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Wizard Joined: 03 Mar 2001 Posts: 1127 Location: London

Something that just occurred today

The ability to open a local command prompt rather than just connecting via telnet. At work we do a fair bit of command line stuff and it'd be nice to be able to use zmud's scripting stuff to automate a few things.

Edit: Might be that this would be more suited to a zTelnet (zTelnetXP/cTelnet) application.
If so, then a feature to use an existing profile but connect to a different address with a prompt.
Example being if I'm testing whether a mail server is responding properly. I'd always want to try the 'Helo', 'Mail from:' commands, but I'd not want to have to create a new 'character' for each server. I'd just want to doubleclick 'Mail Tester' and have it prompt for which server to connect to, or even better show a list of servers that I'd previously entered.

Anyways, I'm probably looking beyond a first beta here ;)

Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2006 5:18 pm

Have you tried the #SESSION command in zMUD? The syntax is:

#SESSION hostname port

and it will open a new window and then connect to that host.

GURU Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 873 Location: USA

Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2006 10:34 pm

Yep. The command line arguments for zMUD are either the Session name of an existing character, or the hostname and port that you want to connect to. For example:

zMUD hostname.com 1234

would create a session to "hostname.com" on port 1234. You wouldn't need an existing character icon for this.

Tarn: About step 4: if you just enter the IP address into the Hostname field you don't need to click the "Try IP". The "Try IP" checkbox tells zMUD to use the stored IP address that was previously looked up for the host (displayed under the host name). If you are using a dummy host, then the lookup failed and the stored IP is invalid. The intent of the Try IP was to tell zMUD to use the stored IP address without having to change the hostname field. If you just put the IP address into the hostname field, then it's fine.

Wizard Joined: 03 Mar 2001 Posts: 1127 Location: London

Thanks, will have a look, should solve that bit. Any chance of being able to connect to a local command line?

Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 12:49 am

Not sure what you mean by "local command line". If you mean a DOS Prompt, then no. Isn't it simple enough to open a Command Prompt window and just switch to it? I can't build *everything* into zMUD...that's what a window-based operating system like Windows does for you...allows you to have multiple windows and switch between them.

GURU Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 873 Location: USA

Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 4:52 am

Sorry, I didn't read your post carefully to know which "Use IP Address" checkbox you were talking about. You are talking about the dialog you get when there is a DNS lookup error, and I was talking about the Edit Characters property box you get when you click the Edit button in the initial selection dialog. Sorry for the confusion.

The dialog you are talking about is displayed when there is a DNS lookup error. So it only makes sense to enter an IP address into the field. You can't enter a hostname into this field, because the whole reason for displaying this was because it couldn't lookup the host name in the first place. Sounds like the instructions on that form need to be changed, or else I can try having it do another lookup. I'll take a look at it.

But the point of this thread, I think, was that you can simply enter the IP address into the Hostname field in the edit character, or in the zMUD command line options. There is no need to use the Lookup Error dialog or a dummy MUD character or anything like that.

Wizard Joined: 03 Mar 2001 Posts: 1127 Location: London

Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 10:25 am

Guinn you should capture the output of the commands to a file and then use find to respond to the output.

It would however be an interesting/unique/funny thing to script a dos box in zMUD/CMUD. I wonder if a plugin can be created as a go between?

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

Well on a Windows server and XP Pro (not sure about the Home), you could enable the Telnet service (or you could install a different telnet server), then log in to your machine via telnet, and script anything you like. It's nearly the same as a command prompt: well I just tried Windows Telnet Server and it is a bit funky, but there is a telnet server in "radmin" - "Remote Administrator" which is almost the same as a command prompt. I haven't tried logging in to the latter with zMUD though - it may well not work. The Windows Telnet Server works though with zMUD. (Of course you might want to be careful with firewalls and where you access your machine from though.)

Wizard Joined: 03 Mar 2001 Posts: 1127 Location: London

Perfect. Windows telnet service is what I'm after, thanks.

I was wondering about RAdmin, as it's what we use at work to connect to most clients too, but since it seems to run everything over port 4899 I couldn't think of a way to let zmud piggyback it, but anyways, no matter, all done. Ta muchly.

Still, giving CMUD the option to 'Connect to local shell' would be a nifty trick, no?