Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!bionet!CSC.FI!HARPER
From: HARPER@CSC.FI ("Robert Harper Finland", CSC)
Newsgroups: bionet.software
Subject: The number 1 FTP site in the Galaxy (nic.funet.fi or 128.214.6.100)
Message-ID: <AB0D957E01DF80676A@CSC.FI>
Date: 8 Mar 91 17:21:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@genbank.bio.net
Lines: 244
Welcome to NIC.FUNET.FI
The number 1 Ftp site in the Galaxy
This is a Sun4/330 with (9-Jan-91) 2.8GB disk space (1.9GB used). This
is owned by the Finnish Academic and Research Network Project FUNET,
and is located at the Finnish State Computing Centre, near Helsinki,
Finland. The Internet address is nic.funet.fi and the IP number is
128.214.6.100
CONTENTS:
- Intro
- What is considered proper conduct of anonymous FTP usage
- Non-standard FTP features
- Physical disk structure is hidden behind logical one
- Restrictions
- Contacts about material on NIC
- Uploading
- FTPD sources
- What is `Freely distributable' ?
INTRO:
This system has plenty of freely distributable material on its FTPable
areas. We also have plans for a couple of info-server -like systems for
maildelivery of remote files (few which are monitored here). BUT NOT
YET! (Details will be explained later when those systems are
operational)
If you have any questions regarding materials in this archive, read
first `Contacts about material on NIC' below. If you can't locate the
correct person/mail alias with it, try `maints@nic.funet.fi' since this
will send mail to every moderator, or if you only want to contact a
moderator that deals with scientific issues then mail to
sci@nic.funet.fi
WHAT IS CONSIDERED PROPER CONDUCT OF ANONYMOUS FTP USAGE:
Like many systems world wide, ours offers anonymous logins for FTP
users. For those who have this priviledge of using ftp, here are some
do's and dont's:
- When You are working over long distance links, do limit yourself
to off hours. When working between the USA and Finland, try it
after 4 PM OUR time ( 10 AM Eastern USA time.) And remember that
we wake up 10 hours before California.
We are at time zone `GMT +2h'.
- 90% of material in this archive have originated from various
locations all over USA. Sometimes those locations are well
known. Often not. We try to indicate origins if we know them.
DO try to use a server nearest to yourself. Quite many central
european sites have connections to RIPE/NORDUnet only via USA,
thus USA located servers are more convenient to use.
- When you log in anonymous, you are prompted with:
331 Guest login ok, send ident (your email address) as password.
It really means what is says: Give your email address as password.
We like to know how is using our server.
If your FTP program uses getpass(3) routine blindly (most
BSD networking source derived FTP programs), you can't enter
more than 8 characters for password. Ever.
Try to install FTP program from pub/localsrc/reno+mea-ftp.tar.Z.
You can then feed in a lot longer `passwords'.
(It has replacement for getpass() which inputs 130 chars.)
- When you upload something, make sure it is freely distributable.
For example some GIF images we have received are very obviously
scanned from magazines, which have publication copyrights on them.
This makes it illegal to copy those pictures `without the prior
written consent of publisher.'
- See below more about what is `Freely Distributable'.
- REMEMBER: USING ANONYMOUS FTP IS A PRIVILEDGE. DON'T ABUSE IT!
NON-STANDARD FTP FEATURES:
This FTPSERVER has some special features which may help on grabbing
files from NIC:
<filename>.Z Compress designated file while
fetching from this system.
<dirname>.tar Make a TAR (using GNU tar-1.07) of a directory.
<filename>.tar Make a TAR (- " -) of file.
<dirname>.tar.Z Make a compressed tar of directory.
<filename>.tar.Z Make a compressed tar of file.
Note: It isn't very useful to compress .arc, .zoo, .gif or
.Z files. Usually they just expand when compressed :-(
( Compression is useful for .txt or .dat files )
Note2: This ftp server won't perform .tar or .tar.Z transfer
(mentioned above) for top level directories.
This is to avoid accidental loading of whole archives over
the network to your disk. Several gigabytes of .tar isn't
very easy to handle:-) So .tar and/or .tar.Z will only work
in some subdirectories. Of course, this restriction doesn't
apply for regular files.
Special command `FIND regexpr' (your average UNIX ftp client accepts
it like this: `quote find WordRef') to run regexpr matching against
files in archive. So if you do not want to wade through all the
directories looking for some software you could give the command
"quote find jokes" which would find material of a humourous nature.
PHYSICAL DISK STRUCTURE IS HIDDEN BEHIND LOGICAL ONE:
This server hides physical disks and symlinks used to point to them
from anonymous user, but only partially:
ftp> cd /pub
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> pwd
257 "/disk1/pub" is current directory.
ftp> cd ..
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> pwd
257 "/disk1" is current directory.
ftp> cd /pub/msdos
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> pwd
257 "/disk2/msdos" is current directory.
You can, of course, use the physical names, but please confine yourself
to logical presentation. We often change PHYSICAL things around. Thus
coming back up with `cd ..' might get you into strange directories...
If you want to move back to /pub, use "cd /pub", not "cd .." to get
expected result. Otherwise you may wind up somewhere wierd...
RESTRICTIONS:
This FTPSERVER counts the number of anonymous customers simultaneously
on the system, and currently limits it to 16 simultaneous FOREIGN
anonymous users, so it doesn't show how many finns there are, also the
restriction of 16 simultaneous users doesn't apply for Finns.
Note that we are located far away from the USA. Our connection to the
USA is only a 128 KBits/Sec terrestial link (which is used by all the
scandinavian countries). Our main purpose is to be central repository
for Finnish users. Lately trafic on that link has been TWICE as great
from the USA as it has been from Finland, think about that...
CONTACTS ABOUT MATERIAL ON NIC:
For the molbio archive ( /pub/sci/molbio ) you can send questions to
sci@nic.funet.fi or molbio@nic.funet.fi. NIC just provides the disk
space, people behind `sci' or 'molbio' take care of the material.
For other interest areas: There is a file /etc/aliases which contains
some comment informations from actual system mail alias database. See if
you can find proper contact person/mail alias from there. There are
aliases for at least following:
386ix 386 UNIX software
amiga CBM Amiga programs
astro Some (amateur) astronomy related material
atari Atari archive
cae-sw Some public CAE software/databases
gif-adm GIF pictures archive maintainers
gnu GNU material
ham Radio-Amateur operations related software and data
mac Macintosh software
mach /pub/mach - Mach mikrokernel
minix comp.os.minix archives et.al.
molbio Molecular Biology archive
msdos MS-DOS/PC-DOS and alikes
os2 OS/2 interests
unix General UNIX
vms Some VMS software
xwin X-Windows
csc Material from the Centre for Scientific Computing (CSC)
sci Serious Science materials, databases, programs
maints All archive maintainers
ftp-bugs Bug reporting address
We also have a mail server for - among other things - to manipulate
internal mailing lists. This is mailserver/unix and not LISTSERV/VM
any similarities are purely coincidental:-) You may wish to join to
NEWMSDOS list for example:
Mail mailserver@nic.funet.fi
Subject: Requesting lists and help
subscribe newmsdos Joe User
list
help
When you send mail to mailserver@nic.funet.fi as in the above example
you will 1) add you to list NEWMSDOS with real name 'Joe User', 2) give
a list of locally known mailing lists, 3) print basic help with pointers
for more. Overall, this behaves much in the same style as BITNET LISTSERVs,
but as it isn't LISTSERV, it isn't called one either.
UPLOADING:
See file /README.UPLOADER for detailed procedure and explanations.
Briefly: there are directories that are world writable, but do not let
uploaded files become visible before maintainers check and approve them.
What we expect uploader to do when uploading anything is stated in
/README.UPLOADER. Read it!
FTPD SOURCES:
If you want the sources for this FTP server (derived from the Berkeley
freely distributable sources) look into /bin for ls and ftpd programs
(GNU-tar and BSD-compress are unmodified).
WHAT IS `FREELY DISTRIBUTABLE' ?
Freely distributable does not mean the same thing as PD (public domain).
A big portion of the software available here is not in the public
domain, although it is freely distributable. Many are copyrighted by
some person or organization, but can be distributed freely; there may be
limitations on the manner of distribution and/or the usage of the
programs. There may also be certain rules concerning the distribution
of modified versions (derivate work) of the programs, like saying that
if you redistribute a modified version you must include in the
distribution the date and author of the modification. Also on many
programs you must include a note crediting the original author of the
program if you use his code in your own programs.
An example of this is the Free Software Foundation's GNU software. GNU
software may be distributed freely, provided that the sources are
included, an offer to distribute the sources is included or that a
pointer to where the sources can be gotten from is included. On
NIC.FUNET.FI, all the GNU source code published is available from the
directory pub/gnu. Some GNU binaries are available from other
directories as well; although we have tried to include a pointer to the
sources and the copyright information in these other directories, too,
it might be that we have neglected some. This note is here to point you
to the sources in pub/gnu. For further information, the GNU copyright
is in the file pub/gnu/COPYING.
Uploads:
List of alias addresses in /etc/aliases, and partially in
/README.UPLOADER. Check them.
Thank you for taking time to read this message, and hopefully you will
find something to you liking on NIC.
Rob "we try harder" Harper