Kermit 95 (C-Kermit for Windows)

This is the free and open source version of Kermit 95, formerly a commercial product of Columbia University from 1994 to 2011. It was for a few years known as C-Kermit for Windows but the decision has been made to switch back to the original more well-known name starting with Beta 7. For more information on Kermit, visit the Kermit Project website: http://www.kermitproject.org.

Major features include:

• More than 40 terminal emulations
• Virtual Terminal connections over SSH, Telnet (including TLS support), rlogin, modem, serial port, named pipe and pty
• Scriptable file transfer via Kermit, X/Y/Z Modem, HTTP, HTTPS, FTP and FTPS protocols
• International character set translation
• Pathworks supported for LAT and CTERM Virtual Terminal connections. Can optionally be built with SuperLAT support as well (not enabled by default)

To get the latest most stable release as well as other news and information, visit the C-Kermit for Windows Beta website. This software is currently based on C-Kermit version 10.0 Beta.11 of 8-AUG-2024 and is available under the 3-clause BSD license.

Requirements

C-Kermit for Windows should work on every released 32bit or 64bit version of Windows except Windows NT 3.10. Some non-x86 platforms (ARM, ARM64, Itanium) are not actively tested due to a lack of hardware.

Certain features within C-Kermit for Windows have a minimum Windows version requirement:

Supported Terminal Emulations

ANSI-BBS; Avatar/0+; AT386; BeBox ANSI; Data General DASHER D200, D210; Data General DASHER D217 in native and Unix modes; DEC VT52; DEC VT100, VT102, VT220, VT320 with color extensions; Hazeltine 1500; Heath/Zenith 19; Hewlett Packard 2621A; HPTERM; IBM HFT and AIXTERM; IBM 3151; Linux console; Microsoft VTNT; QNX ANSI and QNX Console; SCOANSI; Siemens Nixdorf BA80 and 97801-5xx; Sun Console; Televideo TVI910+, TVI925, TVI950; Volker Craig VC404; Wyse 30, 50, 60, 160, and 370

For more details on what features the various emulations support, see The Manual.

Mouse reporting via the X10, X11/normal, URXVT and SGR protocols is also supported and can be configured via the set mouse reporting command.

Documentation

The Kermit 95 manual still covers C-Kermit for Windows quite well and is the first place to look for details on features and capabilities specific to Windows and OS/2. The SSH Client reference is now a little out of date, see the SSH Readme for more details on what has changed in the C-Kermit for Windows SSH implementation. There is also a C-Kermit for Windows How-To which may be useful for new users.

For everything else, consult the C-Kermit Documentation.

If you previously used Kermit 95 and would like to know what's changed, see the C-Kermit for Windows Change Log as well as the C-Kermit 9.0 and 10.0 changelogs

New Features

Since the original open-source release way back in July 2011, a lot of work has gone on to restore missing features and bits that couldn't be open sourced at the time:

• The missing source code required to build the GUI version has been recovered
• The Dialer has been made available now that the framework it was built with, Zinc, is available under an open license
• X/Y/Z MODEM support has been restored thanks to Jyrki Salmi of Online Solutions Oy (www.online.fi) providing his "P" X/Y/Z MODEM library under the same license as C-Kermit for Windows
• An entirely new SSH subsystem using libssh has been built. Not all SSH features are supported yet though - see the SSH Readme
• The SSL/TLS code has been upgraded to support the latest version of OpenSSL allowing support for https, ftps and secure telnet to return
• Initial support for OS/2 is back, now built with OpenWatcom. Much more work is required to get this into a usable state however and assistance from anyone familiar with OS/2 development would be much appreciated.
• DECnet support has been re-enabled but you need a licensed copy of Pathworks32 installed to use it.
• SuperLAT support has been restored as a custom build option. The SDK, while made publicly available by Meridian, has an unclear license so SuperLAT support isn't included by default at this time.
• The Telnet Encryption Option (DES/CAST) is supported again, not that anyone should be using it today if they care about security.
• Kerberos V is supported again (including GSSAPI support in the SSH client). To use Kerberos authentication in CKW you must Download and Install Kerberos for Windows from MIT, it is not bundled with CKW like it was with kermit 95. If you need Kerberos IV you can build CKW from source against an older version of the KFW SDK (2.x or 3.x).
• Alpha and PowerPC support has been restored. Alpha support was previously discontinued after Kermit 95 v1.1.20 (May 2000) and PowerPC was discontinued after Kermit 95 v1.1.16 (8 April 1998).

Additionally, a number of new features have been added:

• Compiler support has been extended down to Visual C++ 2.0 and all the way up to Visual C++ 2022 fixing a number of issues along the way. This enables proper support for the latest versions of windows, as well as the second oldest 32bit version - Windows NT 3.50. Support has also been added for OpenWatcom (targeting both Windows and OS/2) and MinGW.
• PTYs are also supported on Windows 10+ now via the pty command. For example, pty cmd.exe will open the Windows shell inside C-Kermit and from there you can run any windows console tool. Note that Kermit file transfers are not supported via this mechanism as Windows PTYs are not transparent. There may also be some minor terminal emulation glitches as windows slots a terminal emulator in between the subprocess and CKW (Windows PTYs are not transparent).
• The pipe command has also been fixed and kermit file transfers are supported via this mechanism. Applications relying on the special Windows terminal APIs won't work properly but anything that just outputs standard ANSI escape sequences should work interactively. PuTTYs plink tool works as long as the remote host is already trusted, and you use public key authentication.
• Network DLLs are also fixed. You can now add support for additional protocols via custom DLLs which are loaded with the set network type dll command.
• Mouse wheel support and terminal mouse reporting have been implemented
• Support for 64bit Windows (x86-64, Itanium, ARM64, AXP64)
• Ports to new CPU architectures: MIPS, Itanium, x86-64, ARM, ARM64
• A selection of other bugs fixed and other minor features added

A full Change Log is available and updated for major releases.

Still Missing Features

The following features supported by Kermit 95 v2.1.3 remain unavailable in C-Kermit for Windows at this time:

• few misc SSH features have not been implemented yet - ticket #44 is tracking these.
• SSH v1 support will not return as this is not supported by libssh anymore.
• SSH/SSL/TLS on Windows versions prior to Windows XP SP3 will likely not return as OpenSSL no longer supports these older versions of Windows or the compilers required to target them.
• SRP: Formerly provided by the Stanford SRP distribution, now unmaintained for over a decade it is not compatible with any supported version of OpenSSL. Its still buildable if really needed but not included in any standard builds. OpenSSL includes SRP support now which is probably the way forward if CKW is to ever include SRP support as standard again, but it would probably be a lot of work to switch - see ticket #32 for more information
• DNS-SRV (#205) - support for this previously came from wshelper, a part of MIT Kerberos for Windows that was removed in 2018.
• Kerberos IV support is not included in standard builds as current versions of MIT Kerberos for Windows no longer support it.

Code to support Kerberos IV, Stanford SRP and old versions of OpenSSL still exists and should still work if there is some need for these features despite the known security issues.

Compiling

To build C-Kermit for Windows, see the Build Instructions. Visual C++ 2019 is strongly recommended, but any released 32bit or 64bit version should work (with certain features automatically excluded on older compilers). To build with ConPTY and SSH support you'll need to use Visual C++ 2019 or newer.

There is also limited support for compiling with OpenWatcom 1.9+ and MinGW. For OpenWatcom, just follow the normal build instructions above. For cross-compiling from Linux, see the MinGW Build Instructions.

To build C-Kermit for OS/2 using OpenWatcom, see the OS/2 Build Instructions.

Making Changes

Any files matching the pattern ck[cu]*.[cwh] are shared by implementations of C-Kermit for other platforms (UNIX, Linux, VMS, and others) and are not specific to the Windows and OS/2 port in this repository. Any changes to these files should be sent to The Kermit Project to be included in future C-Kermit releases for other platforms. If your changes are not intended to affect other platforms, make sure they're ifdef'd for either OS2 (OS/2+Windows) or NT (Windows only).

Files matching ck[on]*.* can be safely modified as they are only used by the OS/2 and Windows targets

The dialer data files (dialer.dat, registry.dat) are binary files edited by the zinc designer. It's not possible to merge these files, so it's probably best to get in touch before making changes to these files.

History

C-Kermit for Windows is based on what was going to be Kermit 95 v2.2 which was never released publicly. For full details on whats changed since the last public release of Kermit 95, v2.1.3 of 21 January 2003, see the Change Log.