blogin

What is blogin

blogin is a simple interactive graphical interface for setting up remote connections from a Unix^TM machine supporting X windows to another (Unix^TM) machine. It invokes the protocols telnet, rlogin, ssh, rsh, ftp, talk, finger and ping (the default is telnet).

How blogin works

blogin reads host names and IP addresses from two files. The system hosts file (usually /etc/hosts) provides global information about the `host name - IP address' pairs. The user's personal list (which is called `the short list') is stored in the file ~/.bloginhosts.

The user should specify a remote machine, a protocol and optionally a user name in the remote machine. A subsequent connect request opens a suitable `xterm' for handling the remote session.

The short list can be prepared either by editing ~/.bloginhosts manually or by using facilities provided by blogin. These facilities include insertion, deletion and editing of entries in the user's personal hosts file.

Note that blogin never makes an explicit network connection itself. On the contrary, it calls suitable routines provided by your system to handle the remote connection and to carry out the desired task. A telnet connection, for example, is effected by calling the machine's telnet application. blogin is just an easy and elegant interface that hides from the user the shell level calls for the remote connections.

How blogin looks

Here is a dump of the main blogin window.

blogin: Window dump

The left list is read from the system's hosts file and the right one from the user's short list file. The host name and IP address for the selected entry is shown above these lists. The buttons towards the right of the window handles the following connection and editing tasks:

Specify a user name
Select a protocol
Open an `xterm' with the desired connection request
Manipulate user's short list files, etc.

The on-line help provides sufficient information on the functionalities of these window components. We won't go into details here.

Requirements

The Tcl/Tk shell wish. blogin has been found to work well with the versions Tcl8.0/Tk8.0. I didn't check how it works with the earlier versions of Tcl/Tk. If you have problems, let me know.
You must have the following programs installed in your machine: telnet, rlogin, ssh, rsh, ftp, talk, finger and ping.

Installation

Edit the first few lines of the file blogin, if you have problems with the default settings. More precisely, change the following assignments if necessary.

# Change the following line if remote host information exist elsewhere
# in your machine
set HOSTFILE "/etc/hosts"

# Change the following lines according as the type of xterm you want to open
set TERMTYPE "nxterm"
set TERMFLAGS "-font 7x14"

If you do not have `nxterm', but have `color_xterm', set TERMTYPE accordingly. Similarly if you are not sure about what fonts your system provides, just make TERMFLAGS an empty string, that is,

set TERMFLAGS ""

That's all. You don't have to edit anything else. Now copy the file blogin with execute permissions (755 for example) to a suitable directory, so that you (and if possible, other users in your local machine) can access the executable from any place.

What's in a name?

Still, if you care, here it is: Barda's login interface.

Download

Click here to get blogin (gzipped version).

Copyright notice

© 1998 by Abhijit Das (Barda). blogin is distributed freely for personal use. You can redistribute and mirror it free of charge as long as the original author gets credit and this copyright notice remains intact.

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