several businesses and government agencies that would have developed in-house programs specifically for this task for a unix environment that could be ported to Linux. Chances are, they were written over a decade ago, and the current administrators of these programs either don't care about releasing them, or don't have the legal right to do so.


Tobin

Thanks for all the help GrueMaster

I finally got it working with kermit and openssl.
Here is the good documentation I finally found http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/case21.html

So yeah, I am with you all the way on the reasons why there isn't anything in the open source community developed for this task already, and plus why waste time with secure telnet and zmodem transfers when we have SSH and SCP ?

I hope this thread helps someone in the future.