HOSTCONNECT(1c,C) AIX TCP/IP User's Guide HOSTCONNECT(1c,C) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- hostconnect, onhost.alias PURPOSE Creates a connection between an AIX system and an IBM host. SYNTAX +---------+ +------- -a alias -------+ hostconnect ---| one of |---| +---------+ |---| | +-----+ | +- hostname -| |-+ +-| -d |-+ +- style -+ | -d1 | | -d2 | +-----+ DESCRIPTION The hostconnect command is an AIX command which creates a connection to hostname, an IBM VM host. You can then run CMS commands on hostname by using onhost. It can do an automatic login using the alias option. hostconnect requires a binary TELNET session with the host and identifies itself as an IBM-3278-2. After a successful login, hostconnect goes into the background to listen for onhost commands or full-screen emulation. This means that you can now use all the usual AIX commands and, in addition, you can use the onhost command to run CMS commands in the IBM VM host you specified with hostname. When you log out of the host system, hostconnect terminates. You can also terminate hostconnect by using "kill n," where n is its process ID as reported by the ps command. Do not use "kill -9"! If you do, hostconnect does not get a chance to close the host connection. Your host user ID will remain active and, under some circumstances, you may not be able to login again. You can follow the progress of hostconnect by decoding the character string which it produces. The characters L, P, I, E, and S show the login, password, initialize, execution preparation, and sequence complete stages. Also present are equal signs to indicate minor state changes. If the string does not end in S, try repeating the hostconnect command. FLAGS -a alias This option selects a hostname, user ID, and password entry stored in the file named onhost.alias. This file must reside in the current or home directory and, because the file contains passwords, hostconnect sets 600 permission so that only the owner may read and write this file. Processed March 25, 1992 HOSTCONNECT(1c,C) 1 HOSTCONNECT(1c,C) AIX TCP/IP User's Guide HOSTCONNECT(1c,C) -d The -d option turns on debugging. -d sends debug output to the terminal. The -d1 option sends debug output to the file hostcon.debug. The -d2 option is the same as -d1 except that it writes more information. ONHOST.ALIAS The first line of the alias file must be blank. The second line specifies your local user ID and password to be used by onhost for FTP file transfer from the host. A full-screen 3270 terminal emulator is also specified on this line. tn and tn3270 are two such emulators. Successive lines, one per alias, contain the following tokens. alias This field labels the entry. It is used to create a file named hostcon.alias which contains the socket name used by onhost. The file hostcon.noalias is created if the alias option is not used. hostname This is the host system name specified as an Internet domain name or address. When you are connecting to VM/CMS and have specified hostname as LDSF, hostconnect makes a connection using the VM Logical Device Support facility. Otherwise, hostconnect uses the standard TCP/IP socket interface. style The style of the host system is defined as follows: CMS is of style 2 and unknown hosts are of style 6. If no style is specified, it defaults to style 0 which defaults to CMS. In addition, if 1 is added to make the style odd, a connection is made to the host system but the automatic login is suspended. This feature is required to allow hostconnect to work with arbitrary host systems. The automatic login is nice, but it only works in limited cases. An AIX shell script driving onhost can be used to automatically connect to most hosts. Automatic login is not attempted for unknown style hosts. When hostconnect is run and automatic login is suspended, it makes a connection which must be completed by the use of onhost. After completing the login, execute the host command, ONHOSTLD, to initialize the host environment for subsequent use by onhost. Subsequent tokens are passed to the host system one at a time to complete an automatic login to the host system. Additional tokens are requested from the user by hostconnect if they are required. Here is a sample onhost.alias file. ___________________________________ AIXuserid AIXpasswd tn pvm paloalto 1 oak 129.33.192.128 2 root fungus ----------------------------------- Processed March 25, 1992 HOSTCONNECT(1c,C) 2 HOSTCONNECT(1c,C) AIX TCP/IP User's Guide HOSTCONNECT(1c,C) Be sure the file contains a blank line at the top. A template for onhost.alias exists in the /usr/lib/onhost directory. NOTES Before using hostconnect for the first time, make sure that you have a valid user ID and password for the host system you want to use. In addition, some programs used by hostconnect and onhost should be present on the host. See appendix B in this manual for instructions on how to install these programs. The hostconnect command on the VM host expects a VM READ in the standard status area of the VM host's virtual screen whenever a command ends or a program needs input on the VM host. To insure that the VM host is in VM READ status, add the following line in your PROFILE EXEC: SET AUTOREAD ON RELATED INFORMATION In this book: "onhost" Processed March 25, 1992 HOSTCONNECT(1c,C) 3