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... is.
The reason is that these
sites are set up so that anybody can gain access to certain public
files, while letting people with accounts on the sites to log on and
access their own personal files. Next, you'll be asked for your
password. As a password, use your e-mail address. This will then come
up:
230 Guest connection accepted. Restrictions apply.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp>
Now type
ls
and hit enter.
You'll see something awful like this:
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
total 2636
-rw-rw-r-- 1 0 31 4444 Mar 3 11:34 README.POSTING
dr-xr-xr-x 2 0 1 512 Nov 8 11:06 bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 0 0 11030960 Apr 2 14:06 core
dr--r--r-- 2 0 1 512 Nov 8 11:06 etc
drwxrwsr-x 5 13 22 512 Mar 19 12:27 imap
drwxr-xr-x 25 1016 31 512 Apr 4 02:15 info-mac
drwxr-x--- 2 0 31 1024 Apr 5 15:38 pid
drwxrwsr-x 13 0 20 1024 Mar 27 14:03 pub
racine free web space drwxr-xr-x 2 1077 20 512 Feb 6 1989 tmycin
226 Transfer complete.
ftp>
Ack! Let's decipher this Rosetta Stone.
First, ls is the ftp command for displaying a directory (you can
actually use dir as well, but if you're used to MS-DOS, this could lead
to confusion when you try to use dir on your host system, where it won't
work, so it's probably better to just remember to always use ls for a
directory while online).
The very first letter on each line tells you whether the listing is racine free web space
for a directory or a file. If the first letter is a ``d,'' or an "l",
it's a directory. Otherwise, it's a file.
The rest of that weird set of letters and dashes consist of "flags"
that tell the ftp site who can look at, change or delete the file. You
can safely ignore it. You can also ignore the rest of the line until you
get to the second number, the one just before the date. This tells you
how large the file is, in bytes. If the line is for a directory, the
number gives you a rough indication of how many items are in that
directory -- a directory listing of 512 bytes is relatively small. Next
comes the date the file or directory was uploaded, followed (finally!) by
its name.
Notice the README.POSTING file up at the top of the directory. Most
archive sites have a "read me" document, which usually contains some
basic information about the site, its resources and how to use them.
Let's get this file, both for the information in it and to see how to
transfer files from there to here. At the ftp> prompt, type
get README
and hit enter. Note that ftp sites are no different from Unix sites in
general: they are case-sensitive.
You'll see something like this:
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode webhosting racine data connection for README (4444 bytes).
226 Transfer complete. 4444 bytes received in 1.177seconds (3.8 Kbytes/s)
And that's it! The file is now located in your racine free web space home directory on your host
system, from which you can now download it to your own computer. The
simple "get" command is the key to transferring a file from an archive
site to your host system.
If you want to download more than one file at a time (say a series
of documents, use mget instead of get; for example:
mget *.txt
This will transfer copies of every file ending with .txt in the racine free web space given
directory. Before each file is copied, you'll be asked if you're sure
you want it. Despite this, mget could still save you considerable
time -- you won't have to type in every single file name. If you want to
save even more time, and are sure you really want ALL of the given files,
type
prompt
before you do the mget command. This will turn off the prompt, and all
the files will be zapped right into your home directory.
There is one other command to keep in mind. If you want to get a
copy of a computer program, type
bin
and hit enter. This tells the ftp site and your host site that you are
sending a binary file, i.e., a program. Most ftp sites now use binary
format as a default, but it's a good idea to do this in case you've
connected to one of the few that doesn't.
To switch to a directory, type
cd directory-name
(substituting the name of the directory you want to access) and hit
enter. Type
ls
and hit enter to get the file listing for that particular directory.
To move back up the directory tree, type
cd ..
(note the space between the d and the first period) and hit enter. Or racine free web space
you could type
cdup
and hit enter. Keep doing this until you get to the directory of
interest. Alternately ... |
