tn5250 - Man Page

an implementation of the 5250 telnet protocol

Synopsis

tn5250 [Options] HOSTNAME
xt5250 [Options] HOSTNAME
tn5250 -version

Description

tn5250 emulates IBM's 5250 compatible terminals to connect over TCP/IP to an IBM AS/400.  The terminal emulation works on any local terminal supported by curses, and provides 132x27 and full colour support where possible.

An IBM 5250 terminal supports a number of special keys, and does a lot  of processing itself before sending data to the host system.  Because a standard ASCII terminal does not support all these keys, tn5250 uses control sequences to perform the operations.

Named session support (with the env.DEVNAME option) is available for most versions of OS/400, but is only supplied with V4R3 and later versions.  For V3R2, V3R7, V4R1 and V4R2, please see informational APAR II10918.

Options

tn5250 options are described in the tn5250rc(5) man page.

Usage

This manual assumes that the user is familiar with a real 5250 terminal, or another 5250 emulator, and only describes features relevant to tn5250 itself.

Keyboard Mapping

The following table lists the 5250 functions implemented by tn5250, and the corresponding keypresses.  Keys are represented as Emacs does: C-a means hold Ctrl and press A, M-a means press Esc or C-g followed by A, and C-M-a means press Esc or C-g followed by C-a. Most setups also let you use the Alt or Meta key for M- keypresses.

FunctionKeypress
F1 - F10f1 to f10, M-1 to M-
F11f11 [1], M--
F12f12 [1], M-=
F13 - F24f13 to f24 [1], M-! to M-+
Enterreturn, enter, C-j, C-m
Leftleft
Rightright
Upup
Downdown
Roll Upnext, pagedown, C-d, C-f
Roll Downprev, pageup, C-b, C-u
Backspacebackspace [1]
Homehome, C-o
Endend
Insertinsert, M-i, M-delete
Deletedelete [1]
ResetC-r, M-r
PrintC-p, M-p
HelpM-h
SysReqC-c, M-s
ClearM-c
FieldExitC-k, M-x
TestReqC-t
ToggleM-t
EraseC-e
AttnC-a, M-a
DupM-d
Field+C-x, + [2]
Field-M-m, - [2]
NewLineC-M-j
Next Fieldtab, C-i
Prev Fieldbacktab [1]
RefreshC-l, M-l
QuitC-q
  1. Which keys generate f11-f24, backtab, backspace and delete is very dependent on the configuration of the terminal.
  2. + and - only work as Field+ and Field- in signed numeric fields.

Display

The screen display tries to be the same as a colour 5250 terminal. There are some unavoidable differences though:

  • ASCII terminals (and curses) do not support the 5250 column separators.
  • Some terminals (mostly ones based on the VGA text mode) do not support underlining.  If this is the case and tn5250 does not detect it automatically, you should pass the -u option.
  • Some terminals (such as xterm) do not support blinking text.

Examples

These are some examples of the use of tn5250:

tn5250 as400sys

Connect to the system as400sys, using the default translation map (37) and a generated session name (QPADEV####).

tn5250 map=870 env.DEVNAME=session1 env.TERM=IBM-3477-FC as400sys

Connect to as400sys using the translation map for CCSID 870 (Eastern Europe), the session name SESSION1 and with a terminal supporting colour and a 132x27 display.

Bugs

Please report any bugs you find to the bug tracker or to the linux5250 mailing list.  See the tn5250 web site for more details.

See Also

tn5250rc(5), lp5250d(1), http://tn5250.sourceforge.net/, RFC1205, RFC2877, II10918.

Authors

tn5250 was written by Michael Madore, Jay Felice, Scott Klement and others; see the AUTHORS file for details. This manual page was written by Carey Evans.

Referenced By

lp5250d(1), tn5250rc(5).

12 November 2001