A Beginner's Guide to the Internet

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Archie Email Help (Version 3.0) HELP for the archie email server, as of 10 April, 1993. To perform an archie search via email, send mail to archie@<archie_server> Where <archie_server> is the name of an archie host. The current (and complete) list of archie servers can be found with the "servers" command (described below). A sample list is: archie.rutgers.edu 128.6.18.15 (USA) archie.unl.edu 129.93.1.14 (USA) archie.sura.net 128.167.254.179 (USA) archie.ans.net 147.225.1.2 (USA) archie.au 139.130.4.6 (Australia) archie.funet.fi 128.214.6.100 (European server in Finland) archie.sogang.ac.kr 163.239.1.11 (Korea) If you do not get mail back within 2 days or so, try using the "path" command described below. Mail destined for the administration of individual servers should be addressed to: archie-admin@<archie_server> To add or delete a site from the archie database, send mail to: archie-admin@bunyip.com To contact the implementors of archie, send mail to: archie-group@bunyip.com For your information anonymous FTP may be performed through the mail by various ftp-mail servers. Send a message with the word 'help' in it to: For BITNET/EARN sites ONLY: bitftp@pucc.princeton.edu or (general access): ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com for an explanations on how to use them. The "Subject:" in mail sent to archie is treated as part of the message body. Command lines begin in the first column. All lines that do not match a valid commands are ignored. Under version 3.0 the email client implements all the non-interactive commands and variables of the telnet client. However, interactive commands like "pager" are not supported as they don't make much sense in the email environment. For a complete explanation of the the archie system use the "manpage" command to request a copy of the manual page, what follows is a short summary of the valid email commands and variables. NOTE: The "site" command of earlier versions of archie has been disabled under version 3.0 until it can be reimplemented with the new architecture of the system. Quick and dirty summary ---------------------- For those of you who want to get something done now and read the rest of this later, send the email to an archie server with the line: find <foo> (where <foo> is the name of the file you are looking for). You should get a message back with results of your search. If you want to be a bit more sophisticated, read on.... Commands -------- In the commands that follow, parameters between '[' and ']' are optional. The ellipsis ("...") signifies that the previous parameter can be repeated multiple times. A '|' character means "or". help [ <topic> [[ <subtopic> ] ...]] The "help" command by itself produces this message. An optional topic and subtopic(s) may also be given. A list of words is considered to be one topic, not a list of individual topics. Thus, help set maxhits requests help on the subtopic 'maxhits' of topic 'set', not on two separate topics. find <pattern> This command produces a list of files matching the pattern <pattern>. The <pattern> may be interpreted as a simple substring, a case sensitive substring, an exact string or a regular expression, depending on the value of the variable search. prog <pattern> This is identical to "find" and is included for backward compatibility with older versions of the system. list [ <pattern> ] Produce a list of sites whose contents are contained in the archie database. With no argument all the sites are listed. If given, the <pattern> argument is interpreted as a regular expression (see the archie manual page for an explanation of regular expressons) against which to match site names: only those names matching are printed. The format of the output can be selected through the output_format variable (described below). Note that the numerical (IP) address associated with a site name is valid at the time the site was last updated in the archie database, but may have changed subseqently. mail <address> Mail the results generated up until this command to <address>. This must be a vaid email address. manpage [ roff | ascii ] Return the archie manual page. The optional arguments specify the format of the returned document. "roff" specifies UNIX troff (or nroff) format, while ascii specifies plain, preformatted ASCII output. With no arguments it defaults to ascii. motd Re-display the "message of the day", which is normally printed at the start of the returned message. path <address> Set the return address to <address>. This overrides the default path which the system automatically generates by looking at the incoming mail header. This is actually an alias for "set mailto <address>" (see "Variables" below), and is included for backwards compatability. servers Display a list of all publicly accessible archie servers worldwide. The names of the hosts, their IP addresses and geographical locations are listed. set <variable> <value> Set the specified <variable> to <value>. See "Variables" below. show [ <variable-name>...] Without any parameters, display the status of all the user-settable variables, including such information as its type (boolean, numeric, string), whether or not it is set and its current value (if its type requires a value). Otherwise show the status of each of the specified arguments. Useful for finding out what the default settings at a server are. unset <variable> Unset the specified <variable>. The subsequent value of the variable is defined on a <variable>-specific basis. version Print the current version of the email interface. whatis <substring> Search the Software Description Database for the given substring, ignoring case. This database consists of names and short descriptions of many software packages, documents (like RFCs and educational material), and data files stored on the Internet. Note that this database is currently maintained by hand and may not be completely up-to-date. Variables --------- The archie email system has 3 types of variables. 1) Numeric ---------- Numeric variables may have preset internal ranges in which the value of the variable must lie. maxhits Allow the "find" command to generate at most the specified number of matches (permissible range: 0-1000) max_split_size Approximate maximum size, in bytes, of a file to be mailed to the user. Any output larger than this limit will be split in pieces of about this size. This can be set by the user in the range 1024 to ~2Gb with a default of 51200 bytes. Some mail gateways will not allow results of over 100Kb and so care should be taken when setting this limit. 2) String --------- String variables may have a predefined range of values. compress The kind of data compression the user can specify when mailing back output. Currently allowed values are "none" and "compress" (standard UNIX compress program) with a default of "none" encode The type of post-compression encoding the user can specify when mailing back output. Currently allowed values are "none" and "uuencode", with a default of "none". Note that this variable is ignored unless compression is enabled (via the compress) variable. language Allows the user to specify the language in which the help, etc. is presented. Individual servers may be configured for a range of languages. mailto A valid address to mail the results back to. This overrides the address automatically generated by the archie system from the incoming mail header. Setting this variable is equivalent to using the "path" command. output_format Affects the way the output of "find" and "list" is displayed. User settable, with valid values of "machine" (machine readable format), "terse" and "verbose", with a default of "verbose". search The type of search done by the "find" (or "prog") command. The list of valid values is given below in order of increasing search times. The given search string may match a directory or filename in the database. exact String has to match exactly (including case) subcase Substring match. Case sensitive. sub Substring match. Case insensitive. regex Regular expression (see ed(1)) search. Case sensitive. The archie manual page gives examples of regular expressions. There are also compound searches made up of combinations of the above search methods in sequence: exact_sub Try "exact". If no matches found use "sub". exact_subcase Try "exact". If no matches found use "subcase" exact_regex Try "exact". If no matches found use regex. Note: unless specifically anchored to the beginning (with ^) or end (with $) of a line, regular expressions (effectively) have ``.*'' prepended and appended to them. For example, it is not necessary to type find .*xnlock.* because find xnlock In this instance, the regex match is equivalent a simple substring match which should be used instead. server The archie/Prospero server to which the email interface connects when "find" or "list" commands are used. Usually defaults to "localhost" on most archie systems. sortby Set the method of sorting to be applied to output from the "find" command. The five permitted methods (and their associated reverse orders) are: none Unsorted (default; no reverse order, though 'rnone' is accepted) filename Sort files/directories by name, using lexical order (reverse order: 'rfilename') hostname Sort on the archive hostname, in lexical order (reverse order: 'rhostname') size Sort by size, largest files/directories first (reverse order: 'rsize') time Sort by modification time, with the most recent file/directory names first (reverse order: 'rtime') 3) Boolean ---------- Currently the email interface to the archie system has no variables of type "boolean". >> help Archie Email Help (Version 3.0) HELP for the archie email server, as of 10 April, 1993. To perform an archie search via email, send mail to archie@<archie_server> Where <archie_server> is the name of an archie host. The current (and complete) list of archie servers can be found with the "servers" command (described below). A sample list is: archie.rutgers.edu 128.6.18.15 (USA) archie.unl.edu 129.93.1.14 (USA) archie.sura.net 128.167.254.179 (USA) archie.ans.net 147.225.1.2 (USA) archie.au 139.130.4.6 (Australia) archie.funet.fi 128.214.6.100 (European server in Finland) archie.sogang.ac.kr 163.239.1.11 (Korea) If you do not get mail back within 2 days or so, try using the "path" command described below. Mail destined for the administration of individual servers should be addressed to: archie-admin@<archie_server> To add or delete a site from the archie database, send mail to: archie-admin@bunyip.com To contact the implementors of archie, send mail to: archie-group@bunyip.com For your information anonymous FTP may be performed through the mail by various ftp-mail servers. Send a message with the word 'help' in it to: For BITNET/EARN sites ONLY: bitftp@pucc.princeton.edu or (general access): ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com for an explanations on how to use them. The "Subject:" in mail sent to archie is treated as part of the message body. Command lines begin in the first column. All lines that do not match a valid commands are ignored. Under version 3.0 the email client implements all the non-interactive commands and variables of the telnet client. However, interactive commands like "pager" are not supported as they don't make much sense in the email environment. For a complete explanation of the the archie system use the "manpage" command to request a copy of the manual page, what follows is a short summary of the valid email commands and variables. NOTE: The "site" command of earlier versions of archie has been disabled under version 3.0 until it can be reimplemented with the new architecture of the system. Quick and dirty summary ---------------------- For those of you who want to get something done now and read the rest of this later, send the email to an archie server with the line: find <foo> (where <foo> is the name of the file you are looking for). You should get a message back with results of your search. If you want to be a bit more sophisticated, read on.... Commands -------- In the commands that follow, parameters between '[' and ']' are optional. The ellipsis ("...") signifies that the previous parameter can be repeated multiple times. A '|' character means "or". help [ <topic> [[ <subtopic> ] ...]] The "help" command by itself produces this message. An optional topic and subtopic(s) may also be given. A list of words is considered to be one topic, not a list of individual topics. Thus, help set maxhits requests help on the subtopic 'maxhits' of topic 'set', not on two separate topics. find <pattern> This command produces a list of files matching the pattern <pattern>. The <pattern> may be interpreted as a simple substring, a case sensitive substring, an exact string or a regular expression, depending on the value of the variable search. prog <pattern> This is identical to "find" and is included for backward compatibility with older versions of the system. list [ <pattern> ] Produce a list of sites whose contents are contained in the archie database. With no argument all the sites are listed. If given, the <pattern> argument is interpreted as a regular expression (see the archie manual page for an explanation of regular expressons) against which to match site names: only those names matching are printed. The format of the output can be selected through the output_format variable (described below). Note that the numerical (IP) address associated with a site name is valid at the time the site was last updated in the archie database, but may have changed subseqently. mail <address> Mail the results generated up until this command to <address>. This must be a vaid email address. manpage [ roff | ascii ] Return the archie manual page. The optional arguments specify the format of the returned document. "roff" specifies UNIX troff (or nroff) format, while ascii specifies plain, preformatted ASCII output. With no arguments it defaults to ascii. motd Re-display the "message of the day", which is normally printed at the start of the returned message. path <address> Set the return address to <address>. This overrides the default path which the system automatically generates by looking at the incoming mail header. This is actually an alias for "set mailto <address>" (see "Variables" below), and is included for backwards compatability. servers Display a list of all publicly accessible archie servers worldwide. The names of the hosts, their IP addresses and geographical locations are listed. set <variable> <value> Set the specified <variable> to <value>. See "Variables" below. show [ <variable-name>...] Without any parameters, display the status of all the user-settable variables, including such information as its type (boolean, numeric, string), whether or not it is set and its current value (if its type requires a value). Otherwise show the status of each of the specified arguments. Useful for finding out what the default settings at a server are. unset <variable> Unset the specified <variable>. The subsequent value of the variable is defined on a <variable>-specific basis. version Print the current version of the email interface. whatis <substring> Search the Software Description Database for the given substring, ignoring case. This database consists of names and short descriptions of many software packages, documents (like RFCs and educational material), and data files stored on the Internet. Note that this database is currently maintained by hand and may not be completely up-to-date. Variables --------- The archie email system has 3 types of variables. 1) Numeric ---------- Numeric variables may have preset internal ranges in which the value of the variable must lie. maxhits Allow the "find" command to generate at most the specified number of matches (permissible range: 0-1000) max_split_size Approximate maximum size, in bytes, of a file to be mailed to the user. Any output larger than this limit will be split in pieces of about this size. This can be set by the user in the range 1024 to ~2Gb with a default of 51200 bytes. Some mail gateways will not allow results of over 100Kb and so care should be taken when setting this limit. 2) String --------- String variables may have a predefined range of values. compress The kind of data compression the user can specify when mailing back output. Currently allowed values are "none" and "compress" (standard UNIX compress program) with a default of "none" encode The type of post-compression encoding the user can specify when mailing back output. Currently allowed values are "none" and "uuencode", with a default of "none". Note that this variable is ignored unless compression is enabled (via the compress) variable. language Allows the user to specify the language in which the help, etc. is presented. Individual servers may be configured for a range of languages. mailto A valid address to mail the results back to. This overrides the address automatically generated by the archie system from the incoming mail header. Setting this variable is equivalent to using the "path" command. output_format Affects the way the output of "find" and "list" is displayed. User settable, with valid values of "machine" (machine readable format), "terse" and "verbose", with a default of "verbose". search The type of search done by the "find" (or "prog") command. The list of valid values is given below in order of increasing search times. The given search string may match a directory or filename in the database. exact String has to match exactly (including case) subcase Substring match. Case sensitive. sub Substring match. Case insensitive. regex Regular expression (see ed(1)) search. Case sensitive. The archie manual page gives examples of regular expressions. There are also compound searches made up of combinations of the above search methods in sequence: exact_sub Try "exact". If no matches found use "sub". exact_subcase Try "exact". If no matches found use "subcase" exact_regex Try "exact". If no matches found use regex. Note: unless specifically anchored to the beginning (with ^) or end (with $) of a line, regular expressions (effectively) have ``.*'' prepended and appended to them. For example, it is not necessary to type find .*xnlock.* because find xnlock In this instance, the regex match is equivalent a simple substring match which should be used instead. server The archie/Prospero server to which the email interface connects when "find" or "list" commands are used. Usually defaults to "localhost" on most archie systems. sortby Set the method of sorting to be applied to output from the "find" command. The five permitted methods (and their associated reverse orders) are: none Unsorted (default; no reverse order, though 'rnone' is accepted) filename Sort files/directories by name, using lexical order (reverse order: 'rfilename') hostname Sort on the archive hostname, in lexical order (reverse order: 'rhostname') size Sort by size, largest files/directories first (reverse order: 'rsize') time Sort by modification time, with the most recent file/directory names first (reverse order: 'rtime') 3) Boolean ---------- Currently the email interface to the archie system has no variables of type "boolean".