Notetakers

[Henry Yen]

On Tue, Sep 07, 2010 at 06:53:10AM -0400, Leslie Fairall wrote:
> Actually, my Pac Mate only has Outlook and Internet Explorer for a 
> browser. Would cgi telnet still work?

Yes (tested it just now).  Be aware that the rohitab script outputs a logo and
some other stuff that could be removed for minimalism.  CGI access appears to
have many incarnations.  Just google for "CGI telnet" or "CGI ssh".  Here's a
page that compares "anyterm" (which is a CGI telnet script) with several other
generic and non-generic alternatives -- it's a very good read:
   http://anyterm.org/compared.html

The rohitab script just happens to be an "instant" working proof-of-concept,
in that it's just one single script, and can be installed on virtually any
webserver to which you have access, in a matter of seconds.  As with most
of these scripts, though, it cannot be used to run any interactive stuff
(i.e. anything that requires any user input before returning to the shell
prompt), so you have to use purely command-line even to edit files, etc.
(of course, the *nix model makes this quite straightforward).

It's quite possible to expand on the general notion of CGI shell access,
as more modern flexible process control is now available, e.g. using
"expect" and bash co-processes.