Change Log

This document covers what has changed in each release of C-Kermit for Windows (formerly known as Kermit 95). For a more in-depth look at what has changed, check the git commit log.

C-Kermit for Windows 10.0b11 beta 6 - 11 August 2024

This is a minor release focused on upgrading from OpenSSL 1.1.1 (which is now out of support) to OpenSSL 3.0.x, and libssh 0.10.5 to 0.10.6. Also included are a selection of bug fixes and other minor enhancements.

Also in this release: official support for Windows NT on Alpha and PowerPC has returned after being discontinued in March 2000 and April 1998 respectively. And for the first time ever, C-Kermit is now supported on Windows NT for MIPS computers, though without TAPI support.

Things to be aware of when upgrading

Windows XP users: current versions of libssh are no longer compatible with Windows XP. See the included SSH Readme for a workaround if SSH support on Windows XP.

Fixed Bugs

• Fixed directory listings not reporting a size or modified time for files requiring more than 32 bits to store the file size on Windows NT 3.51 and newer. This issue will remain on NT 3.1/3.50.
• C-Kermit will now find the dialer correctly if C-kermit isn't started from the dialer. This behaviour was broken by rebranding the Kermit 95 dialer - C-Kermit looks for it by its window title.
• The default k95custom.ini no longer produces an error when it's run in the console version of C-Kermit or in a build of C-Kermit that lacks SSH support.
• Fixed the SSH, SSL and Kerberos options in the dialer not being available or not working correctly when they should be. These options are now permanently enabled whether the bundled version of C-Kermit supports these features. Previously the dialer tried to load the Kerberos, OpenSSL and SSH DLLs to see if they were there. This no longer works due to changing DLL names (due in part to changing library versions) and the fact these DLLs are now often built for 64bit while the dialer remains 32bit.
• The SSH client will now check which authentication methods are allowed by the server after each authentication method is attempted. This allows the client to handle servers which change their list of allowed authentication methods during login.
• Fixed show network command showing "SSH V1 and V2 protocols - not available" in builds that do have SSH support
• Fixed show network command showing "SSH V1 and V2 protocols" when SSH V1 is no longer supported in C-Kermit for Windows.
• Fixed not being able to resize the terminal area to greater than the primary display in K95G. For example, if the window was moved on to a display that was taller than the primary display and maximised the bottom of the terminal screen would not be correctly rendered. This fix only applies to modern versions of Windows.
• Fixed included openssl.exe not working on Windows XP
• Fixed paging for the "help options all" command where argument help contains line breaks

Minor Enhancements and other changes

• Upgraded to OpenSSL 3.0.14, the current long term support release (supported until 7 September 2026)
• Updated to libssh 0.10.6
• Updated to zlib 1.3.1
• Help text for "set gui window position" updated: this command is supported and it does work.
• The default k95custom.ini now displays a message the console-mode version (k95.exe) is run pointing new users to the GUI version (k95g.exe)
• The SSH client will now attempt authentication methods in the order specified by set ssh v2 authentication (the list is now ordered rather than being simply a list of what is allowed). The default order is: none, gssapi, public key, keyboard-interactive, password.
• Binaries are now provided for Windows NT running on Alpha, MIPS and PowerPC systems.
• Upgraded to C-Kermit 10.0 Beta.11
• About window (Help -> About) now includes the beta number
• Added help text for set terminal autopage and set terminal autoscroll
• Increased the maximum number of terminal columns from 256 to 512 in K95G. This should be enough to fill a 4K display at with a 10pt font or larger. As this change increases memory requirements by around 1MB whether the extra columns are used or not, it has only been increased in builds targeting modern PCs. Vintage PCs will still be limited to 256 columns.
• CKW no longer rejects updated OpenSSL DLLs provided the major and minor versions match.

New features

• Implemented the DECRQCRA VT420 escape sequence which is required by esctest2. This is disabled by default due to its security risks, but can be enabled with set terminal send-data on. As C-Kermit doesn't currently have a VT420 terminal option yet, select VT320 to make use of VT420 features.

Source Changes

• Some minor changes to support a future replacement for the dialer.
• Fixed over 1,000 build warnings. Some of the things warned about could lead to application crashes on 64bit windows.

C-Kermit for Windows 10.0b10 beta 5 - 3 July 2023

This release mostly focused on porting the codebase to 64bit Windows - x86-64, ARM64, Itanium and even the never publicly released 64bit Windows 2000 for Alpha. Also included are a selection of minor enhancements, features and bugfixes.

Things to be aware of when upgrading

This release corrects some issues with the DEFAULT template which the Dialer creates automatically on first run. The auto-created template has bad colour values for colours 1 through 9 resulting in blue appearing green, etc (terminal sessions that should have a blue background will have a green one). The correct values are in the table below - these should be applied to the DEFAULT template as well as any other connections or templates you've created via the GUI Settings page:

The default logfile names in the Log File Settings page should also start with the \ character - by default in prior versions they started with an invalid non-printable character. In Kermit 95 the defaults did not start with \v(appdata) so you may wish to just remove this prefix entirely instead of correcting the first character.

If you have Kermit 95 installed these bugs likely doesn't affect you - while the Kermit 95 dialer has them too, Kermit 95 shipped with C:\ProgramData\Kermit 95\dialinf.dat which contains a DEFAULT template containing the correct values.

New Features

• Builds for 64bit Windows
  • x86-64
  • ARM64
  • Itanium
• Build for ARM32
• Added TLS SNI support for the http and telnet clients
• The old hostmode and other scripts are now included in the distribution with no substantial changes since Kermit 95.
• Kerberos V support has returned (Kerberos IV support can be built from source)
• GSSAPI authentication in the SSH client (requires MIT Kerberos for Windows, see ssh-readme for more information)
• Updated to C-Kermit 10 Beta.10
• Updated to libssh 0.10.5
• Updated to OpenSSL 1.1.1u

Fixed Bugs

• Fixed crash on startup under Crossover on MacOS and Wine on Linux
• Fixed show terminal command showing autodownload as being "on" when it was actually set to "ask"
• Fixed receiving files with an as-name that includes a path using UNIX separators failing when autodownload is set to "ask" in the GUI version of CKW (receiving a file sent as send foo.txt C:/temp/foo.txt now works)
• Fixed CKW for modern Windows (XP SP3+) not setting modified time on received files
• Fixed entering plane-1 unicode values via Alt+n crashing the application (this bug was inherited from Kermit 95)
• Fixed SSH bugs:
  • anonymous SSH (userauth none) doesn't work
  • buffer not flushed on logout
  • fixed some (but not all) occurrences of a server disconnect not being detected
• set syslog works again - this was accidentally removed in beta 4.
• The colours in the dialer GUI Settings for the DEFAULT template automatically created when first run were completely wrong. This bug affected Kermit 95 as well but most users wouldn't have seen it as the shipped dialinf.dat included a DEFAULT with the correct settings (along with a selection of other templates).
• The default log file names in the Log File Settings page for the DEFAULT template automatically created when first run begin with an invalid non-printable chracter instad of '\'. This bug affected Kermit 95 as well.

Minor Enhancements and other changes

• The sample k95custom.ini file now sets:
  • autodownload to "on" rather than "ask"
  • resize mode to change terminal dimensions
  • SSH heartbeat on
• New escape sequences in the terminal emulator
  • CSI 1 8 ; Ps ; Ps t - get text area size in characters (xterm)
  • CSI > Pm t - this is now parsed and ignored, previously this xterm-specific escape sequence would incorrectly minimise the window
• A sample IKSD initialisation script is now included in the distribution Setup instructions are here: https://kermitproject.org/k95manual/wiksdadm.html
• The "show features" command now includes the availability (or lack of) DECnet, SuperLAT and PTY support. Some of these are optional features for custom builds only and others may or may not be present depending on the compiler used.
• "show versions" now shows OS version more correctly
• Updated the dates and version numbers for windows-specific entries in the "show versions" command
• k95custom.ini is now distributed as k95custom.sample to prevent customised user files from being accidentally overwritten when upgrading. The default k95.ini will now rename k95custom.sample to k95custom.ini if it can't find an existing k95custom.ini in any of the usual locations.
• Updated the About dialog: xyzmodem and pathworks support are no longer guaranteed to be missing.
• Improvements to the terminal status line:
  • Increasing the window width now gives more space to the hostname and protocol fields
  • If the hostname and protocol text are too long to fit, the exit text ("Command: Alt-X" by default) is hidden to make room
  • Maximum length for exit text increased from 20 to 30 characters (where there is room to display it)
  • When there is sufficient room available an extra two columns of padding is inserted between the exit text and the hostname to match the other fields

Source Changes

• Fixed build failure with Visual C++ 2017
• Fixed build failure with Visual C++ 4.1 and 4.2
• Fixed some reported build errors with Visual C++ 4.0 RISC Edition. MIPS should now build fine with TAPI disabled, PowerPC may also need debug logging turned off (set CKF_DEBUG=no). No one has tried building the dialer yet.
• Fixed build issues with the DEC Alpha compiler in the NT 3.50 SDK. The linker supplied in the SDK is not compatible, however.
• Ported to 64bit Windows
• Added support for building for 64bit Windows on the DEC Alpha (AXP64 target)
• Ported the core of the application to MinGW (GCC)
• Added support for Visual C++ 1.0/1.1 32-bit edition
• Ported to Windows NT 3.10 but there are currently unresolved bugs (networking is broken for one)
• SRP support is now available as a custom build option. You'll need quite an old and insecure version of OpenSSL (1.0.1u works) and an old compiler too (Visual C++ 2003 works)
• DES/CAST crypto can now be statically linked into k95.exe/k95g.exe/iksdnt.exe instead of being delivered as a shared dll (k95crypto.dll)
• Building with jom (or any other sufficiently compatible nmake clone) instead of nmake is now supported for Visual C++ builds. Just set make=jom.exe to make better use of multicore systems.

C-Kermit for Windows 10.0b8 beta 4 - 15 December 2022

This release is mostly a collection of minor improvements and bug fixes as I have been unexpectedly busy since the prior release resulting in the schedule slipping somewhat.

Things to be aware of when upgrading

• The third mouse button is now supported in k95g which may affect any scripts you have that map mouse buttons. On a three button mouse:
  • Previously: Left was button 1, Middle was unsupported, Right was button 2
  • Now: Left is button 1, Middle is button 2, Right is button 3
• Updates to the Dialer to support new SSH settings have resulted in the version number for the dialer data file being bumped. It is advised you take a backup of your existing data file before running the new version of the dialer for the first time.
  • On first start, your data file(s) will be upgraded to the new format
  • SSH connection scripts generated by the new dialer will not be compatible with Kermit 95 due to a difference in supported SSH options.

New Features:

• Upgraded from C-Kermit 10.0 beta.04 to beta.07, plus beta.08 changes from the 11th and 12th of December 2022.
  • New in C-Kermit 10.0 Beta.05
  • New in C-Kermit 10.0 Beta.06
  • New in C-Kermit 10.0 Beta.07
  • New in C-Kermit 10.0 Beta.08 (Only up to and including 12 December 2022)
• The default k95custom.ini now outputs a message on startup directing new users to have a look at and optionally customise the file
• X/Y/Z MODEM support is back thanks to Jyrki Salmi of Online Solutions Oy (www.online.fi) providing his "P" X/Y/Z MODEM library under the same license as C-Kermit for Windows
• Terminal mouse reporting
  • X10 protocol (send button + coordinates on mouse down) supported for Linux and ANSI terminal types
  • X11/Normal, URXVT and SGR protocols (send button + modifiers + coordinates on mouse down and mouse up) supported for all terminal types
  • Mouse wheel supported for all but the X10 protocol: You can scroll the panels in midnight commander with the mouse wheel!
  • New command: set mouse reporting x where x is one of:
    • disabled - mouse events will not be reported
    • enabled - Applications can turn mouse reporting on. Mouse reports will be sent only if a mouse event is mapped to \Kignore (eg, if you map right-click to \Kpaste then right-click will never be sent)
    • override - Applications can turn mouse reporting on. All mouse
      events will be sent to the remote host and any configured action in CKW will be ignored when mouse reporting is on. For example, if you map right-click to \Kpaste this will only have an effect outside of applications that turn mouse reporting on.
  • The show mouse command shows the mouse reporting setting plus current state (if it's active or not, and the protocol in use)
• The old registry tool (k95regtl.exe) is back and fixed up for C-Kermit as an interim solution until a proper installer is created. This tool lets you create desktop & start menu shortcuts and the .ksc file association.
• The dialer is now included by default with C-Kermit for Windows as changes to the SSH options render it incompatible with Kermit 95 (and the Kermit 95 version incompatible with CKW)
• DECnet support has been re-enabled. You must install a licensed copy of Pathworks32 in order to make LAT or CTERM connections.
• SuperLAT support is now available as a custom build option - it is not enabled by default due to the unclear license on the publicly available Meridian SuperLAT SDK.
• The Telnet Encryption Option (DES/CAST) is supported again, not that you should use it if you care about security.

Fixed Bugs

• Fixed a bug introduced in beta 3 that can prevent the cursor and other elements on the screen with the blink attribute set from blinking reliably
• File transfers over SSH are now much faster
• Fixed the set mouse activate command (aka set terminal mouse) in K95G - previously this command only worked in the old console version.
• Fixed support for the third mouse button in K95G - previously this only worked in the old console version. This change may affect your mouse button mapping!
• Fixed a mark being set (and not cleared on mouse button release) on drag when the drag event is mapped to \Kignore
• Fixed decoding of mouse scroll wheel event coordinates
• The context (right-click) menu in the dialer now works again
• The manual command now works
• The show mouse command no longer tries to output non-printable characters bound to mouse events
• SSH will now prompt for a username if the default login userid has been cleared (this is how Kermit 95 behaved)
• Fixed SSH help error: hmac-md5 is not supported, but hmac-sha1 is
• The GUI window now resizes correctly on Windows NT 3.5x

Minor Enhancements and other changes:

• Upgraded to zlib 1.2.13 fixing CVE-2022-37434
• Upgraded to openssl 1.1.1u
• The libssh version number is now included in the output of the show ssh command
• The default k95custom.ini now sets the default browser to nothing which should result in Edge being used instead of Internet Explorer. This is just a temporary workaround for the default browser not being correctly picked up.
• Dialer: removed SSH v1 options as CKW now supports SSH 2.0 exclusively
• Dialer: Updated the lists of available ciphers, macs and host key algorithms to match what CKW actually supports

Source Changes:

• The Dialer now builds with OpenWatcom 1.9 and Visual C++ 2.0
• dropped the /ALIGN linker flag which has produced a linker warning since Visual C++ 5.0 SP3 (November 1997)

C-Kermit for Windows 10.0b4 beta 3 - 14 September 2022

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

C-Kermit for Windows 10.0b4 beta 2 - 17 August 2022

This release focused on returning some level of SSH support. Initial efforts were based on using an external SSH implementation which resulted in fixes to the DLL, PTY and COMMAND network types. External SSH didn't work well enough in the end so focus shifted to built-in SSH using libssh.

Support for some older Visual C++ releases (4.0 and 5.0) was added to enable RISC NT builds in the future (Visual C++ 4.0 was the last release to support MIPS and PowerPC), and OpenWatcom 1.9 support was added to enable future OS/2 work.

• Fixed builds with Visual C++ 14.x (2015-2022)
• Fixed file transfer crash on builds done with Visual C++ 2008 and newer
• Fixed builds with free versions of Visual C++ that don't include MFC
• PTY support on Windows 10 v1809 and newer
• Added OpenWatcom 1.9 support (win32 target only)
• Fixed building with Visual C++ 97 (5.0)
• Fixed building with Visual C++ 4.0
• Fixed building with the free Visual C++ 2003 toolkit & Platform SDK
• Fixed 64bit file seeking
• Fixed detection of current windows releases
• Fixed network DLL support (set network type dll)
• Fixed file transfers when built with Visual C++ 5.0 and older
• Removed ctl3dins.exe from the distribution (Windows defender thinks its malware)
• Now uses modern windows UI widgets on XP and newer
• Built-in SSH
• Added support for resizing DLL and PTY terminals when the CKW terminal is resized

C-Kermit for Windows 10.0b4 beta 1 - 17 July 2022

This release focused on tidying up the open-source Kermit 95 release of July 2011, getting it into a buildable state, and rebranding it as C-Kermit for Windows. No effort was made to replace features missing from the original open source release except for the GUI code (which was recovered and open-sourced in late 2013).

It was based on C-Kermit 10.0 beta.04 and is best built with Visual C++ 6 though 7.0-8.0 (2002, 2003, 2005) do work too.

• Upgraded from C-Kermit 8.0.207 to C-Kermit 10.0 beta.04. See the C-Kermit 8.0.208 to 10.0b4 Change Log for more information on all that's changed there.
• SRP support disabled
• DECnet support disabled
• LAT support disabled
• Kerberos support disabled
• SSH support removed
• SSL support disabled
• Other encryption features disabled
• X/Y/Z modem support removed
• OS/2 support disabled
• Dialer removed
• zlib support disabled
• Fixed builds with Visual C++ 6
• Fixed builds with Visual C++ 7
• Removed 64bit file seeking - code was broken.
• Removed licensing, registration and demo mode functionality
• Reworked the About dialog
• Fixed builds with Visual C++ 8 (2005)
• Fixed builds with Visual C++ 7.1 (2003)
• Fixed builds with Visual C++ 2010 and 2012
• Updated version number, copyright dates, icons
• Changed application name from Kermit 95 to C-Kermit for Windows
• Disabled DNS SRV support
• Removed border from GUI dialog buttons
• Unused KUI code deleted
• Fixed the pipe command
• Fixed URLs in the help menu
• Dropped separate version number for C-Kermit on Windows
• Updated Windows version check
• Replaced "K95" with "CKW" in the status line and prompt

Kermit 95 v2.2 - never publicly released

Kermit 95 v2.2 was never publicly released, but this file documents what's new since Kermit 95 v2.1.3.

Not every change for K95 v2.2 has made it in to C-Kermit for Windows due to the removal of some components that could not be open-sourced. In particular, changes for the Dialer in K95 v2.2 do not apply as the CKW dialer is based on K95 v2.1.3, and changes for the SSH subsystem don't apply to CKW as CKW uses an entirely new SSH implementation.

Previous Kermit 95 releases

• 1.1.21 to 2.1.3 Change Log
• 1.1.17 to 1.1.20 Change Log
• 1.1.16 Changes
• 1.1.15 Changes
• 1.1.14 Changes
• 1.1.2 to 1.1.13 Change Log
• 1.1.1 Changes - ?