doslang-mirror/tools/tcpagent/README.md

FreeDOS resident TCP agent

TCPAGENT.EXE is a foreground resident automation process. It uses the mTCP packet-driver stack and maintains an outbound connection to the QEMU host at 10.0.2.2:5558.

The Windows-only Python ferro-vm daemon owns that listener. It logs metadata and decoded command output to .qemu/ferro-vm.log; it does not expose an observer/controller TCP port or emit binary payloads to the log. Local host control uses a Windows named pipe.

Build in FreeDOS

1. Obtain the GPLv3 mTCP source tree (tested with the jhpyle/mTCP 2022 fork).
2. Copy this directory to MTCP\APPS\TCPAGENT inside that tree.
3. Set WATCOM for Open Watcom and run BUILD.BAT.
4. Run INSTALL.BAT; it installs the executable and adds startup lines after the existing packet-driver setup in C:\FDAUTO.BAT.

The build uses mTCP's compact memory model and Open Watcom C++16. The agent is therefore distributed under GPLv3 when linked with mTCP.

Protocol

PING, READ, WRITE, LIST, and EXEC use text commands. Fast transfer commands are:

• PUT <hex DOS path> <byte length>\n<raw bytes> -> OK\r\n
• GET <hex DOS path>\n -> DATA <length>\r\n<raw bytes>
• HASH <hex DOS path>\n -> STAT <length> <FNV1A32>\r\n

The host invokes them through:

uv run ferro-vm put host-file 'C:\DOS\FILE'
uv run ferro-vm get 'C:\DOS\FILE' host-file

No DOS-side change is required for the Python host automation.