What's New in C-Kermit for Windows Beta 5

This release is mostly a collection of minor improvements and bug fixes plus ports to new CPU Architectures.

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, AXP64)
  • x86-64
  • ARM64
  • Itanium (IA64)
  • AXP64
• 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.

Known Issues

• 32bit x86 CKW may crash on 64bit systems that have the 64bit version of MIT Kerberos for Windows installed. Use the 64bit version of CKW instead if you experience this problem (or install the 32bit version of KFW)
• When launching the dialer you may get an error about ctl3d32.dll - if you do, run ctl3dins.exe to install it
• The dialer may fail to start on some systems
• On the original retail release of Windows 95 (possibly all versions of Windows 95), the GUI version of C-Kermit constantly steals focus and performs poorly. The solution at this time is to run the console version, k95.exe
• The dialer is not currently available on Windows NT 3.50 - this may be corrected in a future release
• Networking is broken on Windows NT 3.10 - this may be corrected in a future release.

Other known bugs can be found in the CKW issue tracker on GitHub.

Reporting Bugs

If you think you've found a bug in CKW you can either send an email to ckw@kermitproject.org or you can log it directly in the CKW Issue Tracker on GitHub