MAP17: ARCHIE "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 was 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 06:21 10 Oct 1994 Location: /pub/areaii FILE -rw-r--r-- 159326 bytes 14:52 13 Sep 1994 roadmap.ps What does all of this tell me? Well, this tells me the address of the anonymous ftp site 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 doesn't 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: 1. through an Archie client running on your local Internet service provider's system, 2. through a telnet connection directly to an Archie server, or 3. by sending an e-mail letter directly to an Archie server. 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 telnetting or e-mailing to a distant Archie server. To find out if your site is running its own Archie client, type the word Archie and see what happens. If you don't 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 replacing with what you want the client to search for. For example: What you want Archie What you should to search for type -------------------- --------------- files and directories archie squirrel that have the word "squirrel" in their titles files that have the archie .win32 extension .win32 ACCESSING ARCHIE BY TELNET 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: telnet address location -------------------------- --------- archie.au Australia archie.edvz.uni-linz.ac.at Austria archie.univie.ac.at Austria archie.uqam.ca Canada archie.cs.mcgill.ca Canada archie.funet.fi Finland archie.univ-rennes1.fr France archie.th-darmstadt.de Germany archie.ac.il Israel archie.unipi.it Italy archie.wide.ad.jp Japan archie.hana.nm.kr Korea archie.sogang.ac.kr Korea archie.uninett.no Norway archie.rediris.es Spain archie.luth.se Sweden archie.switch.ch Switzerland archie.ncu.edu.tw Taiwan archie.doc.ic.ac.uk United Kingdom archie.hensa.ac.uk United Kingdom archie.unl.edu USA (NE) archie.internic.net USA (NJ) archie.rutgers.edu USA (NJ) archie.ans.net USA (NY) archie.sura.net USA (MD) To start an Archie search using an Archie server that you have telnetted to, type find replacing 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 replacing with your full e-mail address. Finally, to quit your telnet session, type quit ACCESSING ARCHIE BY E-MAIL To conduct an Archie search via e-mail, send an e-mail letter to the Archie server closest to you: Archie mail address location -------------------------- --------- archie@archie.au Australia archie@archie.edvz.uni-linz.ac.at Austria archie@archie.univie.ac.at Austria archie@archie.uqam.ca Canada archie@archie.cs.mcgill.ca Canada archie@archie.funet.fi Finland archie@archie.univ-rennes1.fr France archie@archie.th-darmstadt.de Germany archie@archie.ac.il Israel archie@archie.unipi.it Italy archie@archie.wide.ad.jp Japan archie@archie.hana.nm.kr Korea archie@archie.sogang.ac.kr Korea archie@archie.uninett.no Norway archie@archie.rediris.es Spain archie@archie.luth.se Sweden archie@archie.switch.ch Switzerland archie@archie.ncu.edu.tw Taiwan archie@archie.doc.ic.ac.uk United Kingdom archie@archie.hensa.ac.uk United Kingdom archie@archie.unl.edu USA (NE) archie@archie.internic.net USA (NJ) archie@archie.rutgers.edu USA (NJ) archie@archie.ans.net USA (NY) archie@archie.sura.net USA (MD) and in the body of your letter type find set mailto quit replacing with what you want the server to search for, and replacing with your e-mail address. ADDITIONAL ARCHIE COMMANDS 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 the hosts, their IP addresses and geographical locations are listed. whatis 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. HOMEWORK: 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. SOURCES: (1) from the Archie 3.2 manpage, available from any Archie mail or telnet site by typing "manpage" PATRICK DOUGLAS CRISPEN THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS LETTER DO NOT PCRISPE1@UA1VM.UA.EDU NECESSARILY REPRESENT THE VIEWS OF THE THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA - TUSCALOOSA ROADMAP: COPYRIGHT PATRICK CRISPEN 1994. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.