Elks SSH client

[rafael2k]

Hi there! Is there any ssh client for Elks?
I realized there is SSH2DOS, which does support real-mode and 8086 natively:
https://sshdos.sourceforge.net/history2.txt

[rafael2k]

It is an Open Wattcom project (DJGPP support removed around version 0.1), with realmode-8086 project target:
https://github.com/AnttiTakala/SSH2DOS

It uses the large memory mode for compilation.

[ghaerr]

We don't have an SSH client for ELKS.

The SSH2DOS project looks interesting, but there's lots of work to use it for ELKS. A quick look shows the following issues which would need to be handled somehow:

• large executable: the ELKS compiler doesn't support large model (=far code/far data), only far code with a limit of 128kb. This means the programs may not actually link if they're too large, and each source file may have to be modified to include __far to support far pointers, along with new memory management routines for allocations and possibly far libc routines.
• 32-bit int default: some source looks like it requires 32-bit int as default. All cases would have to be looked at and long substituted instead in each source file.
• watcom TCP: the programs use a non-standard DOS-based TCP/IP instead of Berkeley sockets. Most of the lower level networking routines need to be rewritten for ELKS (Berkeley) sockets.
• testing: deep knowledge of SSH is likely required to get this all working, given the above.

[rafael2k]

Thanks @ghaerr ! Got it. I imagined it would be a bit more than a recompilation.
: )
Concerning the large model, would it be possible to use the Wattcom compiler to create the elks executable? I understand the libc would also need some work, as well code adaptation to match the correct semantic of the int size.
Changing watcom tcp calls to berkeley sockets would be the fun part I think. Anyway, I'll also take a look in other implementations to check if there is any better option.

[ghaerr]

Using Watcom could be a neat idea, but the wlink linker would have to be modified to emit an ELKS-compatible a.out format executable, rather than DOS-compatible .exe format. Other options would be a post-processor for .exe files to convert to a.out, or having ELKS load .exe files directly. All would be potentially a lot of work.

[rafael2k]

I have a feeling better I focus on compiling in gcc-ia16 and strip the wattcom tcp stack and see what I get.

[ghaerr]

If you're serious about trying to get this to work the first step would be attempting a compile/link just to see whether the code size is < 128k, as that's a hard limit. I checked the DOS .exe and its 143k so it could be close, depending on the amount of initialized data. It would be worth continuing to check around for small SSH implementations.