dterm: Documentation

dterm: A simple terminal program

dterm is a simple terminal emulator, which doesn't actually emulate any particular terminal. Mainly, it is designed for use with xterm and friends, which already do a perfectly good emulation, and therefore don't need any special help; dterm simply provides a means by which keystrokes are forwarded to the serial line, and data forwarded from the serial line appears on the terminal.

Running dterm

dterm is invoked thusly:

dterm [options|device ...]

dterm attempts to read the file ~/.dtermrc for options; if this doesn't exist, it tries /etc/dtermrc. Then it parses the options passed on the command line.

The options read should include a device name, e.g "ttyS0" or "ttyd0" for the first serial port on a Linux or FreeBSD system respectively. If no device is specified, dterm tries /dev/ttyUSB0, /dev/ttyU0, /dev/ttyS0, and /dev/ttyd0.

Once started, dterm can be got into command mode using Ctrl/]. Press enter once from command mode to get back into conversational mode. (The command character can be changed with the esc= option, e.g. esc=p to use Ctrl/P instead of Ctrl/].)

Options

The following options can be used from command mode

300, 1200, 9600 etc: Set speed, default 9600.
5, 6, 7, 8: Set bits per character, default 8.
1, 2: Set number of stop bits, default 1.
e, o, n, m, s: Set parity to even, odd, none, mark or space, default none.
cts, nocts: Enable / disable CTS flow control, default nocts.
xon, noxon: Enable / disable XON/XOFF flow control, default noxon.
modem, nomodem: Enable / disable modem control (hang up modem on exit, exit if modem hangs up), default nomodem.
bs, nobs: Enable / disable mapping of Delete to Backspace, default nobs.
del, nodel: Enable / disable mapping of Backspace to Delete, default nodel.
maplf, nomaplf: Enable / disable mapping of LF to CR, default nomaplf.
igncr, noigncr: Ignore / output carriage returns, default noigncr.
crlf, nocrlf: Enable / disable sending LF after each CR, default nocrlf.
ctrl, noctrl: Enable / disable control character display mode. In this mode, non-printable characters are displayed as ^c for the codes 0-31 (except CR, LF & TAB), [DEL] for 127, or [xx] for non-printing characters >= 128.
hex, nohex: As for ctrl, but prints [xx] for all characters except 7-bit printable ASCII, CR and LF.
b: Send a 500 ms break.
dtr, nodtr: Raise / lower DTR, default dtr.
rts, norts: Raise / lower RTS, default rts.
d, r: Toggle DTR / RTS.
delay=: Add delay of ms after each charachter sent
crwait=: Add delay of ms after each line sent
esc=: Set command mode character to Ctrl/ (default ']')
@: Read and process configuration from .
!: Execute shell command
@!: Execute shell command and process its output
sx : Send a file using XMODEM.
rx : Receive a file using XMODEM.
sz : Send a file using ZMODEM.
rz: Receive file(s) using ZMODEM.
noshell: disable any further use from '!' (can not be re-enabled)
show: Display current configuration and modem status.
speeds: Show known speeds. (Known to the OS, not the device.)
help, h, ?: Display a summary of commands.
version: Display version, copyright and warranty information.
quit, q: Exit

Configuration file

The configuration file (~/.dtermrc, or /etc/dtermrc if that does not exist) contains command mode commands, as sequences of words (see above). Command lines may be preceded by a :, which will be matched by the first parameter passed to dterm. For example:

19200 8 n 1
com1: ttyS0
com2: ttyS1 bs

will set the speed to 19200, 8 bits, no parity, one stop bit for all connections. However, "dterm com1" will always connect to /dev/ttyS0, while "dterm com2" will connect to /dev/ttyS1, and furthermore enable delete to backspace keyboard mapping. Further parameters can be added after the profile keyword, e.g. "dterm com2 nobs" will connect to /dev/ttyS1, but override the "bs" keyword on the com1 profile line.

Comments may be marked with a '#'.

File Transfer

If the rzsz package (or lrzsz) package is installed, the sx, sz, rx & rz commands can be used to initiate file transfers using the reliable XMODEM and ZMODEM file transfer protocols. Note that the program files for rzsz must be in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin for dterm to find them.

Note that rx, sx and rz require that the transfer be initiated at the remote end before escaping back to the dterm command prompt. sz will send an "rz" command down the serial link in start-up to initiate the transfer.

Examples

Connect via ttyS1 to a system running at 2400 bps, 7 bits even parity:

dterm ttyS1 2400 7 e

Send a break in a running session:

^]
dterm> b
dterm>

Transmit a file using ZMODEM:

^]
dterm> sz file.txt
rz waiting to receive.Sending: file.txt
Bytes Sent:  22943   BPS:645                             
Transfer complete
dterm>

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

A copy of the GNU General Public License version 2 is available at http://www.knossos.net.nz/gpl.html or can be obtained from the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.

Source Code

dterm source code is located at http://www.knossos.net.nz/downloads/dterm-0.5.tgz

Changes

2017/5/10 v0.5 - General tidy-ups, including fixing compiler warnings due to discarding return codes that showed up with recent compiler & header file changes. - Replaced unreliable speeds.h generation (see speeds.sh). - Added Readline support. - Minor tweaks to how mark & space parity are handled (termios doesn't really let us handle anything but 7S or 7M, which we fudge by setting CS8 and ISTRIP and doing the mark/space thing in code. - Search for USB devices first when lookling for default device.