FINDING FILES BY E-MAIL ON THE INTERNET - THE SHORT COURSE ---------------------------------------------------------- by Jack Rickard, Boardwatch Magazine, 12/93 Electronic bulletin board aficionados live in a world of files. When browsing files to find the latest, newest, or just something interesting, the Internet itself can't add or subtract much from the immense pool available on direct dial bulletin boards. For one thing, the BBS community is way out in front on the cataloging, listing, presentation, and description of shareware programs. That said, the internet File Transfer Protocol (ftp) program is one of the main uses of the Internet, and the bulk of network backbone traffic involves the transfer of these files. Often, you will read in a USENET newsgroup, a mailing list, or by e-mail of a specific file available from a specific site. Usually, they provide three pieces of information: 1. The site. 2. The directory 3. The file name. With these three bits of information, you can locate and download a specific file by ftp. You simply enter ftp sitename.org.whatever. You get a login prompt and normally enter ANONYMOUS as the login, and your own e-mail address as the password. You then enter the cd command to change to the directory (cd /pub/somedir/thathas/somefil). And finally you enter GET FILENAME.UNIX.FILES.CAN.BE.A LITTLE.LENGTHY.and.CaSe.SenSITive. This transfers the file to your host. From most UNIX hosts, you then download the file using the zmodem protocol by entering SZ FILENAME.EXT. The file is transferred from the host, through the modems, to your local hard drive. And this can be a very valuable thing to be able to do. Rather than list every Internet provider in the world in an e-mail message, a correspondent would be more likely to note its existence, and provide this pointer to the larger file. Files containing Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) are quite commonly referred to in response to common questions in newsgroups. In this way, files are maintained that anyone can ftp to learn the basics. Similarly information files, electronic text articles, programs, and more are maintained in "archives" and it is quite common to refer someone to one of these files for more information, software, or lists of most anything. The other common scenario is when you need to locate a file and have no idea where it is. If you have the filename, or even part of the filename, you can use a program titled ARCHIE to locate it. On most any host, you can enter ARCHIE FILENAME. After a few seconds delay, the program will print a list of sites, directories, and filenames where you can ftp the particular file you are looking for. ARCHIE is actually a worldwide coordinated database of what files are available where. It lists over a million files on thousands of sites. In this way, you can locate files, and obtain them. But it all assumes that you have access to a full Internet host. Internet dialup accounts typically run $15 to $25 per month. And realistically, for many of us, after the first blush of enthusiasm for the Internet and a few weeks of "exploring", the bulk of what we really want to do is e-mail, mailing lists, and newsgroups. There is a growing number of users who have saved quite a bit of money by using commercial services and bulletin boards for these services only. And actually, there is quite a bit you can do from an e-mail only account. LOCATING FILES ARCHIE is actually quite usable by electronic mail, just slower. You can send e-mail to an ARCHIE server, and receive the results back by electronic mail. The following addresses are ARCHIE e-mail server sites. Australiaarchie.au Canadaarchie.mcgill.ca Englandarchie.doc.ic.ac.uk Finlandarchie.funit.fi Germany archie.th-darmstadt.de Israel archie.cs.huji.ac.il Japan archie.wide.ad.jp New Zealandarchie.nx Taiwanarchie.ncu.edu.tw United Statesarchie.rutgers.edu United Statesarchie.sura.net United Statesarchie.unl.edu United Statesarchie.ans.net To use an ARCHIE e-mail server, address your message to ARCHIE @SITE.COM. For example e-mail archie@archie.rutgers.edu. Leave the SUBJECT blank. In the body of the message on the first line, starting with the first character, enter the command: prog filename.ext quit The server will respond by e-mail with a list of sites and directories where you can find that file. There are a few other interesting commands. servers - returns a list of all known archie servers. site - returns a list of all files on a particular site. help - responds with a document describing how to use the server. path - allows you to specify a different address for the server to send the reply. RETRIEVING FILES BY ELECTRONIC MAIL Once you have located a file, you can actually retrieve it by electronic mail as well - although this gets a little more complicated. There are currently four general ftpmail servers available that will let you retrieve a file from most any site, and will send it to you in electronic mail form. United States ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com England ftpmail@src.doc.ic.ac.uk Australia ftpmail@cs.uow.edu.au France ftpmail@grasp1.univ-lyon1.fr These sites run a program titled FTPMAIL written by Paul Vixie at the Digital Western Research Laboratory (decwrl.dec.com) that will generally go ftp a file from any site, get the file, and mail it to you. To use these sites, you basically make up a little batch file of what you want it to do, and mail it to the ftpmail site in the message body. The basic form is as follows: connect pit-manager.mit.edu ;ftp logon to the systemPIT-MANGER.MIT.EDU chdir pub/usenet/news.answers ;change directories get finding-sources ;get the file finding-sources quit ;end of the process Note that you don’t want to include the above comments - just the commands. If the file you are looking for is a binary file instead of a text file, you will want to instruct the server to send the file to you in UUENCODED format. This is a process where the server converts the data into printable ascii text. It makes them about a third larger, but assures that they can be transported by e-mail. You will have to use the UUDECODE utility to reassemble the message into the original binary file. reply jack.rickard@boardwatch.com connect time_a.timefreq.bldrdoc.gov binary uuencode chunksize 50000 chdir /pub/acts get pctime.exe quit If you send this message to ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com you will receive the PCTIME.EXE file back by electronic mail. The response may take from a few hours to several days, depending on traffic at decwrl. The file will come back in UUENCODED ASCII text form, and you will have to run UUDECODE on it to get the PCTIME.EXE executable. The first statement of the above procedure is the REPLY statement. This can be used to specify the address you wish to have the file sent to. It isn't actually necessary. Without it, the system will send the file to the return address on your message. But the REPLY statement can be used to override your return address, and does offer some additional insurance that the file is mailed back to the correct address. The CONNECT statement instructs the system to ftp to time_a.timefreq.bldrdoc.gov. The BINARY statement sets the ftp mode to pass binary files. UUENCODE tells it to encode the file as ASCII text for transmission. CHUNKSIZE tells it to break the file into 50 kb messages. CHDIR specifies the directory the file is stored in. GET PCTIME.EXE specifies which file to send. QUIT terminates the batch procedure. Note that files are limited to 100 KB in size, and that some intermediary sites may further limit file size. Your host, such as CompuServe, may typically limit message sizes to 50 KB. You can actually specify the maximum message size with the statement CHUNKSIZE nnnnnn where nnnnn is the value in bytes. The ftpmail server will break the file into a series of messages. You will normally have to piece them back together with a text editor before UUDECODING. There are numerous other mail servers available. Unlike the FTPMAIL servers, they tend to be specialized on particular topics or functions and operation may vary from server to server. In general, to find out how to use a particular server, simply send an e-mail message with the word HELP as the message body. This will usually result in an electronic mail response with documentation on how to use that particular server, and what is offered. If it does not absolutely positively have to be there right now, you can generally locate and retrieve most any file on the Internet from a simple e-mail box with an domain name address. SOME ADDITIONAL MAIL SERVERS ---------------------------- alt-sources-serv@dmc.com archive-server@ames.arc.nasa.gov archive-server@athena-dist.mit.edu archive-server@bcm.tmc.edu archive-server@cc.purdue.edu archive-server@chsun1.uchicago.edu archive-server@dsi.com archive-server@eclectic.com archive-server@germany.eu.net archive-server@ics.uci.edu archive-server@joshua.atherton.com archive-server@ncsa.uiuc.edu archive-server@rice.edu archive-server@st.cs.uiuc.edu archive-server@sun.soe.clarkson.edu archive-server@wdl1.wdl.loral.com comp-binaries-mac-serv@dmc.com comp-sources-misc-serv@dmc.com comp-sources-reviewed-serv@dmc.com comp-sources-unix-serv@dmc.com comp-sources-x-serv@dmc.com cubelib@gmuvax2.gmu.edu doc-server@prl.dec.com fileserv@dmc.com fileserv@shsu.bitnet ftp@opcom.canada.sun.com ftp-mailer@ftp.informatik.tu-muenchen.de gene-server@bchs.uh.edu goodies-lib@cs.man.ac.uk graf-bib-server@decwrl.dec.com info-server@doc.ic.ac.uk info-server@Germany.EU.net info-server@hp4nl.nluug.nl info-server@sh.cs.net librarian@cse.ucsc.edu library@cme.nist.gov lido@cs.uni-sb.de listserv@orion.bitnet listserv@ubvm.bitnet listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu listserv@vm1.nodak.edu mail-server@cs.ruu.nl mail-server@nluug.nl mail-server@rusmv1.rus.uni-st netlib@draci.cs.uow.edu.au netlib@mthvax.cs.miami.edu netlib@nac.no netlib@ornl.gov netlib@peregrine.com netlib@uunet.uu.net netlib@ukc.ac.uk next-archive@cc.purdue.edu nistlib@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov nptserver@cme.nist.gov object-archive-server@decwrl ps-file-server@adobe.COM reduce-netlib@rand.org reports@midgard.ucsc.edu request@legato.com search@genbank.bio.net service@nic.ddn.mil source@ureview.com statlib@lib.stat.cmu.edu tech-reports@cs.columbia.edu telecom-archive-request@letni vax-pro@wkuvx1.bitnet vmsnet-sources-serv@dmc.com wrl-techreports@decwrl.dec.co wscott@ecn.purdue.edu xstuff@expo.lcs.mit.edu