From: jrpg8255@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Jeremy Payne )
Subject: Re: what's this all about?
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 23:37:15 GMT

adxm@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Andrew Mcewan) writes:

>O.K , I'm new to this thing and I'm sure that you guys get really fed up with
>initiates, but how can I get on to the ftp files? I have already checked that it is
>available here by simply typing ftp at my normal prompt and  I get 

>ftp>

>Any commands after this like ls,cd and all that just give me a "not connected"
>message.How do I get "connected" and once I am what do I do next.

I know this has been answered every other day, but I've never taken my turn, 
and I need to kill some time while my simulation is running, so here goes...

"ftp" is just a tool for moving files around the net, and you had the right idea,
but you have to give it a bit more information, like where you want to get files
from.  Here's how I get files from nevada.edu:


wildcat 1: ftp ftp.nevada.edu
Connected to animal-farm.nevada.edu.
220 ftp.nevada.edu FTP server (Version 6.14 Wed Sep 30 10:33:33 PDT 1992) ready.
Name (ftp.nevada.edu:jeremy): anonymous
331 Guest login ok, send e-mail address as password.
Password:jrpayne@uiuc.edu
(initial text deleted)
ftp> (this is the ftp prompt)

ftp.nevada.edu is the address that you want to connect to.  Your login is
"anonymous", meaning you want to access public files for which you don't
need to have an account on that machine.  By convention you generally use
your own email address as your password, and some sites, nevada included I
believe, strongly urge that you do so.

The other option for getting into a site is to just start up ftp like you
did by just typing "ftp".  You'll get the ftp prompt, but of course the ftp
program doesn't yet know where you want to connect to, so you have to tell it:
"open ftp.nevada.edu", then login as before.

Once you're connected you can use the cd and ls commands to move around in tthe
remote machines directories just like you would on your local machine:
ftp> ls
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list.
etc
bin
pub
README
dev
bitnet
226 Transfer complete.
36 bytes received in 0.83 seconds (0.042 Kbytes/s)
ftp> cd pub/guitar/Led_Zepplin
ftp> pwd
257 "/pub/guitar/Led_Zepplin" is current directory.
ftp> ls
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list.
Kashmir.tab
226 Transfer complete.
13 bytes received in 0.0016 seconds (7.7 Kbytes/s)
ftp>

So Kashmir.tab is the only file in the directory.  You can download
it to your own machine (into the directory you were in when you started
ftp) by typing "get Kashmir.tab".  You can do a wildcard pattern match (e.g.
give me all files starting with 'K') instead of having to ask for them 
one by one by typing "mget K*", i.e. use mget instead of get and use the
standard wildcard syntax.  

That's about all.  When you're done type "bye", and you get your own machine's
prompt.  One thing to remember if you're getting >binaries< (as opposed to 
ascii files (the stuff on nevada is mainly text/ascii stuff); you need to
type "bin" at the ftp prompt >before< getting any such files or they'll be 
garbled.  This changes the mode in which ftp does the data transfer.  There
are other nifty things you can do, all of which are in the ftp man page.  e.g.
if there's a README or index file,  you can get it, and then read it on your
local machine without first quitting ftp by typeing "get README" then 
"!vi README", where the '!' means "interpret what comes next as a command to my
local machine".  

OK, I'm rambling and the simulation I was waiting for is done now.  Hope that 
was enough to get you started.


---------------------------
Jeremy Payne
UIUC Neuroscience program /
College of Medicine
jrpayne@uiuc.edu
(217)244-4478
---------------------------
Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.guitar.tablature