Author Topic: SSH - take the long way home  (Read 5914 times)

SoundChaser

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SSH - take the long way home
« on: December 26, 2022, 03:11:38 am »
When you can't really SSH to the main server
'coz the OS2 term type isn't recognized
You take the long way home -
  you take the long way home

When you've tried and tried with the qputty
And seems like it won't be working eventually
You take the long way home
  you take the long way home

----

(I could have went on but I realize my Supertramp "filk" isn't really good and I really appreciate that song so, in respect to the authors, I'll stop there.)

When I reinstalled ArcaOS, I thought about using it as a decent terminal. I would ssh to my linux box and do what I mostly do during the day - use vim. My cheap 10 years old T420 would be recycled as decent terminal with WP51 to type prose, mutt for IMAP-based emails (yeah, old fashioned)... and X-Windows through SSH when I need to run some app from my Linux box.

Well. Turns out SSH-as-a-Linux-terminal is mostly broken. VIM is soo outdated isn't not even funny. Can't get any X-Server thing to work (so far). SSH works from a non-resizeable window (...) and the list of annoyance goes on and on and on. Mutt probably doesn't work, I just haven't tried - I'm at the point of almost giving up.

(Maybe I should use Windows. Yes, I know, I know - I really shouldn't say that.)
But let's try anyway. From within OS/2!

In my PC virtualization shoutout, VirtualBox releases on netlabs are mostly not working for me. While I appreciate the phenomenal work from BWW, Valery and friends... It's a good beta. Many test cases are not working (they know and documented it) and it's instabilities might be related - who knows.

Surpringly enough, the last Virtual PC from Connectix was remarkably stable to run Windows XP i386. Should you wish to ever take this route, make sure you clone the repo "https://github.com/faultlinehc/tlsonxp" and use the shared folders functionality to bring the files into the virtual machine and install modern TLS support otherwise you'll find Internet Explorer pretty useless on the modern web. With good reasons. Yes, it was always useless. Until you need to download "just one file" and you can't.

But, with functional TLS support, you can download Putty for i386.
And it works.
It just _fuckin_ works.
So I can ssh to my Linux box, from VirtualPC running under ArcaOS. But I can't do it natively (or barely, the terminal is all screwed up) nor through winos2 (needs win32s 1.30) nor DOS (needs watttcp to be ported to TCP/IP for DOS so that vtcpdos.sys kicks in)

But i _FINALLY_ have a working SSH... but I can't use it for X11.

There must be more. Folks, what do _you_ use?



Dave Yeo

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Re: SSH - take the long way home
« Reply #1 on: December 26, 2022, 04:47:30 am »
Perhaps VNC or RDP? RDP is likely the better solution once you install a server on your Linux box.
http://os2.snc.ru/product-freerdp.html

SoundChaser

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Re: SSH - take the long way home
« Reply #2 on: December 26, 2022, 06:21:05 am »
Hmmm correct. with Xrdp it could perhaps work for graphical ! Great idea!

The SSH issue remains complete though. If anyone knows a simpler way for a great SSH experience with OS/2, I'm open to about any suggestion

Dave Yeo

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Re: SSH - take the long way home
« Reply #3 on: December 26, 2022, 08:19:29 am »
Qputty? https://ecsoft2.org/qputty
Might be able to build the Qt5 one from here, https://github.com/seppd/qputty-qt5

TeLLie

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Re: SSH - take the long way home
« Reply #4 on: December 26, 2022, 10:55:14 am »

Heikki Kekki

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Re: SSH - take the long way home
« Reply #5 on: December 26, 2022, 11:08:01 am »
Qputty? https://ecsoft2.org/qputty
Might be able to build the Qt5 one from here, https://github.com/seppd/qputty-qt5
I've been using Qputty for at least 6 years. Works well but after the QT5 installation it has randomly died immediately after starting. But not often.

SoundChaser

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Re: SSH - take the long way home
« Reply #6 on: January 16, 2023, 04:54:34 am »
I gave another shot at komh' s QPutty, and found the culprit from previous failures (on which I gave up really quickly, I must admit) - only an old subset of now-considered-insecure ciphers are available.

Back to square 1.

You know what? There's nothing like the original. Downloaded the win32 putty, 32-bit edition. After a bit of tinkering with puttygen to import my private key to putty's proprietary format (wtf, really) IT ACTUALLY WORKS.

Procedure:
- Download putty.exe
- Open an OS/2 Command Prompt
- Open putty through Odin with "pe putty.exe"

Confirmed to work:
- Window is resizeable \o/
- There are some quirks with the cursor (annoying, but I can live with them until qputty is refreshed)
- TUI apps such as Midnight Commander render just fine
- Fonts report negative font sizes for about every font except Courier New (perhaps for every bitmap except TrueType)

So here's my current compilation of the current state of things with SSH client for OS/2, existing and potential:

- Win32 Putty through ODIN - only known to work stable solution (well, it crashes on exit but I can live with that)
- Command line SSH from ANPM - give it a shot, it connects but it's not really usable.
- ZOC. doesn't work. It needs a refreshed SSL stack. Seriously, it's only useful for unencrypted
- QPutty - doesn't work with secure ciphers.
- PUTTY for Win32s - doesn't work, relies on Win32s 1.30 but open source... based on OpenWatcom infamous V2 branch - SSH for DOS - doesn't work, needs wattcp to be ported over to IBM TCP/IP for DOS
(probably easy to port to OW 1.9 and build to win32s 1.25)
- Kermit 95. Doesn't work, but it's now open source and modular. It could actually be interesting to (re-)port as it once supported OS/2.



« Last Edit: January 16, 2023, 04:56:40 am by SoundChaser »

Dave Yeo

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Re: SSH - take the long way home
« Reply #7 on: January 16, 2023, 05:22:36 am »
Kind of surprised that the Win32 version of Putty still works with Odin, I was going to suggest it but figured it would have used newer API.
Hopefully QPutty is easy to rebuild, and Kermit would be worth revisiting to see if it still builds.

SoundChaser

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Re: SSH - take the long way home
« Reply #8 on: January 16, 2023, 05:58:12 am »
Yeah I remembered one of my friend using putty with odin around 2001 or so... and decided to give it a shot :-)

I managed to have X11 forwarding to work. Due to the richness of today's GNOME, the experience is unbearable. Even adding compression doesn't help. Perhaps an X2Go client would do better.... seems that previously suggested xrdp a better route for remote desktop of that Unix box...

But disregarding the performance, the combo putty-on-Odin-with-X11 + Hoblink works.