* EFF FTP FAQ * 2.2 README file for ftp.eff.org - currently 192.77.172.4 Recent changes: 2.2 - updated item 7 with info on DOS and Mac gzip, updated mirrors list 2.1 - minor fixes and additions 2.0 - added items 23-24, added coast.cs.purdue.edu mirror site The Electronic Frontier Foundation ================================== 1001 G Street NW, Suite 950 E Washington DC 20001 USA +1 202 347 5400 (voice) +1 202 393 5509 (fax) +1 202 638 6120 (BBS) Internet: ask@eff.org Internet fax gate: remote-printer.EFF@9.0.5.5.3.9.3.2.0.2.1.tpc.int Contents: 1) Introductory Info 2) Notes on EFF's Guide to the Internet (formerly Big Dummy's Guide) 3) Notes on EFF's electronic Publications archive - CuD and /pub/journals/ 4) Notes on other EFF files that have moved: /pub/irc, /pub/airliners/, etc. 5) Redistribution information 6) Notes on binary and text (ASCII) files 7) Notes on compressed/archived files (.tar.*, .Z, .z, .gz, etc.) 8) How/where to get more help (try documentation and your sysadmin FIRST!) 9) Uploading to EFF 10) Notes on how to get "best of EFF" collections 11) Where are our files mirrored on other sites? 12) "How come when I type 'cd publications' or 'chdir groups' it get an error?" 13) "How come when I type 'get EFF' or 'mg Publications' I get an error?" 14) "How come when I type 'get *.eff' or 'get l???x.txt' I get an error?" 15) "How come these wildcards don't behave right?" 16) "How come when I type 'put newfile.txt' I get an error?" 17) "What are those .Links, .cap, and zzz files and directories?" 18) "How come when I type 'cd pub/Net_info/' or 'cd ~ftp/pub/EFF/' I get an error?" 19) Date format used on this server 20) File indexes 21) HTML (WWW) links to other sites 22) "Can I get these files by any other method?" 23) "What do I do if I can't get directory listings and have other probs?" 24) A hint for Delphi ftp users 1) Introductory Info This is ftp.eff.org (currently 192.77.172.4). Most of the files reside in the "pub" directory. If you want general information on the EFF look in the "pub/EFF" directory, specifically at the file "pub/EFF/about.eff". There are lots of neat features about this site, so read on! One in particular you might like to know about is that all directories (except those under the CAF tree) begin with upper-case letters. Files, on the other hand begin with (and usually fully consist of) only lower case characters (besides numbers, etc.) Indexes are called 00-INDEX.*, and all README files are README.* This makes it easy to find stuff, since you don't have to look for files like some_file.readme, this_directory.index, etc., and you can tell at a glance which listings are directories (they also show up in the list before most files). 2) Notes on EFF's Guide to the Internet (formerly Big Dummy's Guide) EFF's Guide (contrary to what WIRED magazine said) is in /pub/Net_info/EFF_Net_Guide/ The basic ASCII text implementation of the latest version is always in the file netguide.eff, regardless of version number. Special versions (WWW/html, TeX DVI, Texi, PostScript, Windows .HLP, AmigaGuide, GeoWorks Write, MS Word 5.x, DOS self-displaying hypertext, Gnu info, and more) are in: /pub/Net_info/EFF_Net_Guide/Other_versions/ 3) Notes on EFF's electronic publications archive - CuD and /pub/journals/ Note! the EFF Zine Stand has moved! All the zines and journals previously kept here are now on etext.archive.umich.edu. The CuD e-pub archives are still here however, in pub/Publications/CuD. 4) Notes on other EFF files that have moved: /pub/irc, /pub/airliners/, etc. The IRC archive has now been moved to ftp.kei.com:/pub/irc including all of the irc mailing list archives. The Airline info directory has likewise moved to ftp.kei.com, in pub/airliners 5) Redistribution information Any and all files in the EFF online archives may be freely distributed at will, unless otherwise noted, as long as the content of the files is not altered. It is appreciated if you make it known where the file originated, so people can get more info or updated versions. EFF's Internet Guide may also be redistributed. This includes posting on BBSs, FTP sites and any other means of distribution, so long as it is not modified and not sold for profit, except under certain conditions. Please see the first page of the guide for more information. Items that have a copyright notice: You may wish to contact the authors before distributing them further, just in case. 6) Notes on binary and text (ASCII) files. All files other than ASCII text files (most of the files on this site are text files) must be transferred as binary files, or you'll get them as worthless gibberish. This holds true for ANY ftp site. Files with extensions like .gif, .zip., .tar.z, .Z., .gz, .sea, etc. are binaries. Some files that may look like binaries but aren't, are files that end with a .hqx or .ps extension (note, however that a .ps PostScript file that has been compressed, e.g. filename.ps.gz, has become a binary.) For most ftp software, all you have to do is give the "binary" command (no quotes) to enter binary mode. In most cases, transferring text files in binary mode works fine, too, especially if you are on a Unix machine. It will actually be faster. This is a Unix site, and MS-DOS and Macintosh handle ASCII end-of-line markers differently, so you should transfer text files in the slower ASCII mode, so they are translated properly, if you are on a DOS or Mac machine. If the file you just got looks like garbage, ask yourself first and foremost: "Did I remember to use binary mode?" 7) Notes on compressed/archived files (.tar.*, .Z, .z, .gz, etc.) All compressed and tar-archived files are binaries, and must be transferred in binary mode! .z and .gz files are GZip (GnuZip) compressed archives, NOT Unix "compress" archives (.Z files). If you don't have gzip on your system, you can get these files uncompressed by 'get'ing the filename w/o the .z/.gz extension. If you find some-file-I-want.z (or .gz), you can get the uncompressed version by: ftp> get some-file-I-want rather than: ftp> get some-file-I-want.z or ftp> get some-file-I-want.gz The .z/.gz will be decompressed for you on the fly. If you want them in .Z compress format, substitute .Z for .z or .gz: ftp> get some-file-I-want.Z Note that files that end in .tar.* (e.g file.tar.Z, file.tar.gz, etc.) are archives produced with the unix "tar" program. You should be able to find an un-tarring utility for your computer at garbo.uwasa.fi or perhaps wuarchive.wustl.edu (look for tell-tale directories like pc/compression, mac/archivers, etc.) It may take a while to find it, but the tools are there. In most cases .tar.* files will be of little use to those not on Unix machines anyway. If you prefer to mget files in batches and want to decompress at home, use the unix gunzip command to extract .gz, .Z and .z files. If using a non-unix box of some sort, there are Mac and DOS toys for dealing with GZip files, which you can get from ftp sites like wuarchive.wustl.edu: /systems/ibmpc/umich.edu/compression/gnuzip/ -r--r--r-- 1 root archive 119146 Jan 29 1994 gzip124.exe /systems/mac/umich.edu/util/compression -r--r--r-- 1 root archive 151330 Jul 23 12:50 macgzip0.22.cpt.hqx If busy, see mirror site uceng.uc.edu, /pub/wuarchive/systems/... Juding from "umich" in the path, msdos.archive.umich.edu and mac.archive.umich.edu also have these files. 8) How/where to get more help (try documentation and your sysadmin FIRST!) If you have problems, comments or requests to pass on, please mail ftphelp@eff.org. Note that ftphelp is a person, not an infobot, so please make your messages detailed and specific. If possible include captures of the relevant parts of your session. ** PLEASE! For basic help with ftp and other net services, talk to your local admins, and try "man " (example: man ftp) to get the manual pages on the command you are trying out. EFF is not in the business of net.consulting, so please use local resources first. Don't hesitate to point out problems with our system though, if you are certain that there are bugs or other mistakes on our part. Thanks! 9) Uploading to EFF ** ALL UPLOADS MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY EITHER A TEXT FILE DESCRIBING WHAT IT IS, OR AN EMAIL TO FTPHELP@EFF.ORG DESCRIBING THE FILES. Files that don't have either an email or uploaded explanation are very likely to be deleted, unless we are expecting it, or otherwise can be expected to know what it is. The /incoming (uploads) directory is for EFF-related material only. E.g., something like the text of a bill, a guide to online resources, a notice about a national networking conference, etc. are all apropriate. GIFs, shareware, pornographic text files, and solar flare reports are not. Please don't upload junk in here, it will just get deleted. If you do have something good to add to the archives, then by all means please do upload it, provided it is redistributable material. Also note that after the upload, you will not be able to see the file in the directory, as incoming is write-only to prevent it being misused to nefarious purposes like software piracy or whatever. The turnaround time on processing the uploads might be a week or so, but then again it might be 5 minutes. If you want faster processing, send me an email explaining that you just uploaded something and what it is. 10) Notes on how to get "best of EFF" collections We have a collection of the "best of EFF" files, called the Frontier Files disks, the content of which can be downloaded from this site, at /pub/EFF/Misc/Frontier_Files/ - 3 versions are available. They are available from us (see top of this file for address) on disks for Macintosh, DOS, and Amiga. If you'd like such a disk please send us a self-addressed, 52-cent-stamped diskette mailer, and a disk if you can, to help defray costs. The disks are available in 3.5" DD only. It is perferred (probably by you too!) to get the archives from the ftp site, rather than send off for a disk. 11) Where are our files mirrored on other sites? Mirror sites are sites that keep copies of another site's material, so it is more widely available. Many sites mirror our files. This is NOT an exhaustive list; if you find more, let us know. coast.cs.purdue.edu, /pub/mirrors/ftp.eff.org/ mirrored directories: /pub/EFF/Legal/ /pub/EFF/Legislation/ /pub/EFF/Policy/Anonymity/ /pub/EFF/Policy/Crypto/ /pub/EFF/Policy/Privacy/ /pub/EFF/Policy/Security/ /pub/Publications/CuD/CuD/ /pub/Publications/CuD/Law/ /pub/Publications/CuD/Phrack/ and subdirectories thereof wuarchive.wustl.edu, /pub/doc/EFF/ mirrored directories: /pub/CAF/ /pub/EFF/ /pub/Publications/ and subdirectories thereof uceng.uc.edu, /pub/wuarchive/doc/EFF/ This is a mirror of a mirror, same material as wuarchive.wustl.edu ftp.std.com, /src/wuarchive/doc/EFF/ This is a mirror of a mirror, same material as wuarchive.wustl.edu, may or may not be active (last I looked it was [probably temporarily] not available due to NFS problems.) ftp.std.com, /obi/EFF/ a small collection of misc EFF files (mostly older files, but some of the basic intro material). ftp.glocom.ac.jp, /mirror/ftp.eff.org/ mirrored directories: /pub/EFF/ /pub/CAF/ /pub/Publications/Bruce_Sterling/ /pub/Publications/CuD/ and subdirectories thereof (that's most of the site). bric-a-brac.apple.com, /alug/EFF/ partial mirror of /pub/Net_info/EFF_Net_Guide/ mailer.fsu.edu, /pub/DDuke/EFF/ a small collection of some introductory EFF info, mainly stuff that can be found at /pub/EFF/ and /pub/EFF/History/ at ftp.eff.org. CuD-only mirror sites (may not be complete mirrors of/pub/Publications/CuD): UNITED STATES: etext.archive.umich.edu (141.211.164.18), /pub/CuD/ aql.gatech.edu (128.61.10.53), /pub/eff/cud/ ftp.halcyon.com (192.135.191.2), /pub/disk1/cud/ ftp.std.com, /obi/Computer.U.Digest/ (partial mirror) EUROPE: nic.funet.fi, /pub/doc/cud/ (Finland) ftp.warwick.ac.uk, /pub/cud/ (United Kingdom) Selected articles (mostly announcement, notices, press releases and papers) from Usenet's comp.org.eff.talk are archived at: cs.dal.ca, /comp.archives/comp.org.eff.talk/ 12) "How come when I type 'cd publications' or 'chdir groups' it get an error?" Unix, the operating system our site runs on, is *case-sensitive*, unlike DOS, Macintosh, etc. This means that a file or directory name like "publications" is NOT the same as one called Publications or PUBLICATIONS or pUbLiCaTiOnS. If you get a bad directory name error when trying to cd (chdir) into it, or a bad filename error when trying to get a file, look at the case and make sure you are typing it as it appears. As a side note, on some systems, you may encounter file names like FILE.TXT;1 in which case you need to include the ";1", while on others you may find filenames with spaces in them, in which case you need to enclose the entire name, spaces and all, in double-quotes, like "file name". You won't run into either of these problems on our server, however. For beginners: If you aren't sure what the file name is, type "dir" or "ls" at your ftp prompt - this will get you a directory listing of the files in the current directory. 13) "How come when I type 'get EFF' or 'mg Publications' I get an error?" You can't use get or mget (mg) on directories, only on files. You need to go INTO the directory (cd EFF, cd Publications, etc.), do a dir or ls command to see what's in there and do a get on the file you want, or an mget on the set of files you want. 14) "How come when I type 'get *.eff' or 'get l???x.txt' I get an error?" "get" does not support wildcards (* and ?), only mget (mg) does. Use the full filename, or use mget. 15) "How come these wildcards don't behave right?" If you are used to DOS wildcards, you should be aware that the Unix ones, though similar, are don't work exactly the same. In particular, be aware that "." is not considered a special character, a divider. In Unix, it's Just Another Character. Thus if you have 3 files, fnord.1, fnord.2 and foobar.1, doing mg * or mg *.* will get them all. Doing mg *.1 or mg *1 will get both fnord.1 and foobar.1, and doing mg fnord* or mg fnord.* will get fnord.1 and fnord.2. Also, one good thing is that you CAN do wildcards like *widget*.*, which you cannot in DOS (it interprets *[string].* as *.*, due to a bug that's been there since version 1.) 16) "How come when I type 'put newfile.txt' I get an error?" Only one directory on the system is set up so that anyone can upload to it. This is /incoming. Please see /README.incoming before uploading. Thanks. 17) "What are those .Links, .cap, .menu, and zzz files and directories?" They are just control files for the gopher system, and you can ignore them. They aren't very interesting. In general, on any FTP server, a filename beginning with a "." is of no interest to you. Likewise, material in /usr, /etc, or /bin, is likely to be nothing you are looking for. Most ftp sites hold their public material in a directory called /pub. There are a few that don't, but the standard ftp control directories (/bin and the like) don't hold archives, but are the homes of the ftp server itself and associated files. 18) "How come when I type 'cd pub/Net_info/' or 'cd ~ftp/pub/EFF/' I get an error?" The proper syntax is "cd /pub/Net_info" or "cd /pub/EFF/". You may need to use "chdir" instead of "cd", depending upon your ftp client. When cd'ing through several directories like that, the initial "/" is required. "~ftp" is just a customary notation indicating that "ftp" is actually the root directory for anonymous ftp. You don't actually include it as part of the path when using cd (chdir). Note also that the trailing "/" is optional. This is to say, ~ftp/pub/EFF, pub/EFF, /pub/EFF/ and /pub/EFF are all the same thing, but to get to it you'll do "cd /pub/EFF" (or "cd pub" as one command, then "cd EFF" as another.) 19) Date format used on this server In general, dates that appear in filenames are in the traditional US order: month, day, year. Ex: 080494 and 8/4/94 both mean August 8th, 1994. Exceptions: there may be a few files here and there with day, month, year order (e.g. in the text of non-EFF articles), and there may also be a few files with the canonical unix date format (year, month, day: 940804) in them. These are pretty uncommon, though. 20) File indexes Indexes of our file areas are available in files with names of the pattern 00-INDEX., where is the name of the current directory, a reasonable abbreviation thereof, or .TXT in a few cases (mainly old indexes that haven't been updated.) These indexes include descriptions, though indexing is still underway, and even when fairly complete, they may not be updated the instant new files arrive (all of this takes time, and that's a scarce resource here. If you'd care to volunteer to help us with our site indexing, please email mech@eff.org). A file listing of the entire ftp site is available at /00-master_filelist.Z. This is just a directory-by-directory listing of file names, sizes and dates; it does not include descriptions. When indexing is completed a script will be set up to prepare a master file index of the entire site with descriptions. 21) HTML (WWW) links to other sites In many directories on this site, you will find 00-links*.html files. These are World Wide Web HTML hypertext documents, and if you are using a smart gopher client or a WWW browser to view this archive, you can select this file to get a menu of other resources related to the subject of the current directory. If you see more than one 00-links*.html file, select 00-links.html - the rest are submenus of the main menu in 00-links.html. NOTE: This feature does NOT work for normal ftp users, only for those using a smart gopher (e.g. the unix gopher client, but not Mac TurboGopher), or a WWW client like lynx, Mosaic, Cello, or MacWeb. For gopher users, the gopher actually shells out to lynx to perform the www applications. This is why it doesn't work for ftp or dumb-gopher users. If you are using gopher, and enter one of these items and wish to get out, just hit Q to uit, and you'll be back in gopher. 22) "Can I get these files by any other method?" YES. Our ftp site, our gopher site, and a portion of our WWW site are all the same thing. They point to the exact same files. To get any particular file, say ftp.eff.org /pub/EFF/about.eff, via gopher, just replace ftp.eff.org with gopher.eff.org, and replace /pub/ with 1/ in the path. Note that gopher just goes to directories in the path, not the file name, so leave the filename off, then when you get into the directory, select the file manually. For instructions on how to specify a path name to your gopher client, please see your documentation. All gopher clients work a little differently. The standard unix gopher uses this syntax: gopher -p e.g.: gopher -p 1/EFF gopher.eff.org 70 To get the file via WWW, replace ftp.eff.org with http://www.eff.org and make a URL-format address/path out of it (e.g. http://www.eff.org/pub/EFF/about.eff - the only difference is the site name change, and attaching the path to the end of the site name so it's all one statement.) Many of our files are also available from our BBS, "Outpost - EFF Online", +1 202 638 6119 - 8N1; 300-14400bps (baud), V.32bis, V.42bis; 16800bps ZyXEL +1 202 638 6120 - 8N1; 300-14400bps, V.32bis, V.42bis If you wish to login anonymously, you can do so by logining in as ANONYMOUS password GUEST. Anon access is limited, but you can download any of the files (limitations apply primarily to message areas). 23) "What do I do if I can't get directory listings and have other probs?" If you can't get directory listings except in the top levels, the display looks messed up, automatic messages don't display correctly, you have trouble getting files, etc. (especially if you are using HyperFTP), try logging in with a - before your "password" (email address). Example: Password: -mech@eff.org NCSA's Telnet for DOS also has problems properly displaying the messages from the FTP server. If it bugs you, use the "-" trick. 24) A hint for Delphi ftp users Please remember that the Delphi ftp client requires you to enclose case-sensitive directory and file names in "quotes".