Virtual terminals for SSH sessions

[cct]

Some time ago, I am sure that I read you could set up virtual terminls for interactive SSH sessions

However I cannot find anything about his. Was I dreaming?

Chris

[sms]

Code: Select all

> [...] I cannot find anything about his. [...]

   Where did you look?

   I know nothing, including what actual problem you're trying to solve,
but, while trying to refresh my dim recollection of virtual terminals
with Telnet, my quick Web search for:
      openvms virtual terminal telnet
found an old (2009) HPE forum posting which might be relevant:

      https://community.hpe.com/t5/x/x/td-p/5211370

      You could SSH to the system, then immediately telnet to the same
      system. This would give you a virtual terminal between the SSH
      session and the "real" session. Reconnecting do the same thing,
      SSH in, then telnet to reconnect to the VT. [...]

   I might never use these things, but I do set "VT_SUPPORT = 1" in my
SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM, so I might be ready if I ever find a good reason.

[jonesd]

The people who express mystery at why anyone would want virtual disconnectable terminals must only have ever used networks far far more pristine than any networks I've experience with.

You can also use LAT instead of telnet to get a virtual terminal. You could even set up a captive account that logs in with an RSA key and automatically set hosts to itself so you only have to do a traditional username+password login once.

[cct]

I used to use LAT at home - not sure if I stll could these days, and not sure what I could run over it

The question was more about using virtual terminal over ssh. It sounds good, but I can't find any references

Chris

[jonesd]

I used to use LAT at home - not sure if I stll could these days, and not sure what I could run over it

The question was more about using virtual terminal over ssh. It sounds good, but I can't find any references

Chris.

Back in 1998, I wrote an SSH server (protocol version 1, so not viable today) which you could configure to support virtual terminals. The gotcha was that it required 2 authentication actions to login. In the normal configuration, the authentication carried out by the SSH server was associated with a OpenVMS username and the server would create an interactive process with that username with the PRC$M_NOPASSWORD flag. In the special configuration, the nopassword flag was not set so loginout.exe would ask for username/password. All the machinery to handle virtual terminal reconnection is buried within loginout, so the second login was the only way to get PTYs to use virtual terminals.

The customer who wanted the virtual terminal capability wasn't bothered by 2 logins since they were pre-configuring the SSH client for the users anyway and could make the first authentication automatic.