Re: Where to find SCO Termlite?

Brian K. White wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Logos" <tyler.style@xxxxxxxxx>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sco.misc
To: <distro@xxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2006 7:28 PM
Subject: Re: Where to find SCO Termlite?


moncho wrote:
"Logos" <tyler.style@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1150244804.444207.256020@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
We're running openserver 5, and I would like to plunk down an emu on a
few windows XP desktops. A contractor set up our systems, and he's not
available for a few weeks at least. Can anyone tell me where I can
find a copy of Termlite to download? Pretty please?

Thanks bajillions!
Tyler
tyler (at) healthy habits web [d o t] c o m
Just go get AlphaCom for $25 per seat and/or a free 30 license.

www.omnicomtech.com

moncho

How totally unhelpful and off topic. Why would I want to pay for
something I know is available for free with my SCO installation? And I
have enough licensing headaches as it is without having to keep track
of any more.

Also, don't you think it's a teensie bit unethical not to state that
you're part of the company that sells that AlphaCom? Poor marketing
technique, that - I wouldn't buy from anyone that shady.

Tyler


Actually, Termlite sucks and his recommendation was the epitomy of helpful and on-topic, along with about 200 other possible good ones.

Myself, it depends how much effort you want to exert and/or how much clue you have or want to be responsible for having.

PuTTY is completely free and can be made to work perfectly.
It just takes setting several options in it's config, and then those options are stored in the windows registry so it's a little inconvenient copying the working setup from one pc to another.
You can do it though, you can export a registry branch from regedit and then import it on a new machine.

I use putty myself as a developer and admin and only when I don't need certain features that my application relies on that various commercial emulators have.

The users all need those certain features all the time. (run-program escape code, good passthrough printing, 100% automatic/preloaded configuration launchable right from a web page)

So for them we mostly use FacetWin, which is way more than $25/seat and _worth it_, _in that context_. It is really not to handy for an admin or developer who needs to log in to lots of random boxes, but it is by far the easiest and slickest experience for the end user. Because the seats are licenced on the server instead of in the client, the client is free and freely downloadable redistributable, You can put a link to the installer right on a web page next to a "login" button, and the user never sees anything like a license number or serial number or registration. See http://www.aljex.com for an example. Log in to the demo. All our customers who have their own boxes have login pages of their own that look just like that. Try doing that with any other emulator!
There are a few Java emulators out that that make it possible to be as easy as that, but they all suck to some degree just because they are java. There are inherent limitations like cut & past usually doesn't work, and of course they kill your pc with cpu load which is silly since a terminal emulator does very little actual work.

But FacetWin has things that make it a pain sometimes too. The server licenses cramp your style when it comes to changing/moving servers around or moving users to different servers etc..
The proprietary server daemon doesn't allow you to specify a login program, which means you can't use ttysnoop for training & support. We absolutely need that, and on SCO it wasn't a problem because we have Double-Vision, which operates at the kernel level rather than by replacing /bin/login. Double-Vision exists for Linux, but it's unuseable because it only works on certain specific precompiled kernels from certain specific vendors. In our case, we use Suse linux and it doesn't work on any of our boxes. I have not yet evaluated "Peek" but it's on my to-do list.
FacetWin's server daemon also doesn't heartbeat the client. So when the clients connection breaks, the server often never knows it which causes all kinds of problems from locked database records to processes that race consuming all cpu when they go headless like that. (trying to read for input I guess, it is usually the filepro "runmenu" command that races like that)
Then there are other things that only appeared with linux, like, our xinetd crashes several times a day. The only funny thing about our xinetd is that facetwin was added to it.
I don't know that facetwin is crashing xinetd, but I can't imagine it crashes this often for everyone else and the overall install is a plain suse 10.0 boxed dvd.

So we also use AnzioLite or AnzioWin a lot, especially on Linux boxes. Which sports all the goodness of FacetWin as far as solid scoansi emulation and features like run-program and it's passthrough printing is like no other thanks to printwizard.

In the long run, given how much FacetWin seats cost and how many seats we currently use, and the rate at which we are growing, and how we dont want the user to have to deal with terminal emulator license codes or serial numbers, we have decided to simply pay someone to hack 3 smallish changes into PuTTY. For roughly the cost of our current existing FacetWin licences, we'll have our own emulator that's free and unlimited forever after that.

Other terminal emulators we have used in the past for various reasons are DejaWin ICE-TCP(telnet) and ICE-TEN(serial), I've used MS-DOS Kermit in a prior life with great success, K95 (windows kermit), Ericomm, Anita, and the new java version of Anita, One of our developers swears by TinyTerm, I used SecureCRT all the time for a while,...

These are all ones that have proven good scoansi emulation, which is maybe not necessary but certainly the most convenient when dealing with SCO boxes and apps written on or for SCO boxes.

Any of these and probably 50 others are etter choices than Termlite.
The ones that cost almost $200/seat are worth it if you take advantage of the features. The ones that cost $25/seat are worth it even though they have fewer features. AnzioLite in particular would have been my recommendation as it's both cheap and feature rich and very solid. They are really good to deal with too for support and requesting features or changes. Changes I've expressed a wish for have been implimented not only the way I asked, but a few other ways besides that meets the same overall need but by other means.

Termlite is part of VisionFS (windows file&print sharing server daemon like Samba or FacetWin), and neither of those (termlite, visionfs) has been maintained in years and neither was the product of choice even when they were still alive.

The installer for Termlite is right on your own sco box in a public share provided by (built into) visionfs, and termlite only works when that share is up & working, or possibly it's just the installer that needs it, it needs to see a licence file on the server and it has to match up with something in the client. There are probably 50 ways for file & print sharing to be screwed up on a pc even when the server and the network in general are fine. Add to that, visionfs being the suckiest of the 3 main choices (visionfs, facetwin, samba) is more likely than most to be down for various reasons.

I don't think I've ever used Alphacom, but given all of the above, I would take his recommendation without any hesitation and that's also why I didn't feel a need originally to chime in with my own personal recommendation which would have been AnzioLite.
Any recommendation from someone who can say (we use it on sco boxes) is a good one and better than futzing with termlite.

So now you know more than you ever wanted to know about terminal emulators and the 101 unsuspected ancillary issues that (should) go into choosing one, especially in concert with SCO boxes.
You did not really need to know all that and I'm sure you don't care, and that is fine, you do not need to and not knowing all that doesn't make you ignorant, but, since you didn't know all that stuff, that is why you asked for help. You got it. What I generally say in that situation is "thank you".

Try it, then when it doesn't work, _then_ you get to complain it was bad advice, and maybe not then depending on the details.


Hi, Brian.

FYI peek is a good alternative to DV on the, now, many systems DV no longer works on. :(

I have it running on several Unixware and SuSE Linux sites.

It lacks the menu interface that DV has and can't be used to, for example, remotely login on a console session (it is not kernel resident like DV, but runs a special shell after you login).

But it's pretty trivial to script a simple menu front end and it works well as a support tool. Licensing is per user.

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