PTC MKS Toolkit

Administrator’s Evaluation Guide

PTC Inc.
 PTC MKS Toolkit: Administrator’s Evaluation Guide

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Administrator’s Evaluation Guide iii

Technical Support
Please refer to the introductory letter you received with the link to download your evaluation copy of PTC
MKS Toolkit for instructions to contact PTC Technical Support.

iv PTC MKS Toolkit

Table of Contents

Technical Support ..................................................................................iv

1 Introduction............................................................... 1
Product Family Introduction............................................................1
PTC MKS Toolkit Developer Products....................................1
PTC MKS Toolkit System Administration Products ...............3
What’s in the PTC MKS Toolkit Products ......................................4
Summary..........................................................................................6
2 Installing the PTC MKS Toolkit Evaluation Package
1
Installing the PTC MKS Toolkit Resource Kit ...............................1
PTC MKS Toolkit Basics ................................................................1
3 Evaluating the PTC MKS Toolkit System Adminis-
trator Products5
Evaluating PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators..............5
Secure Shell ..............................................................................6
Visual SFTP .............................................................................6
Telnet Client and Server...........................................................8
Remote Utilities........................................................................8
MKS AlertCentre Add-On .....................................................10
For Windows Administrators .................................................12
For UNIX Administrators on Windows .................................20
4 Available Resources .............................................. 25
Customer Support ..........................................................................25
Additional PTC MKS Toolkit Resources ......................................25
Features Summary .........................................................................26
Ordering Information.....................................................................29

Evaluation Guide v
vi PTC MKS Toolkit
Introduction
1
This guide will help you evaluate, become familiar with, and choose the
appropriate PTC MKS Toolkit® product to meet your needs. While this
guide is aimed primarily at software and web developers, it also discusses
the general scripting and automation capabilities inherent in all PTC MKS
Toolkit products and applicable to almost any use. There is also a separate
evaluation guide aimed more at system administrators as well as one aimed
at users of the MKS AlertCentre Add-On. These guides are available from
the same source as this evaluation guide.
This evaluation guide will:
 Give you an overview of the PTC MKS Toolkit product family.
 Help you install the PTC MKS Toolkit evaluation kit.
 Walk you through some of the highlights of each of the PTC MKS
Toolkit developer products.
 Tell you where to get more information about these products.
 Help you get customer support, should you need it.

Product Family There are several products in the PTC MKS Toolkit family aimed at different
kinds of people, performing different kinds of tasks. All products in the PTC
Introduction MKS Toolkit family are unified by our goal of making your use of Windows
more efficient and more enjoyable. Our products fall into two broad
categories – those for system administrators and those for software
developers.

PTC MKS Toolkit Developer Products

PTC MKS Toolkit development products facilitate a cross-platform, "write
once-deploy anywhere" development and deployment strategy across
Windows and legacy systems, and preserves existing investments in
technology and expertise. The PTC MKS Toolkit development products also
allow pure Windows developers to automate routine tasks with scripting and

Evaluation Guide 1
Introduction

increase productivity with file and text manipulation tools, batch search and
replace tools, and scheduling interfaces. PTC MKS Toolkit development
products provide solutions in the following areas:
 User Compatibility – a variety of command shells and hundreds of
command-line utilities help make your software engineers more
productive on their Windows machines.
 Platform Interoperability – a selection of connectivity utilities
provides you with secure interactive access to both your remote
Windows servers and workstations and your legacy systems.
 Application Portability – more than 2700 APIs let you port all
manner of legacy applications to Windows, while maintaining a
single source code baseline.
The PTC MKS Toolkit product family is the only solution for developing
and deploying enterprise-critical cross-platform applications. It is also the
leading product for evolving those applications to incorporate the latest
Windows and web technologies, such as COM and Java™. Whether you are
a native Windows or cross-platform software, script, or web developer, the
PTC MKS Toolkit developer products can help you be more efficient in your
job.
 PTC MKS Toolkit for Developers – a Windows development
product for software, script, and web developers, who can choose
from command-line or graphical Visual Studio ® build
environments. It is ideal for developing common, cross-platform
scripts for UNIX ® , Linux, and Windows, from a single Windows
desktop. Using the power of more than 400 command-line utilities,
including make, cc, and vi, you can develop native Windows
applications, as well as Perl, KornShell, C shell, bash, Tcl, sed /
awk, and others.
 PTC MKS Toolkit for Interoperability – extending PTC MKS
Toolkit for Developers by adding a complete X server for displaying
X Window System-based graphical applications, including OpenGL
and Motif applications, on Windows. A network-capable server can
display a graphical application on your Windows workstation from
any machine on your network.
 PTC MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers – an ideal solution
for the migration of non-graphical, character based, UNIX C, C++,
and Fortran applications and utilities to Windows. With over 1500
APIs, you can extend the power of the PTC MKS Toolkit and
migrate custom utilities, non-graphical C, C++, or FORTRAN
applications as well as Perl, KornShell, C shell, bash, Tcl, sed /
awk, and CGI scripts.

2 PTC MKS Toolkit

  PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers – the proven
solution for porting robust, mission-critical UNIX applications to
Windows. With over 2700 UNIX APIs and a full command-line
development environment, PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise
Developers is the ultimate in UNIX to Windows migration. No other
product can match our full support for C, C++, and Fortran; for
UNIX process management including fork(), signals, alarms, and
threads; for file system and security management; and for curses, X,
Motif, and OpenGL. And no other product matches PTC MKS
Toolkit's access to Win32 APIs for Windows integration and
interoperability.
 PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers 64-bit Edition –
64-bit Windows is an ideal platform for applications that require
large amounts of memory and high-performance such as digital
content creation, electronic design automation, data warehousing,
mechanical design automation, and advanced scientific and research
applications. PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers 64-bit
Edition simplifies the migration of 32-bit and 64-bit UNIX
applications to both Itanium and extended architecture 64-bit
Windows platforms.

PTC MKS Toolkit System Administration Products

PTC MKS Toolkit system administration products are built on a solid
foundation of robust tools and engines that have been optimized for building
best-of-breed system administration solutions. Whether you are
administering a Windows ® environment or one that mixes Windows and
legacy systems, these tools and engines let you effectively manage that
environment.
The PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators is no longer sold, but its
capabilities are completely encapsulated in the PTC MKS Toolkit for
Developers. This document continues to refer to the now defunct product,
but as you read PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators, think the
System Administrator subset of PTC MKS Toolkit for Developers.
The MKS Alertcentre is no longer sold, but it serves as a wonderful example
of the sorts of applications you can build with PTC MKS Toolkit and the
source is still fully available for download as example code and for and
reuse. The PTC MKS Toolkit Development shop still monitors server and
builds using this technology.
 PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators – a powerful
administration suite featuring PTC MKS Toolkit for System
Administrators also gives you the ability to move data and files
between machines, remotely administer systems, and perform

Evaluation Guide 3
Introduction

backups across multiple platforms. Increase productivity and

automate repetitive tasks like password synchronization, adding
users and groups, setting up new machines, cloning a system file or a
document tree on local or remote systems, and automatically
scheduling recurring tasks.
 MKS AlertCentre™ Add-On – a complete solution for monitoring,
alerting and job scheduling. MKS AlertCentre can monitor your
mission-critical systems and applications 24 hours a day, seven days
a week to provide you with the peace of mind of knowing that your
network, applications, and Internet/Intranet-based information
systems are running normally.
For more information on MKS AlertCentre Add‐On, please visit 
http://www.mkssoftware.com/products/ac. 

What’s in the This section details the contents of each of the PTC MKS Toolkit products:
PTC MKS PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators—a powerful
administration suite that lets you move data and files between machines,
Toolkit remotely administer systems, automate administration tasks, and
Products perform UNIX-compatible backups, across UNIX, Linux, and Windows
platforms. It includes:
 Over 350 utilities (full POSIX.2 specification), including remote
utilities (rsh, rshd, rexec, rexecd, rcp, rlogind), secure
utilities (ssh, sshd, scp, sftp, sftp-server), and telnetd for
accessing UNIX systems.
 MKS KornShell (ksh), Bourne Again Shell (bash), and MKS C
shell (csh) command environments.
 Powerful scripting tools such as Perl, awk, and sed and standard
UNIX workhorse tools such as vi and grep.
 SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) utilities that let you
control and monitor network devices and their functions.
 Utilities for setting up users, groups, and permissions on Windows.
 Tape and archive commands (tar, pax, cpio, mt), for creating
UNIX-compatible backups.
 Service and registry commands to start and stop local or remote
Windows services and manipulate the Windows registry.
 Commands to manage device drivers, Windows domains, and file
associations (dev, domain, ftype).

4 PTC MKS Toolkit

  PTC NuTCRACKER Workstation.
PTC MKS Toolkit for Developers—a Windows development product
for software, script, and web developers, who can choose from UNIX-
style command line or graphical Visual Studio build environments. It
includes:
 All the features of PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators.
 Over 400 utilities, including command line build utilities (make, cc,
ar, ld, vi, grep), for migrating and unifying your builds across
UNIX and Windows.
 Tools and utilities for manipulating HTML and other web content as
well as pulling and pushing content from local or remote servers
(web, htdiff, htsplit, url, mkurl, mkscgi).
 PTC NuTCRACKER Workstation.
PTC MKS Toolkit for Interoperability—a full UNIX and Windows
interoperability suite, allowing remote access, remote system
administration, interconnectivity, file sharing, and full automation and
scripting capabilities. It includes:
 All the features of PTC MKS Toolkit for Developers.
 The fully network-capable PTC X/Server, for displaying both local
and remote X Windows applications.
 PTC NuTCRACKER Workstation.
PTC MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers— an ideal solution for
the migration of non-graphical, character based, UNIX C, C++, and
Fortran applications and utilities to Windows. It includes:
 All the features of PTC MKS Toolkit for Developers.
 Over 1500 UNIX APIs for migrating non-graphical UNIX
applications to Windows.
 Process management: fork(), exec(), signals.
 POSIX, DCE, and Solaris threads.
 File system handling: mount(), umount(), symlink().
 IPC and Networking: sockets (including UNIX-domain sockets),
shared memory, message queues, semaphores, and FIFOs.
 UNIX to Win32 file and user security mapping.
 UNIX to Win32 file path and file system mapping, including devices
such as /dev/null and /dev/lp.
 Curses and terminal handling.

Evaluation Guide 5
Introduction

 A complete build environment including ar, cc, cxx, ld, make,

gmake, tcl, bison, and flex.
 A Deployment Wizard, a simple, graphical tool for preparing
applications for distribution.
 The PTC MKS Toolkit UNIX to Windows Porting Guide.
 PTC NuTCRACKER Workstation.
PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers—a complete solution
for integrating UNIX and Windows software development on a single
developer system, solving both interoperability and cross-platform
development needs; for migrating complex, graphical UNIX and Linux
applications and scripts to Windows; and for evolving and modernizing
those applications to take advantage of Windows, to integrate with
Windows applications, and to become web-enabled. It includes:
 All the features of PTC MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers
and all the features of PTC MKS Toolkit for Interoperability.
 Over 2700 UNIX APIs including X11R6, Motif 2.1, OpenGL, and
XView.
 A selection of X servers, for providing display from local and
remote X Window System clients.
 PTC NuTCRACKER Workstation.

Summary Here is a summary of the features available in each of the PTC MKS Toolkit
products to help you choose the right one for your needs:

6 PTC MKS Toolkit

 PTC MKS Toolkit
PTC MKS Toolkit PTC MKS Toolkit PTC MKS Toolkit PTC MKS Toolkit
PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise
for System for for Professional for Enterprise
for Developers Developers
Administrators Interoperability Developers Developers
64-bit Edition
Command shells and scripting
utilities
• • • • • •
System administration utilities • • • • • •
Graphical and command-line
scheduling interfaces
• • • • • •
Tape backup and archiving
utilities
• • • • • •
Client/server remote utilities • • • • • •
Client/server secure utilities • • • • • •
Telnet server • • • • • •
Multibyte support • • • • • •
Software development utilities • • • • •
Web development utilities • • • • •
Tcl shell and built-in commands • • • • •
PTC X/Server • • •
Advanced development utilities • • •
Non-Graphical APIs • • •
Tcl development APIs • • •
X, Motif, OpenGL APIs • •
64-bit versions of APIs •

Evaluation Guide 7
Introduction

8 PTC MKS Toolkit

Installing the PTC MKS
Toolkit Evaluation
Package
2
All PTC MKS Toolkit products install the Evaluation Guide and companion
scripts by default. Custom installations have an option to disable the install
of the Evaluation Guide, so if your installation is missing the Evaluation
Guide, please rerun the installer and add the Evaluation Guide. In all other
cases, the start menu PTC > MKS Toolkit > Evaluation Guide will contain
the evaluation guides and links to the companion scripts and demonstrations.

Installing the You must have a non-demo PTC MKS Toolkit product installed on your
machine before the PTC MKS Toolkit Resource Kit can be installed.
PTC MKS
 Visit http://www.mkssoftware.com/reskit and download and run The
Toolkit PTC MKS Toolkit Resource Kit self-extracting installer.
Resource Kit  Follow the on-screen instructions.

PTC MKS There are a few basics you should know before embarking on your
evaluation of PTC MKS Toolkit.
Toolkit Basics
 Using PTC MKS Toolkit Features. While PTC MKS Toolkit has
several graphical utilities for doing useful things such as
compressing archives of files, the majority of the utilities in PTC
MKS Toolkit are non-graphical in nature. These non-graphical
utilities are designed to be used from inside of a command
processor, which we call a shell. UNIX users will be familiar with
shells, which are more extensive than, but similar to the Windows
command processor, cmd.exe. You will find the graphical utilities
on and be able to launch them from the Start menu (Start >
Programs > PTC > MKS Toolkit > …). On the other hand, to launch
the non-graphical utilities, you will need to be in a shell or command
processor, preferably one of the PTC MKS Toolkit shells.
 Launching a Shell. All versions of PTC MKS Toolkit come with a
KornShell (ksh), Bourne Again Shell (bash) and a C shell (csh).
The easiest way to launch these is from the Start menu, Start >

Evaluation Guide 1
Installing the PTC MKS Toolkit Evaluation Package

Programs > PTC > MKS Toolkit > Korn Shell, Start > Programs >
PTC > MKS Toolkit > C Shell, or Start > Programs > PTC > MKS
Toolkit > Bash Shell. There are some basic differences in these
shells, but they are conceptually very similar. If you have no
experience with shells or have no preference, you should probably
start with the KornShell. This evaluation guide assumes that you are
running the KornShell. The PTC MKS Toolkit products contain
extensive documentation on these shells that you can read at your
leisure to understand the differences in shells.
 Getting Help. There are two main ways to get help in PTC MKS
Toolkit, the Windows way and the UNIX way, whichever you prefer.
Traditionally, in UNIX, in a shell you type man and then the name of
a utility, and this displays what is known as the manual page for that
utility. Try typing man sh, for example, for help on the KornShell.
On Windows, however, help tends to be more graphical in nature.
You will find graphical documentation for the PTC MKS Toolkit
utilities, plus additional tutorials and other information, on the PTC
MKS Toolkit entry in the Start menu, under Documentation (Start >
Programs > PTC > MKS Toolkit > Documentation). There, you will
find the PTC MKS Toolkit Utilities Reference, which contains the
same information as the manual pages, only in a graphical format.
 Launching a Script. Launching files on Windows is different from
launching files on UNIX. Windows identifies how to launch any file
by looking up the program to run by the file extension (the three
letter suffix after the dot in the file name, such as .exe or .doc).
Files on UNIX often have no extensions, while extensions are fairly
critical on Windows. Windows maintains a list of registered file
associations that allows a given file extension to be associated with a
given file type which in turn is associated with a given application.
This allows you to launch an application and load the specified file
by simply clicking on the file name in the Windows Explorer or by
simply typing the file name on the command line of a shell or
command interpreter. For example, if you have Microsoft Word
installed on your system, typing file.doc on the command line
launches Microsoft Word with file.doc open. When you install a
member of the PTC MKS Toolkit product family, you have the
option of registering several PTC MKS Toolkit-specific file
associations. The following table shows the registered file
extensions, their associated file types, and the PTC MKS Toolkit
utilities used to run files with those extensions:

2 PTC MKS Toolkit

 Extension File Type Associated PTC MKS Toolkit Utility
.awk mks_awk MKS AWK(awk)
.cpi mks_vpax Visual Pax (vpax)
.cpio mks_vpax Visual Pax (vpax)
.csh mks_csh MKS C Shell (csh)
.gz mks_gunzip gunzip
.ksh mks_shell MKS KornShell (sh) Windowless
.mk mks_make MKS Make(make)
.pax mks_vpax Visual Pax (vpax)
.pl mks_perl MKS Perl (perl)
.sh mks_shell_sh MKS KornShell (sh) Console
.tar mks_vpax Visual Pax (vpax)
.Z mks_uncompress umcompress

Evaluation Guide 3
Installing the PTC MKS Toolkit Evaluation Package

4 PTC MKS Toolkit

Evaluating the PTC
MKS Toolkit System
Administrator
3
Products

PTC has two products with features specifically for system administrators,
PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators and MKS AlertCentre (an
add-on for PTC MKS Toolkit).
The MKS AlertCentre add-on has a separate Evaluation Guide which you
can see online at http://www.mkssoftware.com/docs. The PTC MKS Toolkit
for System Administrators is a great compliment to the MKS AlertCentre
add-on as it provides the tools necessary to perform remote administration
on servers that are reporting error conditions. Putting a copy of PTC MKS
Toolkit for System Administrators on each of your servers will give you the
ability to connect to these machines from anywhere on your network or via a
dialup line to perform any necessary administration or repair tasks.

Evaluating PTC Currently many thousands of system administrators use PTC MKS Toolkit
for daily system administration tasks, and each of these administrators finds
MKS Toolkit for a different utility in the product depending on whether his or her background
System is from Windows or from UNIX. Accordingly, the following two sections
discuss PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators from these two
Administrators differing perspectives. We recommend that all system administrators read
both sections, because the demonstrations in both sections are useful,
regardless of background.
PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators is a full UNIX and Windows
interoperability suite, allowing remote access, remote system administration,
interconnectivity, file sharing, and full automation and scripting capabilities.
PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators includes:
 A single-connection telnet server, allowing remote access to the
Windows machine.

Evaluation Guide 5
Evaluating the PTC MKS Toolkit System Administrator Products

 A single-connection secure shell server, allowing encrypted remote

access to the Windows machine and the ability to tunnel X11 and other
TCP protocols over the secure link.
 A single-connection rlogin server, allowing remote access to Windows
and UNIX machines.
 Remote shell and rexec services, for remote access to Windows systems.
 Remote utilities (rsh, rexec, rcp, rlogin) for accessing other UNIX
and Windows machines.
 Secure utilities (ssh, sshd, scp, sftp, sftp-server) for secure
access to other UNIX and Windows machines.

Secure Shell
Secure shell client and server can be used in place of rsh, ftp, rcp, telnet
and rlogin and provide encrypted connections between machines that are
both secure and based on industry standards for maximum interoperability.
To launch a secure shell client to connect to your own machine
1. Invoke Start > Programs > PTC > MKS Toolkit > Evaluation Guide >
Secure Shell
2. You are prompted for your account password account. Please type the
correct password and press ENTER.
3. You should see a standard shell prompt.
4. Type eventlog –r or vi or some other PTC MKS Toolkit command.
The secure shell server runs an MKS KornShell by default (although you can
easily run a Windows Command Interpreter if you wish) and all your
familiar commands are right at your fingertip. for example ls, dir, cp, and
copy.
The X11 protocol can be tunneled through the secure shell connection. This
is not tremendously useful for the localhost connection established here, but
it works to any Secure Shell server that enables X11 tunneling.

Visual SFTP
Visual SFTP is a powerful Windows Explorer extension that lets you easily
drag and drop files through a secure connection just as easily as you would
on your local network. Seamlessly integrated with Windows Explorer,
Visual SFTP lets you open one or multiple connections and transfer or
manipulate files found on remote Windows, UNIX/Linux, or any other
system that supports the Secure Shell protocol.

6 PTC MKS Toolkit

 Try this: From the Start menu, select My Network Places. From the My
Network Places window that appears, click Secure FTP Connections. On the
window that appears, click Add Host and enter “localhost”. Double click the
localhost icon that was just added and when prompted, enter the requested
password. You should now see a list of files on your home drive. Select the
Folders icon on the toolbar to display a list of your mapped drives in a tree
view and you can now explore the server in the same manner as with the
built-in FTP Explorer extension. PTC MKS Toolkit Visual SFTP is fully
secure, tunneling passwords over encrypted TCP connections, letting you
explore (and drag and drop files to and from the server) UNIX and Windows
servers anywhere on the internet with complete confidence that all
transactions are securely encrypted.

Evaluation Guide 7
Evaluating the PTC MKS Toolkit System Administrator Products

Telnet Client and Server

PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators includes a single-connection
telnet server. Unlimited connection servers are available as an add-on.
To demonstrate the telnet server, log in to a UNIX or Windows machine,
other than the one on which you installed PTC MKS Toolkit for System
Administrators. From there, start a telnet connection, using whatever telnet
client is available on that machine, to the Windows machine where you
installed PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators. You should see the
default banner “Welcome to MKS Telnet Server Version
x.xxxx.xxxx” and a login prompt. Log in and try one of the PTC MKS
Toolkit commands, such as sysinf drives.
The telnet server runs an MKS KornShell by default (although you can
easily run a Windows Command Interpreter if you wish) and all your
familiar commands are right at your fingertip. for example ls, dir, cp and
copy.

Remote Utilities
PTC MKS Toolkit comes with remote utilities (rsh, rexec, rlogin, rcp)
for accessing other UNIX and Windows machines. It also includes the
server-side components for these utilities (rshd, rexecd, rlogind) so that
your Windows machine can accept remote requests.
The rsh and rexec utilities execute commands on a remote machine. The
rexec utility is used to execute a single command, while rsh creates a shell
on the remote machine and executes a command in that shell. These utilities
have corresponding Windows services (rshd and rexecd) that let your
Windows machine respond to rsh and rexec requests from other machines.
PTC MKS Toolkit provides a configuration utility for setting up your
Windows machine such that rexecd, rlogind, and rshd will accept
requests. This is available in both command line (rconfig) and graphical
versions (grconfig). If you type grconfig at a KornShell prompt, you
will see a dialog similar to the following:

8 PTC MKS Toolkit

 PTC MKS Toolkit also provides the rsetup command to make appropriate
user and password entries in the Local Security Authority (LSA) database,
so that you can authorize various users to receive remote requests.
In addition, PTC MKS Toolkit includes the rcp (remote copy) command for
moving files between machines. It uses the same mechanism as rsh, so if
you can rsh to another machine, you can easily copy files, for example: rcp
thisfile myUNIXbox:thisfile. You can even do third-party copies
where neither the source nor the target files resides on your machine.
If you need to do more than execute a command on a remote machine or
copy a file to or from it, you will want to start a login session on it.
Assuming that your .rhosts file on that machine has been configured

Evaluation Guide 9
Evaluating the PTC MKS Toolkit System Administrator Products

correctly, use the rlogin command followed by the name of the machine
you want to log in to: rlogin solaris2. Using rlogin, you can establish
a remote session on any machine that is running an rlogin daemon. Most
UNIX machines will run rlogind by default.
These four utilities and their corresponding services form the basis for a very simple-to-use, yet amazingly flexible interoperability capability.

KEY POINTS The ultimate flexibility to manage your mixed UNIX and Win-
dows shop
1. Interoperate between Windows machines, between UNIX and 
Windows, or Windows and UNIX using ssh (secure shell), telnet, 
rsh, and rlogin.
2. Transfer files between UNIX and Windows with sftp, scp, rcp, tar, 
cpio, dd, and pax.
3. Run commands on any UNIX or Windows machines on your network 
with ssh, rexec, and rsh.
4. Log in remotely to any UNIX or Windows machine in your network to 
administer it from your desktop, using ssh, rlogin, or telnet.

MKS AlertCentre Add-On

MKS AlertCentre is an add-on for PTC MKS Toolkit that provides a
complete solution for monitoring, alerting and job scheduling. MKS
AlertCentre can monitor your mission-critical systems and applications 24
hours a day, seven days a week to provide you with the peace of mind of
knowing that your network, applications, and Internet/Intranet-based
information systems are running normally
MKS AlertCentre Add-On has its own evaluation guide, but we describe
some of the underpinnings of MKS AlertCentre here, because it is built with
the tools and engines from PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators
(TKSA). TKSA serves as a System Management Solution Platform and
AlertCentre is an example of the kind of solution that can be built and
customized using this platform. PTC is dedicated to providing its customers
with system management solutions combined with a platform, with which to
add value to those solutions. MKS AlertCentre, therefore, is a working
example of what can be built with the TKSA solution platform and MKS
AlertCentre’s underlying programs and scripts are provided in source code
form as a set of sample programs, from which you can learn how to extend
this solution and build additional solutions.

10 PTC MKS Toolkit

 MKS AlertCentre is written almost entirely using the PTC MKS Toolkit for
System Administrators. The tools in the toolkit and its resource kit such as
service, eventlog, db, perl, web, portcheck, etc. form a reusable set
of components just crying out to be glued together for such tasks as
monitoring. The new scheduling capabilities such as cron and TKSched
produce the events to run the monitors. Tools such as smtpmail, snmptrap
and the built in Windows command net send combined with various
scripting engines are used to produce the alerts.
All of the scripts used to build MKS AlertCentre are available on your
Monitoring Stations as examples for you to use in building custom monitors,
jobs and actions. In addition, every copy of MKS AlertCentre requires PTC
MKS Toolkit so you also have at you disposal all the tools and scripting
engines that PTC used to build MKS AlertCentre. You are encouraged to
copy a few of MKS AlertCentre scripts and modifying them to fit your needs
better. Then you can implement them as Custom scripts without affecting the
rest of MKS AlertCentre. Once you experience the power of scripting, you'll
have much freedom to satisfy the needs of your organization. The back end
scripts can be found in $ROOTDIR/AlertCentre/Scripts and it
subdirectories.
When MKS AlertCentre discovers a problem, an action fires and someone is
notified of the issue. The problem can be repaired either of two ways using
TKSA:
 Automatically: Many of the TKSA tools are able to act on remote
devices. (for example, service -S \\host stop "Exchange DS";
service -S \\host start "Exchange DS" will restart one of the
Microsoft Exchange services on machine "host".) These tools can be
wrapped into custom actions for MKS AlertCentre in order to take
automated corrective or pre-emptive action.
 Manually: TKSA provides a number of tools to allow access to
monitored devices from remote clients. If TKSA is installed on each
monitored server and every administrator's workstation (both at
work and at home), then you will have the maximum ability to fix
problems anywhere in your network at any time of day or night to
ensure minimal down time.

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Evaluating the PTC MKS Toolkit System Administrator Products

KEY POINTS MKS AlertCentre Add-On is a system management solution writ-

ten with a script foundation.
1. PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators serves as a System
Management Solution Platform.
2. MKS AlertCentre is built on this platform and its scripts are great
examples of the TKSA tools and engines in action.
3. MKS AlertCentre is easily extended using the same TKSA tools it is
built on
4. PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators is a great compliment to
MKS AlertCentre in shops where servers are in remote locations and
rapid repairs are a must. TKSA provides for remote access to repair
(manually or automatically) any problems found.

For Windows Administrators

Windows system administrators will appreciate the increased flexibility of
traditional UNIX command-line tools in their Windows environment. Mail
administration, file management, registry editing, server management, the
powerful vi editor, and the scripts we demonstrate are only a few of the
many features of PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators that you will
find useful.

Queuing Actions for Next Reboot or Next Login

A powerful Windows feature is the ability to schedule file operations and
other tasks at the next user login or system reboot. We have enhanced the
standard UNIX mv (copy) and rm (delete) file utilities so that they can
schedule deferred file operations, and we have added the pending utility to
view and modify the list of pending operations.
As an example, it is not always possible on Windows to rename a file while
it is in use. Often this operation needs to be deferred to the next reboot. The
demonstration at Start > Programs > PTC > MKS Toolkit > Evaluation
Guide > For Systems Administrators > Windows Administrators > Rename
on Reboot uses the touch, mv –d, and pending utilities to demonstrate
renaming a file on reboot.
In addition, PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators provides a
graphical utility for modifying the registry such that utilities can be
scheduled automatically for the next reboot, for every reboot, for the next

12 PTC MKS Toolkit

 user login, and for every user login. This is a very simple way to have a
message broadcast to each user at the next login or to start a standard
application running each time a user logs in.
Invoke Start > Programs > PTC > MKS Toolkit > Automatic Command
Run and you will see the following dialog:

Managing Desktops
In writing scripts with PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators to
create a common desktop for your 3000 users, you might want to take
advantage of the shortcut utility to create that common desktop. The
example at Start > Programs > PTC > MKS Toolkit > Evaluation Guide >
For Systems Administrators > Desktop Shortcuts shows the power of PTC
MKS Toolkit for creating desktop shortcuts that apply to a single user, a
group of users, or all users.
This script uses basic KornShell scripting (for string manipulation and basic
testing), standard UNIX utilities such as mkdir, rmdir and the value-added
utility registry to query file locations, as well as shortcut to create the
actual menu or desktop shortcut. The basic UNIX utility set has been
extended, in a familiar way, to let you perform operations unique to
Windows.

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Evaluating the PTC MKS Toolkit System Administrator Products

Displaying Free Disk Space

It is not all that easy to determine how much disk space is free on Windows,
especially through the Explorer. With PTC MKS Toolkit for System
Administrators, type df –P at a PTC MKS Toolkit command or shell
prompt to see how many drives you have, how many blocks are used, how
many are free, where they are mounted, and what percentage is free.
If you prefer a graphical utility, try our graphical df (gdf) utility – from a
KornShell prompt, type gdf:

If you are curious, gdf is a script (gdf.ksh) that is built using our general-
purpose dlg dialog building utility. What kind of other useful utilities can
you build with dlg?

Local and Remote Service Administration

Have you ever wanted to start a service on a remote machine from the
command line or a script? The Windows net command does not control
remote machines. Why try to remember all the net command options when
all you need is our service command to fully manage all services locally or
on a remote machine? In one script you can enumerate all the services, grep
(text search) for the one you want, stop it, update the registry, and restart
your services.
The demonstration script shows you how simple working with services can
be, using the PTC MKS Toolkit service utility. Run the demonstration at
Start > Programs > PTC > MKS Toolkit > Evaluation Guide > For System
Administrators > Windows Administrators > Local and Remote Service

14 PTC MKS Toolkit

 Administration. At the prompt, provide the name of a machine on your
network. The demonstration program will then give you the service status of
that machine.
The Windows net command is limited only to the current machine and it is
not always reasonable to use the Server Manager for Domains to perform
service maintenance on a remote machine. The PTC MKS Toolkit service
utility gives you the freedom and flexibility to easily administer both local
and remote services.

Wrapping an arbitrary program to be run as a service

On UNIX, applications may be run free of a logon context (controlling TTY)
simply by making them children of nohup or by catching and ignoring the
SIGHUP signal. Windows applications that try to do this are terminated when
the user logs off. One solution is to wrap the application up as a Windows
Service and have it be a child of the service framework. While this requires
some additional administration (removing this service when the job
completes), there may be reasons to run an arbitrary program as a child of
the service framework (perhaps even changing identity). The PTC MKS
Toolkit mksrv utility does this for you. This utility acts a wrapper around
any Windows application and can be run as any user who has Log On as a
Service privileges. It can also be run as the local SYSTEM account, which
adds an option to give this application access to the desktop.
Run the demonstration at Start->Programs > PTC > MKS Toolkit >
Evaluation Guide > For System Administrators > Windows Administrators
> Generalized Service Wrapper. This demonstration first creates a service to
wrap the MKS KornShell and run as the local System account (requires
administrator privileges). Next, this service is started, creating a secondary
console window in which you see the output of whoami. Finally, the service
is removed.
Uses for mksrv include simple nohup replacement, debugging problems
that only occur with the SYSTEM account, and wrapping legacy batch scripts
to run when nobody is logged in. The PTC MKS Toolkit Scheduler and the
command-line scheduling utilities, described in the PTC MKS Toolkit
Scheduling Solutions Guide, provide an alternative to this approach.

Process Status
There are many ways to see which processes are running on your machine.
Our ps utility and its graphical counterpart gps have one very interesting
feature that lets you differentiate between several programs of the same
name—they show the parameters that were passed to each program. How
many times have you been frustrated by the Task Manager’s lack of ability to
distinguish between two instances of a single process?

Evaluation Guide 15
Evaluating the PTC MKS Toolkit System Administrator Products

See how we have solved this problem, by typing gps at a KornShell prompt:

This is yet another useful utility built on our general-purpose dlg dialog
building utility. It is script based—so you can look at it to get ideas for your
own custom scripts.

Registry Manipulation
You have 3000 desktops to configure and they all require changes to the
registry. You know how to do it but it is going to be tedious. To automate
these changes using the limited, native Windows scripting capabilities is not
appealing. PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators provides a very
powerful scripting language that can do the job. Moreover, our scripting
language is standardized worldwide across many UNIX platforms including
Linux, so that (such as user profile files like ntuser.dat) what you learn
can help you ease your transition to UNIX system administration, if you
choose.
As an example of the power of this scripting, this demonstration shows
registry manipulation (including loading a hive). Once the script is executed,
your shells (*sh) and command prompts (cmd) on Windows will all have tab
completion enabled. That is, when you type the beginning of a command,
you can then use the tab key to cycle through all the possible matches for
that command.

16 PTC MKS Toolkit

 The demonstration is at Start > Programs > PTC > MKS Toolkit >
Evaluation Guide > For System Administrators > Windows Administrators
> Tab completion through registry manipulation.
This script, complete.ksh, demonstrates the power of scripting
(specifically registry scripting) by letting you modify registry entries for the
current user, all users (by repetitively loading user profiles and modifying
them), or new users on the current machine. You can use this script as the
basis for many other useful scripts to modify the registry.

Event logging
Windows event logs can easily be displayed or manipulated with PTC MKS
Toolkit Perl.
The demonstration is at Start > Programs > PTC > MKS Toolkit >
Evaluation Guide > For System Administrators > Windows Administrators
> Event logging.
The script admin8.ksh makes use of PTC MKS Toolkit dlg and SNMP
commands to send an snmptrap to the local machine where the snmptrapd
will log a message in the local event log. An event log watching Perl script
then filters out SNMP trap messages from the event log and displays them in
a window. This Perl script also makes use of a custom COM interface which
blocks for changes to one of the local event log.

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Evaluating the PTC MKS Toolkit System Administrator Products

PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators and all higher products
contain the SNMPv2 snmpbulk, snmpget, snmpgetnext,
snmpnetstat, snmpset, snmpstatus, snmptest, snmptrap,
snmptrapd, and snmpwalk utilities. These are system administration
utilities that let you control and monitor network devices and their functions.
PTC MKS Toolkit also provides a command line eventlog utility to print
(filtering records and specifying fields) and write records from the various
Windows event logs.

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)

Windows provides extensive COM access to system configuration
information through WMI. (http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/driver/WMI/
default.asp). PTC MKS Toolkit Perl can communicate through WMI and
provide mechanisms (using standard Perl syntax) to access and manipulate
these components.

18 PTC MKS Toolkit

 The demonstration is at Start > Programs > PTC > MKS Toolkit >
Evaluation Guide > For System Administrators > Windows Administrators
> Windows Management Instrumentation.
The script ifconfig.pl (which will only run where WMI is present)
displays TCP/IP configuration information. This script can easily be
modified to provide update capabilities and thus fully emulate its UNIX
counterpart.

KEY POINTS Streamline Your Workload

1. Use automated scripts to:
Improve manageability of Windows in large installations by
populating and managing registry entries en masse.
Administer user accounts in batch (for example, after a
reorganization or a merger), instead of one-by-one.
Perform repetitive tasks on large numbers of machines.
2. Manage Windows environments with standardized tools and scripts that
also work in UNIX and Linux environments.
3. Easily perform other common tasks that may be difficult to do using
standard Windows facilities:
Add users and groups.
Control services.
Perform complex file searches.
Copy permissions.
Do UNIX-compatible backups.
Move data and files between machines.
Remotely administer systems.
Clone a system file tree or document tree.
Copy a standard user set-up to a new user account.
Wrap any process or script as a service and run it when the machine
starts and before any user logs on or allow it to survive a logoff.

Evaluation Guide 19
Evaluating the PTC MKS Toolkit System Administrator Products

For UNIX Administrators on Windows

UNIX system administrators will appreciate a set of familiar commands on
Windows and UNIX-style command line utilities for interacting with
Windows features. PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators is ideal for
helping to reduce the learning curve on Windows. In fact, many of your
UNIX administration skills will transfer immediately to Windows.

Editing
The vi editor is the editor that is common to every version of UNIX. PTC
MKS Toolkit for System Administrators includes two versions of this editor
for your convenience. The first is a standard UNIX version, which you can
exercise by typing vi from any command or shell prompt, or by selecting
Start > Programs > PTC > MKS Toolkit > Evaluation Guide > Vi.
Try this: vi is integrated with the Windows clipboard making it easy to cut
and paste between Windows and vi. At the vi command prompt, type set
clipboardbuffer=x, setting the Windows clipboard to buffer x. (You may
want to add this to your profile file ex.rc in your home directory, $HOME.)
Yank a couple of lines into the clipboard, “x2Y. Move your cursor into a
Windows application, such as Notepad or Word, and use control-V to paste
this text. Now, highlight some text in the Windows application and copy it
using control-C. Move into vi and paste it: “xp.
The second version of vi in PTC MKS Toolkit for Developers is a graphical
version, vi for Windows, that responds to the standard vi commands, but
supports standard Windows features such as font control and printer
integration – the best of both worlds. You can try it by typing viw from any
command or shell prompt, or by selecting Start > Programs > PTC > MKS
Toolkit > Evaluation Guide > Vi for Windows.
Try this: UNIX and Windows use different line termination characters:
UNIX uses a linefeed, while Windows uses the combination of a carriage
control and a linefeed. You can control the style to use by selecting Options
> PC Specific from the viw menus. While you’re at it, go to a command or
shell prompt and type man flip to find out how to automatically convert
whole files.

Familiar Tools
To assure yourself that PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators
contains the familiar tools that you are used to, try the demonstration at Start
> Programs > PTC > MKS Toolkit > Evaluation Guide > For System
Administrators > UNIX Administrators on Windows > Familiar Tools. This
is a script that exercises df, du, and ls, with output resembling the
following:

20 PTC MKS Toolkit

 There are hundreds of other familiar UNIX utilities included in PTC MKS
Toolkit for System Administrators—including find, grep, more, vi, sed,
and awk. These are robust UNIX tools. Try them by launching a C shell or
KornShell. Help is available via the usual man command.
PTC MKS Toolkit includes samples that add support for text formatting and
processing capability that is compatible with standard UNIX troff, nroff
and groff and lets you display PTC MKS Toolkit reference pages as well as
standard UNIX unformatted man pages (gman) through a Groff package in
the samples directory of the CD.

UNIX Password Synchronization

Many of you have both UNIX and Windows machines to administer. Your
users must access both kinds of machines, but want only one password and
do not want to have to change their passwords two or more times. We have
provided a tool to let you take the user’s password from Windows
(encrypted, of course) and copy it into your UNIX password database.
Note: this is a fairly involved demonstration. It is a two-step process
requiring a reboot after installation of a security helper DLL. You must also
be an Administrator to run this demonstration, because the password
information is stored in a secured part of the registry.

Evaluation Guide 21
Evaluating the PTC MKS Toolkit System Administrator Products

First, you must install the Local Security Authority (LSA) helper DLL, by
selecting Start > Programs > PTC > MKS Toolkit > Evaluation Guide > For
System Administrators > UNIX Administrators on Windows > Password
Synchronization Installation.
Next, you must reboot.
Then, you are ready to run the demonstration at Start > Programs > PTC >
MKS Toolkit > Evaluation Guide > For System Administrators > UNIX
Administrators on Windows > UNIX Password Synchronization. This script
creates a file called passwd.ntsync containing DES-encrypted passwords
for the users of the Windows machine. Copy this file to your UNIX server
(or extract only certain users) and merge it with your existing password file.
You can use the rcp command to copy the file, if you like.
This script, which demonstrates the power of PTC MKS Toolkit for System
Administrators, extracts information stored in the registry (using the LSA
helper DLL) and merges it with information derived from the userinfo and
groupinfo utilities to produce an /etc/passwd-format file.

System Information
System information is available on Windows, but getting at it is not always
an easy or straightforward process. To find everything you need, you have to
know a lot about Windows and ultimately you need to dig into the registry
and that means you have to understand the registry layout, no mean feat.
This demonstration script shows you the power of scripting with PTC MKS
Toolkit for System Administrators, by finding all the system information that
you need to know, and presenting it graphically using dlg, our custom,
scriptable dialog building utility.
Run the demonstration script at Start > Programs > PTC > MKS Toolkit >
Evaluation Guide > For System Administrators > System Information. This
demonstration script exercises the sysinf PTC MKS Toolkit utility, which
keeps you from having to know where every little piece of system
information is stored.

22 PTC MKS Toolkit

 Note that this demonstration shows you the power of the dlg utility. This
demonstration script creates the dialog, buttons, and actions that you have
just seen. When you press a button, it calls sysinf with the appropriate
arguments, and uses awk to format the information for display.

Backups and File Archiving

However you’re used to handling large quantities of files and data—be it via
tar, cpio, dd, or pax—it’s in PTC MKS Toolkit for System
Administrators. We’ve also got mkszip; type man mkszip at a command or
shell prompt for more information.
We all know tar—we’ve used it so many times that our fingers type tar
cvf and tar xvf whenever we want to move entire directory trees from
one machine to another. But what about doing backups in a mixed UNIX and
Windows environment? Tar to tape? Sure—the PTC MKS Toolkit tar
recognizes the tape drives on Windows and lets you read or write a tar-
formatted tape for cross usage of backup media. PTC MKS Toolkit pax is

Evaluation Guide 23
Evaluating the PTC MKS Toolkit System Administrator Products

the POSIX utility that handles both tar and cpio formats and it too
recognizes the tape drives. We’ve provided it to you both with (vpax) and
without (pax) a GUI.
To see vpax in action, select Start > Programs > PTC > MKS Toolkit >
Evaluation Guide > For System Administrators > UNIX Administrators on
Windows > Visual Pax.
The tar, cpio, pax, and vpax (Visual Pax) utilities can store and retrieve
Windows security information, while remaining compatible with UNIX
archives. Additionally, in order to increase performance, when dealing with
standard archives (no Windows security information is being stored or
retrieved), these utilities no do not attempt to access security information.
PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators and all higher products
include the bzip2, gzip/gunzip and zip/unzip compression utilities.
These utilities augment the existing suite of compression utilities: mkszip,
uncompress, pack, unpack, zcat, and the -z option of cpio, pax,
and tar.

KEY POINTS Harness the Power of UNIX on Windows

1. PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators contains over 250 authentic 
UNIX utilities such as df, du, and ls, and both Korn and C shells. 
Therefore, you can immediately start using your UNIX skills and scripts 
on Windows.
2. Administer both Windows and UNIX systems using the Interoperability
capabilities such as the Password Synchronization and Familiar Tools
scripts demonstrated in this section.
3. Using powerful UNIX commands such as awk, supplemented with our 
KornShell’s dlg dialog building utility, you can get all the information 
you need about your Windows system, and you can avoid going to the 
registry to find what you want.
4. Use UNIX commands to perform file backups across multiple
platforms.

24 PTC MKS Toolkit

Available Resources
4
Customer PTC offers extensive customer support to ensure your success with our
products. At any time during your evaluation of our products, please feel
Support free to contact us concerning any issues that may arise.
The evaluation versions of any PTC MKS Toolkit products include free
support from the time of installation. In order to continue support beyond the
evaluation period you must purchase a fully licensed version of the product
along with a Support Contract (Maintenance). A Support Contract is
renewable annually for a small fee and entitles you to unlimited customer
support, patches, bug fixes, and product upgrades. All of our sales channels
offer PTC MKS Toolkit products with bundled a Support Contract for your
convenience.
Please refer to the introductory letter you received with the link to download
your evaluation copy of PTC MKS Toolkit for instructions to contact PTC
Technical Support.

Additional PTC There are several other sources for additional information about our PTC
MKS Toolkit products. We have general product information, including
MKS Toolkit technical specifications, detailed utility listings, and datasheets at:
Resources PTC MKS Toolkit Product Information: http://www.mkssoftware.com/
products
We offer a resource kit including example scripts, additional utilities, more
tutorials, and a wide variety of other useful information at:
PTC MKS Toolkit Resource Kit Page: http://www.mkssoftware.com/
reskit
Through the years, we have accumulated a lot of technical details about the
NuTCRACKER Platform products and have put this information in a
searchable database at:
PTC MKS Toolkit Knowledge Base: http://www.mkssoftware.com/
support/kb

Evaluation Guide 25
Available Resources

Our customers commonly ask certain questions. These questions and their
answers are in our Frequently Asked Questions pages at:
PTC MKS Toolkit FAQs: http://www.mkssoftware.com/support/faqs

Features The PTC MKS Toolkit product family is the most comprehensive suite of
products for UNIX-Windows interoperability, UNIX-Windows application
Summary migration, cross-platform development and system administration, and
advanced Windows scripting. Today’s power users, developers, and system
administrators require powerful utilities that are rock-solid in performance
and reliability. PTC MKS Toolkit is the choice of Global 2000 companies
worldwide for the management and automation of mission-critical tasks.
Used by over 450,000 power users, developers, and system administrators
worldwide, PTC MKS Toolkit is the premium brand for addressing your
organizations’ critical Windows and UNIX/Linux interoperability needs.
The primary features of the products are:
 Advanced Scripting for Windows. With Korn, Bourne Again and
C shells, sed, awk, Perl, dlg, filebox, and over 400 additional utilities,
there is no finer scripting environment on Windows.
 Comprehensive Command Line and Build Environments. Power
users, developers, and system administrators will love the flexibility
of our command line environments, for batch processing, for
automation of recurring tasks, for remote access, and for general
scripting. With rock-solid, proven utilities such as vi, grep, find,
make, cc, and ld, our command-line and build environments are
unsurpassed.
 Scriptable System Administration Utilities. With extensive
system administration utilities for managing users, groups, desktops,
shortcuts, and permissions; for tape handling, file archiving, and
UNIX-compatible backups; for registry manipulation; for service,
device driver, domain, and file association management; for queuing
actions and scheduling tasks; and for process and system
information queries; there are no better system administration
products than those in PTC MKS Toolkit.
 Scriptable Web Development Utilities. Web developers and
maintainers will love the ability to create custom utilities and scripts
to manage their sites with our utilities for manipulating HTML, for
pushing and pulling content to and from local or remote servers, for
Perl scripting in the Microsoft Active Scripting environment, and
CGI programming in Perl and mkscgi.

26 PTC MKS Toolkit

  Advanced UNIX-Windows Interoperability Suite. PTC MKS
Toolkit products have everything that you need to interoperate in a
mixed UNIX and Windows world, including telnet server, remote
commands (rexec, rsh, rlogin, rcp) and servers (rexecd, rshd,
rlogind), secure commands (ssh, sshd, scp, sftp, sftp-server) and X
Windows servers.
 Most Extensive UNIX-Windows Migration and Cross-Platform
Development Facilities. With over 2700 UNIX APIs and a full
command-line development environment, PTC MKS Toolkit
products are the ultimate in migration and cross-platform
development environments. No other products can match our full
support for C, C++, and FORTRAN; for UNIX process management
including fork(), signals, alarms, and threads; for file system and
security management; and for curses, X Windows, Motif, and
OpenGL. And no other product matches PTC MKS Toolkit’s access
to Win32 APIs for Windows integration and interoperability.
 Advanced Modernization and Evolution Facilities. Beyond
migration, PTC MKS Toolkit products help you modernize and
evolve your legacy applications, by creating objects that can be
reused within existing Windows applications, that can be used to
build new Windows applications; and that can be embedded in
Active Server Pages, web-enabling your application.
 Most Extensive Suite of Value-Added Utilities for Windows. No
other products on the market address real-world needs for robust
utilities like PTC MKS Toolkit products. Following are some of our
powerful value-added utilities:

Evaluation Guide 27
Available Resources

Command Definition
64decode Decode a file using base64.
64encode Encode a file using base64.
appc Arbitrary precision programmable calculator.
assoc Set file extension association in the Windows registry.
autorun Specify programs to run on bootup or log in under Win32.
awkc Compile awk programs into executables.
bindres Encode resources and insert them into a specified text file; used with dlg.
c Produce multiple-column output.
chacl Change the access control list (ACL) on Windows objects.
chgrp Change group attribute of a file on Windows.
color Change foreground and background colors of the shell window
db Send SQL queries to a database via ODBC.
dde Perform DDE client operations.
desktop Simple command-line desktop manipulation.
dev Display device driver information.
dlg Load and manage Windows dialog boxes; create graphical shell scripts.
domain Display Windows domain information.
filebox Display Windows Open or Save dialog box.
filever Print file version information.
ftype Set file type association within the Windows registry.
gdf Graphically display the amount of free space remaining on a disk (a dlg example).
gdir Graphically display and manage the current directory stack.
ghist Display and manage command history from a scrollable dialog box.
gps Display and manage process status in a scrollable dialog box (a dlg example).
groupinfo Manipulate Windows group information.
gset Graphically define shell settings.
gvar View or define variables, parameters, functions, and aliases.
halt Shut down the system.
hist Display, fix, edit and re-enter previous command.
htdiff Compare two HTML files and display differences.
htsplit Split an HTML file into tokens.
htstrip Remove HTML tokens from a file or stream.
imapmail Manipulate e-mail messages on an IMAP mail server.
lsacl List access control lists for Windows objects.
manstrip Strip the unprintable sequences out of online man pages.
mapimail Send mail on a Win32 system using the MSMapi32 ActiveX COM object.
member Manipulate Windows group membership information.
mkscgi Run scripts on HTTP server through the Common Gateway Interface.
mksdiag Check PTC MKS Toolkit configuration.
mksinfo Display PTC MKS Toolkit serial number and other information.
mkszip Compress/decompress a file.
msgbox Display a Windows message box.
pop3mail Manipulate e-mail messages on a POP3 mail server.
registry Display and modify the Windows registry.
security Find security related information.
sendevent Send mouse or keyboard events.
service Manage Windows services.
shortcut Create Windows shortcuts from the command line.
sid Display user's security identifier.
start Start a new program in another window.
strerror Display a system error message.
sysinf Display technical system information.
tksched Launch commands at predefined times.
ugrep Search for regular expressions from a dialog box (dlg example).
uncname Return the UNC name for a specified file.
url Parse Uniform Resource Locators (URLs).
userinfo Manage Windows user information.
VDiff Compare two text files and show / merge differences.
viw Display-oriented interactive text editor for Windows.
VPax (Visual Pax) graphical interface to pax, cpio, and tar archives.
wcopy Copy from a specified file or standard input to the Windows clipboard.
web Transfer files to or from a Web server.
winctrl Manipulate windows and dialog boxes.
windir Display the name of the Windows directory.
wpaste Print Windows clipboard text to standard output or a specified file.
ws Display the name of the current workstation or desktop.
wstart Start a new program in another window.

28 PTC MKS Toolkit

 No matter what your need in UNIX-Windows interoperability, there is an
PTC MKS Toolkit product that is just right for you. Whether you are a power
user, developer, or system administrator, PTC MKS Toolkit is the clear
choice. After evaluating PTC MKS Toolkit, we hope that you understand, as
have our 450,000 existing customers, why no other interoperability product
delivers comparable quality, extensive support, and features in one
convenient package. If you still have questions or concerns, please contact
us at the numbers below.

Ordering PTC MKS Toolkit can be purchased by emailing [email protected]

or by calling +1-703-803-3343 or 1-800-637-8034.
Information

Evaluation Guide 29
Available Resources

30 PTC MKS Toolkit