From: ssd.fsi.com!kevinb@tesla.elen.ssd.fsi.com (Kevin's Remote Mail)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Who/What is Archie?
Date: 24 Jul 92 20:38:54 GMT

The following is a reply to the help message sent to archie@cs.mcgill.ca
========================================================================

			The ARCHIE Mail Server

HELP for the archie mail server, as of 31 Oct, 1991 (modified from the 
KISS help file)

Requests to this server should be addressed to archie@cs.mcgill.ca


To contact us humans, mail to archie-l@cs.mcgill.ca

For your information anonymous FTP may be performed through the mail by
an ftp-mail server. Send a message with the word 'help' in it to:

		ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com

for an explanations on how to use it. NOTE: The BITFTP server at
Princeton no longer accepts requests from non-BITNET sites.  If you *are*
at a BITNET site you may use:

		bitftp@pucc.princeton.edu

Send 'help' in a message to it.


NOTE: The Subject: line is processed as if it were part of the main message
body: no special keywords are required.


Note that the "help" command is exclusive. All other commands in the same 
message are ignored.

Command lines begin in the first column. All lines that do not match a valid
commands are ignored. 

Results are now sorted by archive hostname in lexical order.

An archie UNIX man page and it's straight ASCII text file equivalent are
available on archie.mcgill.ca in the ~ftp/archie/doc directory as
archie.man.roff and archie.man.txt respectively. If you would like this 
delivered by mail see 'manpage' command for more information.

If you suspect that your results may exceed 45Kb in length, you should
ask that they be compressed. See the 'compress' command below. We hope to
automate this procedure (or split large requests) in the future.

The server recognizes 10 commands. If a message not containing any valid 
requests or an empty message is received, it will be considered to be a 
'help' request.


path <path>     This lets the requestor override the address that would
		normally be extracted from the header.  If you do not
		hear from the archive server within oh, about 2 days, you
		might consider adding a "path" command to your request.  The
		path describes how to mail a message from cs.mcgill.ca to your
		address. cs.mcgill.ca is fully connected to the Internet.

		BITNET users can use the convention

			user@site.BITNET

		UUCP users can use the convention

			user@site.uucp


help            Will send you this message.


prog <reg expr1> [<reg exp2> ...]

		A search of the "archie" database is performed with each
		<reg exp> (a regular expression as defined by ed(1)) in
		turn, and any matches found are returned to the requestor.
		Note that multiple <reg exp> may be placed on one line, in
		which case the results will be mailed back to you in one
		message.  If you have multiple "prog" lines, then multiple
		messages will be returned, one for each line [This doesn't
                work as expected at the moment... stay tuned].

		Any regular expression containing spaces must be quoted with
		single (') or double (") quotes. ALL OTHER ed(1) rules must
		be followed.

		NOTE: The searches are CASE SENSITIVE. The ability to change 
		this will hopefully be added soon.


site <site name> | <site IP address> 

		A listing of the given <site name> will be returned. The
		fully qualified domain name or IP address may be used.

list <reg expr1> [<reg exp2> ...]

		List all of the sites names currently stored in the
		database that match <reg expr> (a regular expression as
		defined by ed(1)). Multiple <reg expr> can be placed on
		one 'list' line [There maybe some problems with this while
		the format of the database is being reorganized. Try
		multiple 'list' lines if this doesn't work]. The format
		of the resulting list is: site name, site IP address and
		date last updated in the archie database.

whatis <substring1> [<substring2> ...]

		Search the Software Description Database (SDD) for
		<substring> (case insensitive). The SDD is a text
		database containing the names and short descriptions of
		about 3500 software packages, documents and datasets
		available on the Internet. If you have any corrections or
		additions, mail them to 

			archie-admin@cs.mcgill.ca

		Multiple <substring> arguments may be placed on the same
		'whatis' command line.

servers		List all the archie server hosts worldwide

manpage ["txt" | "nroff"]
		Send a copy of the archie manual page. Without any arguments
		the preformatted ASCII manual page will be returned. This
		can also be specified with the "txt" argument. That is

		manpage txt

		Will return the preformatted manual page. The nroff
		(UNIX) manual format can be obtained by specifying the
		"nroff" argument. It is probably a good idea to use
		the compress command (on a different line) in
		conjunction with this request, if you have access to
		the UNIX compress(1) and uudecode(1) utilities.

compress	ALL of your files in the current mail message will be
		"compressed" and "uuencoded". When you receive the reply,
		remove everything before the "begin" line and run it through
		"uudecode". This will produce a .Z file. You can then run
		"uncompress" on this file and get the results of your
		request. 


quit            Nothing past this point is interpreted. This is provided so
		that the occasional lost soul whose signature contains a line
		that looks like a command can still use the server without
		getting a bogus response.

==============================================================================

Basically the archie server does a database lookup for a specified filename
via commands sent by mail.  The database includes most of the ftp sites
on the Internet.

  //Kevin

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kevin Bonifield                        |  Phone: 918-251-0500 x520
Avionics Interface Computer Design     |  Email: kevinb@tesla.elen.ssd.fsi.com
FlightSafety - Simulator Systems Div   | 
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