0. Overview of dataComet and dataComet-Secure ________________________________________________________________ dataComet, "The Telnet Client Productivity Tool" dataComet/dataComet-Secure documentation. (Rev. 9/16/09) Copyright 1996,2001,2002 databeast, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Portions Copyright 1986,1993 Cornell University; Portions Copyright 1984 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. PLEASE NOTE THIS DISCLAIMER: NO WARRANTEES, express or implied, are made regarding the fitness of this software for use in any application whatsoever. THE USER assumes all liability for damage to hardware, software, or data which may result from its use. _____________________________________________________________ This document has information on (select and use "Find..." to go to the section): Using dataComet and dataComet-Secure FAQ and Problem Solving Shortcuts dataComet Feature Summary dataComet-Secure Feature Summary dataComet System requirements dataComet session documents Editing text documents dataComet Help The Documents folder The Sessions folder dataComet emulators "Foreign" character translation and font support Macros (command scripts) AppleScript and dataComet Scrollback buffering File Transfer (SCP, ZMODEM, IND$FILE) Launching sessions using Internet Config Performance notes Installing dataComet The Fonts folder and font resources The "dataComet keyboard" resource dataComet-Secure "Security" folder Installing Kerberos Support ___________________________________________________ Using dataComet and dataComet-Secure ___________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________ FAQ and Problem Solving ___________________________________________________ For help with Frequently Asked Questions and problem solving, see the Help document "A0. Problem Solving". ___________________________________________________ Shortcuts ___________________________________________________ See the Help document "0.1. Shortcuts" for information on basic keymapping and the numerous mouse click and command key shortcuts available in dataComet and tips for using them. Also listed are a number of menu command variations available when holding down the Shift- and/or Option- keys when the command is selected. You may want to print out "0.1. Shortcuts" to use as a reference; if you want to know what function a key command will perform, you can use "Control-Command-Key" to automatically find any documentation on the Command-key combination. ___________________________________________________ dataComet Feature Summary ___________________________________________________ dataComet emulator window configurations and text window contents are saved as individual documents which can be launched directly from the Finder. Modeless dialogs make it easy to tailor session configurations for different hosts. dataComet supports AppleEvents. Command-clicking URLs in dataComet windows launches helpers to open files and web pages. Emulators: dataComet offers multiple VT220, PC-ANSI, and IBM 3279 color terminal emulator windows with searchable scrollback buffers. dataComet automatically draws variable-width fonts as mono-spaced fonts; users can set the character height and width of all fonts for maximum legibility. Sessions can be configured so they are automatically logged to a file. Text Editing: dataComet also offers text editing windows whose contents can be sent to a host by making a selection and pressing the Enter key (or Command-Return to break a line and send it to a host, easing use of host-based Chat programs). Users can use keyed commands to search, move the cursor by characters, words, or lines, and reformat text by adding or removing line breaks. Macros: dataComet includes powerful macro commands which can be invoked through keystrokes, mouse clicks, configurable on-screen buttons, and menu items. Macros can also be set to execute on host session open and close. Macros can be recorded automatically as the user interacts with the host to ease macro creation. An AppleScript interface allows other applications to open dataComet documents, execute dataComet macros, and monitor session status. Interfaces: dataComet supports VT220, PC-ANSI, SCO-ANSI, and IBM 3279 TN3270 terminal emulations. dataComet offers connections through Telnet, Shell sessions, and serial ports or modem devices. Network firewalls can be traversed using a SOCKS V4 proxy. (Note that serial access is supported only for the ASCII emulators--serial dialup access to IBM mainframe hosts requires the use of an IBM 7171 or similar VT100 <-> 3279 channel translator at the host end.) File Transfer: dataComet offers SCP file transfers over Telnet connections, and ZMODEM transfers over both serial and Telnet connections. The standard IND$FILE file transfer protocol is supported for TN3270 connections to IBM mainframes. Downloads using these protocols can all perform automatic file opening using Internet Config File Mappings. Public Access Terminals: dataComet also supports special configurations for computers intended to be used as public-access terminals, which require enhanced security; a launch macro can be configured to disable commands which are inappropriate for your application. dataComet supports user-configurable international character translation for the Macintosh character set, with character translation tables provided for ISO-Latin-1, DEC Multinational, PC-ANSI, IBM ALA, and IBM 3270. dataComet is fully internationalizable through customization of the on-line documentation and the 'MENU' and 'STR#' resources incorporated in the program. ___________________________________________________ dataComet-Secure Feature Summary ___________________________________________________ dataComet-Secure adds support for SSL/TLS Telnet, Kerberos 5 Telnet, the SSH1 and SSH2 Secure Shell terminal protocols, and the SCP "Secure Copy" file transfer protocol to standard dataComet for secure access to ASCII hosts. (TCP and X-Window tunnelling are NOT supported.) All features of dataComet, including ZModem file transfers, work with SSH and SSL/TLS connections. SSH features currently supported include automatic SSH protocol selection, client authentication using user passwords (and under SSH1, using RSA public keys), encryption using Triple-DES or Blowfish, and data compression using zlib. Host public keys are maintained in files using the standard "known hosts" format (e.g., a "NiftyTelnet SSH Known Hosts" document can be copied directly to dataComet's "Security" folder and used as-is). More information on SSH configuration is available in the Help document "3. Dialogs". Passwords can be stored in session documents in encrypted form to speed logins while maintaining security. You can use one secret Master Passphrase to unlock all your session passwords. In addition, you can use the "Lock" command to prevent use of dataComet until a master passphrase is entered, so that you can leave sessions open on your unattended computer without seriously compromising security. The password encryption is performed using strong encryption (Triple-DES, 168 bits). ___________________________________________________ dataComet System requirements ___________________________________________________ MacOS 10.3.9 or later is required; dataComet and dataComet-Secure are Universal Binaries compatible with both PowerPC and Intel-based Macintoshes and releases of MacOS up to 10.6 (Snow Leopard). ___________________________________________________ dataComet session documents ___________________________________________________ dataComet uses dataComet documents to retain session configuration information between launches. If you create macros after launching from a document or saving a configuration, they are automatically saved in the document. The "Comet Default" document is a special document which is automatically created in the "{User}/Library/Preferences/dataComet Preferences/" directory under your username "{User}". This document contains session configuration data which is used as a default when you use the File menu "New..." command to make a new document, and also contains global configuration data which applies to all sessions. To make it easy to access, the "Comet Default" document appears first in the list of documents in the "File" menu "Sessions" submenu. If you create a new document by choosing "Reconfigure Session" and changing the name, the new document will have the same settings, macros, and other attributes as the source document. Note that some of the more exotic configuration options in dataComet are available only as macro commands, e.g., disabling mouse-click cursor positioning on a per-session basis. Including these macro commands in a Connection macro will allow you to configure a session so it executes them automatically when the session is opened. ___________________________________________________ Editing text documents ___________________________________________________ You can open text windows with no associated session by holding down the Shift key when using the File menu "New..." or "Open..." commands or by dropping the documents onto the dataComet application. Edit windows are TextEdit windows, and can hold up to 32K of text. Each host session has a ".edit" window in addition to the window containing the emulator screen. The session name is used as the first part of the window name, with ".edit" added as a suffix. This window is provided for use as a handy text scratchpad to save text and commands used with a connection; the ".edit" window's contents are loaded automatically when the session document is opened. You can send a text selection or the current line to the next frontmost emulator session by pressing Enter or Command-Return. You can execute macros in edit windows by pressing Shift-Enter or Shift-Command-Return, which causes either the selection or the current line (if no selection has been made) to be executed. See "2. Menus" ("Using the Edit menu") for more information on the .edit window. When documents are saved, the document's creator ID is changed to dataComet's ID only if the Option key is held down; otherwise the document's default type and application will be left unchanged. ___________________________________________________ dataComet Help ___________________________________________________ The Apple Help menu allows you to open dataComet documentation. Documents placed in the Help folder contained in the dataComet application bundle will be included in the list, so you can place your own text documents in the folder for convenient access. HELP! When the documentation is left in the folder as distributed, you can use a shortcut to quickly get help on command keys and menu and dialog items: Control-"Click" on a menu, dialog item, or control brings up the dataComet documentation describing the item. Control-Command-"Key" also brings up the documentation for the menu command which the key triggers. ___________________________________________________ The Documents folder ___________________________________________________ The "Documents" submenu in the File Menu allows you to open documents placed in the "Documents" folder (located in your "Documents" folder in the folder "dataComet/Documents"). Documents placed in the Documents folder will be included in the list, so you can place frequently-used text documents in the folder for convenient access. ___________________________________________________ The Sessions folder ___________________________________________________ The "Sessions" submenu in the File Menu allows you to open dataComet session documents placed in the "Sessions" folder (located in your "Documents" folder in the folder "dataComet/Sessions"; session documents can also be placed in the dataComet application bundle "Contents/Resources/Sessions" folder). By default, new session documents are saved in the Sessions folder. Documents placed in the Sessions folder will be included in the list, so you can place frequently-used session documents in the folder for convenient access. ___________________________________________________ dataComet emulators ___________________________________________________ dataComet allows you to connect to the two major types of host computer using either a TCP/IP network or serial/modem lines to make the physical connection; dataComet requires Apple's MacTCP TCP/IP driver to make Telnet TCP/IP connections. Using dataComet, you can connect to either an IBM mainframe running an operating system such as VM/CMS or MVS, which uses the EBCDIC character set, or other hosts such as those running an operating system such as UNIX or VMS, which use the ASCII character set. See the Document "1. Emulators" for more information on the emulators included in dataComet. ___________________________________________________ "Foreign" character translation and font support ___________________________________________________ dataComet supports character translation tables; see "Translation" in "2. Menus and dialogs". These translation tables use the same format as NCSA Telnet's translation tables. To add different tables to dataComet you can place the document containing the 'taBL' resources in the dataComet application bundle "Contents/Resources/User" Folder before launching dataComet; the new translation tables will be added to those in the Translation menu list. Translation tables are automatically selected when you select a Comet-Font; for other fonts the default character translation is Macintosh <-> ISO-Latin-1 for emulator windows. You can use "Shift-Paste" to translate from a Macintosh font to the target window's font when Pasting. Other translation features include using the "Translation" command to translate edit window text from the Macintosh character set and back... see "0.1 Shortcuts" and "2. Menus" for more details. dataComet sessions can use fonts other than the default font (which is Comet Mona, a Macintosh font, for both ASCII and 3270 connections). Proportional fonts are drawn as if they were fixed width fonts so that any font can be used with the emulators. If characters in alternate fonts do not appear as they should in ASCII sessions, check to make sure that 8-bit characters are enabled in your session (for example, PINE must be configured to use ISO-8859-1 as its character set in order to use extended character sets). ___________________________________________________ Macros (command scripts) ___________________________________________________ dataComet offers macros which allow the user to create scripts to execute routine operations automatically. These can be stored as text in an edit window, or associated with a keystroke or other program states... see the document "4. Macros" for more information. ___________________________________________________ AppleScript and dataComet ___________________________________________________ dataComet offers an AppleScript interface which allows the user to control dataComet by sending plain text, executing macros, testing connection status, and performing Copy and Paste operations. See the document "5. AppleScript" for more information. ___________________________________________________ Scrollback buffering ___________________________________________________ dataComet supports scrollback buffers for both 3270 and ASCII emulations which preserve screen character attributes (e.g., inverted or boldface text). The Edit menu "Clear buffer" command clears the text from the buffer. The Edit menu "Find" and "Find again" commands allow you to search the buffer, and the File menu "Print" command prints either the selection range or the current screen (if no selection has been made). By default dataComet scrollback records an unlimited amount of text; you may want to set the scrollback buffer size in the dataComet Preferences "Session" dialog. Each line scrolled takes three times as much space to store as the length of the line, so 100 lines of an 80-column session takes 24K of memory. ___________________________________________________ File Transfer (SCP, ZMODEM, IND$FILE, TFTP) ___________________________________________________ dataComet supports different techniques for transferring files: SCP, ZMODEM, IND$FILE, and session logging. SCP (Secure CoPy) is a file transfer method used for transferring files on SSH connections; dataComet's SCP also allows you to use SCP on Telnet connections. ZMODEM is the standard method for tranferring files over serial connections to a host, and also works well for performing file transfers over Telnet connections. It offers superior reliability over FTP or TFTP tranfers, since it uses an additional CRC checksum to help guarantee that data has not been corrupted during the transfer. IND$FILE is the standard file transfer protocol for use with TN3270 connections to IBM mainframes. Session logging, which you enable in the File menu, allows you to save lines from your session in a file as they are cleared or scroll off the top. For more information, see the document "6. File Transfer". ___________________________________________________ Launching sessions using Internet Config ___________________________________________________ Under OS X, you must use Microsoft Internet Explorer to configure Internet Config, since the "System Preferences" dialogs do not allow user control of Internet Config to select your preferred Telnet/TN3270 application or file mappings for file transfers. Internet Explorer's "Preferences..." "Protocol Helpers" and "File Helpers" dialogs allows you to control these mappings. Internet Explorer is no longer supported by MicroSoft, but you can download the last released version of IE from . How Internet Config launches work: dataComet supports 'GURL' AppleEvents, which allow other applications to notify dataComet that a Telnet session should be opened. When dataComet receives a 'GURL' AppleEvent, it opens a session to the host and places the URL specification in the session's .edit window. If the session name matches the name of a document that has been saved in the "Sessions" folder, the session document will be opened, so that configuration changes will be retained between sessions (along with notes made for use with the connection in the session's .edit window). ___________________________________________________ Performance notes ___________________________________________________ If you notice that your Macintosh is performing sluggishly, check to see whether you've left a web browser page open which is running a script. "Cute" pages running scripts which present spinning globes, etc., can degrade performance dramatically even when run in the background. The only cure is to close the browser window or go to another, less power-hungry browser page. If you wish to check to verify that an application or web page is gobbling CPU cycles, you can use the Activity Monitor utility provided by Apple, which you can launch by Command-clicking on this link: . ___________________________________________________ Installing dataComet ___________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________ The Fonts folder and font resources ___________________________________________________ The fonts dataComet uses for various emulations are included in the "Fonts" folder in the application's home folder. You should drag the font suitcase files into one of the OS X System Font Folders such as the /Library/Fonts directory; this will ensure correct results when displaying graphics characters on-screen, printing, and displaying special characters in the Macro dialogs (which can use the Comet-Chicago font to display buttons in text fields). Fonts in the current release include: Comet Chicago Comet ALA (3270 American Library Association character set) Comet ALA Bold Comet APL (3270 APL character set) Comet APL Bold Comet DEC-Multinational Comet DEC-Multinational Bold Comet Latin-1 Comet Latin-1 Bold Comet Mona (mono-spaced Macintosh character set) Comet Mona Bold Comet PC-ANSI Comet PC-ANSI-Bold ___________________________________________________ The "dataComet keyboard" resource ___________________________________________________ The Macintosh keyboard layout maps some Option-key combinations into foreign characters. This can cause confusing results when using key macros, so the "dataComet keyboard" keyboard layout is provided to disable remapping of Option-key combinations. For more information on installing the "dataComet Keyboard" keyboard layout under OS X, see the Help document "A2. dataComet keyboard". ___________________________________________________ dataComet-Secure "Security" folder ___________________________________________________ The "Security" folder in dataComet's home folder and the "{User}/Library/Preferences/dataComet Preferences/Security" folder contain documents which dataComet will use for authentication. Documents containing host public keys placed in these folders will be used for verifying the identity of hosts to which you connect; all documents in these folders are scanned at startup time, and lines that appear to contain valid host keys are added to tables in memory for lookups when SSH host connections are being authenticated. The public key files must be 'TEXT' type documents, and must use either the standard ssh_known_hosts or ssh_known_hosts2 formats. This allows files to be copied directly from standard SSH "known hosts" files on UNIX hosts. Host keys added by dataComet will be saved in files named "known_hosts.dataComet" (SSH1) and "known_hosts2.dataComet" (SSH2) using the standard format. ___________________________________________________ Installing Kerberos Support ___________________________________________________ dataComet-Secure supports Telnet connections authenticated using the Kerberos 5 protocol. This may require that you configure the Kerberos package. Kerberos support is bundled with Mac OS X. ________________________________________________________________