Kermit 95 - Using Named Pipes

Using Named Pipes in Kermit 95

Kermit 95 has supported Named Pipes on IBM OS/2 as an interprocess communication mechanism since the release of OS/2 C-Kermit 5A(190) in October 1994. With Kermit 95 v3.0, Named Pipe support makes its way to Windows.

Named Pipe support (local and networked) is built-in to Windows, while on OS/2 only support for local connections is built in with operation over a network requiring additional software. Each computer may be a Client, a Server or both. Each server on a particular network has a unique Named Pipe Server Name - on Windows this is the computers name, while on OS/2 this is assigned as part of the Named Pipe software installation.

To have a named pipe connection between two Kermit programs, one Kermit program must be the "server" and the other must be the "client". The server is the one that is started first, and which waits for a connection to come in from the client. The server is started this way:

  SET NETWORK NAMED-PIPE [ pipename ]
  SET HOST *

If the pipename is omitted from the SET NETWORK NAMED-PIPE command, a pipename of "kermit" is used. "SET HOST *" means to wait for a connection to come in from another Kermit program.

Then the client makes a connection to the server:

  SET NETWORK NAMED-PIPE [ pipename ]
  SET HOST servername

where pipename is the pipename used by the server you want to communicate with (default "kermit"), and servername is the name of the server on the network. If you specify a servername of "." (period), this means your own computer; on OS/2 you can set up such local connections even if you don't have Named Pipes network support installed, e.g. between two copies of Kermit/2 running in different windows.

Connecting to a pipe on your own computer may also be useful for communicating with other software such as to connect to a virtual machine or emulators virtual serial port. Other software may use the form \\servername\pipe\pipename for specifying named pipes.

Both pipename and servername are case-independent, and can contain spaces but not a backslash.

There is no particular restriction on what Kermit commands can be used on a named-pipe connection. Here are some useful scenarios:

The named-pipe server is in Kermit SERVER mode. Clients can perform SEND, GET, REMOTE, FINISH, and similar commands.
Both Kermit programs are in CONNECT mode, allowing two network users to "chat" with each other. Each user should give the following commands:
```
  set terminal echo local
  set terminal cr-display crlf
  connect
```

To close a named-pipe connection, give the HANGUP command (or the SET HOST command, specifying no hostname) to either the client or the server.

The Kermit 95 named-pipe server can also wait for a client to connect. After the client disconnects, the connection will be reset to await the next client. This allows for the use of kermit "server" as a pseudo-FTP site for those on OS/2 without IBM TCP/IP.

Windows Security

Named Pipes created by Kermit 95 are owned by your user account and only your account, users in the administrators group, and the LocalSystem account have full access to it. To connect to a named pipe from another computer, you'll need to use the same user account on the other computer as well.

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