Kermit-11 under IAS Original Author - Bruce C. Wright Updated for version 3.2 - Frank R. Borger 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. Supported features IAS Kermit supports most of the features of RSX Kermit: 1. File transfers 2. Remote and local commands 3. Spawning installed tasks 4. Dial-out lines 5. 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$ direc- tive rather than via RUN$T. Therefore, anyone wanting to spawn installed tasks must have the PR.RTC (real-time) privi- lege. 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 in- stalled 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 STILL not ava- ilable under IAS, so there are the following restrictions on file operations: 1. Wild-cards must be specified for the entire field or not at all. For example, TEST.* is OK but TEST*.* is not. 2. When 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. PAGE 2 3. 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. 4. RMS Version 2 supports transparent DECNET remote file op- erations, while RMS Version 1 does not. Therefore, Ker- mit-IAS does not support DECNET file transfers. 5. Renaming files within Kermit is not supported. 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 re- ceiving files. If it is sending packets (sending files or remote command responses), or if it is reading commands rath- er than its file transfer packets, it will use long I/O oper- ations and will not put an excessive burden on the system. Installation and Required Files Kermit is built as a multi-user task, with a task name of ...KER. The task is not linked to RMSRES, since this made the task images almost useless to other users, unless you happened to have the correct version of RMSRES, (a highly unlikely case.) Summary of Changes done at MRH. 1. All modules of KERMIT have been put into a library for faster task linking. 2. The code has been modified to differentiate between IAS ver- sion 3.2, (MAC knows about saving and restoring the current psect,) and version 3.1, (MAC doesn't know about it.) 3. The connect code has been modified to conditionalize out a lot of the RT11/RSTS code. 4. Kermit orginially did its connect I/O one character at a time. This was a real system hog and did not work reliably above 300 baud. An alternate method is enabled by defining the symbol "fasias". In this mode the connect code does a read with buffer size equal to .25 seconds worth of char- acters, along with a slightly longer mark time. If the read is successful, the mark time is cancled. If the mark time occurs, the read is cancelled and any characters that are wa- iting are read. NOTE that this mode requires you to have bu- ilt your TT handler to use RSX11M style IO.KIL. (Set the symbol D$$KIL = 0 in your params.mac file.) This method works nicely at 1200 baud with little system loading, but has not been tested beyond that. PAGE 3 5. Our institution has a command munger/flying install task that attempts to handle tasks that aren't installed. In our case it is ...MAS. Any SYSTEM command that doesn't suceed in run- ning ...XXX, will pass the command to ...MAS. The name of the catchall task is defined in K11MAC.MAC as mungna. 6. Our version of task builder on 3.2 has a bug in that it does not set up the vector extension pointer ($VEXT at location 10 of your task's address space.) If this is true for your sys- tem, define the symbol tkbbug in K11MAC.MAC. 7. On our version 3.1 system, there was a bug in the RMS library with the module INIDM. This was fixed by disassembling the INIDM module from a later version of RMS and expicitly in- cluding it in the ODL file. We have both version 3.1 and 3.2 IAS systems, so I have included versions for both systems. The basic package as presented here is built and assembled for version 3.2. I have included a mac and a tkb command file, an odl file and a task image for version 3.1. If you wish to do a full-blown rebuild of kermit, you must: o Edit K11MAC.MAC to set conditionals properly. o Re-assemble all files using K11IASASM or K11I31ASM. o Re-create the library using L11IASLBR o Re-link using K11IASTKB or K11I31TKB. Also included in this distribution are two tasks DUP and MOD. They are both just the connect code portion of kermit, but are dedicated to specific lines on our system, (one connecting to another PDP system via hardwire, the other connecting to a Hayes type MODem for dialing out.) Happy KERMITing.