Installing Exceed. (Exceed Exceed 15 3D + SecureShell 15)

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1 Date: June 2015 Author: D.Savas Installing Exceed (Exceed Exceed 15 3D + SecureShell 15) Introduction University of Sheffield has a site license for the X Windows terminal emulation software named Exceed. For information: Exceed was originally owned by a company named Hummingbird, the software is now owned by a company named Open Text 1. Exceed software allows remote graphical terminal access to Unix hosts from any Windows workstation. 2. You can use Exceed if you do not wish to depend on the browser access method as described in (5) below. 3. If you require only line-mode access (i.e. without any graphics capabilities), a simple terminal access client such as PUTTY may be sufficient to use. 4. If you prefer not to use Exceed, there is a method of graphical terminal access to iceberg simply via the internet browser. This is achieved by pointing your browser to Although the browser access service is aimed at providing full graphical interface to iceberg, it can also be used to access other remote hosts. 5. See: for other methods of terminal access to iceberg. The Exceed software can be delivered to Sheffield University users in a physical media DVD or by downloading it from research software support pages. If it is downloaded from the support pages, it will be in a format that can be self-extract into a working directory to recreate the DVD image. After such self-extraction these instructions for installing Exceed will be equally valid for installing from a downloaded DVD image directory. The DVD contains three (.exe) installation packages and corresponding three installation guides for Exceed 15, Exceed 15-3D and SecureShell 15 respectively. On Windows Vista or Windows 7 platforms, you may have to run the installation (.exe) files as administrator by right-clicking on them and selecting running as administrator.

2 Installation 1- Insert the Exceed 15 DVD in the drive and move into folder Exceed 15, 2- Run opentextceed15_dvdesd.exe by double clicking onto it to start installation 3- Choose the Installation Language 4- If you already had an earlier version of this software you will be notified about its presence and by default your current settings will be migrated (saved) for use with the new version. We recommend that you accept this unless the previous version of Exceed was rendered completely unusable and you want to make a fresh start by un-clicking the Migrate Settings Field. If at any one point you are asked to select the type of installation choose personal installation. 5- Accept the terms of the License Agreement. 6- Enter/Accept Username and Organisation and select anyone who uses this PC 'unless you want to limit Exceed to a particular user on your PC'. If migrating settings from a previous version this option may be greyed out. 7- Accept or specify the install location of the software. 8- If you had selected to make Exceed available to any user on the PC, you will be asked if you need to allocate a directory to each user or share a directory for saving the settings for Exceed. Unless there are multiple users of the same PC, shared-user-directory will be sufficient for your needs. 9- Select Typical Installation 10- Click Install (this step will take several minutes). 11- Restart the computer - No. 12- Select Back, Select Exit, Up to the top level of the DVD 13- Next run opentextceed3d15_dvdesd.exe by double clicking on it to install the Exceed/3D components, accept default install location 14- On the OpenText Installation window click on Install OpenText Exceed/3D and follow the installation similar to (3) to (13) above. 15- Finally run opentextsecureshell15_dvdesd.exe by double clicking on it to install the secure shell features in a similar manner. 16- Restart the computer. Using Exceed

3 Having installed Exceed, you are now ready to use it to access the remote Unix hosts on which you are a registered user, such as iceberg at Sheffield University. Start Exceed via: Start -> Programs ->Open Text Exceed 14 -> Exceed Tools-> Xstart This will open up a Client Startup panel which should be filled in as shown The Command field can contain the name of any X-windows based program provided on the host machine but the normal thing to do is to start up an X- terminal shell that will allow you to issue further commands. The minimal Xterm command is; xterm but a better X-terminal with a slider to one side of it to allow viewing of past output and to run your login scripts is (xterm -ls -sb -sl 1024) & On some systems the back-space character does not work as intended and characters can not be deleted one at a time on the command line. Starting xterm with the following extra parameters will usually cure this problem by setting the CTRL+H generated by the backspace key on the keyboard to be interpreted as a kill character. (xterm ls -sb -sl j -tm 'erase ^H') & If the backspace key generates CTRL+? then replace ^H with ^? above.

4 Note also that ^ is the literal hat character and does not signify keeping the ctrl key pressed. If all fails the stty unix command can be used to try to match the keyboard onto terminal. For example: stty erase ^H If you are using Exceed to connect to another host, it is possible that the Secure Shell method of connection,as used to iceberg', is not available. In which case you can still fill the XStart form as shown above but select as method REXEC instead of Secure Shell. As this is the first time you run Exceed you may be asked to allow Exceed to have firewall exemptions for Exceed to work correctly You will also be asked if you wish to save a new server key, sent by iceberg. The answer to this question is not crucial, so just accept the default offered. Having completed the Xstart panel, Clicking on the Run icon (green) will test to see if everything is functioning as expected. After a short pause you should observe an xterm window opening on your desktop which is ready to receive Unix commands onto the remote host. We have noticed that occasionally the first attempt to start a session fails but subsequent tries work, suggesting a minor bug in Xstart. Once you managed to get a connection going, you can save these setting for future use by clicking on File -> Save as and give it a name that is the same as your host name, for the above example iceberg'. These files are called x- session ( *.xs ) files. The best place to save them for convenience is your desktop. This way, they will always be visible and connections can be achieved by a simple double-clicking of these icons. Problems with the fonts Earlier versions of Exceed use to present problems associated with default font sizes, sometimes producing almost unreadably small text. Version 14 seems to have corrected these problems but even then you may find that the font sizes are not to your liking. There are couple of ways of changing the font characteristics. These are; (a) On the xterm window's main text area, while holding down the Ctrl button click and hold down the right-hand-mouse-button to expose the VT-Fonts menu. Drag the mouse down to select largefonts. (b) When issuing the xterm command on the host try issuing it with larger fonts option; for example; xterm fn 8*15 & To make life easier on iceberg, we have created couple of locally modified xterm commands that you can try. These are Xterm and uterm. You can use either one of these in place of xterm. Problems due to the firewall If you are accessing a Unix host which is located outside the Sheffield University campus (Note that VPN and RATS users as well as the halls of

5 residence networks are considered to be inside the campus ) you may find that the normal x-traffic is blocked by the university firewall for the default settings of Exceed. Information on the current firewall policy and its effects on users can be found on If you are having problems when accessing remote sites, you will need to look at these pages as well as any such information provided by the remote site. Copying and pasting. It is possible to copy both TEXT and GRAPHICS images from/to your Xterminal or x-application window to/from a Windows application such as MS- Word or Notepad. To copy and paste text in ASCII text format from an X-Window to MS-Window application - Highlight a block of text by L.H.Click + HOLD mouse and drag to end of block of interest. - Release the mouse button. - Click exceed icon on L.H.S. of your XWindow and select o EDIT COPY X-SELECTION TO CLIP-BOARD. o then PASTE into MS application as usual. - Note that you can also (copy all) or (copy rectangle) selecting rectangle by an immediate click drag mouse ( to a file ) you will be asked to choose a file or to printer. To copy and paste text in ASCII text format from an MS-Window to X-Window application - From the windows application ( copy ) a block of text ( to_the_clipboard) - On the Xwindows screen, click middle mouse button to paste what was last copied to the clipboard. To copy and paste graphical images from X-Window to an MS-Window application ( such as Word, Paint, PowerPoint ) - Click exceed icon on L.H.S. of your XWindow and select o EDIT COPY X-SELECTION (or rectangle) TO CLIP-BOARD ( or file ) o Then EDIT PASTE into MS Windows programs that can handle graphics (BMP ) images, such as WORD or PAINT. Any other problems Exceed related news and documents will be maintained under the pages.