OSCLI daemon
v1.06 (25 January 1998)
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On a network, it is often useful to be able to control other computers that
that may not be physically close to you.  OscliD allows you to do this
for RISC OS computers, using the mechanism of "star commands", and a number
of special tools.  Unlike other programs that work in a similar vein,
OscliD works at the lowest level, which means that often you can even
`get through' to a crashed computer.  (The inspiration for this was when
a certain A5000 started crashing regularly, leaving the modem still online.
When the computer crashed, none of the other applications would get through
to it, but OscliD was low-level enough to accept a "hangup" command.)

 The OscliD system requires a BSD-derived TCP/IP stack; i.e. any one of
FreeNet, Acorn's "Internet" stack, or ANT's stack.  If you are running
Access+, you will already be running a TCP/IP stack, but the IP addresses
/may/ be rather convoluted if you haven't set them up explicitly.
(Note: in order to find out a computer's local IP address, if you are running
Access+, enter "*Show Inet$EtherIPAddr" at the command prompt.)

 If a computer is to understand how to execute *commands sent to it, it
needs to be running the *command "daemon" -- OscliD.  To do this, simply
include the !OscliD application somewhere in the boot sequence of the
machines you want to control.  Once you've done this, you can use the
"roscli" utility to issue *commands to all the computers "under your power".

 Now read "roscli" and "Security" to find out how to send commands using the
"roscli" utility, and how to make your network secure from unwanted people.
You may also want to read "Tools".

 You'll find full buildable source code in the same directory as !OscliD;
you /will/ need an extended BASIC assembler to compile it, though; one that
supplies ADRL.  An example one is !BAX by Ben Dooks <ben@fluff.org>,
available from http://www.doggysoft.co.uk/.

 This software is distributed under the GNU Generic Public License:

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
    Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

 The license file can be found as `GPL' and should be in the documents
directory of the archive you received this in.

 In future, I'll perhaps add logging of the commands received, on-the-fly
authorisation code encryption via DES/Blowfish/Idea and Unix-style
authentication on all received commands.  It has also been suggested
that OscliD could be converted into a generic RISC OS rexecd implementation.
Also, it is possible that *OscliD_Task is entirely redundant, and that
*WimpTask will duplicate its function precisely.  If this is true, it
would be good to remove the *OscliD_Task code altogether, as this would
simplify OscliD somewhat.

Chris Rutter <chris@fluff.org>
(http://www.fluff.org/widget/)
