Some screenshots of IVT

For starters, the image below shows IVT after startup, showing its minimum "Create session" dialog.
Just type a host, and optional user name and hit ENTER to login.
Notice the tabs bar showing just an empty tab (no session created yet).
Also notice the "Profile" button, which allows you to select a particular setup (colors, window size, etc) with a single click.

Some more advanced options: the image below shows IVT after startup, showing its maximum "Create session" dialog box. A hostname can be typed followed by an ENTER (or click OK), and IVT will do some (script programmable) operations on the hostname (in this case, it will prepend a numeric subnet-address to a numeric hostname, so if I type a hostname like "41", it will connect me to "10.8.60.41" because there is no DNS and decent names in this particular environment).
The message in the dialog (Current subnet...) is also set by this script.
New in version 23.0 is auto-complete of the host name.
IVT will log me in automatically under the default account for the host (Automatic login checkbox). Optionally, I can type another user name in the "User name" textbox and IVT will log me in as that user when it knows the password, or automatically switch to password learning mode when it does not know that particular password yet (see below).
Entering a repeat-factor will clone that many sessions. Click on the button just after the hostname to display a picklist of the last 10 hostnames and usernames you have typed, and/or a customizable list of hosts and descriptions (using the HOSTLIST command, see below).
Any comment entered will appear in the status line. When not specified, it defaults to USER@HOST.
Note the vertical scroll bar and the adjustable gap (2 pixels) between the border of the window and the displayed text.

IVT supports UTF-8 and is a full Unicode application.
This means it can display all existing Unicode characters (something a VT220 was never designed to do :-)
The shot below begins with some Cyrillic characters, followed by some special Hiragana double-wide characters, which take op the space of 2 normal characters.
IVT also supports IME (International Method Editor). In the shot below, the keyboard was set to Chinese (PRC) and I typed an 'a'.
An IME window appears that allows me to choose a Chinese character.

Clicking on the HOSTLIST button after the hostname will show a box like this:

By clicking on the "Fixed only" button, it will suppress the last 10 manually connected hosts, and show only the fixed part.
The source for the "fixed" part (in the IVT.RC configuration files) looks like this:

HOSTLIST "rohan" "root" "Primary Kerberos server" Profile=RootProfile
HOSTLIST "rohan" "" "Primary SSH server" SSH
HOSTLIST "rohan:25" "" "Test Kerberos server" TLN
HOSTLIST "shitec" "" "Old Linux 150 Mhz Pentium I"
HOSTLIST "apkdcu1.pc.belastingdienst.nl" "root" "KDC Tax office" Profile=RootProfile TLN
HOSTLIST COMMENT "=== Other things"
HOSTLIST "compaq" "" "Ancient MS/DOS test machine"
HOSTLIST "COM3" "" "Serial session" SERIAL
I.e. you can specify a host name, user name, comment and protocol for every type of connection, plus comment lines to create logical groups of hosts.
The "Profile" selects a particular configuration for the session, in this case I use a different color scheme for "root" sessions to make sure I do not forget that I need to be extra careful.
The (-) icon appears automatically and can be used to collapse a group of hosts. The "Expand all" and "Collapse all" buttons can be used to quickly get an overview of all logical groups of hosts.
You can select multiple entries here, click "Connect" and be connected instantly to all selected hosts!
See also the session groups below, for an even easier way to create whole groups of sessions with just a few mouse clicks.
If you have very many hosts, the "Filter" box will accept part of a host name and instantly adjust the list to hosts matching the characters you type.

The picture belows shows what happens when I try to connect to a host for which I no longer have the correct password stored in the IVT password learning system. The script recognizes the fact that the password no longer works, and switches into learn-mode.
When I log in manually, the new user-id and password will be stored in an (encrypted) database maintained by IVT, and the next time IVT will log me in automatically. From the "setup" menu I can add, change and delete such accounts.
F7 will skip the password learning for this single session;
F8 will skip all password learning for the current host (current and future sessions);
F9 will disable all password learning.
This allows you to have automatic login on some systems, but not on others (important production servers may require the extra security).
You can also configure "Save to disk" to be off, in which case IVT will store paswords in memory (lost when IVT exits). As long as IVT keeps running, you can log on to the same hosts again and again, but the the passwords are not recorded on disk in any form (not even encrypted).

SSH support
Simply choose "SSH" in the create-session dialog (instead of Telnet) and IVT will do Secure Shell version 2. The login process is integrated with the auto-login password learning system, so all the features and benefits of that system apply to SSH sessions as wel. Note the padlock in the statusbar to indicate the session is secure.
Also note the commands entered at the prompt (export EXINIT...), which are always sent automatically on any session, any host I log in to by a small IVT script. This script is not confused by the fortune cookie displayed by Linux during login (see below for the text of the script).
The many options that can be configured for SSH are shown in the next shot.


IVT can work with the PAGEANT authentication agent of PuTTY (distributed with IVT). When you use an SSH keypair, IVT will automatically start and use this authentication agent. This agent uses your private key to authenticate to SSH server machines, and also allows you to use programs such as SCP on Unix without having to enter passwords again. IVT passes the name of the keyfile(s) to Pageant automatically, too.
The setup panel also has buttons to start Pageant immediately and to start the key generator, the integrated help for these buttons explains what the advantages of keypairs over passwords are and how to use them.
IVT also allows more control over SSH host keys than PuTTY does. You can view the keys, and export them to a file. Such files can be used to configure IVT to (optionally) limit SSH connections to previously known hosts only.

The IVT setup interface is shown below (the windows were dragged around to show the Midnight Commander beneath). Notice the printer setup options (Auto Landscape, Controller mode and "Properties") which allow full control over your printers. Also notice the "Font scaling", which will automatically shrink the font to make a screen-print fit your currently selected paper size. This can be very handy when you have a large monitor (and/or a small font).
The tab bar shows one other session, the status bar also shows the current session number (1) and total session (2). Clicking on the numbers will switch sessions, or re-order them. for the current ses

The screen below shows the double-high and double wide characters. This screen is from the VTTEST program. The HELP menu shows one way of accessing the built-in manual.
Notice the status bar: session 1 has had an error (it is red), session 3 has been active (produced output).

The shots below show Kerberos in action (IVT Secure Access, the commercial version).
First of all, when IVT connects to the server and sees that Kerberos is available, it checks the credentials cache. When it finds no valid credentials, it says:

KERBR5: Attempting login program c:/tools/krb5.exe

And starts the (configurable) Kerberos login program, The following program pops up:

This shows my expired credentials. If I type the correct password, my credentials are renewed. IVT detects this, and immediately uses the fresh credentials to authenticate. It even closes the Kerberos login program for me (so it appears & disappears automatically). IVT then checks the authentication of the server (server successfully authenticated itself).
It shows the fact that the server authenticated me (Kerberos accepted you as 'ruurdb@SNIPWEG.WXS.NL).
IVT forwards my credentials to the host, and shows whether the host accepted them or not (Forwarded credentials accepted).
Since auto-encryption is enabled, IVT will negotiate a secure session and it tells me it the connection is encrypted in both directions. The status line shows a padlock icon when the connection is encrypted in both directions (same as for SSH).
The password-learning system is integrated with Kerberos, it will not attempt to wait for login and password prompts, and shows a window for a few seconds to let me know this.
My standard script (export EXINIT) does its thing, and then I quickly typed "echo $DISPLAY" (before the green popup disappeared) and the answer is ":1", showing that IVT negotiated the X-Windows port forwarding protocol and the Kerberized telnet server is now tunneling X-traffic through IVT so it is encrypted along with the rest.

Below is what happens on non-Kerberized, succesful logins.
I typed "rohan" as the hostname, and IVT looked up the default username for that host (ruurdb), attempts to login and succeeds.
I have a script that sends a few default commands to each initial session, to set my favourite environment (VI init string and a 'set -o vi'). This is because I have some 50 hosts which come and go all the time (reinstall of the OS) so I can't change the login-profiles of the accounts. The script is the following:

ONCONNECT * MyEnv
Script MyEnv
   Call IvtWaitLoggedIn
   SEND "export EXINIT=\":se ai sw=3 nows\"\r"
   Call WaitPrompt
   SEND "set -o vi\r"
END

The popup-window shows what IVT is doing in the background (it disappears after a few seconds).
Note the status line, which shows that there are now 2 sessions active, the current hostname, time and a comment that identifies the purpose of the session. The comment can also be set when I create the session, defaults to user@host and can be altered later. The text in the tab also defaults to user@host and can also be changed by a script or the user.

The one below demonstrates the ANSI compliance of IVT. This is an *old* VT100 art file, displayed by IVT simply by CATting the file to the screen. This only works properly when you first select codepage "437" in IVT and select black as the background color.

This shows the main help screen of IVT (type F4, followed by F1 or from one of the many context-sensitive help parts of IVT).
All underlined fields are mouse-clickable hyperlinks. The menubar on top offers facilities to find certain topics quickly. There is a table of contents, major-features list and much, much more (almost 300 pages when printed!).
Notice the vertical scrollbar, which allows a more convenient way of scrolling through the help. I also immediately shows the size of a topic.

This shot is showing off the multi-session features of IVT.
There are four sessions active, the current one is number 1 (the 1/4 in the status line). Clicking on the "Window" item on the menubar results in the menu-window you see. It lists the comments of all 4 sessions, another session can be selected using the mouse or keyboard.
Note that IVT has TELNET, Kerberized TELNET (padlock + TLN), SSH and a serial session active at the same time!
The 'Session maintenance' dialog allows you to re-arrange, rename, regroup, export and kill sessions.
There are very many ways to switch between sessions using mouse, keyboard or script controls.

In the configuration file of IVT, or by using the groups editor, groups of sessions can be described and named. A click on the <Groups> button in the main create session dialog will show all such defined groups (like was done below) and allow you to create new ones. Double-clicking on a group will cause that group of sessions to be created (or select the line and click the <Launch> button). Every session will be logged in automatically (when possible), and will start whatever you want (under script control).
For example, double-clicking on the "setuid" line will start 6 sessions, on various development and test machines, using different accounts (some as root, some as me), go to various directories and start VI on various files. My entire development environment for SETUID initialised in a single mouseclick! Once you get used to this, you wonder how you ever got along without it!

This shot shows the "setup" screen of Kerberos (commercial version only).
You will find that the Kerberos setup button is greyed out in the freeware version (Kerberos is simply not compiled into the program, it is not just disabled).