AppGate MindTerm is a Java implementation of the SSH client. It is available free of charge for personal and non-commercial use.
We've tried to make it as easy as possible for you to run MindTerm from within your Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser. You should be able to find most of the information you need to know in the MindTerm User's Guide.
We provide several ways for you to run MindTerm:
You can run the digitally-signed applet from our web page. This program has been cryptographically signed by the author, so that your web browser can verify that it has not been altered. Netscape and Internet Explorer will both give you the option of granting privileges to the applet to perform actions which, for security reasons, Java applets are not normally allowed to perform.
The first time you run the applet, you will be presented with dialog boxes informing you that the applet is requesting additional privileges which are "high risk." You need to grant those privileges in order for all of MindTerm's features to work.
You can fetch an unsigned version of the applet directly from on of CSLab's timesharing servers. This doesn't require you to grant any privileges to the applet, but you will only be able to connect to the host you retrieved the applet from, and many of MindTerm's features (such as port forwarding) will be unavailable to you.
You can download the applet (and the HTML page to launch it) onto your local disk. You might want to do this if you're running Netscape or Internet Explorer at home, or on your laptop computer. It takes a couple of extra steps to set up, but it means that you don't need to download the applet from our web server every time you want to use it.
Netscape will allow you to grant privileges to even an unsigned applet, if it's loaded from a local disk.
Internet Explorer will typically not allow you to grant these privileges to the unsigned applet with the default security settings. However, under Windows 2000 or Windows NT, you can run MindTerm as a Java application (rather than as an applet within Internet Explorer) by double-clicking on the .jar file from the desktop. This is the way we recommend launching MindTerm under Windows 2000 or Windows NT.
If you're running a different version of Windows (e.g., a version prior to Windows 2000, or Windows XP without a Java runtime installed), double-clicking on the .jar file probably won't work: you'll need to run MindTerm within a web browser. If you're running Microsoft Internet Explorer rather than Netscape, you should download the signed .cab file version of the applet rather than the unsigned version.
Note that cryptographic signatures on Java applets have a limited lifetime. If you download the signed applet for Netscape or Internet Explorer to your local disk, you may need to update your copy periodically, whenever the certificate which was used to sign the applet expires.
To use MindTerm, you must have Java enabled in your web browser.
When you go to one of the MindTerm launch pages, you can select which host you want to connect to. If you are connecting from within the University of Toronto campus networks, you can put any hostname into the form (unless using the unsigned version of the applet); however, if you're connecting from outside U of T, you will only be able to select dvp.cs, qew.cs, or otp.cs.
Tip: If you select More Options... when connecting from outside U of T, you'll be able to connect to any host within the University, not just those three CSLab servers. You'll also be able to specify other options, such as the terminal type, number of rows and columns, and font size.
Selecting More Options... a second time will present the most powerful interface: it will allow you to completely customize MindTerm, by setting any or all of the options supported by the applet. See the MindTerm User's Guide for descriptions of all of the available options.
Tip: After you've started the applet with the "Start MindTerm SSH" button, you can save the launch page (File -> Save As...) to your local disk (or even save it under your public_html directory). When you load the saved page, MindTerm will be re-launched with the same options. This can be useful if you set a lot of options.
After you launch the applet with the "Start MindTerm SSH" button, do not close your browser window or redirect it to a different page while the applet is running. Your browser window controls the applet: MindTerm may exit or stop responding if you close the browser window or send it to a different URL.
One of the most interesting features of Mindterm 2.1 is the FTP to SFTP Bridge feature. This feature allows you to use any FTP client software to transfer files over an SSH connection.
To use this feature:
You should now be able to transfer files via FTP. MindTerm will act like an FTP server to your FTP software or web browser, but will transfer files to and from the machine you're connected to via SSH.
Note: If you're running your web browser on a Unix or Linux machine, and you're not root, you may get an error when you try to enable the bridge. This is because only root is allowed to use port numbers less than 1024. If you run into this problem, change the "Listen port" from 21 to 2121, and configure your FTP software to use port 2121 instead of the default.
For more information about this feature, see Chapter 8 of the MindTerm User's Guide.