This is a list of undocumented features we have discovered -- Livingston Portmaster Commands to help you effectivly use your portmaster series machines to the fullest extent! The original author of the bpmtools package is Brian Pollack. The current maintainer of these tools is Gary E. Miller . ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- PREFACE Most of the commands listed in here come from one of two places, the portmaster-users mailing list, or the hard work of a system admin struggling to make the portmaster all that it can and should be. A large set of the commands listed here don't work from the portmaster protocal mode, they only work if you telnet into the portmaster. I do not recommend reading any further unless you are familiar with the portmaster and have a portmaster to "experiment" on. INTRODUCTION If you are still reading this, you are probably already familiar with the command "set console" to get into console mode on your port master. Well, that is about all you will need to know to continue. FROM THE LIST Here are two commands that have been documented by Carl from Livingston on the Portmaster-users mailing list. Both of these were suggestions to Livingston from Internet Direct, Inc. based on software we have written previously to do exactly the same thing. However, until the portmaster protocol became "available" to us, we had to use scripts that telnetted in to accomplish this, and it was slower than the new command set being created by Livingston directly. MODEM TABLE Date: Thu, 22 Jun 1995 15:16:43 -0700 From: Carl Rigney Message-Id: <199506222216.PAA07004@server.livingston.com> Subject: The Modem Table ComOS 3.1.2 includes an undocumented modem table which you can add entries to; you can then set the modem type for a port and the PortMaster will configure the modem for you. IMPORTANT! It expects the modem to be in factory default when it attempts to initialize it. If the port has never been configured before either, then when you set the modem type for the port and reset the port, the PortMaster will set the port for hardware flow control (RTS/CTS), set the speed properly, and turn modem control on. Command> add modem usr-v34 "USRobotics V.34" 57600 "AT&F1S0=1&W^OK" New script entry successfully added. Modem usr-v34 successfully added. Command> show table modem Short Name Long Name Type ---------------- -------------------------------------------------- ------ usr-v34 USRobotics V.34 User Command> show modem usr-v34 Short Name: usr-v34 Long Name: USRobotics V.34 Optimal Speed: 57600 Type: User Defined Init Script: Send Command Wait for Reply ------------------------------ ----------------------------- AT&F1S0=1&W OK Command> set s1 modem usr-v34 Modem type for port S1 changed from to usr-v34 Command> reset s1 Resetting port S1 Modems that you add go into the User Modem Table. In a future release of ComOS we intend to pre-load a System Modem Table with configuration strings for various popular brands of modems, so that configuring ports and modems will become as simple as: set all login network dialin set all security on set all modem usr-v34 reset all save all We'll also put that table on our Web server and our FTP site eventually. ATTACH We've added a command "attach" in 3.1.2 to make it easier to configure modems by hand. % telnet pm1 Trying 149.198.247.200 Connected to pm1. Escape character is '^]'. ComOS - Livingston PortMaster login: !root Password: pm1> attach s5 Trying 149.198.247.200 ... Connected - Escape character is '^]'. AT OK ^] (the escape character doesn't actually echo) telnet> send escape Connection Closed pm1> quit Goodbye... Connection closed by foreign host. % If you're on the console then the escape character will return you to the console command prompt and you don't need the "send escape" part. NOT FROM THE LIST Here are the commands and useful tools that I have been using with the portmaster, but have not yet seen described in officialese by the good technical folks at Livingston. Debug Values ------------ Some of the most important commands in the Livingston ComOS software have to do with the output of debug commands. First, telnet into the terminal server and type "set console" to get into console mode. Then, to set a debug value type "set debug ". The portmasters accept either decimal or hex values for debug mode. Following is a list of a few of my favorite debug values and what they appear to accomplish. value = 0x2b This value will show you when the portmaster tries to connect for certain services. The portmaster will periodically check to see if the "default host" is alive, or when the portmaster has to close a file descriptor. This value will show you those internal calls displayed directly to the screen. value = 0x54 This is one of the more useful debug values. When you then do a 'show' on a port, you will get some very valuable information for debugging ports. For example, here is a port on our terminal server: Modem: 0xb9 Line: 0x0 Flow: 0x24 Last 60 Recvd: \0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0 Last 60 Sent: rs log in as 'guest'\r\n\r\n(phx-ts5 port 2) indirect.com login: uptr = 0x65a50 iptr = 0x65a50 pop = 0 push = 0 fifo = 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 This is mostly useful to check to see if a modem is responding to rts/cts, and to find out what is *really* going on when you dial in and get "garbage" (as if the dte speed was set wrong, sighhhhh). value = 0x73 This is a good value to see if your terminal server is seeing other people on the net, or to test any new hosts on your network. This will show you every time the portmaster hears an arp request and who it is for and who it is from. Other Commands -------------- There are a few commands on the terminal server that don't appear to do much at all and a few that appear to do some useful things. The only really useful command that is not documented at all elsewhere, to the best of my knowledge, is "tftp". brian-test-1> tftp Usage: tftp get|put [nostop|config|comos] host filename - Here is how you can download the Com/OS files from the portmaster to - your computer. The first command is needed by most secure tftp - implementations. bash$ touch /tmp/comos; chmod 777 /tmp/comos brian-test-1> tftp put comos 165.247.1.5 /tmp/comos - Now you can generate the Portmaster code from the file on your - unix host. The portmaster just uploaded a file with two separate - files contained within it. They are very close to being in a uuencoded - format for unix. bash$ dos2bsd comos comos.uu bash$ cat comos.uu | sed 's/file pm/begin 755 pm/' | uudecode bash$ cat comos.uu | sed 's/file msg/begin 755 msg/' | uudecode bash$ ls comos.uu msgOS pm2OS - The pm20S file is a binary file that can be sent to another portmaster - via pminstall. The msgOS file contains all of the portmaster messages - that are printed. Most of the messages are in printf style formatting, - so if you know what the output looks like in the portmaster, you know - what values will replace each %s or %d in the file. Well, that's it for right now. As we discover more, we will make them available in subsequent "Secrets" files, although we hope most of the great features available will be implemented officially and directly by Livingston. If you know of a secret, or just want to fill us in on mistakes or questions with the above information, please e-mail gem@rellim.com. Remember, don't try this at home kids. . . Unless you have a spare portmaster to play with!