Whats New in C-Kermit for Windows 10b4 Beta 3 (2022-09-14 test build)
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:
- set ssh v2 ciphers
- set ssh v2 hostkey-algorithms. New options: ecdsa-sha2-nistp256,
ecdsa-sha2-nistp384, ecdsa-sha2-nistp521, rsa-sha2-256, rsa-sha2-512,
ssh-ed25519
- set ssh v2 macs. New options: hmac-sha1-etm@openssh.com, hmac-sha2-256,
hmac-sha2-256-etm@openssh.com, hmac-sha2-512,
hmac-sha2-512-etm@openssh.com, none
- set ssh heartbeat-interval
- ssh key create
- ssh key display
- ssh key change-passphrase
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
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.