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"If the hill will not come to Mahomet [sic],
Mahomet will come to the hill."
-- Francis Bacon, Of Boldness
Wouldn't it be great if there were some sort of "search" program that would look through hundreds of different anonymous FTP sites and tell us where all of the files that we want are located?
Well, such a search program exists; it is called "Archie".
Archie is actually a collection of servers. Each of these servers is responsible for keeping track of file locations in several different anonymous FTP sites. All of the Archie servers talk to each other and they pool their information into a huge, global database that is periodically updated.
The Archie catalog subsystem maintains a list of about 1200 Internet anonymous FTP archive sites of approximately 2.5 million unique filenames themselves containing 200 Gigabytes (that is, 200,000,000,000 bytes) of information. The current catalog requires about 400 MB of disk storage. (1)
You can search this database for file locations simply by giving an Archie client or server a keyword to search for.
A few minutes ago I did an Archie search using the keyword "roadmap". Archie sent me back a whole bunch of information in the following format:
Host theory.lcs.mit.edu (18.52.0.92)
Last updated 02:55 16 Apr 1995
Location: /pub/areaii
FILE -rw-rw-r-- 266222 bytes 20:00 18 Sep 1995 roadmap.ps
What does all of this tell me? Well, this tells me the address of the anonymous FTP site (or the "host") is
theory.lcs.mit.edu
the directory that the file is located in is
/pub/areaii
and the name of the file is
roadmap.ps
Archie does not retrieve the file for me, but it does tell me exactly where the file that I am looking for is located. Once I know the file's location (and its filename), retrieving the file using FTP is easy!
There are three ways that you can access Archie:
The load on all of the Archie servers is incredible. If your site has its own Archie client, you should use that client instead of TELNETing or e-mailing to a distant Archie server.
To find out if your site is running its own Archie client, type the word
archie
on your system's line, press the ENTER or RETURN key, and see what happens. If you do not get an error message, you can safely assume that your site has its own Archie client. :)
To actually conduct an Archie search using your site's Archie client, type
archie <searchterm>
replacing <searchterm> with what you want the client to search for. For example:
What you want Archie to search for What you should type
---------------------------------- --------------------
files and directories that have the archie squirrel
word "squirrel" in their titles
files that have the extension .win32 archie .win32
The following are a few of the Archie servers that you can access using TELNET. Please use the username
archie
to login and *please* use the server that is closest to you:
ADDRESS IP ADDRESS LOCATION
archie.au 139.130.23.2 Australia
archie.univie.ac.at 131.130.1.23 Austria
archie.belnet.be 193.190.248.18 Belgium
archie.bunyip.com 192.77.55.2 Canada
archie.cs.mcgill.ca 132.206.51.250 Canada
archie.uqam.ca 132.208.250.10 Canada
archie.funet.fi 128.214.6.102 Finland
archie.univ-rennes1.fr 129.20.254.2 France
archie.th-darmstadt.de 130.83.22.1 Germany
archie.ac.il 132.65.16.8 Israel
archie.unipi.it 131.114.21.10 Italy
archie.wide.ad.jp 133.4.3.6 Japan
archie.hana.nm.kr 128.134.1.1 Korea
archie.kornet.nm.kr 168.126.63.10 Korea
archie.sogang.ac.kr 163.239.1.11 Korea
archie.uninett.no 128.39.2.20 Norway
archie.icm.edu.pl 148.81.209.2 Poland
archie.rediris.es 130.206.1.2 Spain
archie.luth.se 130.240.12.23 Sweden
archie.switch.ch 130.59.1.40 Switzerland
archie.switch.ch 130.59.10.40 Switzerland
archie.ncu.edu.tw 192.83.166.12 Taiwan
archie.doc.ic.ac.uk 146.169.16.11 UK
archie.doc.ic.ac.uk 146.169.17.5 UK
archie.doc.ic.ac.uk 146.169.2.10 UK
archie.doc.ic.ac.uk 146.169.32.5 UK
archie.doc.ic.ac.uk 146.169.33.5 UK
archie.doc.ic.ac.uk 146.169.43.1 UK
archie.doc.ic.ac.uk 155.198.1.40 UK
archie.doc.ic.ac.uk 155.198.191.4 UK
archie.hensa.ac.uk 129.12.43.17 UK
archie.bbnplanet.net 192.239.16.130 USA (MD)
archie.unl.edu 129.93.1.14 USA (NE)
archie.internic.net 192.20.225.200 USA (NJ)
archie.internic.net 192.20.239.132 USA (NJ)
archie.internic.net 198.49.45.10 USA (NJ)
archie.rutgers.edu 128.6.18.15 USA (NJ)
archie.ans.net 147.225.1.10 USA (NY)
To start an Archie search using an Archie server that you have TELNETed to, type
find <searchterm>
replacing <searchterm> with what you want the server to search for (see example above).
After Archie has finished its search and printed its results on your screen, you can have Archie e-mail the results to you by typing
mail <your Internet address>
replacing <your Internet address> with your full e-mail address. Finally, to quit your TELNET session, type
quit
To conduct an Archie search via e-mail, find the site from the list above that is closest to you, add "archie@" to the address, and then send your e-mail letter. For example, to do an ARCHIEmail search at the InterNIC (archie.internic.net), you would send an e-mail letter to archie@archie.internic.net
In the body of your letter you need to type
find <searchterm>
set mailto <your Internet address>
quit
replacing <searchterm> with what you want the server to search for, and replacing <your Internet address> with your e-mail address.
The following Archie commands should work regardless of how you access Archie:
help Displays a general help screen
manpage Displays a *HUGE* manual that tells you
everything you could possibly want to know
about Archie (including how to limit or
expand searches)
servers Displays a list of all publicly accessible
Archie servers worldwide. The names of
the hosts, their IP addresses and
geographical locations are listed.
whatis <substring> Searches the Software Description Catalog
for the given substring, ignoring case.
This catalog consists of names and short
descriptions of many software packages,
documents (like RFCs and educational
material), and data files stored on the
Internet.
Example:
whatis uucp
in part gives as a result:
findpath.sh UUCP Pathfinder
logfile-stats UUCP LOGFILE analyzer
mapstats UUCP map statistics program.
If you *REALLY* want to learn more about Archie (and I mean *REALLY* want to learn more), try using the "manpage" command in the Archie client or server that you are using.
(1) from the Archie 3.2 manpage, available from any Archie mail or TELNET site by typing "manpage".
Start Lesson Seventeen-B | Go to the Roadmap96 Syllabus | Go to the Roadmap96 Homepage
Originally written by Patrick Douglas Crispen
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