© Copyright Robert Vasvari, 1993-98.

SSH/UNIX Connection preferences

The preferences in RBrowser have two levels: global and connection specific settings.

Connection preferences apply to a single connection only. This panel is different for each connection protocol. Below is the panel for the UNIX protocol. Use the Remote/Connection Preferences/Current Connection (CMD !) menu to bring up the panel.

Connection preferences can be used on a connection even if it is not open. If the connection is not open the new settings will be saved in the preferences file and used next time the connection is used. If you want to edit these preferences before you ever log in, use the "Edit Preferences" button on the login panel.

1. Character Encoding:

You can tell RBrowser what character encoding the remote host uses. This could help the browser to correctly display characters in the upper ASCII set (eg ¥ or ª, etc..)which are used in a lot of languages and interpreted differently on various hosts. The default is Iso Latin 1, which will work for most Sun and HP systems.

2. Refresh Time Period:

Since RBrowser caches the filesystem, there is a way to make the caches invalid after a certain amount of time. For instance, once you load the directory /User/home, the next time you select it in the browser it will use the cached copy to display, and it will NOT go to the remote host for the info. If the refresh time is set to 10 minutes (default), then after 10 minutes of inactivity in this connection will automatically invalidate this cache. Any subsequent action involving this directory will result in reloading the contents of the directory from the remote host

3. Remote Shell:

If the UNIX protocol is used to connect to the remote host, RBrowser is actually talking to a shell on the remote machine. It is encouraged to use a shell that is eight bit clean (like ksh, zsh) so international character support will work correctly. RBrowser will search the remote host for shells in the following order: "zsh","ksh","jsh","sh","bash". RBrowser MUST find one of these, otherwise the UNIX protocol cannot be used.

4. Shell Search Path:

If the UNIX protocol is used to connect to the remote host, RBrowser makes heavy use of the standard UNIX utilities, such as cp, mv, gzip, chmod, etc.. By default, RBrowser uses the most standard implementations of these utilities. The fields in Program Paths allow you to make your connection to use more up-to-date versions of these utilities, for instance the ones in /usr/5bin that is available on SunOS and Solaris. It is encouraged to use a shell that is eight bit (like ksh, zsh) so international character support will work correctly. However, these shells are not always available. This path definition is in the following format:

fullpath1:fullpath2:....fullPathn:

If you edit it, make sure to include the ':' separators.

5. Follow Links:

If on (default), soft links will be represented as if the target file was actually there. In this mode the inspector will not show that the file is a link. This is due to the limitations of the bourne shell. It would be very expensive to detect a link and the same time load its target right away (the local viewer does have that feature).If you want to see which file is a link, turn this option off. Then, the browser will show the links without loading their targets.Clicking on the link icon will load its target. If the target is a file, the icon will become . Else the target directory of the link will load.

7. Open at Startup:

As a convenience, some connections can be auto started when RBrowser starts up. Use this option for connections you always need.

8. Load Home Directory Only:

This option can be set on an unopened connection. If set, RBrowser will load only the homedirectory and its subdirectories. If you are not interested browsing the entire machine, it is a quick way to get to your files. Default is OFF.

9. Maximum Connections:

This is the maximum number of open connections RBrowser will hold simultaneously to the remote host. Holding multiple connections speeds up directory loads and virtually all other operations. Please note that some FTP servers change passwords during every login. DO NOT use RBrowser to connect to such systems.

10. Maximum Persistent Connections:

RBrowser will keep some of the above mentioned connections open. This speeds up access to the remote host, since connections will not have to be opened every time the FileViewer is touched.

11. Connection Inactivity Timeout:

Persistent connections will be terminated after the time period ste in this preference. This is necessary to save network resources. If the connections time out, RBrowser will reconnect automatically at any subsequent activity.

12. Set:

Saves the new preference settings. Also, all entries are verified (the remote shell must exist, etc...).

13. Cancel, keep the old settings.

14. Delete Preferences:

Upon any successful login the preferences files are saved. These files will show up under the Remote/Connection Preferences menu. If the preferences were called up on an unopened connection, this button will erase the file and remove it from the preferences list. Preferences files can be found at ~/Library/RBrowser.


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RBrowser ® is a product of Different Drummer Software.