SSL File Transfer

[Brian K. White]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Campbell" <bill at celestial.com>
To: "filePro List" <filepro-list at lists.celestial.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 3:25 PM
Subject: Re: SSL File Transfer


> On Thu, Dec 09, 2004, Fairlight wrote:
>>Simon--er, no...it was Bill Vermillion--said:
>>>
>>> So what is it that >>CURRENT<< kermit programs don't support that
>>> you think of in terms of robustness or protocols. Disintegrating
>>> minds want to know :-)  The topic of this thread was SSL transfers.
>>
>>Well, I wouldn't know because I gave up on kermit as anything but a
>>last-resort effort on serial dialups years ago because it didn't cut it 
>>for
>>me features-wise compared to things like Procomm and Term ][+.
>>
>>I've never needed to use it since I've been in a network situation.  The
>>last time I used it was probably 1993.
>
> Even in 1993, ckermit had things like sliding windows, resume transfers,
> etc., but many telcom program's kermit protocol implementations were sadly
> lacking.  Back in the days when our Internet connection was a 56k frame
> relay circuit, I frequently used ckermit to do file transfers as it was
> faster and more reliable than other options I knew about at the time
> (kermit does support telnet).
>
> Furthermore, the official DOS versions of kermit had some pretty good
> terminal emulations and scripting capabilities.  Many of the other
> DOS/Windows communctions programs had pretty poor terminal emulations
> (although probably they would be considered good by the Microsoft Windows
> telnet program standards :-).
>
> Anzio was probably the first comm program that offered good ANSI emulation
> for SCO Xenix and OpenServer systems.

kermit is THE stuff for serial. Not the last resort, rather almost the only 
thing worth bothering with.
I had one site I set up with all XT, 286, 386 stations with a mix of nic 
cards and serial lines, but all running a single dos boot floppy with dos 
kermit on it and kermrc / ini files I made myself that telnetted o serial'd 
in to a sco box. (all serial into a xenix box at first) I did this because 
the kermit was bot more reliable and more controllable than the procomm+ 
that the original var supplied years before my time. Among other things, 
some hot key traps I put in the .ini (or rather, didn't put in the ini 
file)eliminated a chronic problem they had with accidentally hitting procomm 
hot keys to abort the session and other things.

It had an ansi that was close enough to sco's that I had to make a few 
additions to the clients .ini to make sco Fkeys and I think I had to twak 
the termcap a little on the sco box.

The boot floppy had the necessary executables that I even made another 
hot-key in the .ini, one that takes 3 keys and did NOT get hit by accident, 
that made a copy of the boot floppy. So the users could make a new copy of 
the boot floppy from any working station any time they wanted so they were 
not in danger of the floppies wearing out and me not being available. This 
even allows them to make new stations at will as long as they are serial or 
used the same model of nic.

I don't suppose I'd do it that way again today, but at the time it was a 
good answer and I was always kinda pleased with myself about that one. 
Mostly it just doesn't apply today. No one uses XT's without hard drives 
today.

Brian K. White  --  brian at aljex.com  --  http://www.aljex.com/bkw/
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