[Info-vax] VXT, anyone ?

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2019-03-01 23:10:35 +0000, Marc Van Dyck said:

> I've been offered a nice and powerful Linux workstation at work, which 
> is pretty useless for me, because I know nothing to Linux.

Or, maybe, learn a little more about one of the predominant computing 
platforms in existence?  Whether for servers, or for Android / AOSP.  
Yeah, it's different from OpenVMS.

> Except if I can turn it into a glorified X terminal, that I can use to 
> access the OpenVMS systems that are my bread and butter. If I can make 
> that work, it will sure be far better than Reflexion X and Putty 
> running on my laptop.

Can't speak for Reflections and PuTTY on (presumably) Microsoft 
Windows, but there are some reasonable X clients available for Windows, 
Linux, BSD and macOS clients.

Windows finally got around to making the terminal window ANSI-capable 
with Windows 10 Anniversary Edition, and the terminal windows on Linux, 
BSD and macOS have been ANSI-capable for quite a long while.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16755142/how-to-make-win32-console-recognize-ansi-vt100-escape-sequences 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/console/console-virtual-terminal-sequences 

etc.

There's nothing special about using ssh to connect to an OpenVMS box or 
into an iLO, beyond sometimes having to downgrade the connection 
security to match the security on OpenVMS or on the iLO.  The ANSI 
displays generally work just fine.

Some of the more esoteric DEC control sequences might or might not 
work, but the routine stuff usually works just fine.

Linux, BSD and macOS tend to have newer tooling.  Which sometimes means 
downgrades.  The following ssh downgrade works for most OpenVMS and iLO 
targets:

ssh -o HostKeyAlgorithms=ssh-rsa,ssh-dss -o 
KexAlgorithms=diffie-hellman-group1-sha1 -o Ciphers=aes128-cbc,3des-cbc 
-o MACs=hmac-md5,hmac-sha1 -o ServerAliveInterval=300 -o 
ServerAliveCountMax=2 user at example.com

There are ways to shorten that ssh command, and that's an 
intentionally-generic works-on-most command.

As for X?  Linux has X built in.   You'll need to disable part or all 
of the X security on the X Window Server on Linux, and the older 
DECwindows client security support had some issues here.  Previous 
discussions of xming and other X Window servers around here in 
comp.os.vms will have discussions of disabling X security features, too.

> That didn't look to complicated to me until I ran into the devilish details :
> 
> 1) The keyboard mapping does not work (I have a french belgian keyboard 
> connected to it)

There have been X keyboard maps for DECwindows posted previously.  You 
might have to experiment to get those maps to work with that Belgian 
French keyboard, though.

> 2) Probably more complicated, I do not have the font corresponding to 
> the DEC graphics character set

Search for previous discussions of the DECwindows font server here in 
comp.os.vms, if you really want to use DECwindows fonts.

> 3) I'd like to connect a VMS keyboard to it (I have it), but have no 
> idea how to do it

Plug the OpenVMS LK keyboard into the USB port.  If you don't have one 
of the LK USB keyboards, there's no good answer for adapting the DEC 
PS/2 DIN keyboard connections to USB.  The available DIN adapters don't 
necessarily work, or don't work for all keys.

The Apple keyboards are one of the closest to the LK layout, if you're 
stuck.  And there are some LKs still available for sale, though—like 
the Apple keyboards—the USB LKs are not cheap.

Most OpenVMS stuff can be run from the command line.  Yeah, the keypads 
can be missed.  I punted on the DEC editors for most work and moved 
(back) to vim a while back.  Dealing with EDT line mode or EVE line 
mode or LSEDIT line mode is not fun when that's what is available, but 
possible.  And vim and microemacs and related editors are also 
available for OpenVMS.  Hopefully VSI gets around to incorporating more 
common editors, but that's fodder for another discussion.

Absent requirements for displaying an X Window client app and for 
typical interactive use, an ssh connection works as well as a remote 
DECterm session.

For more information...  Search the newsgroup archives (via Google 
Groups) for xming-related discussions, and for xterm-related 
discussions, and for XDM-related discussions, and for decw$font-related 
discussions.  Lots of good info.




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