"" HELP This info goes with KERMIT version 1.99 or later, as of April 24, 1987. KERMIT is a file-transfer protocol for use over an asynchronous serial telecommunications lines. Files are broken up into "packets", adding checksums and other control information to ensure, with high likelihood, error-free and complete transmission. KERMIT-RTE is implemented for HP-1000 systems running RTE-6/VM or RTE-A. The following commands may be entered in upper- or lower-case: Bye Connect Exit Finish Get Help Quit REceive RUn SET SENd SERver SHow STatus Transfer Note: the minimum allowable abbreviation is shown in UPPER-CASE. Info about a given command's parameters, if any, is available via a "?" -- "SET ?" gives you a list of settable parameters. Info about the commands themselves is available via "HELP " where you replace "" with one of the commands shown above. If you need even more help, consult the KERMIT user's manual. "" CONNECT CONNECT [] The CONNECT command puts KERMIT into a terminal-emulator state, connecting your terminal to either the in this command, if given, or to the LU# given in a previous SET LINE command. Anything you type will be sent to the other "remote" computer; anything it sends back will be displayed on your terminal. WARNING: If you are NOT connected via a "D" mux (currently only under RTE-A), TYPE SLOWLY! You may otherwise lose keystrokes. When you are typing to KERMIT-RTE, it will prompt you with "KERMIT-RTE>" unless you have changed the prompt (see SET PROMPT for info). When you CONNECT to another machine, you will see information about how to ESCAPE back to KERMIT-RTE, and then you will be typing as if you were on a terminal directly connected to the other machine. When you need to return to KERMIT- RTE (to give it a command or to exit), you will need to type the ESCAPE info as shown in the message you got when you did the CONNECT (see SET ESCAPE for more info). You will then get a message about having returned to the local machine and KERMIT-RTE. "" EXIT "" QUIT EXIT or QUIT causes this KERMIT to shut itself down in an orderly way (as opposed to crashing!), closing debugging files if opened, and restoring various things to their original state before KERMIT was run. If you are running KERMIT-RTE as a server, you must use the FINISH, BYE, or LOGOFF commands from your local machine rather than QUIT or EXIT. "" GET "" RECEIVE GET [] RECEIVE [] GET and RECEIVE tell this KERMIT to receive one or more files from the KERMIT running on the other computer, be it a PC or another mainframe. If the other KERMIT is a SERVER, you MUST use GET instead of RECEIVE; GET requires a file-descriptor which must be legal for the remote system, and may contain wild-cards if the remote KERMIT will accept them. The optional parameter allows you to rename the first received file to that mask, and remaining files using all but the file-name part of the mask. If the received files are put in FMGR space, their names will be subject to (possibly severe) editing, since FMGR allows only 6 characters. FILE-WARNING NOTE: If a received file's name conflicts with an existing file, the RECEIVE or GET will be aborted with a message unless file-warnings are off. If file-warnings are off, new files will overlay the first existing one with the same name. Do "HELP SET WARNING" if you need more information on this. "" SEND SEND [] "SEND " causes KERMIT-RTE to send the file(s) matching the file-descriptor to the other KERMIT whether or not it is a SERVER. "SEND " works as above starting with the given file-name (wild-cards are NOT allowed here!); this is used primarily to resume sending a set of files after some kind of interruption. Files' names are sent to the "other" KERMIT in a "packet" so that they will know what to receive. If the SEND command is issued to the remote KERMIT (you are CONNECTed) then you must escape back to the local KERMIT to give a RECEIVE command within 15 seconds or this packet may be lost. If this is not an appropriate delay, you may alter it using the SET DELAY command. "" RUN "[RUN] []" causes KERMIT to schedule the named program with wait, passing any run-string parameters as supplied. If the program so scheduled returns a non-zero first parameter or a string, they will be displayed at your terminal. "" SERVER This command causes KERMIT-RTE to act as a server, getting all further commands from another KERMIT in "packets". This command may only be used if this KERMIT-RTE is the "remote" KERMIT and the "local" KERMIT knows how to talk to a server (not all of them do!). Once this KERMIT becomes a server, you will be told to ESCAPE back to the local KERMIT. Once acting as a server, KERMIT-RTE may only be shut down by a local KERMIT command such as FINISH, BYE, or LOGOUT, as appropriate. FINISH will shut down KERMIT-RTE but not log-off the session. If you need to rename received files or direct them to a particular directory during a server receive, you may SET RMASK to accomplish this before starting the server -- see SET RMASK for further information. KERMIT-RTE is set up so that if the default communication parameters are already compatible with your PC, you can "[ru] kermit SERver". "" STATUS STATUS causes KERMIT-RTE to display retry- and overall packet-counts and timing information about the most recent file transfer, and retry- and overall packet-counts of all file transfers done during the current KERMIT-RTE session. "" TRANSFER Transfer [NOecho] This causes all further commands to be obtained from the file-name given. If 'NO' or blanks appear after the file-name, commands obtained from the file will not be echoed at the console; anything else will cause those commands to be shown at your terminal as they are processed. Transfer-files may contain any legal command except the transfer command itself. If the transfer-file contains a blank line, control will return to your terminal for one command, and then return to the transfer-file. If you should inadvertently put a blank line in the transfer-file, you will have to enter SOMETHING at the KERMIT-RTE prompt; entering one or more commas will return you to the transfer-file. At the end of the file control automatically return to your terminal. NOTE: all commands which appear in a transfer-file after a SERVER command will not be processed! "" FINISH "" BYE BYE or FINISH FINISH causes the remote KERMIT to terminate but not log-off from the remote system when the remote KERMIT is acting as a server. It does not cause the local KERMIT to terminate. BYE causes the remote KERMIT to terminate AND log-off from the remote system when the remote KERMIT is acting as a server. It DOES cause KERMIT-RTE to terminate as if an EXIT or QUIT command was given. WARNING: You should NOT use the BYE command under any KERMIT if there is a permanent connection between the systems, and if some kind of "log-on" is usually performed on BOTH systems. If you do use the BYE command in such a situation, one system's log-off messages could act like a log-on attempt to the other system, and since that is bound to fail, the resulting message will be like a log-on attempt to the first system, resulting in a chain- reaction which has been known to seriously degrade system performance. "" SHOW "" < SHOW SET SET and SHOW allow you to set or see system-dependent characteristics. SHOW causes KERMIT-RTE to display the values of the SET parameters, and various other information. SET commands require one of the following : BInary BQuote Check DEBug DELay Escape Ibm Line PACket PARity PRompt Quote REPeat RETry RMask Sync Warning NOTE: The minimum allowable abbreviation is shown in UPPER-CASE. SET commands also require a value which is dependent on which parameters is being set. If a parameter requires a numeric value, you may enter it in decimal, octal (post-fixed with a 'B'), hexadecimal (post-fixed with an 'H'), or as a single literal character (post-fixed with a '"'). For more information on the settable parameters and the type of allowable values they require, do "help set " from the above list; to get help on set debug, for example, you would type "help set debug". "" BINARY SET BINARY ON or OFF As of version 1.97, KERMIT-RTE can transfer non-ASCII files to compatible KERMITs if you SET BINARY ON. "Normal" (non-binary) transfers convert the logical END-OF-RECORD in a file to a sequence which all KERMITs know how to use. If this sequence appears as part of the normal data in a file, the destination KERMIT will start a new record at that point and drop both characters. Once you have SET BINARY ON, KERMIT-RTE will transfer all data as it appears in the file and ignore the "special" significance of CR/LF within the file. Further, the file's record-structure is ignored; the file operates as if it's records are all 256 bytes long. For this reason you should GET or RECEIVE (or SET RMASK) using a FULL FILE DESCRIPTION, including the type, size, and record- length. Otherwise the file will default to type-4, 24 blocks, record-length of 0. NOTE: if the communications line requires parity other than NONE, and if you have disabled binary-quoting (see SET BQUOTE), transfers of binary files will not be allowed. "" BQUOTE SET BQUOTE If you need to send non-text data to another KERMIT using a communications line with parity other than NONE, KERMIT-RTE can do "8th-bit prefixing" if the other KERMIT agrees to do it also. What this means is that if KERMIT is about to send a character which has it's 8th bit set, KERMIT will send a special character (the "BQUOTE") before it (which tells the other KERMIT to set the 8th bit on the next character it receives). The setting of the 8th bit would otherwise be lost due to the parity setting. With this command you may set the BQUOTE to something other than the usual "&" (46 octal). The value you enter is the character-code of the character you would like to use (which must match what the other KERMIT expects); it must be in the range of 33-62 or 96-126 (all numbers decimal) and it must be different than the QUOTE (for control codes) and the REPEAT (use for repeat- count processing). You may enter this number in decimal, octal (nnnB), hexadecimal (nnH), or as the literal character followed by a quote ("). You should not have to change this for most KERMITs. Setting the BQUOTE to 32 decimal (ASCII blank) turns 8th-bit prefixing off; this interacts with the communications-line parity and may prevent binary-file transfers. "" CHECK SET CHECK This command allows you to request alternate checksum bytes within packets: "SET CHECK 1" builds 1-byte (arithmetic) checksums "SET CHECK 2" builds 2-byte (arithmetic) checksums "SET CHECK 3" builds 3-byte (CCITT-CRC) checksums By setting CHECK to 2 or 3, KERMIT's error-detecting capability increases, but only if the other KERMIT can also do it! If it can't do 2- or 3-byte checksums, don't worry, because all KERMITs already know to do the 1-byte checksum. "" DEBUG SET DEBUG In the event that you experience some problem with KERMIT-RTE's operations, you may arrange for KERMIT-RTE to perform some self-diagnosis. Before you can debug any of KERMIT-RTE's operations, you must first setup it's debug logging file via "SET DEBUG FILE ", which will create the given file if it doesn't already exist. NOTE - if the debug logging file already exists, it will be overlaid! You may then "SET DEBUG " as shown in the following to obtain: STATES - shows packet numbers/types and internal state as A Abort transmission B Break transmission C Transfer complete D Data E Error F File header R Receive initiate S Send initiate T Timeout Z End of file PACKETS - shows the actual data in incoming and outgoing KERMIT packets. You will need to consult the KERMIT protocol manual in order to get a description of these ALL - a combination of STATES and PACKETS OFF - turns off debugging "" DELAY SET DELAY This sets the time in seconds which the KERMIT-RTE will delay before it sends the first packet of a file. It starts out at 15 seconds and you may change to anything from 1 to 30 seconds, to give yourself time to escape back to the local KERMIT to give a RECEIVE command. This command will not be allowed if this KERMIT is the local one. SET DELAY 25 sets the send-delay to 25 seconds. "" PROMPT SET PROMPT [] When you are trying to work with a copy of KERMIT-RTE at both ends of a link, you may have some difficulty in determining whether a command-line prompt is for the "local" KERMIT or for a "remote" KERMIT. To resolve this problem, you may change the command-line prompt that KERMIT-RTE uses to any sequence of up to 20 non-blank characters (a blank terminates the prompt-string); KERMIT-RTE will shift the string to all upper-case. If no prompt-string is given, the original command-prompt will be restored. "" IBM SET IBM ON or OFF You may "SET IBM ON" or "SET IBM OFF" only if the local KERMIT is talking to a remote KERMIT requiring IBM mode (half-duplex). If IBM mode is ON, KERMIT will wait until it has received a DC1 (XON, or ^Q) character before it transmits anything. Further, IBM ON causes KERMIT-RTE to locally echo keystrokes during CONNECT mode. "" LINE SET LINE This tells KERMIT-RTE which logical unit number () is to be used for communications to a remote computer. The LU# must be legal for your session, and should be a 12792B/C or 12040B/C/D multiplexer port hooked to the desired remote computer or modem. KERMIT-RTE starts up in "remote-host" mode, which means it expects that you are running from a PC and will transfer files on "LU 1". By setting the line to some other LU, you are putting KERMIT-RTE into "local-host" mode. Some commands work in one mode and not the other, or they operate differently depending on the KERMIT's mode. You can switch from local- host mode back to remote-host mode by SETting LINE to your terminal LU. "" PACKET SET PACKET This is used to change the packet size from it's default 94 bytes to any size from 31 to 94 bytes. If the connection is very good, you may get slightly better thruput with a packet size of 94 bytes. For noisy lines, you may be able to avoid (costly) retries by reducing the packet size "" PARITY SET PARITY NONE/ODD/EVEN/MARK/SPACE As of version 1.97, you may set the parity of KERMIT's remote line. When the system boots up, a port's parity is set by the system manager to suit the needs of most users. If you need to communicate with a remote system which uses some other parity, you may change it (before you CONNECT) to be compatible with the other system. KERMIT will restore the original parity when you SET LINE to some other LU or exit out of KERMIT. WARNING -- use this command with extreme caution! If the parity you set is different from what the other system actually does use, you may still be able to talk through CONNECT, but file-transfers will be impossible, and it will be difficult to determine why! NOTE -- KERMIT-RTE supports "binary quoting" for the transfer of some non- printable data over lines where parity is not NONE (do H BQuote for info). "" WARNING SET WARNING OFF or ON You may "SET WARNING OFF" to allow received file(s) to overlay existing file(s) with the same name. You may "SET WARNING ON" to restore KERMIT-RTE's starting condition, in which a file-reception which would overlay an existing file will be aborted and you will get an error message telling you about it. "" RETRY SET RETRY [Initial] If KERMIT encounters an error in receiving or sending a packet to the other computer, it will retry sending that packet. It will keep on retrying the packet transfer operation until the retry-limit is reached. The retry- counter is reset each time a packet is successfully transferred so that an intermittently noisy line can be tolerated. KERMIT-RTE starts with a retry-limit of 5; with this command you may change it to any value from 5 to 30. If you can't transfer a packet trying 30 times, you probably never will. If you include the (I)nitial qualifier (only the first character is used), you will adjust the retry-limit used on initiation of a connection. The default setting for the initial retry-limit is 15; you may increase it to 30, as above. "" RMASK SET RMASK Since server-receives won't allow you to specify any receive-mask info, this command, given before the server command, will do it for you. The file mask may specifications for directory, subdirectory, type-extension, file-type, file-size, security-code, record-length, and so on, but wild- card characters may not be used. NO CHECKING IS PERFORMED as to the validity of the file-mask when it is entered, only when it is used. If the file-mask parameter is not given, a previously-defined file-mask (if any) will be cleared; otherwise, any subsequent server-receives will function exactly like a RECEIVE command with the same file-mask. Do "HELP RECEIVE" for more information. "" QUOTE SET QUOTE The quote character is the character that the local KERMIT sends to prefix control-characters which may occur in the files to be transferred. The normal quote character is "#" (43 octal), and there should be no reason to change this. If the remote KERMIT requires some other quote character, enter it's NUMERIC VALUE (character-code) as "SET QUOTE ", entering the value in decimal, octal (nnnB), hexadecimal (nnH), or as a literal character followed by a quote character ("). The character-code for this alternate quote character must be in the range of 33 to 126 (decimal), and it must not conflict with the BQUOTE character (for 8th-bit flagging) or the REPEAT character (for repeat-count processing). "" REPEAT SET REPEAT The repeat character is the character that the local KERMIT sends to prefix a repeat-count character. If both KERMITs agree to do it (with the same character), data can be compressed if 4 or more identical characters need to be sent consecutively. This command allows you to set KERMIT-RTE's repeat character to match the one that the other KERMIT is using. The usual repeat-character is a "~" (tilde, decimal 126, or octal 176), and most KERMITs which know how to do this will use it. If the KERMIT you want to talk with uses some other character to prefix repeat-counts, you may enter it's character code here in decimal, octal (nnnB), hexadecimal (nnH), or as a literal character if entered followed by a quote character ("). It must not be the same as either the QUOTE character (for control-codes) or the BQUOTE character (for 8th-bit processing). The value you enter must be in the range of 33-62 or 96-126. "" SYNC SET SYNC The sync character is the character the local KERMIT expects to receive as the first character of any from the other KERMIT. Control-A is the default sync for most KERMITs and there should be no reason to change it. If the other KERMIT uses some other SOH, you must "SET SOH ", where is the character-code (a number) of the SOH character to be used; it must be from 1 to 31 and must not conflict with the EOL or IBM-prompt characters. The character-code may be entered in decimal, octal (nnnB), hexadecimal (nnH), or as a literal followed by a quote character ("). "" ESCAPE SET ESCAPE The escape character is the character that you enter to "escape" back to the local KERMIT after CONNECTing to another machine. The normal escape for KERMIT-RTE is control-] (35 octal) and probably doesn't need to be changed. If this character is commonly used by the other machine for some reason, you may change by "SET ESCAPE ", where is the character-code (a number) of the escape character to be used, which must range from 1 to 31 (decimal). The actual value may be entered in decimal, octal (nnnB), hexa- decimal (nnH), or as a literal followed by a quote character ("). The escape character is always a control-code of some kind. It tells the KERMIT terminal emulator to look for the next character as a KERMIT command (rather than sending it to the remote computer). If the default escape character (control-], abbreviated as ^]) is in effect, then ^]^] will actually send one ^] to the remote computer ^]C will "Close" the CONNECTion (return to local) ^]Q will Quit debug logging, if active ^]R will Resume debug logging, if previously active Note that there are no spaces between the escape and the command character.