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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

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>

Copyright

dterm is Copyright 2007-2017 Don Stokes & Knossos Networks Ltd.

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