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... tells the computer you
want it to send you a particular file.
First, though, you'll need to know where the mail server stores
that file, because you have to tell it which directory or sub-
directory it's in. There are a couple of ways to do this. You can
send an e-mail message to the archive-server that consists of one
line:
index
The server will then send you a directory listing of its main, or
root directory.
You'll then have to send a second message to the
archive server with one line:
index directory/subdirectory
where that is the directory or directory path for which you want a
listing. An alternative is to send an e-mail message to our old
friend archie, which should send you back the file's exact location on
the archive-server (along with similar listings for all the other
sites that may have the file, however)
Once you have the file epdq name and its directory path, compose a
message to the archive server like this:
send directory/subdirectory/file
Send off the message and, anywhere from a few minutes to a couple
of days later, you'll find a new message in your mailbox: a copy of the
file you requested. The exact time it will take a file to get to you
depends on a variety of factors, including how many requests are in line
before yours (mail servers can only process so many requests at a time)
and the state of the connections between the server and you.
Seems simple enough. It gets a little more complicated when you
request a program rather than a document.
Programs or other files that
contain unusual characters or lines longer than 130 characters (graphics
files, for example) require special processing by both the epdq mail server
to ensure they are transmitted via e-mail. Then you'll have to run them
through at least one converter program to put them in epdq a form you can
actually use. To ensure that a program or other "non-mailable" file
actually gets to you, include another line in your e-mail message to the
server:
encoder
This converts the file into an encoded form. epdq To decode it, you'll
first have to transfer the file message into a file in your home
directory.
One further complication comes when you request a particularly
long file. Many Net sites can only handle so much mail at a time.
To
make sure you get the entire file, tell the mail server to break it up
into smaller pieces, with another line in your e-mail request like
this:
size 100000
This gives the mail server the maximum size, in bytes, of each
file segment. This particular size is good for UUCP sites. Internet
and Bitnet sites can generally go up to 300000. When you get all of
these files in mail, transfer them to your home directory. Exit mail
and call up each file in your host system's text processor and delete
each one's entire header and footer (or "signature" at the end). When
done with this, at your host system's command line, type
cat file1 file2 > bigfile
where file1 is the first file, file2 the second file, and so on. The >
tells your host system to combine them into a new megafile called
bigfile (or whatever you want to call it). After you save the file to
your home directory (see section 9.2 above), you can then run uudecode,
tar, etc. One word of caution, though: if the file you want is long
enough that it has to be broken into pieces, think of how much time it's
going to take you to download the whole thing -- especially if you ... |
