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C-Kermit for Windows Beta 3

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@davidrg davidrg released this 15 Sep 20:22
· 761 commits to master since this release

This release comes in three forms - one more than the previous!

  • ckw-b3.zip: includes SSH, PTY, and secure telnet/http/ftp support. Built with Visual C++ 2019, this requires Windows XP SP3 or newer. PTY support requires Windows 10 v1809 or newer.
  • ckw-b3-vintage.zip: does not include SSH, PTY or secure telnet/http/ftp support. Built with Visual C++ 6, this requires at least Windows NT 3.51 or Windows 95
  • ckw-b3-nt350.zip: does not include SSH, PTY, secure telnet/http/ftp, modem, or NTLM support, or a toolbar. Built with Visual C++ 2.0 this requires at least (and really should only be used on) Windows NT 3.50.

On Windows Vista or newer, grab the latest version from of the Visual C++ Redistributable from here: https://aka.ms/vs/17/release/vc_redist.x86.exe

On Windows XP, version 16.7 of the Visual C++ 2019 Redistributable is required. You can get this from ftp.zx.net.nz: https://ftp.zx.net.nz/pub/dev/redist/vcpp/2019_16.7/VC_redist.x86.exe.

On older platforms (except for NT 3.50), you'll need the Visual C++ 6.0 SP6 Redistributable if some other application hasn't already installed it You can get that from here: https://ftp.zx.net.nz/pub/dev/redist/vcpp/6sp6/vcredist.exe

New in this release:

This release focused on improving SSH support, returning SSL support, minor enhancements, porting to new platforms (NT 3.50, OS/2) and new compilers (Visual C++ 2.0, OpenWatcom 2.0, OpenWatcom 1.9 for OS/2)

New Features:

  • Idle SSH sessions can now be prevented from timing out by supplying some interval to the "set ssh heartbeat" command, for example: set ssh heartbeat 60
  • Added support for "user@host" syntax to SSH command. "ssh root@myhost" should do the same as "ssh myhost /user:root" now. The implementation is pretty basic and may not handle weird input well but when it works it should be less confusing to new users.
  • Added mouse wheel support. By default, it scrolls one line at a time, or one screen at a time when holding Ctrl. You can remap this to whatever you like via the new "set mouse wheel" command which works like "set mouse button".
  • File save dialogs are now the modern (normal) type on Windows ME, 2000 and newer. Windows 95, 98 and NT4 retain the old Windows 95-look file dialogs as before.
  • The Shell Execute utility, se.exe, is back. Documentation is here: https://kermitproject.org/k95manual/url.html#urlsexe
  • SSL and TLS support has returned. The http command can now make https connections, secure telnet (telnet-ssl) works again, as does ftps
  • SSH is now supported on Windows XP (for now - it will probably disappear in a year or so when OpenSSL drops XP support)
  • The screen update interval is no longer fixed at 100ms - you can now change it with the "set terminal screen-update fast" command. Smaller intervals will feel smoother. If the interval is too small for your computer elements that are supposed to blink (such as the cursor if noblink is not set) may not blink or may not blink consistently.
  • The /subsystem qualifier now works on the SSH command, as does the "skermit" command allowing you to use kermit as an SSH subsytem. Documentation: https://kermitproject.org/skermit.html
  • SSH Keyboard Interactive authentication is now supported
  • New SSH-related command: set ssh v2 key-exchange-methods
  • "set tcp nodelay" should affect SSH sessions now too
  • Implemented these SSH-related commands:

Fixed Bugs:

  • Fixed bug where some applications (eg, nano, htop) wouldn't come back properly after being suspended with Ctrl+Z and restored with fg when using the linux terminal type.
  • Fixed terminal being cleared the first time you move the K95G window and possibly the other random occurrences of this happening
  • Fixed terminal scrolling bug in OpenWatcom! Builds done with OpenWatcom are now functionally equivalent to Visual C++ 6 in platform support and features and have no known issues unique to that compiler.
  • Fixed auto-download "ask" setting not working on Windows NT 3.51
  • Receiving large files (>4GB) no longer fails with "Refused, size"
  • Fixed the "space" command never reporting more than 4GB of available free space
  • Fixed incorrect (too narrow) window size on first run
  • Fix file transfers to E-Kermit and possibly some other Kermit implementations (fdc)

Minor Enhancements and other changes:

  • Improved error message when no authentication methods supported by the SSH server are enabled
  • Upgraded to libssh 0.10.3
  • Adjusted how the cursor is drawn so it blinks more nicely in the GUI version of CKW
  • Removed these SSH commands as they are obsolete and will never be supported by libssh, the SSH backend used by CKW:
    • set ssh v1
    • set ssh version 1
    • set ssh v2 authentication {external-keyex, hostbased, srp-gex-sha1}
    • set ssh v2 ciphers {arcfour, blowfish-cbc, cast128-cbc, rijndael128-cbc, rijndael192-cbc, rijndael256-cbc}
    • set ssh v2 macs {hmac-md5, hmac-md5-96, hmac-ripemd160, hmac-sha1-96}
    • set ssh {kerberos4, kerberos5, krb4, kerb5, k4, k5}
    • ssh key v1
    • ssh key display /format:ietf
    • ssh v2 rekey

Source Changes:

  • Fixed compatibility with the OpenWatcom 2.0 fork
  • Added support for building with Visual C++ 2.0
  • Added support for targeting Windows NT 3.50 with either OpenWatcom 1.9 or Visual C++ 2.0
  • Now builds on OS/2 with OpenWatcom 1.9. Only minimal testing has been done. Networking does not work and the builds are done without optimisations. Further work is required, likely by someone with OS/2 development knowledge, to get it back to the Kermit-95 level of functionality.
  • OpenSSL 0.9.8 - 3.0.5 (the latest version) now works
  • Added support for TLS 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 when built with sufficiently new versions of OpenSSL

Known Issues:

  • Window resizing in the GUI version of C-Kermit (k95g.exe) doesn't work well on Windows NT 3.x.
  • File transfers over SSH are slow. It should be fine over telnet (the secure TLS version of which is now supported - install the telnetd-ssl package on debian/ubuntu).
  • Canceling a file transfer (with Ctrl+C) can cause the application to crash
  • Fast screen update intervals can cause the cursor and other elements to not blink as they should. If this is a problem, try a slower update interval. You can use set terminal attribute blink off to disable blinking text entirely, and set terminal cursor {full,half,underline} noblink to turn off the blinking cursor.
  • A crash has been observed FTPing a large directory tree to a NetWare FTP server. This may affect FTP in general.