TERM

I should tell you a bit about term.  (unless you use SLIP/PPP, in case you
can skip this)

It's absolutely fabulous. You run a programm called "term" at both ends, and 
can subseqently run ftp (actually called tncftp, derived from a better ftp,
called ncftp - preserves timestamps, remebers ftp aliases and logins etc.)
trsh to log into your remote ('work') etc. 

(most common programs are "termified" and their name is prepended with a
't' to avoid confusion with the regular version if you would run
SLIP/PPP, e.g. tnetscape, trsh, tncftp etc.)

In other words, your serial line will run several connections in
'parallel' (multiplexing as they call it on serial lines, as your CPU
runs multiple jobs 'simultaneously'). I also run netscape this way. Run
it at home, and connect to anywhere on the internet. Using the txconn
program you run on the remote you get a $DISPLAY assigned, and can
display X clients from work at you home machine etc. etc. It's a good
alternative to PPP and does not require root permission.

With term the only thing you need to do is get the source from sunsite
or so, and compile it for the workstation you would login. I have a
script called 'athome' which i run when i get at work, I escape back to
home with ^A-J (talking minicom, the program I use), then run 'athome'
at home (the two scripts are almost identical, apart from a -r flag  in
the remote version) and the connection has been established.

One final important thing: you need to have a .term *directory* in your
homedir with a termrc file. This is a bit tricky, you need to fiddle
with it. If you have a 14.4 modem for examnple, you need to turn off
compression in term itself.

The other tricky part is finding if you modem / annex server
need to escape certain characters. Mine apparently is pretty clean
This is my termrc file, without the comments:

remote				<--- not needed at home, only at work.
baudrate 19200
timeout 150
window 10
shift 224
compress off
chdir '/home/teuben'
terminate 'NO CARRIER'


but you should read the sample .term/termrc that comes in your
/root/ directory and play with it. (the escape and ignore commands
in the termrc). If you're lucky you don't need any. I get a pretty
solid 1.55kb/s on a 14.4 modem. In ascii I can get 4k/s and some
of my simulations compress to 10k/s.

Here is my 'athome' script from work (the home version you can see
echoed at the bottom)

#! /bin/csh -f
#
#  running 'term' so we can multiplex over the phone line
#
set termdir=/lmc/teuben/linux/term/term-2.2.9
echo termdir=$termdir
if (-d $termdir) then
   (cd $termdir ; exec term -l $HOME/term.log )
else
   echo No directory $termdir
endif
echo Now issue the local command:
echo 'term -r -l $HOME/tlog < /dev/modem > /dev/modem &'


Of course, if you have the resources, PPP is to be preferred. I actually
do have a slip account, but found it to be more cumbersome. I only got
1.2k/s over SLIP in regular ftp, and I need to pay $$$ (well, the boss
pays, but it's too much trouble given that term is pretty good). There
also seem to be smail/sendmail patches so you can send mail from home
(even receive I believe). The big advantage of term is that you don;t
need root permission at work.

A word about email: it is useful (e.g. for netscape) to have outbound
email work. You need to do two things for this: run (locally) tredir
and patch your /etc/sendmail.cf (assuming you use this) file.  However,
the one from the term-HOWTO didn't work for me. I have one working now,
but it doesn't work for email to our local domain.