Introduction
tinyTerm started as a simple telnet client used to work with telecom transport equipment through command line interface(TL1). Over time it has grown to a full function terminal emulator supporting serial, telnet, ssh, sftp and netconf connections with xterm emulation, plus unique features like: command autocompletion, scp integration, batch automation, and scripting.
Windows 10 user should install from Microsoft Store, users on older versions of Windows, or prefer portable apps download exe files.
Stable release: 1.9.9
Download: Microsoft Store 32-bit: tinyTerm.exe 64-bit: tinyTerm64.exe
License: GPL 3.0
written in C with Win32 API and libssh2
Usage notes
Terminal Emulation
Each time a connection is made using the connect dialog, an entry will be added to the Term menu, simply select the menu entry to make the same connection again.
When local edit is enabled, user is presented with a “tinyTerm >” prompt, simply type commands like “telnet 192.168.1.1” or “ssh admin@172.16.1.1” to make connection, or type commands like “ipconfig”, “ping 192.168.1.1”, “tracert google.com” to execute
For serial connections, available serial ports will be auto detected and added to the ports dropdown list in connection dialog.
for netconf connections, typing netconf messages is possible but not really practical, it’s better to use a text or xml editor to compose the messages and then drag&drop to the terminal window.
Press and drag left mouse button to select text, left double click to select a word, middle click to paste selected text without copying to clipboard, right click to get context menu for copy, paste, copy all and paste selection(i.e. middle click).
Scroll buffer holds 16k lines of text, use pageup key or mouse wheel to scroll back, scrollbar will appear when scrolled back, and will hide when scrolled all the way down.
Command Autocompletion
When local edit mode is enabled, key presses are not sent to remote host until “Enter” or “Tab” key is pressed, and the input is auto completed using command history, every command typed in local edit mode is added to command history to complete future inputs. Command history is saved to tinyTerm.hist at exit, then loaded into memory at the next start of tinyTerm.
Command history file is saved as %USERPROFILE%\documents\tinyTerm\tinyTerm.hist by default, copy tinyTerm.hist to the same folder as tinyTerm.exe for portable use. Since the command history file is just a plain text file, user can edit the file outside of tinyTerm to put additional commands in the list for command auto-completion. For example put all command TL1 commands in the history list to use as a dictionary.
Command history file is not only used for auto completion, user interface options like window size, font size and font face, local edit mode, transparency are saved in the history file on exit, and loaded from the history file at next start. Plus the added Term and Script menu entries are saved in the history file too, so they can be restored at sebsequent sessions.
Batch Automation
To automate the execution of batch commands, simply drag and drop a list of commands from text editor, or select “Run…” from Script menu and select a text file with all the commands to be executed, tinyTerm send one command at a time, wait for prompt string before sending the next command, to avoid overflowing the receive buffer of the remote host or network device.
Most command line interface system uses a prompt string to tell user it’s ready for the next command, for example “> “ or “$ “ used by Cisco routers. tinyTerm will auto detect the prompt string used by remote host when user is typing commands interactively, and use the detected prompt string during scripting. Additionally, prompt string can be set in the script using special command “!Prompt {str}”, refer to appendix A for details and other special commands supported for scripting.
SCP integration
When a SSH or SFTP session is established in tinyTerm, simply drag and drop files to the terminal window will cause those files to be transfered to remote host using SCP or SFTP put, remote files will be created in the current directory.
To copy file from server to a local folder, select the filename in the terminal window, then chose “scp_to_folder.js” from script menu.
xmodem support
When a SERIAL sission is established, simply drag and drop a file to the terminal window will cause the file been sent using xmodem protocol, only send function of the original xmodem protocol is supported, CRC optional, xmodem-1K is not supported. This is added to 1.1 release for to support bootstraping of MCUs on embeded system like Ardiuno
FTPd/TFTPd/HTTPd
A built in FTP server can be used for simple file transfer tasks, like software download to network devices. Only one user name “tiny” is allowed to login, with password “term”. For security, user session to the FTP server is timed out in 1 minute without action, and FTP server will time out in 15 minutes without active connection.
Similarly a built in TFTP server can be used for file transfer with simpler devices like cable modems. TFTP server times out after 5 minutes.
A built in HTTP server is started as soon as tinyTerm is started, for the first instance of tinyTerm running, HTTPd listens at 127.0.0.1:8080, the second instance listens at 127.0.0.1:8081, the third instance listens at 127.0.0.1:8082, so on and so forth. Since it’s listening on 127.0.0.1 only, the HTTPd will only accept connections from local machine, for the purpose of scripting.
Scripting interface
The Built in HTTP server will accept GET request from local machine, which means any program running on the same machine, be it a browser or a javascript or any other script, can connect to tinyTerm and request either a file or the result of a command,
for example:
- http://127.0.0.1:8080/tinyTerm.html return tinyTerm.html from current working folder
- http://127.0.0.1:8080/?ls%20-al return the result of "ls -al" from remote host
- http://127.0.0.1:8080/?!Selection return current selected text from scroll back buffer
Notice the “!” just before “Selection” in the last example, when a command is started with “!”, it’s being executed by tinyTerm instead of sent to remote host, There are about 30 tinyTerm commands supported for the purpose of making connections, setting options, sending commands, scp files, turning up ssh2 tunnels, see appendix for the list.
The script scp_to_folder.js referenced in the trailer, is a perfect example of scripting tinyTerm
// Javascript to download a highlighted file via scp.
var xml = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
var port = "8080/?";
if ( WScript.Arguments.length>0 ) port = WScript.Arguments(0)+"/?";
var filename = term("!Selection");
var objShell = new ActiveXObject("Shell.Application")
var objFolder = objShell.BrowseForFolder(0, "Destination", 0x11, "")
if ( objFolder ) term("!scp :"+filename+" "+objFolder.Self.path);
function term( cmd )
{
xml.Open ("GET", "http://127.0.0.1:"+port+cmd, false);
xml.Send();
return xml.responseText;
}
Appendix. list of supported tinyTerm commands:
These commands can be used programatically for scripting or interactively in local edit mode.
Connection
!com3:9600,n,8,1 connect to serial port com3 with settings 9600,n,8,1
!telnet 192.168.1.1 telnet to 192.168.1.1
!ssh pi@piZero:2222 ssh to host piZero port 2222 with username pi
!sftp -P 2222 jun01 sftp to host jun01 port 2222
!netconf rtr1 netconf to port 830(default) of host rtr1
!disconn disconnect from current connection
!Find {string} search for {string} in scroll back buffer
Automation
!Clear set clear scroll back buffer
!Prompt $%20 set command prompt to “$ “, for CLI script
!Timeout 30 set time out to 30 seconds for CLI script
!Wait 10 wait 10 seconds during execution of CLI script
!Loop 5 repeat the list of commands 5 times
!Waitfor 100% wait for “100%” from host during execution of CLI script
!Log test.log start/stop logging with log file test.log
Scripting
!Disp test case #1 display “test case #1” in terminal window
!Send exit send “exit” to host
!Recv get all text received since last Send/RecV
!Selection get current selected text
Options
~TermSize 100x40 set terminal size to 100 cols x 40 rows
~Transparency 192 set window transparency level to 192/255
~LocalEdit Enable local edit
~FontFace Consolas set font face to “Consolas”
~FontSize 18 set font size to 18
Extras
!Ftpd c:/tmp start/stop ftp server using c:/tmp as root directory
!Tftpd c:/tmp start/stop tftp server using c:/tmp as root directory
!scp tt.txt :t1.txt secure copy local file tt.txt to remote host as t1.txt
!scp :*.txt d:/ secure copy remote files *.txt to local d:/
!tun 127.0.0.1:2222 127.0.0.1:22
start ssh2 tunnel from localhost port 2222 to remote host port 22
!tun list all ssh2 tunnels
!tun 3256 close ssh2 tunnel number 3256