| [ kyungPookUniv ] in KIDS 글 쓴 이(By): wooko (오 원욱) 날 짜 (Date): 1993년11월04일(목) 16시04분45초 KST 제 목(Title): Internet 메뉴얼입니다.. Guide to Network Resource Tools EARN Association July 9, 1993 Acknowledgements We would like to express our gratitude to the authors and developers of these tools for making their work available to the networking community. We have consulted their documentation, and the documentation of others, in preparing this guide, and for this we are also grateful. We have used their descriptions and explanations when suitable, but any errors or inaccuracies are the sole responsibility of the EARN Staff. Consult the sources listed at the end of each section for specific queries and original detailed information. Notice This document has been compiled and produced by the EARN Association. Permission to copy all or part of this document without fee is granted provided the copies are not used for commercial advantage and that the EARN Association is cited as the source of the document. This document is available in electronic format from: LISTSERV@EARNCC.BITNET Send the command: GET filename where the filename is either: NETTOOLS PS (Postscript) NETTOOLS MEMO (plain text) Document version: 1.0 ISBN 2-910286-01-0 (c) EARN Association, 1993 Contents Introduction Part 1: EXPLORING THE NETWORK GOPHER What is Gopher Who can use Gopher How to get to Gopher Using Gopher VERONICA Simple Boolean search method Partial Boolean search method Learning more about Gopher WORLD-WIDE WEB What is World-Wide Web Who can use World-Wide Web How to get to World-Wide Web Using World-Wide Web Learning more about World-Wide Web Part 2: SEARCHING DATABASES WAIS What is WAIS Who can use WAIS How to get to WAIS Learning more about WAIS ASTRA What is ASTRA Who can use ASTRA How to get to ASTRA Using ASTRA General Commands Batch Query Language Commands Examples Learning more about ASTRA Part 3: FINDING NETWORK RESOURCES ARCHIE What is ARCHIE Who can use ARCHIE How to get to ARCHIE Using ARCHIE Using a local client Using Telnet Using electronic mail Examples Learning more about ARCHIE WHOIS What is WHOIS Who can use WHOIS How to get to WHOIS Using WHOIS Using a local client Using Telnet Examples Learning more about WHOIS NETSERV What is NETSERV Who can use NETSERV How to get to NETSERV Using NETSERV Commands For General Users Examples Learning more about NETSERV Part 4: GETTING FILES TRICKLE What is TRICKLE Who can use TRICKLE How to get to TRICKLE Using TRICKLE Examples Learning more about TRICKLE BITFTP What is BITFTP Who can use BITFTP How to get to BITFTP Using BITFTP Examples Learning more about BITFTP Part 5: NETWORKED INTEREST GROUPS NETNEWS (USENET) What is NETNEWS Who can use NETNEWS How to get to NETNEWS Using NETNEWS Unix X-window VMS VM/CMS MVS Macintosh MS-DOS Learning more about NETNEWS LISTSERV What is LISTSERV Who can use LISTSERV How to get to LISTSERV Using LISTSERV List subscription commands Informational commands File and filelist commands Parameter description LISTSERV Database Facilities Examples Learning more about LISTSERV Introduction As the worldwide academic computer network grows and expands far beyond its previous confines, so the resources and services available on the network evolve and multiply at a dizzying rate. The typical user is hardpressed to keep up with this explosive growth. Fortunately, a number of tools are available to facili- tate the task of locating and retrieving network resources, so that users anywhere can utilize texts, data, software and infor- mation for public access. Facilities to explore public domain software repositories, to consult mailing list archives and data- bases, to retrieve directory information and to participate in global group discussions are now available to all. The key to exploiting these resources is a server, special soft- ware on a computer somewhere in the network which accepts requests (or queries or commands) and sends a response automati- cally. The requestor does not have to be working on the same com- puter (or even in the same part of the world) in order to use the server. Many servers accept requests via electronic mail, so that often the requestor needs not even be on the same computer net- work as the server. In many cases, servers are interconnected so that once you have established contact with one server, you can easily communicate with other servers as well. Today, many users have powerful computers on the desktop, with advanced graphical, audio and storage capabilities, which are connected to the network. This fact has given rise to what is known as the client-server model. Users can have special software on their local computer called a client which can utilize the capabilities of that computer and can also communicate with a server on the network. These clients provide an easy-to-use, intuitive user interface, allow use of pointing devices such as a mouse, and exploit other local features. The client sends the user's requests to a server using a standardized format (called a protocol) and the server sends its response in a condensed format which the client displays to the user in a more readable way. The tools described in this guide have been divided into five functional areas. Actually, several of the tools have several different functions, and have been classified according to their main purpose. The first section, Exploring the network, covers two relatively new services, Gopher and World-Wide Web, which use the client-server model to provide a means of moving through a wide range of network sources and resources in a uniform and intuitive way. Two tools for searching in a wide range of differ- ent databases located throughout the network, WAIS and ASTRA, are documented in the section Searching databases. The problem of knowing where to find people and things in the network is addressed in the third section, Finding network resources, which deals with archie, WHOIS and NETSERV. While just about all of these network tools can be used to get files of one sort or another, there are a few servers available for getting files eas- ily and efficiently from various repositories in the network. Two of these servers, TRICKLE and BITFTP, are covered in section four on Getting files. The final section deals with what is perhaps the most popular of all the network resources, discussion groups on every imaginable topic. The two tools discussed in this sec- tion are LISTSERV and Netnews. Part 1 EXPLORING THE NETWORK GOPHER What is Gopher The Internet Gopher, or simply Gopher, is a distributed document delivery service. It allows users to explore, search and retrieve information residing on different locations in a seamless fash- ion. When browsing it, the information appears to the user as a series of nested menus. This kind of menu structure resembles the organ- ization of a directory with many subdirectories and files. The subdirectories and the files may be located either on the local server site or on remote sites served by other Gopher servers. From the user point of view, all information items presented on the menus appear to come from the same place. The information can be a text or binary file, directory informa- tion (loosely called phone book), image or sound. In addition, Gopher offers gateways to other information systems (World-Wide Web, WAIS, archie, WHOIS) and network services (Telnet, FTP). Gopher is often a more convenient way to navigate in a FTP direc- tory and to download files. A Gopher server holds the information and handles the users' queries. In addition, links to other Gopher servers create a net- work wide cooperation to form the global Gopher web (Gopher- space). Who can use Gopher Gopher uses the client-server model to provide access to the Gopher web. You must be on the international TCP/IP network (the Internet) in order to use a client on your computer to access Gopher. How to get to Gopher Users explore the Gopher menus using various local clients or accessing a remote client via an interactive Telnet session. Local clients Public domain clients for accessing a Gopher server are available for: Macintosh, MS-DOS, OS/2, VM/CMS, VMS, NeXT, Unix, X-Window. The clients are available for anonymous FTP from many FTP sites (eg, boombox.micro.umn.edu in the directory /pub/gopher). Remote clients Some sites allow public access via Telnet to a client. To access such a remote client, telnet to one of these sites: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | info.anu.edu.au Australia (login: info) | | tolten.puc.cl Columbia | | ecnet.ec Ecuador | | gopher.chalmers.se Sweden | | consultant.micro.umn.edu USA | | gopher.uiuc.edu USA | | panda.uiowa.edu USA (login: panda) | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ At the login: prompt type gopher (unless specified otherwise) and the top-level Gopher menu for that site will be displayed. Users are requested to use the site closest to them. Using Gopher The implementations of the Gopher clients on various platforms are slightly different to take advantage of the platforms' capa- bilities (mouse, graphic functions, X-Window server) and to offer the popular look and feel. Even with different implementations, the same set of functions and commands is available. When issuing the gopher command, you will be connected automati- cally to the default Gopher server specified at the installation. The format of the command is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | gopher <hostname> | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where hostname is an optional alternative Gopher server you want to talk to. When connected to a Gopher server, it is still possible to access another server by exploring the Other Gopher servers in the rest of the world branch. To locate them more easily, the Gopher ser- vers are distributed in geographical regions: * Africa * Europe * Middle East * North America * Pacific * South America and then by countries. Access to a Gopher server is identical whether using a local or a remote client: a simple menu-driven interface which doesn't require any special training or knowledge from the user. Here is a sample menu: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Internet Gopher Information Client v1.1 Information About Gopher 1. About Gopher. 2. Search Gopher News <?> 3. Gopher News Archive/ 4. comp.infosystems.gopher (Usenet newsgroup)/ 5. Gopher Software Distribution/ 6. Gopher Protocol Information/ 7. University of Minnesota Gopher software licensing policy. 8. Frequently Asked Questions about Gopher. 9. gopher93/ 10. Gopher| example server/ 11. How to get your information into Gopher. --> 12. New Stuff in Gopher. 13. Reporting Problems or Feedback. 14. big Ann Arbor gopher conference picture.gif <Picture> Press ? for Help, q to Quit, u to go up a menu Page: 1/1 ----------------------------------------------------------------- In the example above, any item can be selected by typing its line number or by moving the cursor (-->) next to it. An item could be: * a subdirectory * a text file * a binary file * a sound file * an image file * a phone book (directory information) * an index-search * a Telnet session Items are displayed with an identifying symbol next to them. In the example above, "<?>" means a full text index-search, "/" means a subdirectory, "<Picture>" means an image file and no sym- bol means a text file. Some Gopher clients are not able to handle certain file types (eg, sound files). Some clients display only files of types they can handle or files they suppose you are interested in. Others display all types of files. Most Gopher clients allow you to create, view and select book- marks. A bookmark keeps track of the exact location of a Gopher item, regardless of where it resides. It is useful when you often need to reach a file or a service located far from the top-level directory. A collection of bookmarks is like a customized Gopher menu. Some capabilities of a local Gopher client are bound to the capa- bilities of your own computer. In fact, for sound files, image files and Telnet sessions, the Gopher client looks for the appro- priate software on your computer and passes control to it to per- form the requested task. When the task is completed, control is returned to the Gopher client. At any time, it is possible to terminate the session (quit com- mand), to cancel the current processing or to get the on-line help (help command). An item is processed according to its type: a subdirectory its contents are displayed. To go up one level, use the up command. a text file the file is displayed. Then you can browse it, search for a particular string, print it on a local printer or copy (save) it onto your local disk space in a user-specified file (the last 2 functions may not be available to you). a binary file the remote file is simply copied onto your local disk space in a user-specified file. Binary files are binhexed Macintosh files, archives (.zip, .tar,...), compressed files, programs, etc. a sound file the remote file is played through your local audio device if it exists, as well as the appropriate utility. Only one sound file can be active at a time; you will be warned if you try to play a sound before a previous one is done. an image file the remote file is displayed on your computer screen if an image viewer exists on your computer. a phone book you are prompted for a search string to look up peo- ple information through the selected phone book. Since different institutions have different directo- ry services, the queries are not performed in the same fashion. an index-search you are prompted for a search string which may be one or more words, plus the special operators and, or, and not. The search is case-insensitive. Usual- ly, an index is created to help users locate the information in a set of documents quickly. Eg: terminal and setting or tset will find all documents which contain both the words terminal and setting, or the word tset. or is non- exclusive so the documents may contain all of the words. The result of the index-search looks like any Gopher menu, but each menu item is a file that contains the specified search string. a Telnet session Telnet sessions are normally text-based information services, for example, access to library catalogs. VERONICA Veronica was designed as a solution to the problem of resource discovery in the rapidly-expanding Gopher web, providing a key- word search of more than 500 Gopher menus. Veronica helps you find Gopher-based information without doing a menu-by-menu, site- by-site search. It is to the Gopher information space, what archie is to the FTP archives Veronica is accessible from most top-level Gopher menus or from the Other Gopher servers... branch. There is no need for opening another connection or another application. There are two search methods: the simple Boolean search method and the partial Boolean search method. When you choose either search method, you will be prompted for a search string. The searches are carried out on an index of Gopher menu titles. They are NOT full-text searches of data at Gopher sites. Veronica queries are case-insensitive. Simple Boolean search method: The search string may contain keywords optionally separated by and and or. and is assumed between 2 words. or takes precedence over and. Eg: eudora will give you a list of menu titles that contain eudora, includ- ing: Electronic Mail: Eudora on Macintosh, Micro-08 Modem Setting Eudora Slip. A UNIX-based Eudora reader for those that ... Eudora: Popmail for the Macintosh. Eudora. etc. while eudora and macintosh will give you a list of menu titles that contain both eudora and macintosh, including: Eudora: Popmail for the Macintosh. v4.1 EUDORA: E-MAIL FOR THE MACINTOSH. Micro News: Eudora - A Mailer for the Macintosh. Eudora: Electronic Mail on Your Macintosh. ACS News - Eudora Mail Reader for Macintosh. etc. Partial Boolean search method: BOOLEANS The search string contain keywords optionally separated and, or and not. The evaluation is done from left to right. not clauses are evaluated after all the other clauses are evaluated. Eg: red and blue or yellow but not green and orange or black but not white will be interpreted as: (((((red and blue) or yellow) and orange) or black) not green) not white PARTIALWORD '*' is the wildcard character, which can replace any other char- acter. It causes a partial search on the substring it follows. Eg: desk* will give you a list of menu titles, including: The Help Desk. Keene State College Press Release COMPUTER ON EVERY DESK. DESKQview/X... An alternative to Windows???. Ethernet at Your Desktop/ LITERAL A string surrounded with a pair of quotes (') or double-quotes (") causes an exact match search (case-insensitive). and, not, and '*' may occur in the literal string, they have no special meaning. The first part of a literal string must be a word, rath- er than a delimiter symbol, to get a successful search. Eg: "desk" will give you a list of menu titles, including: Mac on Your Desk. Information Desk. Available at the Help Desk .... The result of both search methods is a Gopher menu composed of items (with an identifying symbol) whose titles match the search string. Like any Gopher items, you can process them: open subdi- rectories, display text files, etc. Learning more about Gopher The Internet Gopher is developed by the Computer and Information Services Department of the University of Minnesota. Bug reports, comments, suggestions, etc. should be mailed to the Gopher devel- opment team at: gopher@boombox.micro.umn.edu. Mailing list: gopher-news@boombox.micro.umn.edu To subscribe send a mail to: gopher-news-request@boombox.micro.umn.edu Usenet newsgroup: comp.infosystems.gopher A comprehensive description of veronica search methods is avail- able from the veronica menus. Veronica is being developed by Steve Foster and Fred Barrie at the University of Nevada. Bug reports, comments, suggestions, etc. should be addressed to: gophadm@futique.scs.unr.edu WORLD-WIDE WEB What is World-Wide Web World-Wide Web (also called WWW or W3) is an information system based on hypertext, which offers a means of moving from document to document (usually called to navigate) within a network of information. Hypertext documents are linked to each other through a selected set of words. For example, when a new word, or a new concept, is introduced in a text, hypertext makes it possible to point to another document which gives more details about it. The reader can open the second document by selecting the unknown word or concept and the relevant section is displayed. The second docu- ment may also contain links to further details. The reader need not know where the referenced document is, and there is no need to type a command to display it, or to browse it to find the right paragraph. Cross-references may be defined in the same doc- ument. A collection of documents is a database. If you were reading this document on a hypertext system, instead of this all too short explanation about hypertext, you would have a selectable pointer to a complete hypertext information web with examples and more pointers to other definitions. For instance, in the first document you might read: ----------------------------------------------------------------- The WorldWideWeb (W3) is a wide-area "hypermedia" information retrieval initiative aiming to give universal access to a large universe of documents. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Selecting hypermedia will display the following explanation for you: ----------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT IS HYPERTEXT Hypertext is text without the constraint of linearity. Hypertext is text which contains "links" to other texts. The term was coined by Ted "Nelson" around 1965. Hypermedia is a term used for hypertext which is not constrained to be text. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Then you can learn more about links and Nelson. Also, special documents (indexes) in the WWW information space can be search for given keyword(s). The result is a document which contains links to the documents found. World-Wide Web uses hypertext over the network: the linked docu- ments may be located at various sites. WWW can handle different text formats and various information organizations. WWW also pro- vides access to many of the other tools described in this guide. Who can use World-Wide Web WWW uses the client-server model to provide access to the infor- mation universe. You must be on the international TCP/IP network (the Internet) in order to use a client on your computer to access WWW. How to get to World-Wide Web Users access the World-Wide Web facilities via a client called a browser. This interface provides transparent access to the WWW servers. If a local WWW client is not available on your computer, you may use a client at a remote site. Thus, an easy way to start with WWW is to access a remote client. Local clients Usage of a local client is encouraged since it provides better performance and better response time than a remote client. Public domain clients for accessing WWW servers are available for: Macintosh, MS-DOS, VMS, VM/CMS, MVS, NeXT, Unix, X-Window. The clients are available for anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch in the directory /pub/www. All these platforms support a simple line mode browser. In addition, graphical clients are available for: Macintosh, Windows, X-Window, NeXT and Unix. Remote clients To access a remote WWW client, telnet to one of the server sites. At the login:prompt enter www, no password is needed. There are many WWW servers already available throughout the network, and the number is growing, so it is not possible to include a compre- hensive list here. A server may provide databases on specific topics. The following servers act as demonstration sites: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | info.funet.fi Finland | | vms.huji.ac.il Israel | | info.cern.ch Switzerland (CERN) | | eies2.njit.edu USA | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ CERN is the entry point to find information about WWW itself and to have an overview of the Web with a catalogue of the databases sorted by subject. Using World-Wide Web When using a graphical interface, you access the WWW functions by pressing mouse buttons. In particular, references are highlighted or underlined words. To follow a link, click on the associated reference. The line mode browser is a more simple user interface: references are numbers in square brackets next to words. Type the number and hit the RETURN key to follow a reference. For example, here is the beginning of the Subject Catalogue you get on the CERN ser- ver: ----------------------------------------------------------------- The World-Wide Web Virtual Library: Subject Catalogue INFORMATION BY SUBJECT See also arrangements by organization[1] or by service type[2]. Mail www-request@info.cern.ch if you know of online information not in these lists.... Aeronautics Mailing list archive index"3" . Astronomy and Astrophysics Abstract Indexes"4" (unavailable). Astrophysics work at FNAL"5" . Bio Sciences[6] separate list . Computing[7] Seperate list. Geography CIA World Fact Book"8" , India: Miscellaneous information"9", Thai-Yunnan: Davis collection"10", Law US Copyright law"11" . Libraries[12] Lists of online catalogues etc. Literature & Art[13] separate list. Mathematics CIRM library"14" (french). The International Journal of Analytical and Experimental Modal 1-30, Back, <RETURN> for more, Quit, or Help: ----------------------------------------------------------------- The following commands are available within WWW. Some are disa- bled when not applicable (eg, Find is enabled only when the cur- rent document is an index). Angle brackets (<>) indicate an optional parameter. Help gives a list of available commands depending on the context, and the hypertext address of the current docu- ment. Manual displays the on-line manual. Quit exits WWW. Up, Down scrolls up or down one page in the current document. Top, BOttom goes to the top or the bottom of the current document. Back goes back to the document you were reading before. HOme goes back to the first document you were reading. Next, Previous goes to the next or previous document in the list of pointers from the document that led to the current one. List gives a numbered list of the links from the current document. To follow a link, type in the number. Recall <number> if number is omitted, gives a numbered list of the documents you have visited. To display one specific document, re-issue the command with number. <Find> keyword queries the current index with the supplied keyword(s). A list of matching entries is displayed with possibly links to further details. Find can be omitted if the Find first keyword does not conflict with another WWW com- mand. Multiple keywords are separated by blanks. Go docaddress goes to the document represented by the given hypertext address, which is interpreted relatively to the current document. Extra command available on Unix versions only: Print prints the current document, without the numbered document references. The default print command is lpr, but it may be defined in your local working environ- ment by the variable WWW_PRINT_COMMAND. To access WWW with the line mode browser, type: www. The default first document will appear on your screen. From this point, you should be able to navigate through the WWW universe by reading the text and following the instructions at the bottom of the screen. If you want to start with a first document other than the default, or if you want to change some other aspect of the usual interaction, there are a number of command line parameters and options available. The full format of the www command to invoke the line mode browser is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | www <options> <docaddress <keyword>> | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where: docaddress is the hypertext address of the document at which you want to start browsing. keyword queries the index specified by docaddress with the sup- plied keyword(s). A list of matching entries is dis- played. Multiple keywords are separated by blanks. Options are: -n non-interactive mode. The document is formatted and displayed to the screen. Pages are delimited with form feed (FF) characters. -listrefs adds a list of the addresses of all documents referenc- es to the end. Non-interactive mode only. -pn sets the page length to n lines. Without a number, makes the page length infinite. Default is 24. -wn sets the page width to n columns. The default is 78, 79 or 80 depending on the system. -na hides references in the text. Useful, when printing out the document. -version displays the version number of the software. The commands listed above should be available in all clients. They may be abbreviated (CAPITAL letters indicate acceptable abbreviation). Case is not significant. Special characteristics of the line mode browser interface are: number type in a number given in [] and hit the RETURN key to follow the link associated to the reference. RETURN hit the RETURN key to display the next page of the cur- rent document (without a reference number). Learning more about World-Wide Web World-Wide Web is being developed at CERN (European Particle Physics Laboratory) by the World-Wide Web team leaded by Tim Berners-Lee. Bug reports, comments, suggestions, etc. should be mailed to: www-bug@info.cern.ch On-line documentation is available from info.cern.ch, for anony- mous FTP or using the remote WWW client. Mailing lists: www-talk@info.cern.ch To subscribe send a mail to www-talk-request@info.cern.ch Usenet newsgroup: comp.infosystems.www Part 2 SEARCHING DATABASES WAIS What is WAIS WAIS, Wide Area Information Server, is a distributed informa- tion retrieval system. It helps users search databases over net- works using an easy-to-use interface. The databases (called sources) are mostly collections of text-based documents, but they may also contain sound, pictures or video as well. More than 400 databases on topics ranging from Agriculture to Social Science can be searched with WAIS. The databases may be organized in different ways, using various database systems, but the user isn't required to learn the query languages of the different databases. WAIS uses natural language queries to find relevant documents. The result of the query is a set of documents which contain the words of the query: no semantic information is extracted from the query. Who can use WAIS WAIS uses the client-server model to provide access to databases. You must be on the international TCP/IP network (the Internet) in order to use WAIS. How to get to WAIS There are many WAIS servers throughout the network. A directory- of-servers database is available at several sites. You can address a query to it. quake.think.com acts as a demonstration site, you can telnet to it. At the login: prompt enter wais, no password is needed. A complete listing of the advertised databases is available via anonymous FTP from Think.com in the directory /pub/wais as file wais-sources.tar.Z. Public domain clients for accessing WAIS are available for: Macintosh, MS-DOS, Windows 3.x, VMS, NeXT, Unix, X-Window. These clients are available for anonymous FTP from the University of North Carolina (SunSITE.unc.edu) in the directory /pub/wais. The client interface differs slightly on different platforms. However, the queries are performed in the same way, whatever the interface. * Step 1: The user selects a set of databases to be searched from among the available databases. * Step 2: The user formulates a query by giving keywords to be searched for. * Step 3: When the query is run, WAIS asks for information from each selected database. * Step 4: Headlines of documents satisfying the query are dis- played. The selected documents contain the requested words and phrases. Selected documents are ranked according to the number of matches. * Step 5: To retrieve a document, the user simply selects it from the resulting list. * Step 6: If the response is incomplete, the user can state the question differently or feed back to the system any one or more of the selected documents he finds relevant. * Step 7: When the search is run again, the results will be updated to include documents which are similar to the ones selected, meaning documents which share a large number of common words. Learning more about WAIS Bug reports, comments, suggestions, etc., should be addressed to George Brett at George.Brett@cnidr.org Mailing list: wais-discussion@wais.com To subscribe send a mail to wais-discussion-request@wais.com Usenet newsgroup: comp.infosystems.wais WAIS was developed at Thinking Machines Corporation. ASTRA What is ASTRA The ASTRA service allows users to retrieve documents from databases known by ASTRA throughout the network. Users can send their queries to the ASTRA server which in turn forwards the query to the related database servers. This provides an easy- to-use uniform access method to a large number of databases. ASTRA provides the same user interface for all databases it can access, even if the database servers have different access lan- guages, such as STAIRS, ISIS or SQL. Each database defined in ASTRA has an abstract which holds information about the database: title, name of the maintainers, a brief description of the database, the main topics of the data- base and its language. Users are advised to look at the abstracts before sending requests, to avoid sending requests to the wrong databases. Some databases actually combine several different databases that deal with the same topics. When a user sends a request for such a database, the request is forwarded to all related databases. Who can use ASTRA Anyone who can send electronic mail to EARN/Bitnet can access ASTRA. Interactive user interfaces (clients) to ASTRA are avail- able for VM and VMS systems on the EARN/Bitnet network. For all other users, there is a batch language that permits batch queries using e-mail. How to get to ASTRA Currently there are five ASTRA servers installed at the following addresses: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | ASTRADB@ICNUCEVM.BITNET | | ASTRASQL@ICNUCEVM.BITNET | | ASTRADB@IFIBDP.BITNET | | ASTRADB@IFIIDG.BITNET | | ASTRADB@IRMKANT.BITNET | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ There are clients available for IBM VM and DEC VMS systems run- ning on the NJE network. To order either client, send the fol- lowing command to ASTRADB@ICNUCEVM.BITNET: SUBSCRIBE SYS=sysname Firstname Lastname where sysname is either VM or VAX, depending on your system, and Firstname Lastname is your real name (*not* your e-mail address). The ASTRADB server will send you a copy of the executable files and documentation files necessary to run the client. Communication between the user interface and the server can be performed either by interactive messages, or via sendfile. In sendfile mode, the query entered by the user is placed in a file and delivered to the server. Using ASTRA The commands accepted by the ASTRADB server can be divided into two sections: general commands, such as HELP, and the com- HELP mands that are part of the ASTRA Batch Query Language. In the following, angle brackets (<>) indicate an optional parameter. General Commands: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | GET fn ft <fm> <password> | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where: fn is the CMS filename of the file ft is the CMS filetype of the file fm is the CMS filemode of the file password a password is required to access certain files. This command allows the user to order any file from an ASTRA database server. SENDME is a synonym for GET command. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | NEWS | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ The NEWS command delivers a news bulletin from the ASTRA ser- vice. A separate file called ASTRA LOGNEWS with a complete log of old news is also available by sending the command: GET ASTRA LOGNEWS to the server. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | HELP <fn> | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where: fn is the optional filename of the helpfile to fetch. This command provides the requested helpfile. If fn is omit- ted, the ASTRA INFO file is delivered. If a parameter is given, the helpfile with that filename is sent. Helpfiles on several databases are available. Batch Query Language Commands: Although the full-screen user interfaces to ASTRA are easier to use, the server also accepts batch-mode commands, which can be sent to the server by e-mail. The following batch-mode commands may be specified. Note that only the first character of each com- mand is required. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | StartRequest: Username: username Host: host | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where: username is the userid to which the results should be sent. host is the host (or node) name to which the results should be sent. This command starts the transaction, and specifies the address username@host to which the command results should be sent. For example, if the command comes from toot@hubble.circe.fr, the command should be: S: U: toot H: hubble.circe.fr +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Dbname: dbname TypeResult: resulttype | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where: dbname is the name of the database resulttype is the type of result desired. This command selects a database name to use, and the type of results desired. Here the dbname can be any database name valid to ASTRA service. For an up-to-date listing of the avail- able databases, send the command GET ASTRA HELPDBTB to ASTRADB@ICNUCEVM.BITNET. resulttype indicates how the server should report the results. The choices are NUMERIC, DOCUMENT or SOFTWARE. NUMERIC indi- cates that only the number of hits should be returned, DOCUMENT specifies that the user should receive all documents matching the criteria, and finally SOFTWARE indicates that all related reports, software and pictures should also be sent to the user. For example, to search the STAR database and get the hit count, enter: D: STAR T: N +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | = querytext | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ This command starts a keyword search on the selected data- base. The querytext format can be either in STAIRS/CMS query language, or in the query language of the host (SQL stored query, or ISIS query language). The format to be used is speci- fied with the PrintFormat command Consult the ASTRA help file for a complete list of search keywords. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | PrintFormat: format | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where: format is the print format name defined for this database. This command tells the server which report format to use to dis- play the results of a query. A default PrintFormat called D is defined for each database, and specifies that the whole document is to be displayed. For examples and details, refer to the meta-database GEOL. Some other keywords that can be specified for the PrintFormat are as follows: H=Y/N: Heading Required Yes/No F=T/C: Tabular or Comma-Delimited format. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | EndRequest: | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ Use the EndRequest command to signal the end of a job. The Dbname, TypeResult, =, and PrintFormat commands may be repeated as many times as necessary within a batch job. Examples If you work on a VAX/VMS system in EARN/Bitnet and your name is Hilary Clinton, to subscribe to the ASTRA service and get the files for the interactive interface, use the command: $ SEND ASTRADB@ICNUCEVM "SUBSCRIBE SYS=VAX Hilary Clinton" To get help on ASTRA's meta-database, send the command: HELP META to: ASTRADB@ICNUCEVM.BITNET Here is a sample batch file: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | startrequest: username: TURGUT host: FRORS12.CIRCE.FR | | dbname: star typeresult: numeric | | = campus and network | | printformat: | | dbname: soft typeresult: document | | = campus and network | | printformat: all | | endrequest: | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ Learning more about ASTRA An extensive help file is available by sending the command HELP to ASTRADB@ICNUCEVM.BITNET. The following three files are also available at the same address using the GET command: META DOCUMENT the list and description of the available databases ASTRAIMM DOCUMENT the installation and maintenance guide ASTRAFS DOCUMENT the system specification manual There are also LISTSERV lists for ASTRA users: ASTRA-UG Used for the distribution of a newsletter about new databases or new versions of the current databases. ASTRA-OG Used to report problems about the server. Users are encouraged to submit their questions or problems to this list. To subscribe, send the command: SUB listname Your Name where listname can be either ASTRA-UG or ASTRA-OG to: LISTSERV@ICNUCEVM.BITNET An ASTRA newsletter is also available by sending the command: NEWS to ASTRADB@ICNUCEVM.BITNET. The developers of the ASTRA service may be contacted at: ASTRA@ICNUCEVM.CNUCE.CNR.IT Part 3 FINDING NETWORK RESOURCES ARCHIE What is ARCHIE Archie is an information system. It offers an electronic directo- ry service for locating information in the international TCP/IP network (the Internet). The best known use of archie is for scanning a database of the contents of more than 1000 anonymous FTP sites around the world. Currently, this database contains more than 2,100,000 file names from anonymous FTP sites. This database is known as the archie database. The files made available at anonymous FTP sites are software packages for various systems (Windows, MS-DOS, Macintosh, Unix, etc.), utilities, information or documentation files, mailing list or Usenet group discussion archives. At most FTP sites, the resources are organized hierarchically in directories and subdi- rectories. The database tracks both the directory path and the file names. The archie database is automatically updated, thereby ensuring that the information is accurate. Using this database, users can easily find the the location of files they need without logging onto several machines. Who can use ARCHIE Users on any network can access the archie database by electronic mail. Other means of access are available to users on the Inter- net (see the section Using ARCHIE below for details). You are requested to respect a few basic rules when you request information from an archie server: * avoid connecting during working hours; most of the archie servers are not dedicated machines, they have local functions as well. * make your queries as specific as possible; the response will be quicker and shorter. * user interfaces installed on your computer contribute to reduce the load on the server sites, please use them. * use the archie server closest to you and, in particularly, don't overload the transatlantic lines. How to get to ARCHIE The archie database is maintained in 17 different locations. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | archie.edvz.uni-linz.ac.at Austria | | archie.univie.ac.at Austria | | archie.au Australia | | archie.funet.fi Finland | | archie.th-darmstadt.de Germany | | archie.doc.ic.ac.uk Great Britain | | archie.cs.huji.ac.il Israel | | archie.wide.ad.jp Japan | | archie.kuis.kyoto-u.ac.jp Japan | | archie.sogang.ac.kr Korea | | archie.nz New Zealand | | archie.luth.se Sweden | | archie.ncu.edu.tw Taiwan | | archie.ans.net USA | | archie.rutgers.edu USA | | archie.sura.net USA | | archie.unl.net USA | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ There are three ways to access the archie database: via a local client, interactive Telnet session or electronic mail. Each type of access is described below in the Using ARCHIE section. Using ARCHIE The format of the parameters is given at the end of this section. Angle brackets (<>) indicate an optional parameter; a vertical bar (|) indicates a choice of parameters. Using a local client: Usage of these clients is encouraged since they provide quick and easy non-interactive access to the archie servers, and thus, bet- ter performance of the servers and better response time for the user. Public domain clients for accessing archie servers are available for: Macintosh, MS-DOS, OS/2, VMS, NeXT, Unix and X-Window. The clients are available for anonymous FTP from the archie sites in the directory /archie/clients. Archie client command and parameters The archie client is a command with parameters that you enter on your local machine. With most versions of the archie client, if you type archie with no parameters, you will get a list of the possible parameters and a short description of each. The format of the command is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | archie <-options> string | pattern | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where the options are: o specifies an output file name to store the results (not available with all clients). l lists the result one match per line. This form is suit- able for parsing by programs. t sorts the result inverted by date m# specifies maximum number of matches to return (# within the range 0 to 1000). The default value is 95. h archie_server specifies an archie server to send the query to; if this parameter is not given, then the query will be sent to the default archie server, if one is defined. L lists known servers and current default The following group of options determines the kind of search per- formed on the database. They are mutually exclusive. s a match occurs if the file/directory name contains string. The search is case insensitive. c as above, but the search is case sensitive. e string must EXACTLY match (including case) the file/ directory name in the database. This is the DEFAULT search method. r searches the database using pattern. It contains spe- cial characters which must be interpreted before per- forming the search. There may be some slight differences in the options available with different clients on different platforms. The result is a list of FTP site addresses with entries matching the argument, the size of the resource, its last modification date and its directory. By default, the list is sorted by host address. See the Examples section below for an example of archie output. Using Telnet: To access an archie server interactively, telnet to one of the existing servers (see the list of servers in the section How to get to ARCHIE above). At the login: prompt enter archie, the login procedure ends leaving the user at a archie> prompt. The server is ready for the user requests and the following commands are available: exit, quit, bye exits archie. list <pattern> provides a list of the sites in the database and the time at which they were last updated. The optional parameter limits the list to specific sites. The result is a list of site names, sites IP address and date of the last update in the database. The command list with no pattern will list all sites in the database (more than 1000 sites!). The command: list ".de$ will lists all German sites. site site-name lists the directories and, recursively, the subdirecto- ries, of site-name in the database. The result may be very long. whatis string searches the database of software package descriptions for string. The search is case-insensitive. prog string | pattern searches the database for string or pattern which rep- resents the name of the resource to be found in the database. Searches may be performed in a number of dif- ferent ways specified in the variable search (set com- mand) which also decides the interpretation of the parameter as string or pattern. The result is a list of FTP site addresses with match- ing entries, the size of the resource, its last modifi- cation date and the directory to find it. The number of hits is limited by the maxhits variable (set command). The result of prog can be sorted in different ways, depending on the value of the sortby variable (set com- mand). By default, the variables search, maxhits and sortby are set to, respectively, exact match search on string, 1000 hits and unsorted resulting list. Typing the keyboard interrupt character during a search will abort it. The results up to that time are dis- played. See the Examples section below for an example of the prog command and its results. prog mail <email> <,email2...> sends the result of the last command in a mail message to the specified e-mail address(es). If issued with no argument, the result is sent to the address specified in the variable mailto (set command). show variable displays the value of the given variable name. If issued with no argument, it displays all variables. See the set command below for the possible variables. set variable value sets one of the archie's variables. Values of these variables affect how archie interacts with the user. Variables and values are: mailto email <,email2 ...> specifies the e-mail address(es) to mail the result of the last command when mail is issued with no arguments. maxhits number specifies the maximum number of matches prog will gen- erate (within the range 0 to 1000). The default value is 1000. search search-value determines the kind of search performed on the database by the command: prog string | pattern. search-values are: sub a partial and case insensitive search is per- formed with string on the database, eg: "is" will match "islington" and "this" and "poison" subcase as above but the search is case sensitive, eg: "TeX" will match "LaTeX" but not "Latex" exact the parameter of prog (string) must EXACTLY match (including case) the string in the database. The fastest search method of all, and the default. regex pattern is interpreted before performing a search on the database. sortby sort-value describes how to sort the result of prog. sort-values are: hostname on the FTP site address in lexical order. time by the modification date, most recent first. size by the size of the found files or directories, largest first. filename on file or directory name in lexi- cal order. none unsorted (default) The reverse sorting orders from those described here are obtained by prepending r to the sortby value given. (eg, reverse host- name order hostname is rhostname). term terminal-type <number-of-rows <number-of-columns>> tells the archie server what type of terminal you are using, and optionally its size in rows and columns, eg: set term xterm 24 100 Using electronic mail: Users limited to electronic mail connectivity can access the archie servers by sending mail to the domain address of one of the servers listed in the section How to get to ARCHIE. The com- mands are sent in the body part of the mail. An archie server recognizes eight commands: help, path, prog, whatis, list, site, compress and quit. Particularities to the electronic mail interface are described below. If an empty mes- sage, or a message containing no valid requests is received, it will be considered to be a help request. Command lines begin in the first column. All lines that do not match a valid command are ignored. The Subject: line is processed as if it were part of the message body. help sends you the help file. The help command is exclusive, ie, other commands in the same message are ignored. path return-address specifies a return e-mail address different from that which is extracted from the message header. If you do not receive a reply from the archie server within sev- eral hours, you might need to add a path command to your message request. prog pattern <pattern2 ...> searches the database for each interpretation of pat- tern which represents the name of a resource to be found in the database. If multiple patterns are placed on one line, in that case, the results will be mailed back in one message. If multiple prog lines appear, then multiple messages will be returned, one for each prog line. Results are sorted by FTP site address in lexical order. If pat- tern contains spaces, it must be quoted with single (') or double (") quotes. The search is case sensitive. whatis string <string2 ...> searches the database of software packages descriptions for each string. The search is case insensitive. list pattern <pattern2 ...> provides a list of the sites in the database that match pattern and the time at which they were last updated. The result is a list with site names, sites IP address and date of the last update in the database. site site-name lists the directories and, recursively, the subdirecto- ries, of site-name in the database. compress causes the result of the current request to be com- pressed and uuencoded. When you receive the reply, you should run it through uudecode. This will produce a .Z file. You can then run uncompress on this file and get the result of your request quit nothing past this point is interpreted. Useful when a signature is automatically appended at the end of your mail messages. Description of pattern A pattern describes a character string including characters which take a special meaning. The special meaning is lost when "\" is put before the character. The special characters are: . (period) this is the wildcard character that replaces any other character, eg, "...." will match any 4 character string. ^ (caret) if "^" appears at the beginning of the pattern, then the searched string must start with the substring following the "^". If it occurs anywhere else in the pattern it is regarded as non-special, eg: "^efghi" will match "efghi" or "efghijlk" but not "abcefghi" $ If "$" appears at the end of the pattern, then the searched string must end with the substring preceding the "$". If occurring anywhere else in the pattern, it is regarded as non-special, eg: "efghi$" will match "efghi" or "abcdefghi" but not "efghijkl" Examples If you are using an archie client, and enter the command: archie -s eudora or if you send, by e-mail or during a Telnet session, the com- mand: prog eudora then archie will send you the following results: Host dorm.rutgers.edu Location: /pub/Mac/comm DIRECTORY drwxr-xr-x 512 Oct 2 1990 Eudora Location: /pub/Mac/comm/unsorted FILE -rwxr-xr-x 634517 Sep 1 1990 eudora.tar.Z Host extro.ucc.su.oz.au Location: /pub DIRECTORY drwxr-xr-x 512 May 6 1992 eudora Location: /pub/eudora FILE -rw-r--r-- 1140708 Mar 6 1991 eudora1.1ctb1.i.hqx FILE -rw-r--r-- 1138727 Mar 6 1991 eudora1.1ctb2.i.hqx FILE -rw-r--r-- 1140546 Mar 6 1991 eudora1.1tcp.i.hqx etc. If you send the command list ".de$ by e-mail or in a Telnet ses- sion, then you will get the following results: 41 currently stored site names match '\.de$' alice.fmi.uni-passau.de 132.231.1.180 17:54 3 Mar 1993 askhp.ask.uni-karlsruhe.de 192.67.194.33 19:20 3 Mar 1993 athene.uni-paderborn.de 131.234.2.32 19:26 3 Mar 1993 charly.bl.physik.tu-muenchen.de 129.187.160.10 20:26 3 Mar 1993 coma.cs.tu-berlin.de 130.149.29.10 21:17 3 Mar 1993 dsrbg2.informatik.tu-muenchen.de 131.159.0.110 21:57 2 Mar 1993 etc. If you send the command whatis archie by e-mail or in a Telnet session, then you will get the following results: archie A Prospero client for archie awl Layout language for widget hierarchies (X11) perl_archie An archie client in perl xarchie X11 client for the archie system Learning more about ARCHIE However you communicate with the archie server, on-line help is available. If you have any questions about archie, write to the Archie Group, Bunyip Information Systems Inc. at info@bunyip.com. Bug reports, comments, suggestions, etc. should be mailed to archie-group@bunyip.com. Mailing list: archie-people@bunyip.com To subscribe send a mail to: archie-people-request@bunyip.com Archie was developed by Alan Emtage, Peter Deutsch, and Bill Hee- lan from the McGill University Computing Center, Canada. WHOIS What is WHOIS WHOIS provides directory service to network users. This service is a way of finding e-mail addresses, postal addresses and tele- phone numbers. It may also deliver information about networks, networking organizations, domains and sites. The main database of networking-related names (organizations, sites, networks, people, etc.) is maintained by the Internet Registration Service (InterNIC). Actually, the names of the administrative and technical contacts for registered domains are automatically entered into the database when domain or IP number applications are processed by the Internet coordination authori- ty. Each entry of the database has a handle (a unique identifi- er), a name, a record type, and various other fields depending on the type of record. This database will be used as an example in the descriptions below. Before April 1, 1993, the Network Information Center (NIC) of the Defense Data Network (DDN) was the Internet coordination authority and, therefore, maintained the database (known as the NIC database). The NIC database is now restricted to information about the .mil domain. Many documents still refer to these names. Many academic sites maintain their own database to offer informa- tion about their staff members and students. Who can use WHOIS WHOIS is available to users on the international TCP/IP network (the Internet). A WHOIS server is accessible across the network from a user program running on local machines or via an interactive Telnet session to the site which hosts the server. How to get to WHOIS There are many WHOIS servers throughout the network and a com- prehensive list would be too long to be included here. A WHOIS server offers information about the organization to which it belongs: it doesn't share a common directory with other WHOIS servers and doesn't know either where to find information about other institutions. Using WHOIS WHOIS has become the familiar name of the user program for accessing a WHOIS database, although NICNAME is the original name. In the following, angle brackets (<>) indicate an optional param- eter. Using a local client: Unix computers have a native whois command. On non-Unix machines, ask your system administrator whether your computer has it or not. This command searches the database on the specified site for entry which contains identifier. The format is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | whois <-h site-name> identifier | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where: site-name is the domain address of the site which hosts the database you want to query (eg, whois.internic.net). On some installations, the default value is set to the NIC database site (nic.ddn.mil). identifier is a name (person, host, domain or network), an IP num- ber or a handle. Special characters may be used to specify the search: . before the identifier will cause a name-only search. ! before the identifier will cause a handle-only search. ... or . after the identifier will cause a partial search: everything starting with identifier will match. @ in the identifier will cause a search on the e-mail addresses. * before the identifier will return the entire member- ship list of the entry that match identifier (eg, shows a site and its registered users). % before the identifier will return only the entire membership list of the entry that match identifier (eg, shows the registered users of a site). The special characters may be used together. The results are displayed in one of 2 ways: * a full detailed display for a single match, * a list of summary lines for multiple matches. In both cases, the handle is shown in parenthesis after the name to be used in further searches. Using Telnet: To access interactively the InterNIC database, telnet to the InterNIC site (whois.internic.net). There is no specific login. Other WHOIS databases have a Telnet access and offer most of the functions below (eg, whois.ripe.net which hosts the WHOIS database of the European IP Networks). In the following, CAPITAL letters indicate acceptable abbreviation. WHOIS invokes the information retrieval program. ? displays a short on-line help. HElp accesses the full on-line help. Q, QUIT, RETURN key exits WHOIS <keyword> identifier searches the database for entry which contains identi- fier. The default action is to do a broad search, look- ing for matches in many fields: handle, name, nick- names, hostname, IP number, etc, and finding all record types. keyword may be used to narrow the search to a specific record type. Special characters may be used in identifier to specify the search: . before the identifier will cause a name-only search. ! before the identifier will cause a handle-only search. ... or . after the identifier will cause a partial search: everything starting with identifier will match. @ in the identifier will cause a search on the e-mail addresses. * before the identifier will return the entire membership list of the entry that match identifier (eg, a host and its registered users). % before the identifier will return only the entire mem- bership list of the entry that match identifier (eg, registered users) ~ before the identifier will return the entry that match the identifier only, no membership list. The special characters may be used together. keyword specifies the record type to limit the search. It may be one of: PErson limits the search to persons. DOmain limits the search to domains (eg, DO EARN.NET). HOst limits the search to hosts (eg, HO PRINCETON). NEtwork limits the search to networks (eg, NE EBONE). Organization limits the search to organizations (eg, O CREN). NAme same as leading '.' in identifier. HAndle same as '!' in identifier. PArtial same as trailing '.' in identifier. Mailbox same as '@' in identifier. EXPand same as '*' in identifier. SUBdisplay same as '%' in identifier. Full or '=' shows detailed display for EACH match. SUMmary or '$' shows summary always, even if just one match. Except if Full or SUMmary are specified, the results are dis- played in one of 2 ways,: * a full detailed display for a single match, * a list of summary lines for multiple matches. In all cases, the handle is shown in parenthesis after the name to be used in further searches. Etiquette In general, WHOIS servers should only be used for isolated quer- ies about specific information. Typically, it is not accep- table to make an extended series of queries to obtain large sections of the directory. Such a strategy is unfair both because of excessive consumption of server resources, and because the directory information belongs to individuals. In par- ticular, extracting lists of people for commercial purposes is strictly prohibited. Examples whois \!EARN... (remark: """ is an escape character) EARN (EARN-HST) SEINE.EARN.NET 130.84.8.204 European Academic Research Network (EARN-DOM) EARN.NET whois EARN-DOM European Academic Research Network (EARN-DOM) EARN Office CIRCE BP 167 91403 ORSAY CEDEX, France Domain Name: EARN.NET Administrative Contact: Deckers, Hans (HD35) deck@FRORS12.CIRCE.FR +33 1 6982 3973 Technical Contact, Zone Contact: Bovio, Daniele (DB355) hi@FRORS12.CIRCE.FR +33 1 6982 3973 Record last updated on 23-Oct-92. Domain servers in listed order: LUMIERE.CIRCE.FR 130.84.8.14 SEINE.EARN.NET 130.84.8.204 whois hi@f... Bovio, Daniele (DB355) hi@FRORS12.CIRCE.FR EARN EARN Office CIRCE BP 167 91403 ORSAY CEDEX, France +33 1 6982 3973 Record last updated on 23-Oct-92. Learning more about WHOIS The WHOIS service is documented in an Internet Request For Com- ments (RFC 1400). If you have any questions about WHOIS write to nic@nic.ddn.mil. Bug reports, comments, suggestions, etc. should be mailed to sug- gestions@nic.ddn.mil. NETSERV What is NETSERV NETSERV is a server, which allows fast access to data files and programs of general interest. The main functions of the server can be divided into three general categories: File Server, Node Management and User Directory services. As a file server, NETSERV provides a file repository con- sisting of information files, and programs. It allows users to retrieve files, to store files and to subscribe to the files of their choice. The latter two functions however, require the user to be a privileged user meaning, a user who has a pass- word for NETSERV. As a node management tool, NETSERV provides data files and pro- grams for node administrators and network coordinators, and allows the registration of new nodes or changes in the network. Finally, each NETSERV keeps a separate user directory of the users who have chosen to register themselves to the server. Users can specify a wide variety of information on themselves, permitting queries to be performed by others on any of the available fields. In order to achieve a balanced load on the network and a faster response time to users, NETSERV uses a distributed server concept: this is achieved by the installation of a large number of servers on the network to ensure that the user can locate a nearby server. All servers communicate with each other to distribute updated information and make it available from each copy of the server. NETSERV's file server functions include retrieving any file present in its filelists, storing new versions of a file, and subscribing to files stored on the server. Its file direc- tories are arranged in an hierarchical method, with NETSERV FILELIST being on top or at the root of the filelists. This filelist can be obtained by sending a GET NETSERV FILELIST com- mand to any NETSERV. Filelists contain short descriptions of the files, and two access codes for each file. These codes represent the get and put privileged required for that file. These codes are explained at the beginning of the NETSERV FILELIST file. NETSERV's user directory allows users to search for registered users on any of the available fields, such as name, network address, profession, phone number, etc. Who can use NETSERV The server is available in almost every country. To find the closest server for your area send a QUERY SERVICE command to a server. The following are examples of NETSERV server addresses: NETSERV@FRMOP11.BITNET NETSERV@HEARN.BITNET NETSERV@BITNIC.BITNET In general, there is only one NETSERV permitted for one country. However, in some limited cases, such as when the country has a large number of nodes, additional servers may be installed. In any case, the user is not required to run NETSERV to be able to access and use the server. How to get to NETSERV NETSERV accepts e-mail access from users on any network. Com- mands to NETSERV should be placed in the body of the mail file, and not in the Subject: line. For users in the EARN/Bitnet network, NETSERV is accessible via interactive message. Commands from privileged users requiring a password must be sent this way. NETSERV does not have delivery limitations, except that a file ordered from NETSERV cannot be ordered again on the same day. Using NETSERV NETSERV offers a complete set of commands for every task. In par- ticular, its HELP feature is thorough: a short help info about a single command or message can be requested by the command HELP helptype where helptype is either a command, a sub-command or the message number that was displayed by the server. Commands For General Users: Use the GET command to retrieve a file, or a filelist stored on NETSERV. The format of the command is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | GET<xx> filename filetype <prologtext> | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where: XX (optional) defines the transfer format of the file, and can be one of: ND for NETDATA, DD for DiskDump, PP for Punch or Print,LP for LISTSERV-Punch, and 80 to split records at 80 columns, in Punch format. If XX is omitted then NETSERV will use the format best suited to your site. filename is the filename of the file. filetype is the filetype of the file. prologtext is any text that you wish placed at the top of the file. Use the GET NODENTRY command to extract an entry for a node in the Master Nodes file, which contains complete network and contact information about all nodes in EARN, Bitnet and cooperating networks. The format of the command is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | GET NODENTRY entryid | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where: entryid is the name of a node in the BITEARN NODES file. Use the QUERY command to display various information about the server. The format of the command is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | QUERY keyword | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where keyword determines the behavior of the command. Acceptable keywords are: CMD to see the available NETSERV commands, CONTROLLER to display the network address of this NET- SERV's Controller, FILE filename filetype to display information about a file stored on NETSERV SERVICE <nodeid> to provide information about which countries or sub- networks this NETSERV provides service for, and which NETSERV is responsible for your node area, or for another node specified by nodeid. Use the SERVE command to have service reinstated, if your access to NETSERV has been suspended. This command must be issued from another user address. The format of this command is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | SERVE user@node | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where: user@node is your address. Use the UDS command to add information about yourself to the server, or to update or delete it. The format of the command is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | UDS option keywords | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where: option can be ADD, REP, FIND, GET or DEL. keywords are the keywords that may be required for that option. The format of the ADD option is: UDS ADD :USERID.xxxxxxxx :NODE.xxxxxxxx :NAME.firstname middle lastname :PHONE.phone number :ADDR.institute name;city;country :DESCR.job title;activities;interests;etc The GET and FIND options can be used to locate other users on the network. FIND only returns one line per entry, whereas GET returns entire entries for the matching users. These options must be followed first by the maximum desired matching and also by the search criteria. The criteria must be specified as: :fieldname searchvalue <:fieldname searchvalue ...> The fieldname can be any of the ones listed in the above exam- ple, and the search value can be a subset of the actual sought value, such as SM instead of Smith. Example: UDS FIND 30 :name Harry :addr New York The search is case-insensitive and additional blanks are ignored. NETSERV has a wide variety of clients that provide a local inter- face to the service. The most widely used one is called NETSRV EXEC and runs on IBM/VM systems. It features on-line help and facilitates sending commands to NETSERV. It is available via GET NETSRV EXEC command from any NETSERV. The NODES EXEC program provides a full screen interface to information within the BITEARN NODES file. Examples If you want to find out what NETSERV server provides service for your node, then send the command: QUERY SERVICE to: NETSERV@HEARN.BITNET (or to any other NETSERV server). If you want to get details on the node ROEARN, then send the com- mand: GET NODENTRY ROEARN to your nearest NETSERV. If you want to get an up-to-date listing of all nodes in the international NJE network, then send the command: GET BITNET NODELST to your nearest NETSERV. Learning more about NETSERV The server provides a large helpfile which can be obtained by sending a GET NETSERV HELPFILE command to any NETSERV. A list for NETSERV maintainers is available as NETSRV-M@HEARN.BITNET. Addi- tional information can be obtained from the NETSERV maintain- er, Ulrich Giese at U001212@HEARN.BITNET. Part 4 GETTING FILES TRICKLE What is TRICKLE TRICKLE is a service which will send you files on request, or by subscription. TRICKLE works with various anonymous FTP sites, computers in the Internet network that allow public access and retrieval of software and files. It provides a quick and easy alternative to FTP, whether or not you have access to the Inter- net. There are several TRICKLE servers throughout the world that coop- erate to distribute the files efficiently. To request files the user issues commands to the nearest TRICKLE server, which deliv- ers the software either from its local cache disk, from the cache of another TRICKLE server, or from an FTP site that holds the software. Who can use TRICKLE There are currently TRICKLE servers at the following addresses: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Location EARN/BITNET Internet | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | Austria TRICKLE@AWIWUW11 | | Belgium TRICKLE@BANUFS11 TRICKLE@ccs.ufsia.ac.be | | Colombia TRICKLE@UNALCOL TRICKLE@unalcol.unal.edu.co| | France TRICKLE@FRMOP11 TRICKLE@frmop11.cnusc.fr | | Germany TRICKLE@DEARN TRICKLE@vm.gmd.de | | Israel TRICKLE@TAUNIVM TRICKLE@vm.tau.ac.il | | Italy TRICKLE@IMIPOLI | | The Netherlands TRICKLE@HEARN TRICKLE@hearn.nic.surfnet.nl | Sweden TRICKLE@SEARN TRICKLE@searn.sunet.se | | Turkey TRICKLE@TREARN TRICKLE@ege.edu.tr | | Turkey TRICKLE@TRMETU TRICKLE@3090.cc.metu.edu.tr| | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ When you send a command to a TRICKLE server, it either executes the command or sends you a message with the address of the TRICKLE server for your area. The files which are available from TRICKLE are organized in main directories which contain many subdirectories. The main directo- ries which are currently available are: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Directory Source FTP Site Contents | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | MSDOS simtel20.army.mil Large MS-DOS software archive| | MISC simtel20.army.mil Software for VM, VMS, Unix | | SIGM simtel20.army.mil SIG/M CP/M archive | | PC-BLUE simtel20.army.mil PC-BLUE MS-DOS|archive | | CPM simtel20.army.mil CP/M Software Archive | | ARCHIVES simtel20.army.mil Various discussion group archives | UNIX-C simtel20.army.mil Unix and C code software archives | MACINTOS simtel20.army.mil Apple Macintosh software archives | OS2 ftp-os2.nmsu.edu Large archive of OS/2 software | AMIGA nic.funet.fi Large Amiga collection | | KERMIT watsun.cc.columbia.edu Kermit network software | | TEX rusinfo.rus-uni-stuttgart.de TeX software and fonts | WUARCHIVE wuarchive.wustl.edu MS-DOS and others | | EXPO-MIT export.lcs.mit.edu Unix and others | | UUNET ftp.uu.net Unix and others | | SUMEX-AIM sumex-aim.stanford.edu Macintosh and others | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ How to get to TRICKLE You send commands to TRICKLE by electronic mail. The commands should be in the body of the mail message, one command per line. Any number of commands (up to your daily command limit) may be placed in one message. Note that all TRICKLE commands begin with a slash (/). Users on the EARN/Bitnet network may also send com- mands to TRICKLE by interactive message. Using TRICKLE All commands begin with a slash (/). Note that the angle brackets (<>) are part of the command, NOT an indication of an optional parameter. Use the /PDDIR command to obtain directory listings. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | /PDDIR | | | | /PDDIR <dirname> | | | | /PDDIR <dirname.subdirname>pattern | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where: dirname is the name of a main directory, subdirname is the name of a subdirectory, pattern is the first characters of a filename, to limit the directory listing. Use /PDDIR without any parameters to get a listing of the main directories. With: PDDIR <dirname> you will get a listing of the subdirectories under that directory. If you specify both directo- ry and subdirectory, it will list the files that are available in that subdirectory. pattern may be used to reduce the size of the listing. Use the /PDGET command to get files. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | /PDGET <dirname.subdirname>filename ( delivery option | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where: dirname is the name of a main directory subdirname is the name of a subdirectory filename is the name of a file delivery option specifies the format to which the file(s) should be translated before being sent to you. The possible val- ues are: EBC80 UUE XXE HEX BTOA The option EBC80 should be used to get text files if you work on an IBM mainframe system. The other options are formats for translating binary files so that they can be sent via electronic mail. You will need a pro- gram to translate the file back to its original form. The default for EARN/Bitnet users is to send the file as-is. The default for others is UUE. You can use an asterisk (*) as a wildcard character in the sub- dirname or filename fields. This will cause TRICKLE to send the file(s) matching your specification. The /SUB command is used to subscribe both to directories and to individual files. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | /SUB <dirname> | | | | /SUB <dirname.subdirname>pattern | | | | /SUB QUERY | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where: dirname is the name of a main directory, subdirname is the name of a subdirectory, pattern is the first characters of a filename If you subscribe to a directory, you will get a summary of added files about once a week, depending on how active the FTP site is. This listing shows the names, sizes and dates of each file added. If you subscribe to files, a new version of the file will be sent to you as soon as TRICKLE is informed that it has been stored at FTP site. pattern consists of the first few letters of a filename. Since filenames usually reflect the version number of the file, it is a good idea to omit the number when specifying a pattern. For exam- ple, it is better to send a /SUB <MSDOS.VIRUS>SCANV command rather than /SUB <MSDOS.VIRUS>SCANV102 since, as new versions of the file are stored, the name might change to SCANV103, SCANV104, etc. The /SUB QUERY command allows you to get a list of the files you are subscribed to. The /UNSUB command may be used to cancel a subscription. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | /UNSUB <dirname> | | | | /UNSUB <dirname.subdirname>pattern | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where: dirname is the name of a main directory, subdirname is the name of a subdirectory, pattern is the first characters of a filename Optionally, you can put a '*' instead of pattern to remove all entries for that subdirectory. Examples For a listing of the files in the VIRUS subdirectory of SIMTEL20 (the MSDOS directory), send the command: /PDDIR <MSDOS.VIRUS> To get the file 00-INDEX.TXT from <MSDOS.VIRUS> in EBCDIC format, send the command: /PDGET <MSDOS.VIRUS>00-INDEX.TXT ( EBC80 To subscribe to automatically get new versions of the SCANV soft- ware from <MSDOS.VIRUS>, send the command: /SUB <MSDOS.VIRUS>SCANV To unsubscribe from all files in the VIRUS subdirectory, send the command: /UNSUB <MSDOS.VIRUS>* Learning more about TRICKLE The /HELP command may be sent to any TRICKLE server to obtain a very detailed help file from the server. The LISTSERV@EARNCC.BITNET also holds a file describing this server. This file can be obtained by sending a GET TRICKLE MEMO command to LISTSERV@EARNCC.BITNET. BITFTP What is BITFTP BITFTP, BITNET FTP Server, allows users of EARN, Bitnet and asso- ciated networks to access FTP sites on the Internet. The BITFTP server provides a mail interface between a user on the EARN/Bitnet network to FTP sites on the Internet. BITFTP handles this task by passing the commands specified in the mail message from the user to another server that actually makes the connection to the FTP sites. When the server finishes the inter- action with the FTP site, or fails due to an error, a transcript of the result is sent back to the user, as well as the requested file(s), if any. The format of the files sent to the user can be defined within the mail message. BITFTP can deliver files in NETDATA and UUENCODE formats. Who can use BITFTP BITFTP is currently available only to users on EARN, Bitnet and other regional NJE networks. It currently does not accept access to European FTP archive sites from European users. Further, it does not support putting files onto FTP sites or the mget (multi- ple get) command. How to get to BITFTP There are BITFTP currently running at: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | BITFTP@PUCC.BITNET | | BITFTP@DEARN.BITNET | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ Servers at other locations are planned. BITFTP accepts requests via electronic mail, including IBM NOTE and PROFS-format messages, as well as by file transfer. Using BITFTP BITFTP implements a large subset of the FTP commands of the IBM's TCP/IP for VM, using the same syntax. This software is documented in the IBM manual TCP/IP for VM User's Guide. In the following, angle brackets (<>) indicate an optional parameter. Use the FTP command to specify which host to connect to. This command must be the first command in your mail file. You can also specify the file format that you wish BITFTP to use to deliver files to you. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | FTP hostname <fileformat> | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where: hostname is either the IP address or the domain name of the host to connect to. fileformat is the format in which BITFTP should deliver files to you. It can be either NETDATA or UUENCODE. Use the USER command to tell the host the username and the password to be used for the FTP connection. Note that on Unix systems, both username and password are case-sensitive. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | USER username password | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where: username is the user-id to use for the FTP connection. password is the password for the username you specified. It can be omitted if you specified anonymous for the userid. Use the CD command to select a particular directory as current directory. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | CD directory-name | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where: directory-name is the name of the directory to be selected. Use the DIR command to display a list of the files in the cur- rent, or specified, directory. The file names, and depending on the site, the file size, file creation date and other informa- tion will be listed. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | DIR <pattern> | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where: pattern is a pattern that defines which file names should be displayed. Many FTP sites are case-sensitive, thus care must be used with the pattern. The pattern may contain any number of characters, and the wildcard character asterisk (*) may be used to represent any characters. The LS command is similar to the DIR command, except that with most FTP sites, it only displays the filenames, without any other information. The pattern specification is identical to DIR. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | LS <pattern> | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where: pattern is a pattern that defines which file names should be displayed. Many FTP sites are case-sensitive, thus care must be used with the pattern. The pattern may con- tain any number of characters, and the wildcard char- acter asterisk (*) may be used to represent any charac- ters. Use the GET command to obtain a file from the current host. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | GET foreignname <localname> | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where: foreignname is the filename of the file, as stored at the FTP site. With many sites, the case of the filename must be respected. localname is an optional local filename. If you specify a local- name, it must be in the form: filename.filetype where neither part is longer than eight characters. Use the BINARY command to set the FTP transfer mode. If this option is set then no EBCDIC-ASCII translation will take place. This should be used for non-text files. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | BINARY | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ Use the QUIT command to close the connection to the host, and to terminate the BITFTP session. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | QUIT | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ Examples Here is a sample BITFTP command file: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | FTP nis.nsf.net | | USER anonymous | | cd introducing.the.internet | | get intro.to.ip | | get network.gold | | get where.to.start | | get zen.ps | | get zen.txt | | QUIT | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ Learning more about BITFTP A four-page instruction to the BITFTP service can be obtained by sending a HELP command in the body of a mail message to the BITFTP@PUCC.BITNET address. Additional information on BITFTP may be obtained from EARN (NETHELP@EARNCC.BITNET). More information about TCP/IP and FTP in general can be obtained from a wide variety of sources, including the IBM TCP/IP for VM User's Guide, and the FTP site nis.nsf.net which provides good introductory documents on the subject. Part 5 NETWORKED INTEREST GROUPS NETNEWS (USENET) What is NETNEWS NETNEWS, or Usenet as it is more commonly called, is a collection of newsgroups distributed electronically around the world. Net- news provides a means for local users to communicate with each other, and with other users nationally and internationally. Usenet was developed for Unix systems in 1979 by two graduate students at Duke University. Within a year, fifty Unix sites, including Bell Labs, were participating. Now, there are thou- sands of sites running a number of operating systems on a variety of hardware platforms communicating via Usenet around the globe. Site administrators control their own sites. No one has any real control over any site but his own. Sites are not entirely without influence on their neighbors, how- ever. There is a vague notion of upstream and downstream relat- ed to the direction of high-volume news flow. To the extent that upstream sites decide what traffic they will carry for their downstream neighbors, those upstream sites have some influence on their neighbors' participation in Usenet. There are many misconceptions about Usenet. Despite the myths: Usenet is not an organization. Usenet is not a democracy. There is no person or group in charge of Usenet as a whole. Usenet is not an academic network. Although many Usenet sites are univer- sities, research labs or other academic institutions, by plain count, most Usenet sites are commercial entities. Usenet is not the Internet. The Internet is only one of the various networks carrying Usenet traffic. For example, EARN carries Usenet traf- fic too. Usenet is not a UUCP network. UUCP is a protocol for sending data over point-to-point connections, typically using dialup modems. Sites use UUCP to carry many kinds of traffic, of which Usenet is only one. Usenet is not a Unix network. Usenet can be found on many operating systems. Usenet is not software. There are dozens of software packages used at various sites to transport and read Usenet articles. So no one program or package can be called the Usenet software. Who can use NETNEWS Usenet newsgroups can be read at thousands of sites around the world. In addition, there are several sites that provide public dial-up service, so that people who are not at a Usenet site can have access to newsgroups as well. How to get to NETNEWS If your site provides Usenet access, then there are a large num- ber of software packages available for reading news (at least one is probably available on your computer). These packages either access a local news spool, or use the NNTP protocol to access the news spool on some other computer in the network. Within EARN, a network of Netnews distribution has been devel- oped, providing efficient distribution of Usenet traffic while minimising the load on the network for the participating coun- tries. Using NETNEWS There are many software packages available for reading and dis- tributing Netnews on a variety of platforms. Most, if not all, of these packages provide the same basic abilities: * subscription to news groups, so that you can choose to read the postings of groups that interest you quickly and easily. * keeping records of which postings you have already read. * threads of discussion, so that you can follow groups of post- ings that deal with the same subject. * posting to news groups, so that you can easily participate in group discussions. The following, excerpted mostly from the article Usenet Software: History and Sources, by Gene Spafford, is not an exhaustive list of the existing news packages: Unix: Several popular screen-oriented news reading interfaces have been developed in the last few years to replace the traditional read- news interface. The first of these was vnews and it was written by Kenneth Almquist. vnews provides a readnews-like command interface, but displays articles using direct screen positioning. It appears to have been inspired, to some extent, by the notes system (described below). vnews is currently distributed with the standard 2.11 news source. A second, more versatile interface, rn, was developed by Larry Wall (the author of Perl) and released in 1984. This interface also uses full-screen display with direct positioning, but it includes many other useful features and is very popular with many regular net readers. The interface includes reading, discarding, and/or processing of articles based on user-definable patterns, and the ability of the user to develop customized macros for dis- play and keyboard interaction. rn is currently at release 4.4. It is being maintained by Stan Barber of the Baylor College of Medicine. rn is not provided with the standard news software release, but is very widely available because of its popularity. The software can be obtained from its official archive site, lib.tmc.edu, using FTP, and via mail from archive- server@bcm.tmc.edu A variant of rn is trn by Wayne Davison. trn adds the ability to follow threads of discussions in newsgroups; its latest version 2.2 is based on rn 4.4. It uses a reference-line database to allow the user to take advantage of the discussion tree formed by an article and its replies. This results in a true reply-ordered reading of the articles, complete with a small ASCII representa- tion of the current article's position in the discussion tree. trn can be obtained from ftp.coe.montana.edu in the /pub/trn directory, from UUnet in the news subdirectory, and from many other archive servers world-wide. There are two popular macro packages named GNUS and Gnews that can be used with the GNU Emacs text editor. These allow reading, replying, and posting interaction with the news from inside the Emacs text editor. Client code exists to get the articles using NNTP rather than from a local disk. Copies can be found on most archive sites that carry the GNU archives. nn is yet another reader interface, developed by Kim F. Storm of Texas Instruments A/S, Denmark, and released in 1989. nn differs from the traditional readnews and vnews by presenting a menu of article subject and sender-name lines, allowing you to preselect articles to read. nn is also a very fast newsreader, as it keeps a database of article headers on-line. (i.e. it trades space for time. A good rule of thumb is that the nn database size is 5%-10% of your news spool. So up to 110% of your news spool is the amount of space news and the nn database will take.) The current version of nn is 6.4.16. nn can be obtained via anonymous FTP from dkuug.dk, uop.uop.edu, or various other sites. Yet another newsreader is the tin reader. It operates with threads, has different article organization methods, and is full- screen oriented. tin works on a local news spool or over an NNTP connection. It has been posted to alt.sources, and further information is available from Iain Lea (iain%anl433.uucp@Germany.EU.net). The current release of tin is 1.1 PL5. tin is based more on the Notes and tass systems than rn. There is an extensive list of features, including interfaces to batch modes and auto unpacking mechanisms. X-window: xrn is an X11-based interface to NNTP that was written by Rick Spickelmier and Ellen Sentovich (UC Berkeley). The current ver- sion is 6.17. xrn supports many features, including sorting by subject, user-settable key bindings, graceful handling of NNTP server crashes, and many of the features of rn (including KILL files and key bindings similar to rn). xrn is actively supported by the authors with bug fixing and feature addition support from many of the users. xrn can be retrieved from most of the popular FTP sites (gatekeeper.dec.com, ftp.uu.net, export.lcs.mit.edu). Another X11-based newsreader is xvnews. This is a news reader designed primarily for Sun workstations running OpenWindows. It runs with NNTP and is compatible with rn style commands. It is available from export.lcs.mit.edu in the /contrib directory. VMS: ANU-NEWS is a news package written by Geoff Huston of Australia for VMS systems. ANU-NEWS is complete news system that allows reading, posting, direct replies, moderated newsgroups, etc. in a fashion closely related to regular news. The implementation includes the RFC 1036 news propagation algorithms and integrated use of the NNTP protocols (see below) to support remote news ser- vers, implemented as a VAX/VMS Decnet object. An RFC 977 server implemented as a Decnet object is also included. The ANU-NEWS interface is similar to standard DEC screen oriented systems. The license for the software is free, and there are no restric- tions on the re-distribution. For more info, contact Geoff Huston (gih900@fac.anu.oz.au). ANU-NEWS is available for anony- mous FTP from kuhub.cc.ukans.edu. Contact sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu for more info. A screen-oriented news client for VMS is also available via FTP from ftpvms.ira.uka.de. Contact Bernd Onasch (onasch@iravcl.ira.uka.de) for details. Reader NNTP clients for VMS are also available, including VMS/VNEWS (current release 1.4) and an upcoming reader only ver- sion of ANU-NEWS. VMS/VNEWS is available for anonymous FTP from arizona.edu (contact jms@arizona.edu for more information) or at any site which archives vmsnet.source. Although the current release of ANU-NEWS is usable as a reader it can be difficult when used with a Unix server. VM/CMS: There is an IBM VM/CMS version of the Usenet software which is widely available. It is known as PSU NetNews, and it is main- tained by Linda Littleton (lrl@psuvm.bitnet or lrl@psuvm.psu.edu). Version 2.4 of the software is available from listserv@psuvm. PSU NetNews supports only 3270 terminals, and uses XEDIT as its screen driver. Most major VM sites appear to use this package. NetNews supports locally-stored news, not NNTP reading. There is NNTP support for PSU NetNews for bulk news receipt: NNTPXFER will poll another site for news, and NNTPRCVR will receive news sent from a Unix NNTPXMIT process. Either program sends the news articles to NetNews for processing. Contact Andy Hooper (hooper@qucdn.bitnet or hooper@qucdn.queensu.ca) for more information, or obtain them from listserv@qucdn in public file- list. These programs are provided with source, and require IBM's FAL TCP/IP and Pascal. An NNTPXMIT sender that works in coopera- tion with PSU NetNews is available from Herman Van Uytven (systh- vu@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be). There is at least one NNTP news-reader for VM using XEDIT as its screen manager: NNR. Contact Paul Campbell (pc@mbunix.mitre.org) for information. The program requires IBM's FAL TCP/IP. The soft- ware is available for anonymous FTP from rusmv1.rus.uni-stuttgart.de in the directory: /soft/ kommunikation/news/beginner/software/vm-cms/*. MVS: An NNTP news reader is available for TSO/ISPF, called NNMVS. NNMVS is written by Stephen Bacher (seb1525@mvs.draper.com) at Draper Laboratory. It requires C/370 V1R2 (though V1R1 will work) and uses TCP/IP sockets. It is now available for anonymous FTP at ftp.uni-stuttgart.de under the directory /soft/ kommunikation/news/beginner/software/nnmvs. The current release is Version 2 Release 3 Modification Level 1 (in pseudo-IBM par- lance). Macintosh: An NNTP newsreader for Macintoshes is available called News. It is implemented as a HyperCard stack and depends on MacTCP. It is available from many Mac archives, including ftp.apple.com and sumex-aim.stanford.edu MS-DOS: Trumpet is an NNTP news reader for MS-DOS machines by Peter R. Tattam (peter@psychnet.psychol.utas.edu.au). It requires the use of a packet driver. It provides a user-friendly environment for news-reading and also supports the use of a mouse for point-and- click use. It is available as shareware from tas- man.cc.utas.edu.au. Note that the number of software packages available to run news, especially on PCs, is increasing. We have mentioned only a few of the many news packages available, and the presence or absence of any particular software package should not be construed as indi- cating anything about its suitability or usefulness. In addition to the packages for Usenet access mentioned above, many other communications programs provide the possibility for Usenet access as well as their main function. Learning more about NETNEWS News programs communicate with each other according to standard protocols, some of which are described by Internet Request For Comments (RFC). Copies of RFCs are often posted to the network and obtainable from archive sites. Current news-related RFCs include the following: - RFC 977 specifies NNTP, the Network News Transfer Protocol, - RFC 1036 specifies the format of Usenet articles. Several articles on Usenet are posted periodically to the news- group: news.announce.newusers. LISTSERV What is LISTSERV LISTSERV is a distribution list management package. It runs on IBM VM/CMS systems in the international NJE network (EARN/ Bitnet). It allows groups of computer users with a common interest to communicate among themselves, while making effi- cient use of computer and network resources. It makes it easy for even novice users to discover, join, and participate in these interest group mailing lists. LISTSERV also provides facilities for logging and archiving of mail traffic, file server functions, and database searches of archives and files. There are LISTSERV lists on every subject under the sun, with names ranging from AARPUB-L (AAR Electronic Publication list) to Z3950IW (Z39.50 Implementors Workshop). LISTSERV lists are inter- national and eclectic. You will find lists in every imagina- ble field, for every audience, in many different countries and in many different languages. See the description of the List command below for instructions on getting an up-to-date list of lists. Who can use LISTSERV Anyone who can send electronic mail to an EARN/Bitnet address can participate in a mailing list and access other LISTSERV facilities, as long as the message format is valid (according to the RFC822 standard), and has a usable return address. Every day, people use LISTSERV from HEPnet, Internet, Compuserve, MCIMail and many other networks throughout the world. Ask your local support people if you don't know how to send electronic mail to EARN/Bitnet. How to get to LISTSERV To use LISTSERV facilities, send electronic mail with your LISTSERV commands to: LISTSERV@host-id where host-id is the host computer's NJE address (eg, TAUNIVM.BITNET) or its Internet domain name (eg, VM.TAU.AC.IL). There may be some local variation on the format needed to send mail to Bitnet or Internet address- es. Check with your local support people. More than one command can be sent to LISTSERV in the same mail message. Each command must be on a separate line. LISTSERV will ignore the Subject: line of the mail header. For EARN/Bitnet users, interactive messages are the fastest and most convenient way to send commands to LISTSERV, but bear in mind that interactive messages only work when the links between your computer and LISTSERV are up; if the message fails, you can always send your command via mail. To send interactive messages from an IBM computer running VM/CMS, the format is: TELL LISTSERV AT node_id listserv_command On a VAX/VMS system, the format is: $ SEND LISTSERV@node_id "listserv_command" The LISTSERV command must be in quotes. Note: To join a list, you send a message with your SUBscribe command to LISTSERV. To make an announcement to the members of a list, you send mail to the list address. For example, to join the EARN Users Group list (list name: EARN-UG, host site: IRLEARN), send a SUBscribe command to LISTSERV@IRLEARN.BITNET This can be done interactively, from VM: TELL LISTSERV AT IRLEARN SUB EARN-UG Name Lastname or from VMS: $ SEND LISTSERV@IRLEARN "SUB EARN-UG Name Lastname" or by mail, to LISTSERV@IRLEARN.BITNET, with the line: SUB EARN-UG Name Lastname in the text of the message. To send a message to all list members, send mail to: EARN-UG@IRLEARN.BITNET There are more than 250 sites in over 30 countries throughout the world running LISTSERV as part of the world-wide network. Here is a list of some of the LISTSERV sites: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Host Computer Site Contry | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | DEARN GMD Bonn Germany | | BITNIC BITNET Network Information Center USA | | HEARN Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen Netherlands| | CUNYVM City University of New York USA | | PUCC Princeton University, New Jersey USA | | ICNUCEVM CNUCE Istituto del CNR, Pisa Italy | | UKACRL Rutherford Appleton Laboratory Great Britain | QUCDN Queen's University Computing Services Canada | | FRMOP11 CNUSC, Montpellier France | | TREARN Ege University Bornova,Izmir, Turkey | | UCHCECVM Universidad de Chile, Santiago Chile | | TWNMOE10 Ministry of Education, Taipei Taiwan | | JPNSUT00 Science University of Tokyo Japan | | KRSNUCC1 Seoul National University South Korea| | UFRJ cUniversidad Federal do Rio de Janeiro Brazil | | SEARN Kungliga Tekniska Hoegskolan, Stockholm Sweden | | ANDESCOL Universidad de Los Andes, Bogota Colombia | | SAKFU00 King Faisal University, Hofuf Saudi Arabia | HKUVM1 The University of Hong Kong Hong Kong | | PTEARN Faculdade de Ciencias de Lisboa Portugal | | GREARN Institute of Computer Science, Heraklion Greece | | PLEARN Warsaw University Poland | | AEARN Vienna University, Wien Austria | | CSEARN Czech Technical University, Prague Czech Republic | HUEARN Hungarian Academy of Sciences Hungary | | TAUNIVM Tel Aviv University Israel | | EARNCC EARN Office, Paris France | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ Using LISTSERV The following summary of LISTSERV commands is divided into list subscription commands, informational commands, and file and file- list commands. This is followed by a brief description of the LISTSERV database facilities. The list of commands included in this document is not exhaustive. CAPITAL letters indicate acceptable abbreviation; angle brack- ets: < > indicate an optional parameter; vertical bar (|) indi- cates a choice of parameters. Format of parameters is given at the end. There are two basic versions of LISTSERV in use: LISTEARN 1.3 and Revised LISTSERV 1.7. The two versions differ only in certain command parameters. Parameters marked with a (#) are for LISTEARN 1.3 only, those marked (+) are available only in Revised LISTSERV 1.7. To find out which version is installed at the server you wish to use, send the command: SHOW VERSion. List subscription commands: Use the SUBscribe command to join a list. The format of the com- mand is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | SUBscribe listname Your full name | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where listname is the name of a mailing list. Note that you do not send your electronic mail address. LISTSERV automatical- ly determines your electronic mail address from your mail (or interactive message.) Subscription to a list can be open, closed, or by-owner. If it is open, you will be automatically added to the list and sent noti- fication. If it is closed, you will not be added to the list, and LISTSERV will send you a message telling you that your request has been rejected. If it is by-owner, your subscription request will be forwarded to the list owner(s), who will decide whether or not to add you to the list (LISTSERV will inform you to whom your request has been forwarded). To see what kind of subscrip- tion a list has, use the REView command. If you send a SUBscribe command for a list to which you already belong, then LISTSERV will interpret the command as a request to change your full-name on the list. You can send your SUBscribe command to the LISTSERV site that manages the list you wish to join, or to any backbone LISTSERV site. All backbone sites have an up-to-date listing of all non- confidential lists at every LISTSERV site. If there are several sites with (unconnected) lists of the same name, then LISTSERV will send you a list of those sites and advise you to send your SUBscribe command direct. Otherwise, the backbone LISTSERV will SUBscribe automatically forward your request to the appropriate site. When you join a list, LISTSERV at that site adds your name and e-mail address to its signup file. Once you have joined a list at a particular site, you need not include your name in subsequent SUBscribe commands for lists at that site. LISTSERV will use the name it has for you in its signup file. Use the UNSUBscribe (or SIGNOFF) command to leave a mailing list. The format of the command is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | UNSUBscribe listname | * <(NETWIDE> | | | | SIGNOFF | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where listname is the name of a mailing list. You can signoff all the lists you belong to at a particular LISTSERV by using the '*' (asterisk) character in place of a list-name. If you want your UNSUBscribe command to be propagated to all LISTSERV sites on the network, include the (NETWIDE option. Use the SET command to change your personal options for a mailing list. The format of the command is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | SET list-name | * < options > | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where list-name is the name of the mailing list for which you are changing your options. You may change your options for a specific list or for all the lists you belong to at a particular LISTSERV by using the '*' (asterisk) character in place of a listname. The Query command can be used to dislay your current option settings for any list. The options you include with the SET command may be one or more of the following: Mail/NOMail This indicates whether you want to receive mail from the list or not. The default is Mail. Files/NOFiles This indicates whether or not you want to receive files from the list. Use NOFiles if your system can not accept non-mail files. The default is Files. ACK/NOACK/MSGAck This indicates the kind of acknowledgement you want to receive from LISTSERV when you send mail to a list. ACK means that you want to receive a mail message from LISTSERV indicating if your message was successfully processed. NOACK specifies that no feedback should be sent to you about the processing of your message. MSGAck is meaningful for EARN/Bitnet users only. With MSGAck, the server will send you the acknowledgement via interactive message. The default is ACK. REPro/NOREPro Indicates whether or not you want to receive a copy of the mail which you send to the list. The default is NOREPro, meaning that mail which you send to the list will be distributed to all members of the list but you. SHORThdr/FULLhdr/IETFhdr Indicates the type of headers you want to receive on mail from the list. SHORThdr means that the header will include only the essential fields: Date:, To:,From:, Subject:,Sender: and Reply-to:. FULLhdr means that all non-essential fields of the mail header will also be sent. IETFhdr is like FULLhdr except that a Message-id: field is added (if none was present in the mail sent to the list). The default is SHORThdr. CONCEAL/NOCONCEAL Indicates whether or not you want your name and mail address to appear in the display of list members which is given in response to a REView command. The default is NOCONCEAL. After having issued a SET command, LISTSERV will confirm to you the successful alteration of your mailing list options. For lists which require validation of all commands, your SET request is forwarded to the list owner. For example, if you want to get a copy of your own messages sent to list EARN-UG at IRLEARN, send the command: SET EARN-UG REPRO to LISTSERV at IRLEARN. If you want to stop receiving mail from all the list at FRORS12 to which you belong, send the command: SET * NOMAIL to LISTSERV at FRORS12. Use the CONFIRM command to renew your subscription to a list. Some mailing lists require subscription renewal at regular inter- vals, usually once a year. A mail message is automatically sent to list members indicating that they must send a CONFIRM command within a given number of days or they will be removed from the list. The format of the command is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | CONFIRM list-name | * | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where list-name is the name of a distribution list to which you are confirming your subscription. You can confirm your subscrip- tion to all the lists you belong to at a particular LISTSERV by using the '*' (asterisk) character in place of a listname. LISTSERV will send a message that your subscription has been con- firmed. For example, if you receive a message from LISTSERV@IRLEARN to confirm your subscription to the EARN-UG list, then send the command: CONFIRM EARN-UG to LISTSERV at IRLEARN. Informational commands: Use the Help command to get a brief description of the most use- ful LISTSERV commands and also the names and network addresses os the server's postmaster(s). The format of the command is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Help | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ Use the Info command to get an informational (or help) file from a LISTSERV server. The format of the command is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Info < ? | topic > < F= format > < CLASS= class >| | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where the '?' option will give you a list of topics for which informational files can be requested. If you require the file in a specific file format or spoolfile class, this can be specified in the F= and CLASS= keywords Use the List command to find out what LISTSERV lists are avail- able. The format of the command is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | List <Global <string>> | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ Send the command List with no parameters to find out what lists are run locally. For example, to find out what lists are avail- able at EARNCC, send mail (or an interactive message) to LISTSERV@EARNCC.BITNET with the word List in the message body. Send the command List Global to get a listing of all the lists in all the LISTSERVs throughout the world. This command should be sent to your closest LISTSERV (since all LISTSERVs have the same global list). Note that this file is rather large (over 3500 lines). To get a subset of the global file, send the com- mand: List Global string. You will get a listing of all lists which contain string in the list name, host computer, or title. Use the Query command to get information on the settings of your personal options for a list. The format of the command is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Query listname | * | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where listname is the name of a list to which you are subscribed. If you use an '*' (asterisk) instead of the name of a list then you will get information on all lists to which you belong at the LISTSERV where you send the command. Use the REView command to get the parameters of a list and the names and addresses of the list members. For some lists, the names and addresses of the members are not available to non- members. The format of the command is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | REVIEW listname <Short | NOHeader> | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ If you add the Short parameter, you will get only the list parameters without the list members. With the NOHeader parameter, you will get the list of members without the list parameters. The SHOW command can be used to display a diverse selection of information from a LISTSERV server. This ranges from displaying the names and electronic addresses of the administrators of a LISTSERV server to showing a list of all known LISTSERVs in a given country. The format of the command is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | SHOW show-option | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where show-option can be: HELP(#) give a brief summary of all show-options. ADmin node-list(#) show the names and electronic addresses of the LISTSERV administrator(s) for the nodes given in node-list. ALIAS node-list show a list of network defined aliases by which the nodes given in node-list are also known. DISTribute get LISTSERV distribution job statistics INcoming (#) display statistics of incoming files and messages processed by the server. NODE node-list show information regarding all the nodes given in node-list. TRee(#) node < depth > display a network tree map from the given node to a level of depth branches. If depth is not given, one level is assumed. PEer(#) cntry-list show a list of all LISTSERVs for the countries giv- en in cntry-list. These may be full names or coun- try codes. User(#) user-list display all names and electronic addresses that match (or partially match) the userids or real names given in user-list. OWNer(#) list-name show the name and electronic address of the own- er(s) of the lists given in list-name. VERSion show the version and release of the LISTSERV server and its operating system. File and filelist commands: Use the GET or SENDme command to get a file from LISTSERV. The format of the command is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | GET filename filetype | | | | SENDme | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ The names of the files follow the IBM VM/CMS convention: the two parts of the name are each one to eight characters in length, separated by a space. No matter how you send your GET command (e-mail or interactive message), LISTSERV will auto- matically send you the file in the most appropriate way. Use the INDex command to review a list of files or packages ref- erenced in a particular filelist. The list is sent onto the requester as a file. The format of the command is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | INDex < filelist > < F= format > < CLASS= class > | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where filelist specifies the name of the filelist you wish to index. If no name is specified, the index of the root filelist will be sent to you (called LISTSERV FILELIST). This command is functionally equivalent to a GET command with filename and file- type parameters of the filelist name and FILELIST respectively (qqv). If you require that the file or package be shipped in a specific file format or spoolfile class, you can include this information in the F= and CLASS= keywords. Parameter description: * = all lists userid = any valid RFC822 network address not longer than 80 characters If omitted, the node defaults to the command sender's node full name = first name middle initial surname (*not* "userid at node") For each command that causes the server to send you a file, a file format option can also be specified by adding F=format to the end of the command. Acceptable formats are: Netdata Card Disk Punch LPunch UUe XXE HEX(#) BTOa(#) VMArc(#) EBCdic(#) Split(#) VMSdump(+) MIME/text(+) MIME/Appl(+) LISTSERV Database Facilities: The archives of mailing lists, as well as certain other data- bases, can be searched using LISTSERV's database facilities. To find out what databases are accessible at a LISTSERV site send the command: DATABASE LIST To perform a database search, you send mail to LISTSERV con- taining a batch command job with your database query. In addi- tion, EARN/Bitnet users on VM or VMS systems can access the database facilities interactively via the LDBASE program. For more details on the LISTSERV database facilities, send the command: Info DATABASE Examples To subscribe to the EARNEWS list, which is located at the node FRMOP11, if your name is Ada Byron Lovelace, then send the com- mand: SUB EARNEWS Ada Byron Lovelace to: LISTSERV@FRMOP11.BITNET To get a listing of all distribution lists that have "europe" in the name or title, send the command: LIST GLOBAL EUROPE to your nearest LISTSERV. To get the file PCPROG ZIP in XXE format the command is: GET PCPROG ZIP F=XXE Learning more about LISTSERV Detailed documentation on LISTSERV, and related services, is available from: LISTSERV@EARNCC.BITNET For a list of available documents send the command: INDex DOC A standard set of help files are available upon request from each LISTSERV server. Use the Info command to retrieve these files. |