HOSTCONNECT(1c,C) AIX TCP/IP User's Guide HOSTCONNECT(1c,C)
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hostconnect
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.
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-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.
= (blank line)
AIXuserid AIXpasswd tn
pvm paloalto 1
oak 129.33.192.128 2 root fungus
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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. If you change the setting of autoread or change the VM
READ status area on the VM host, then hostconnect or onhost may not work
correctly.
RELATED INFORMATION
In this book: "onhost"
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