Much of the
following text was posted by Amer Neely (aneely@execulink.com)
to the newsgroup alt.bbs.internet on 3/12/94. It has been expanded and
edited for publication in Benchmarks.
Digital
Equipment Corporation (DEC) has set up a mail server to handle FTP
requests. The server is located at ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com, but it is so
busy that you may have better luck sending the message to
ftpmail@sunsite.unc.edu or ftpmail@ftp.uu.net. All three servers
provide the same services and the latter two will probably provide
faster results.
You can get a list of commands to use when
requesting files from the mail servers by sending a message to one of
the three servers listed above with the word help in the body of the
message. You will receive a message back containing all the necessary
commands to FTP files via E-mail.
Here's an example request for the file FOOBAR.ZIP at
some.site.place.org. The file is in the directory /pub/Unknown/New.
To: ftpmail@sunsite.unc.edu
Subject: foobar.zip
reply your.name@your.site
connect some.site.place.org
chdir pub/Unknown/New
binary
uuencode
get FOOBAR.ZIP
quit
That's all there is to it. But note the exact case of each
part of the requested file. Most ftp sites are UNIX-based and they are
case-sensitive. It's VERY frustrating to get a reply back saying file
not found when all you did was put a lowercase letter instead of an
uppercase one. This applies to directory names as well.
You will get an acknowledgement back saying that your
ftpmail request has been received and letting you know how many jobs
there are in the queue ahead of yours. This could be in the thousands!!!
You may not get the actual file/s if things are too clogged up. Give
it about 4-5 days before requesting the file again. This acknowledgement
will also tell you if the file was sent, how many parts were sent, and
the size. Good info to know.
If all goes well you will
get messages back with a subject of results of your ftpmail request or
something similar. If you included a Subject in your original request,
this will be seen in the first few lines of the header information. It
will also tell you which part it is. You can use this to save the
message to a file with a meaningful name. Then download everything to
your PC and away you go.
The ftpmail program automatically
names every uuencoded file ftpmail.zip (or whatever other extension the
original file had), so when you uudecode the file/s you end up with a
file called ftpmail.zip. Before you run uudecode, you can edit this
with an ASCII editor in the first .uue file and put in the name of the
actual file if you like.
The nice thing about uuencode is
that you don't have to strip out the header information from each file
just run the whole shebang through uudecode and it will work. You don't
even have to patch all the files together into one big one. Just make
sure that they are numbered sequentially as in: fubar1.uue,
fubar2.uue, fubar3.uue, etc.
Similar services as those described above are suppplied by:
bitftp@pucc.princeton.edu, bitftp@plearn.edu.pl, bitftp@vm.gmd.de, and
trickle@hearn.nic.surfnet.nl. Send a message to one of the sites with
the word help in the body for more information.
If you have problems or questions about this server, please contact me as soon as possible. You can send mail to the following address:
WWW@unt.edu