Efficient usage of telnet on the PCs

Default session

There is usually a default host installed in the telnet.bat file, so if you just type telnet, you will get somewhere. And if you usually work on the same machine, it might be useful to install that machine as the default host.

Multiple sessions

Press Alt-A to start another session. In this case, there is no default host, so you have to supply one.

You can now switch between sessions using Alt-N. Also note that the status line at the bottom indicates which session is active.

Note taht if you want to log out, and then log in again to another machine, it is faster (on some PCs a lot faster) to first open a new session, then switch back to the original session and log out. After all, in this case there is no need to re-read the executable and configuration files from disk, and PC disks aren't the fastest things in the galaxy.

Built-in FTP

You can use the built-in FTP service to transfer files between your PC and the machine you are logged in to. You can even transfer files straight from/to your floppy disk.

Press Alt-F to start a FTP session, now use cd to change to the desired directory on the PC (also, cd a: will take you to your floppy disk drive). You will probably want to transfer all files in binary mode, so type bin.

Note that all transfers are treated as viewed by the workstation, so get reads from the PC, and put writes to it.

Utilities

All PCs with a harddisk have a few utilities installed which are part of the NCSA telnet package. The most interesting is lpr which allows you to print files from your PC to a printer on the Sterrewacht network. You should first use e.g. set printer=hp5 to select the printer, although a useful default is set in autoexec.bat.

There is also a lpq utility to view the printer queue, and lprm to remove jobs from the queue (any job send by the same PC can be cancelled; DOS doesn't know about user authorization).


David.Jansen@strw.leidenuniv.nl
Last modified: Tue Jun 4 16:02:52 MET DST 1996