Kermit 95 3.0 beta 7 is out now!

[davidrg]

This is the seventh beta of Kermit 95, based on C-Kermit 10.0 beta.11. There are now fourteen(!) download options to support different versions of Windows on different CPU architectures, in addition to IBM OS/2.

Download the appropriate zip file for your computer, extract it somewhere convenient and run k95g.exe. If you get an error about some DLL missing when you run it, download and install the matching Visual C++ Redistributable for the version of CKW you downloaded and the version of Windows you're running. If you get an error about ctl3d32.dll when running the dialer, running ctl3dins.exe should fix the problem.

Things to be aware of when upgrading

• Kermit 95 no longer opens COM1 by default. If you previously depended on this, you'll need to add set port com1 to your k95custom.ini
• The mouse wheel now scrolls half a screen at time, rather than one line at a time. If you'd prefer to retain the old default, put the following in your k95custom.ini:

  set mouse wheel up none \Kupone
  set mouse wheel down none \Kdnone
  

The default SSH directory has changed!

The default SSH directory in beta 7 has changed from \v(home).ssh back to \v(appdata)ssh, the location used by Kermit 95 2.1.3 and earlier. This means Kermit 95 may not find your known hosts file, or your identity (public key authentication) files after upgrading to beta 7.

If you'd prefer to keep these files in \v(home).ssh, the same location used by OpenSSH on modern versions of windows, add the command set ssh directory \v(home).ssh to your k95custom.ini

Tip

To find out where \v(appdata), \v(home) and other such directories are on your disk, you can use the orient command.

Downloads

Modern Windows

For 32-bit or 64-bit PCs running Windows XP Service Pack 3 or newer and an x86 or ARM processor.

Download	Description
64-bit x86 Windows	For 64bit PCs with an x86 CPU. This is most likely the version you want. Visual C++ Redistributable : for Windows 7 and newer, or Windows XP SP3 and Vista
64-bit ARM Windows	For 64bit ARM devices running Windows 10 or 11. No Kerberos/GSSAPI support. Visual C++ Redistributable
32-bit x86 Windows	For 32bit PCs with an x86 CPU. Visual C++ Redistributable : for Windows 7 and newer, or Windows XP SP3 and Vista
32-bit ARM Windows	For 32bit ARM devices running Windows RT, 10 or 11 pre-24H2. No Kerberos/GSSAPI authentication support. Windows RT devices must be "jailbroken". Visual C++ Redistributable

The x86 and x86-64 Windows versions are compatible with MIT Kerberos for Windows v4.1. The 32-bit version of Kermit 95 may crash on a 64-bit system with 64-bit MIT Kerberos for Windows installed; use the 64-bit version of Kermit 95 if you experience this issue.

IBM OS/2

For 32-bit IBM OS/2 2.0 or newer. Optional TCP/IP support requires IBM TCP/IP 2.0 or newer, or IBM Internet Connection. Extract to a temporary location and run setup.exe to install.

This is the first open-source Kermit 95 release to feature OS/2 binaries. If you encounter any issues, please report it here on github either by starting a discussion or logging an issue so it can be fixed.

Download
IBM OS/2 2.0+

At this time no SSH backend is available for OS/2. Additionally, TLS/SSL is no longer supported on OS/2 and the dialer is not currently available due to an unidentified issue with Open Watcom.

Vintage Windows

If you're running something older than Windows XP SP3 or something that isn't a PC (doesn't have an x86 or ARM processor), one of these might work for you:

Download	CPU	Minimum Windows Version	Description
k95-3.0.0beta7-vintage.zip	x86	Windows NT 3.51, Windows 95	Feature (and security) reduced for compatibility with vintage PCs. If required: Visual C++ Redistributable
k95-3.0.0beta7-ia64.zip	IA64 (Itanium)	Windows Server 2008 R2	For Workstations and Servers with an Intel Itanium CPU. Past releases have been tested on Server 2008 R2, may work on older versions. Includes SSL/TLS support but no SSH.
k95-3.0.0beta7-axp.zip	DEC Alpha	Windows NT 3.51	For Workstations and Servers with a DEC Alpha AXP CPU (eg, AlphaStation, AlphaServer, DECpc AXP 150, Multia, etc) running Windows NT 3.51, 4.0 or Windows 2000
k95-3.0.0beta7-ppc.zip	PowerPC	Windows NT 3.51	For Workstations and Servers with a PowerPC CPU running Windows NT 3.51 or 4.0
k95-3.0.0beta7-mips.zip	MIPS	Windows NT 3.51	For Workstations and Servers with a MIPS CPU running Windows NT 3.51 or 4.0
k95-3.0.0beta7-nt350.zip	x86	Windows NT 3.50
k95-3.0.0beta7-axp-nt350.zip	DEC Alpha	Windows NT 3.50	For Workstations and Servers with a DEC Alpha AXP CPU (eg, AlphaStation, AlphaServer, DECpc AXP 150, Multia, etc) running Windows NT 3.50. Console version only.
k95-3.0.0beta7-mips-nt350.zip	MIPS	Windows NT 3.50	For Workstations and Servers with a MIPS CPU running Windows NT 3.50. Console version only. Untested.
k95-3.0.0beta7-axp64.zip	DEC Alpha	n/a	64bit build for Microsoft-internal 64bit versions of Windows 2000/XP for the Alpha

All of these builds are feature (and security) reduced for compatibility with these older Windows releases. No SSL/TLS, SSH, or Kerberos support. The builds for Windows NT 3.50 are even further reduced and lack NTLM, TAPI, GUI Toolbar support or dialer. The NT 3.50-compatible builds may work for serial connections only on Windows NT 3.10 (this is untested), but networking support is known to be broken on NT 3.10.

New features

• SSH Port forwarding (tunneling) is now supported again in both the Direct/Local and Reverse/Remote forms. You can add forwards before establishing a connection with SSH ADD { local, remote } and remove all forwards of a given type with SSH CLEAR { local, remote }. As in past releases of Kermit 95, these commands don't have any effect on an already established SSH connection - this may be changed in the future.
• New command to allow removing individual port forwards (SSH REMOVE { local, remote }) - previously Kermit 95 only had commands to remove all forwarded ports of a given type.
• X11 forwarding is back. Turn on with SET SSH X11 ON, and set your display with SET TELNET ENV DISPLAY
• The SSH backend has been moved into a DLL. On startup, K95 attempts to load the backend DLL provided the -#2 command line argument has not been supplied. If no SSH backend gets loaded, you can load one manually with the new ssh load command. This allows K95 to load the appropriate backend automatically based on operating system (Windows XP or not) and presence of MIT Kerberos for Windows. This removes the need to manually shuffle around ssh.dll variants, and also means that alternative SSH backends not based on libssh can now be supported should anyone want to build one, opening the door to SSH on vintage windows or OS/2 systems.
• SSH is now supported on 32bit ARM devices (Windows RT) for the first time
• Initial very limited SSH agent support has been added. Libssh is currently the limiting factor here and SSH agent support in K95 likely won't get much better without significant improvements to libssh in this area. See the SSH Readme for more details.
• REXX support has been extended to x86 systems running Windows XP or newer. This was previously an OS/2-only feature. You can now run REXX scripts and commands from the K95 command mode with the rexx command, and REXX scripts run from K95 can execute any Kermit 95 command by enclosing the K95 command in single quotes (eg, 'set parity none'). For full details, see the REXX section of the K95 manual: https://kermitproject.org/k95manual/os2k95.html#os2rexx. The REXX implementation is the current Regina REXX release. regutil.dll is included but note that the Console I/O Routines it provides are not currently compatible with K95. The rexxre.dll external function package is also included providing support for POSIX regular expressions.
• New command to turn the menubar on or off: set gui menubar visible { on, off }. When the menubar is turned off in this way (rather than with the command line parameter), important menu items are moved on to the system/control/window menu (right-click on the title bar for the actions menu and a few other things):
  
• New command to turn the toolbar on or off: set gui toolbar visible { on, off }
• New command to turn the statusbar on or off: set gui statusbar { on, off }
• New screen scroll kverbs:
  • \Kuphscn - Scroll up half a screen
  • \Kdnhscn - Scroll down half a screen
• IBM OS/2 support is back! It should work on IBM OS/2 2.0 or newer with optional TCP/IP support provided by IBM TCP/IP 2.0 or newer. No SSH or Presentation Manager GUI as in past Kermit/2 releases. Additionally:
  • No PC/TCP 1.2 or IBM TCP/IP 1.2.1 support (no SDK license; the DLLs from K95 2.1.2 should work if you need it)
  • No dialer yet (crashes when built with Open Watcom)
  • No SSL/TLS support (can't be built with Open Watcom)
  • No legacy telnet encryption (no longer useful, but may return in a future release anyway)
• Reimplemented the three checkboxes in the Dialers GUI settings page for the menu bar, toolbar and status bar. These options were new in Kermit 95 2.1.3 but were not present in previous open source releases of the dialer as it's based on code from K95 2.1.2. Any dialer entries edited with the dialer from C-Kermit for Windows betas 4-6, or Kermit 95 2.1.2 or older, will have these checkboxes default to ON. Entries last edited with the K95 2.1.3 dialer will have these three settings preserved. Turning off the GUI bars in this way does so via command line arguments rather than the new set gui commands so they can't be turned back on with the new set gui commands.
• Added support xterms Bracketed Paste feature
• Most of the users guide has been revised for this release and is now included as part of the release. The Kermit Security Reference and sections dealing with installing and uninstalling kermit 95 are still waiting to be overhauled.

Minor Enhancements and other changes

• All executables (*.exe, *.dll) now have proper versioninfo resources
• Upgraded to OpenSSL 3.4 which fixes a number of bugs and security issues and will receive security fixes until October 2026.
• K95G no longer opens COM1 by default. If you still want this behaviour, add set port com1 to your k95custom.ini
• The command set gui toolbar off has been renamed to set gui toolbar disabled to better describe what it actually does and to make room for new commands to turn it on and off. The previous syntax (set gui toolbar { off, on }) is still accepted for compatibility with existing scripts. set gui toolbar on still does nothing as it always has (disabling the toolbar is a session lockdown feature)
• The command set gui menubar off has been renamed to set gui menubar disabled to better describe what it actually does and to make room for new commands to turn it on and off. The previous syntax (set gui menubar { off, on }) is still accepted for compatibility with existing scripts. set gui menubar on still does nothing as it always has (disabling the menubar is a session lockdown feature)
• Implemented the set ssh identity-file command
• Added new command set ssh directory which allows you to set the default location where K95 looks for user known hosts and identity files.
• The default SSH directory has changed from \v(home).ssh back to \v(appdata)ssh
• The ssh key commands will now default to opening or saving keys in the SSH directory.
• The skermit command now has help text
• The default mouse wheel configuration has changed:
  • Wheel up/down now scrolls up/down half a screen (like PuTTY) rather than a single line. This provides better much speed than a line at a time with better usability than a screen at a time.
  • Shift+Wheel up/down now scrolls up/down one line
• Improve exit time when the console version (k95.exe) is just being run to show usage information (k95.exe -h or k95.exe --help). Previously K95 would pause for about 5 seconds after printing usage information before returning you to the shell.
• Fixed the telnet.exe and rlogin.exe stubs - these now behave as in K95 2.1.3
• Added the ssh.exe, ftp.exe and http.exe stubs that were included in K95 2.1.3
• iksdnt.exe is now included.

Fixed bugs

• Fix fopen causing a crash. This issue seems to have come in some recent version of the Microsoft C Runtime.
• Fix hitting backspace in an empty search-in-buffer crashing
• Fix pty dir (or trying to run anything else that isn't a valid program) causing a crash
• Fixed POTS modem support not being available on NT 3.50
• Fixed OpenSSL libraries not being included in the ARM32 distribution
• Fixed \Kexit (Alt+x by default) not updating the state of the associated toolbar button
• Fix the SSH global known hosts file not being set to something sensible on windows. It's now set to the value used by past Kermit 95 releases by default: \v(common)ssh\known_hosts2
• Fixed generation of 4096 RSA SSH keys
• Fixed stdout parameter not working correctly
• Fixed a pair of issues in the OS/2 NetBIOS implementation which has likely been totally broken since Kermit 95 v1.1.17:
  • SET HOST doing nothing for NetBIOS connections
  • NetBIOS name not being correctly padded when making a connection to a NetBIOS Server
• Fixed emacs turning off mouse reporting when started
• Fixed K95G hanging when closing the window or using File->Exit with when a connection is active and GUI dialogs are turned off
• Fixed K95 bug 797: Dialer generated connection scripts will no longer include SET LOGIN PROMPT or SET LOGIN PASSWORD commands if those fields do not have a value as this broke the use of the standard login.ksc script.
• Fixed K95 bug 770: When editing an FTP entry in the dialer the general settings page doesn't load the port number causing it to be cleared on save.
• Fixed TYPE command error "The /HEIGHT switch is not supported without /GUI" when the /HEIGHT switch has not been supplied.

Other Source Changes

• Fixed a selection of build warnings, and improved compatibility with the Open Watcom compiler.