Connecting to CMS terminal with TuTTY
Using CMS terminal UI is easy; in some aspects it is even easier than CMS Supervisor application. There are lots of different terminal emulators out there, simple and complex, free and paid. Some require extensive learning, some do not. I will show how to use TuTTY, a freeware SSH and Telnet client software, with CMS terminal. TuTTY has many advantages, one of them is that you don’t even have to install it–it’s so small that you can just download the executable file, drop it on your desktop and run it, nothing more. Besides being small and easy to use, TuTTY has several enhancements aimed specifically at Avaya users. One of them is native support for Sun xterm terminal type, it means you won’t have to mess with settings. Well, not much anyway. :)
Here is a step by step instruction on how to connect to your CMS system.
- Download TuTTY via this link: http://tutty.dwalin.ru/download/tutty/0.60.2.0/tutty-0.60.2.0.zip and unzip it on your Windows desktop.
- Double-click tutty.exe to run it. You will see TuTTY Configuration window:
- Enter your CMS system’s host name or IP address in the corresponding field. Protocol is set to SSH by default, which is fine with CMS systems R13 and later.
- On the left pane named Category, click on Terminal – Keyboard category. Set Function keys and keypad field to “Sun Xterm”.
- Go to Window – Behaviour (Yeah, that’s British roots here) and enter something meaningful in Window title field:
- Go back to Session category and enter a name in the Saved Sessions field – something like “CMS” or alike. Press Save button.
- Now you have a saved session that you can run at any time. Click Open button and TuTTY should open a connection to your CMS server. If everything’s right, you should see a login prompt.
- Enter your username – the same that you use with CMS Supervisor application – and then your password. After that, you should see terminal type prompt. By default it is xterm so just press Enter.
- If you see messages like this, it would mean your IT guys are not doing their job. ;) In my case it’s lab CMS system and its configuration is not so important so that’s OK.
- CMS says to wait for menu to come up and there is usually a slight delay, about five seconds.
- Voila, you have connected to the CMS terminal. That was easy, isn’t it?
- After that it goes self-explanatory, I mean literally. Press F1 and choose “Automatic on” and CMS will show you help automatically for every field you need to fill.
- Now you will see field help every time you do something. It gets annoying after a time so don’t forget that you know how to turn it off.
- As the last but not least step, create a link on your desktop for your newly created TuTTY session. It is done with the usual right-click on desktop, choosing New -> Shortcut and browsing to tutty.exe. Remember placing it on your desktop? Well, you can move it wherever you want (and have access to) and create as many shortcuts as you need. After creating a shortcut, open its properties and add a parameter in Target field, it should be ‘-load “Your Saved Session Name”‘, without single quotes. Press OK and you’re all set.
Double clicking your new shortcut will launch the saved session every time and you will only have to enter your username and password. In fact, you can avoid even that step—but it will require using cryptographic keys for authentication and that topic goes beyond this article. It is all documented though, you can read it up yourself if interested.
thanx a ton Dwalin it’s so informative for me and i connected as well to my CMS server , could u please let me how to take the backup of CMS server, i m using the ver 16 here.
Again thank u very much.
Dwalin, what if your F keys are not working? Also, what if the “Unix” option is not available under the “commands” tree? I am using the default VT100 emulator.
Hi Trinity,
F keys are not working because you’re using VT100 emulator, it has different key mappings. I added Sun xterm keyboard to deal with CMS terminal specifically. Just set TuTTY to use Sun xterm and use default choices when CMS terminal application comes up.
UNIX option under Commands tree depends on your user permissions. Make sure you have “UNIX (r) system” tick set in Feature Access menu.
Regards,
Alex.
Hi Alex,
Thanks for the reply.
I checked my permissions, and Unix(r) is checked, and i tried SUN xterm, but i get the same results. Not sure what is going on…I have always used emulator type VT100, and it appears to be the same as xterm, but obviously, neither one is working…
Again, thanks for the reply.
Well TuTTY is only a terminal emulator, it just displays whatever server sends over so missing UNIX item in Commands menu is a server side problem. I could tell you how to check user permissions in the database if you have root access to that CMS.
As for F keys, are they working with any other terminal emulator? If you set TuTTY emulation to Sun xterm, go to shell and press F keys, what characters it will display? F keys are just send character strings you know, and application dependent at that.
Regards,
Alex.
Thx dwalin!
Secure CRT is best for me, and i use keymap func for F5-F8 keys
F5 “\eOt”
F6 “\eOu”
F7 “\eOv”
F8 “\eOl”
its grabbed from your mod tutty.
Саша, you great! :)
Is it possible to show russian letters (names, AUX reason codes) correctly?
window → translation → utf-8, but still there are different problems.
Yes, there are all kinds of trouble with Unicode in CMS Terminal. I guess that’s because it was developed way before Unicode idea was even conceived; anyhow, it doesn’t work all that well. Try setting CLIENT_LOCALE environment variable to ‘en_us.utf8’ before running terminal application, maybe that will help. I doubt it though; I think UTF-8 support in CMS Terminal is just broken.
Our LINK Max900 just crapped out and I’m using the TuTTY. As stated by Trinity, I’m having issues with the keyboard. First off I don’t get a main menu option where you use xterm as the default. I get about three or four different terminal options. Each one of them are pretty identical. I’ve been able to use the system and make changes but the main problem I’m having is saving the changes.
The F keys do not work for at all. I’m assuming I need these to save changes or go to next page.
Thanks for this post.
Hi Dave,
First of all, make sure you’ve downloaded the latest available TuTTY version: http://tutty.dwalin.ru/download/tutty/0.60.2.0/tutty-0.60.2.0.zip
Unzip it and run tutty.exe. You will see the TuTTY configuration window; go to Terminal -> Keyboard and switch Function keys to Sun Xterm.
Then open a connection to your CMS server and enter xterm if it asks what terminal type you want to use.
Hope that will help.
Regards,
Alex.
Thank you so much for your reply, even after two years you are manning the fort, thank you.
I do have the updated TuTTY.
So completing the Keyboard Function to Sun Xterm and logging into the system.
Here’s what I get after entering Username and PW.
System: G3siV8 Software Version: G3V8i.04.0.046.5
Terminal Type (513, 715, 4410, 4425, VT220) [513]. 513 is the default. When I select any of them they are all the same setup on the next screens. I have limited control. I have to enter commands in the bottom of the screen. I’m able to navigate to changing extension and whatever else I need, I just cant seem to confirm changes or go to next page to confirm changes.
Any advice would help me tremendously.
Hi Dave,
Somewhat lately but it looks like you’re logging into a Definity switch not into CMS server. In that case you’d need to use 513 function keys in TuTTY instead of Sun xterm. I wrongly assumed you were trying to connect to a CMS server, sorry about that.
Regards,
Alex.
Senor,
Thank you very much for your awesome program. As I was waiting for your reply I was going through some nasty dusty boxes and found Definity Site Administrator emulation software that we received during install of this unit.
This emulator seems to work fine.
During all this research I educated myself on something new. So thank you :)
Good Morning,
It never hurts to ask. Here is what i’m trying to do. I’m trying to change out systems dial out function. Right now we have to press “9” in order to get a local line. I’d like to make the change for that in emergency dialing. Instead of dialing “9911” to get 911. I’d like to change it so you have to dial “911”. And this will be the only modification all other numbers you still have to dial “9” before dialing outside the switch, only “911” will be exempt.
If you know the correct terminology, settings, anything that will assist; i’d greatly appreciate it.
Have a good Sunday!
Hi Dave,
I’m sorry but I can’t give you any good advice without knowing your system; or come to think of it, any good advice at all. It’s been several years since I’ve touched a live Definity system and things get blurry.
Regards,
Alex.
This is a great tutorials
Hello, I am using the latest version of TuTTY but I have run into a problem. When I open TuTTY it immediately opens a session to the last saved device. I cannot get the TuTTY configuration screen to appear and I need to create a session to a new device. Thank you for your time.
Hi Robert,
How do you start TuTTY? Could it be that the shortcut you use to open TuTTY is configured to load a saved session? In that case you can try to locate tutty.exe and start it with no command line options; that should open the default configuration dialog.
If that doesn’t help you can always run “tutty.exe -cleanup” to nuke all saved sessions. This is the last resort option because there’s no way back even if you regret doing it later. :)
Regards,
Alex.
Good morning Alex, thank you for your quick reply. TuTTY did get configured to load a presaved session. The last time (two weeks ago) I used TuTTY it opened normally. When I was working with it I must have mistakenly saved that session as the TuTTY.exe. Earlier this morning I went into regedit to the LOCAL USER/Software folder, opened TuTTY and deleted the “Sessions” folder. After that, TuTTY operated normally. I did save a shortcut specifically for my normal session on my desktop, making sure to give it a new name. The TuTTY.exe shortcut now operates normally, opening the configuration screen.
I like your option better though, as messing with the Registry makes me a little nervous!!
Thank you again for your time. I’m saving your instructions to a older right next to TuTTY.
Glad to hear you could resolve this issue. :)
Editing Registry is OK as long as you don’t touch anything outside TuTTY folder. That’s exactly what “tutty -cleanup” will do: remove its Registry entries.
Regards,
Alex.
Is there a way to execute a command to get the same output as this terminal.
For example:
I am trying to write a script to collect the connection status under maintenance but cannot figure out how to. I was able to locate ./check_status script for rt_sockets and I was wondering if there is a script file within CMS that gives me the status for all acd statuses.
Do I need to access the database for this?
Thanks
Hi Dwalin,
Can you please provide me an alternate method to connect to Avaya CM other than ASA (Avaya site administration) As ASA does not allow me – it gives error message which says – ports not available. Please help I as need to export few reports from Avaya CM on daily basis. Thank you very much.
It’s 2023 and I am glad this article is still up. Thanks for the excellent resource.