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Fun with Kermit and ZMODEM over SSH

cambus.net

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Re: Fun with Kermit and ZMODEM over SSH

#61

Post by blueflow »

myself248 wrote: post #27
themodelplumber wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jumping from Kermit to ZModem was quite a revelation for this Muppets fan. I was so sad to find I'd been needlessly reducing my download speed just by going with the fuzzy green frog, when presented with all of the different download options.

What gets me is that ZModem-Resume had effective continuation of failed transfers _decades_ before HTTP got it right. The early days of the web drove me bonkers, having to start over with a long file that failed in the middle.

> before HTTP got it right

In the spec, yes. But since servers use Content-Encoding instead of Transfer-Encoding for on-the-fly compression, its unspecified now whether the byte offsets in the resumption refer to the compressed or uncompressed file. Result: Download resumption did not work reliably and got removed from browsers.

Re: Fun with Kermit and ZMODEM over SSH

#63

Post by devilbunny »

themodelplumber wrote: post #47
devilbunny wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably didn't have Kermit configured correctly; most of us didn't. When someone finally showed me how to set the options (which default to reliable-but-godawfully-slow) for much higher speed transmission (bigger segments, sliding windows for ACK, maybe a few other things?), it was entirely comparable to Zmodem.

That's pretty funny. I don't remember ever coming across configs for Kermit or other protocols, just the [K]ermit | [Z]modem -type options on the front end of whatever clients I was trying out. I wonder why more than one client would default to such comparatively-lame settings for Kermit though.

The whole protocol does.

IIRC you basically have to get a Kermit prompt and issue your commands to the server. Which is easy if you use an actual Kermit client, like Columbia put out (though apparently for the last 12 years it's been an independent project no longer affiliated with the university), but most people just used the internal version that came with their terminal program - with the primary effect being that most people had no idea it was actually a fast, flexible protocol (see the long explanation at http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/misconceptions.html).

The stated reason for this is that it should always default to working, and it's up to you to configure it to work well if your connection is better than rusty barbed wire.

Re: Fun with Kermit and ZMODEM over SSH

#64

Post by mmaunder »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #15
jerf wrote: post #4

Hello! Thank you for starting me up! I'm the Kermit protocol and I'm happy to hel... wait, you want to transfer what file? What the hell is a giga byte? Well, man, OK, you're the user so you know best, but man, this is going to take like, days man, settle in, here we gooo ooooooo whooooooo OOOOOOOOO AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA !!!!!!!!!!1!! qcjqrjrcorRC!!! WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT? Did I just do megabytes per second ? Holy shit. A…

Thanks for the laugh (but also kind of serious) - reminds me of https://xkcd.com/2221/ (what a fast floppy drive you have!)

A few decades from now we’ll start seeing interactive AIs on emulated platforms asking about president Jon Stewart and other 2030s trivia.

Re: Fun with Kermit and ZMODEM over SSH

#65

Post by icedchai »

mikecoles wrote: post #7
mikecoles wrote: post #3

The article mentions 'Terminate'. That software was a joy to use. https://web.archive.org/web/19980627010642/http://www.termin...

Checking up on other old favorites such as BitchX/irssi and slrn, I found they're still being developed: slrn --- NNTP/spool-based Usenet newsreader last updated: 2023-03-18T04:31:51 [UTC] repository: git://git.jedsoft.org/git/slrn.git tarfile: slrn-pre1.0.4-9.tar.gz ( size: 1563860 bytes; md5: f193d983e104a82ef4fd70b1037f8b60 ) github: https://github.com/jedsoft/slrn https://github.com/BitchX/BitchX1.3 https://irssi…

I still use slrn. In the old days, I used tin! Also, I use mutt for one of my old email accounts (used to use elm...)

Re: Fun with Kermit and ZMODEM over SSH

#66

Post by ractive »

I never thought, I'd read again about ZMODEM and Kermit. To learn programming and dive more into C/C++, I implemented both protocols while writing a Windows application to transfer files from the PC to a HP48 graphics calculator over the serial port in ca. 1999. This app then became the "official" PC link program "HPComm", released under the GPL. Almost 25 years go... :-o

https://hpcomm.sourceforge.net/index-old.html

Re: Fun with Kermit and ZMODEM over SSH

#68

Post by nvahalik »

knorker wrote: post #67

I tried to sell the OpenSSH team on implementing inline file transfer with zmodem once, but they were not interested.

If there is one thing I've hankered for more often than not... it's been the ability to send a file over my existing SSH connection.

Why this isn't something that isn't supported out of the box is beyond me. Doesn't SSH have a control channel? Couldn't it support this without text mode hacks?

Re: Fun with Kermit and ZMODEM over SSH

#70

Post by knorker »

blueflow wrote: post #60
mikecoles wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checking up on other old favorites such as BitchX/irssi and slrn, I found they're still being developed: slrn --- NNTP/spool-based Usenet newsreader last updated: 2023-03-18T04:31:51 [UTC] repository: git://git.jedsoft.org/git/slrn.git tarfile: slrn-pre1.0.4-9.tar.gz ( size: 1563860 bytes; md5: f193d983e104a82ef4fd70b1037f8b60 ) github: https://github.com/jedsoft/slrn https://github.com/BitchX/BitchX1.3 https://irssi…

I'm using irssi right now! There are still active irc communities.

IRC is still alive. I have irssi on a monitor on the side all the time, both for friends and work.

IRC is not as big as it used to be, but at its highest it was mainstream even for computer illiterates.

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