Which telnet program?

Xombie · Post by **Xombie** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 10:19 pm

Does anyone have a telnet program recommendation? I'm looking for something lightweight and free.

I really, really liked Puttytel but I could never get the function keys to work properly. Our company currently uses SmarTerm with SCO emulation. The F4 key sends esc+"[P" and Shift+F10 sends esc+"[h". I think I got those right. However, when I tested Puttytel with SCO it didn't do the same functions. This wouldn't be a problem if I could remap Puttytel keys but it seems like it's not possible.

So... do y'all have recommendations or thoughts?

Rook Zimbabwe · Post by **Rook Zimbabwe** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 10:28 pm

Well we used Putty as well but we played with SyncTERM too

http://syncterm.bbsdev.net/

It is free and scriptable. I was learning how to implement it whenI got dumped by my company for a cheaper idiot!

naw · Post by **naw** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 6:01 pm

If you're having problems with F-Keys, its probably just a case of your Putty / SyncTerm config being different to the TERM setting of the Server you're Telnetting too.

Assuming you're telnetting to a Unix Host, you can check with this:

Code: Select all

echo $TERM

and set it like this:

Code: Select all

export TERM=vt100

or

Code: Select all

TERM=vt100; export TERM

Xombie · Post by **Xombie** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 8:24 pm

Well, the server is hosted at a different site and locked down by our parent company. I can't get to a shell at all. The telnet access a specialized program for our company rather than giving us access to the machine. And that program expects certain commands to do certain things which is why it's emulation is set to SCO.

So, I'm stuck with whatever they've got it set to.

I didn't set the option of changing the emulation of SyncTerm. Did I miss an option or something?

naw · Post by **naw** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 10:00 pm

Well - TBH - I dont know SyncTerm, but I have used lots of Telnet clients and they all support a few common Terminal types:

If you can alter the settings in SyncTerm, try vt100, vt220, ansi, wyse60,wyse120 etc...

They probably replaced the default Startup shell with either a script or an application, but still the application on the Host will be executing within an environment that has been set to some terminal type or other, so the problem remains the same as it would be if you had shell access.

The frustrating thing for you is that there is no way for you interrogate the host to determine what it expects.

Xombie · Post by **Xombie** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 8:20 pm

This is a little bit old but maybe this will help someone in the future. I needed to be able to do some telnet stuff (log in based on stored username and password and then some scripting) and so I wrote my own little thing to do it.

I read a little bit on how telnet worked and then found the netcat program. That gave me a boost since the source code was available (in C).

I figured out exactly how to negotiate a connection based on that code and the lovely Wireshark program. From there it was working out a simple way to script. The part that bothered me the most was figuring out exactly what the server expected when the user pressed any of the function keys. The program we use at work does special things when you press any of them and I needed to duplicate that, especially F4 which will back out to the previous menu. Finally I had a DUH! moment and loaded Wireshark again. I turned it on very briefly for the telnet protocol, hit F4 in the normal program and then turned it off. Worked like magic and gave me the keys I needed.

I'll post something in Tips and Tricks in case it's useful for someone.