Guide to Network Resource Tools EARN Association May 20, 1994 Document Number: 3.0 Notice This document has been compiled and produced by the EARN Association. Permission to copy all or part of this document without fee is granted provided the copies are not used for commercial advantage, and that the EARN Association is cited as the source of the document. This document is available in electronic format from: LISTSERV@EARNCC.EARN.NET (or LISTSERV@EARNCC.BITNET) Send the command: GET filename where the filename is either: NETTOOLS PS NETTOOLS TXT Document version: 3.0 ISBN 2-910286-05-3 (ISBN 2-910286-03-7 Version 2.0) (ISBN 2-910286-01-0 Version 1.0) (c) EARN Association, 1994 Preface to the Third Edition When the first version of the Guide to Network Resource Tools was released, we had no idea how popular it would become, and how quickly it would spread beyond the EARN community. While much had already been written on these tools, a booklet with brief expla- nations and instructions struck a responsive chord. With the sec- ond edition, we tried to make the various corrections and improvements which had been suggested by many people who had seen the first version. In this third edition, we have tried to expand the scope, both in terms of the number of networking tools covered and the size of the audience at which it is aimed. While the Internet continues to grow at an explosive rate, there is still a large community of users, within EARN and beyond, with only electronic mail connec- tivity to the world-wide network. We have tried to show how they too can utilize these networking tools. The work of many people is reflected here, but we owe our great- est debt of thanks to the developers and authors of the network tools and documentation. Their work serves as the basis for this guide. We also wish to thank all those who have provided comments, crit- icisms and suggestions for the guide. Many of the improvements in the third edition are the result of their feedback and encourage- ment. In particular, we have benefitted from the cooperation of the RARE Working Group on Information Services and User Support. We look forward to close collaboration with them on future edi- tions of this guide as well as on other projects. The Guide to Network Resource Tools has been produced by the staff of the EARN Association, under the direction of the EARN Group on Information Services. Any errors or inaccuracies in this guide are the sole responsibility of the EARN staff. We welcome and encourage your feedback. Please send comments, criticisms, corrections, suggestions for future editions and even praise to the electronic mail address: EARNDOC@EARNCC.EARN.NET (or EARNDOC@EARNCC.BITNET) If you have any questions or queries on the use of these tools or on other aspects of networking, and you are in an EARN member country, you can get help and advice by sending your questions by electronic mail to the EARN consulting service at: NETHELP@EARNCC.EARN.NET (or NETHELP@EARNCC.BITNET). The EARN Staff Contents Preface to the Third Edition Introduction Part 1: EXPLORING THE NETWORK GOPHER What is GOPHER Who can use GOPHER How to get to GOPHER Using GOPHER Using GOPHERMAIL VERONICA Learning more about GOPHER WORLD-WIDE WEB What is WORLD-WIDE WEB Who can use WORLD-WIDE WEB How to get to WORLD-WIDE WEB Using WORLD-WIDE WEB The line mode browser Other interfaces Examples Learning more about WORLD-WIDE WEB Part 2: SEARCHING DATABASES WAIS What is WAIS Who can use WAIS How to get to WAIS Using WAIS E-mail access Examples Learning more about WAIS Part 3: FINDING NETWORK RESOURCES ARCHIE What is ARCHIE Who can use ARCHIE How to get to ARCHIE Using ARCHIE Using a local client Using Telnet Using electronic mail Examples Learning more about ARCHIE HYTELNET What is HYTELNET Who can use HYTELNET How to get to HYTELNET Using HYTELNET Local system Examples Learning more about HYTELNET Part 4: FINDING PEOPLE AND COMPUTERS WHOIS What is WHOIS Who can use WHOIS How to get to WHOIS Using WHOIS Using a local client Using Telnet Using electronic mail Examples Learning more about WHOIS X.500 What is X.500 Who can use X.500 How to get to X.500 Using X.500 Using a local client Using Telnet or X.25 Using electronic mail Examples Learning more about X.500 NETFIND What is NETFIND Who can use NETFIND How to get to NETFIND Using NETFIND Local access Remote access Examples Learning more about NETFIND Part 5: GETTING FILES TRICKLE What is TRICKLE Who can use TRICKLE How to get to TRICKLE Using TRICKLE Examples Learning more about TRICKLE BITFTP What is BITFTP Who can use BITFTP How to get to BITFTP Using BITFTP Examples Learning more about BITFTP Part 6: NETWORKED INTEREST GROUPS LISTSERV What is LISTSERV Who can use LISTSERV How to get to LISTSERV Using LISTSERV Commands for Lists Commands for Files LISTSERV Database Functions Commands for Information Examples Learning more about LISTSERV USENET (NETNEWS) What is USENET Who can use USENET How to get to USENET Using USENET Examples Learning more about USENET Part 7: OTHER TOOLS OF INTEREST NETSERV What is NETSERV How to get to NETSERV Learning more about NETSERV MAILBASE What is MAILBASE How to get to MAILBASE Learning more about MAILBASE FTPMAIL What is FTPMAIL How to get to FTPMAIL Learning more about FTPMAIL PROSPERO What is PROSPERO How to get to PROSPERO Learning more about PROSPERO IRC What is IRC How to get to IRC Learning more about IRC RELAY What is RELAY How to get to RELAY Learning more about RELAY Appendix A: Freely available networking software Gopher clients World-Wide Web clients Wais clients Usenet - news reader software Appendix B: Online information General references References for individual tools Introduction As the worldwide academic computer network grows and expands far beyond its previous confines, so the resources and services available on the network evolve and multiply at a dizzying rate. The typical user is hard-pressed to keep up with this explosive growth. Fortunately, a number of tools are available to facili- tate the task of locating and retrieving network resources, so that users anywhere can utilize texts, data, software and infor- mation for public access. Facilities to explore public domain software repositories, to consult mailing list archives and data- bases, to retrieve directory information and to participate in global group discussions are now available to all. The key to availability of network resources is the provision of servers on computers all over the network. A server consists of special software which accepts requests (or queries or commands) and sends a response automatically. Requests received by the ser- ver may have originated from a user on the same computer as the server software, or from a user on a computer on the other side of the world. Many servers accept requests via electronic mail, in which case requests can be received from computers which are not even on the same computer network as the server. Links have been established between many servers, so that once you have established contact with one server, you can easily communicate with other servers as well. Software programs which ask for resources from servers are called client programs - they are clients of the server software. Clients send requests to a server, using a standardized format called a protocol. The server responds by supplying information, usually in the form of files containing text or data of various sorts. New client software is being developed all the time, providing better and more convenient ways of interacting with servers. Dif- ferent versions of a particular client may be developed for dif- ferent desktop computers since these are increasingly more sophisticated, having advanced graphical, audio and storage capa- bilities. Thus different versions of a client will be provided for use on IBM PC's, Apple Macintosh, or Unix computers. There are X Window System versions of many of the clients. The tools described in this guide have been divided into six functional areas. Several of the tools have more than one func- tion, but they have been classified according to their main pur- pose. The first section, Exploring the network, covers two servi- ces, Gopher and World-Wide Web, which use the client-server model to provide a means of moving through a wide range of network resources in a uniform and intuitive way. WAIS (Wide Area Infor- mation Server), a tool for searching databases located throughout the network, is documented in the second section, Searching data- bases. The problem of knowing where to find files and programs in the network is addressed in the third section, Finding network resources, which describes archie, a client for searching archives of filenames, and Hytelnet, a hypertext compendium of online library catalogues and other network resources. Section four, Finding people and computers, covers three tools - WHOIS, X.500 and Netfind. While just about all of these network tools can be used to get files of one sort or another, some servers are designed to obtain files easily and efficiently from various repositories in the network. Two of these servers, TRICKLE and BITFTP, are covered in section five on Getting files. The sixth section Networked Interest Groups deals with what is perhaps the most popular of all the network resources: discussion groups on every imaginable topic. The two tools discussed in this section are LISTSERV and Usenet (Netnews). The final section gives brief descriptions and pointers for a number of other tools. Some have not yet achieved widespread rec- ognition (Prospero), some are relatively unknown outside a par- ticular network (Netserv from EARN/Bitnet and Mailbase from JANET) or there is an alternative service within EARN (ftpmail) and some are meant for chatting rather than work (Relay and IRC). The purpose of this guide is to supply the basic information that anyone on the network needs before trying out and starting to use these tools. A basic knowledge of networking terminology has been assumed, as well as familiarity with the basic tools of net- working: electronic mail (often referred to as e-mail or simply mail throughout this guide) and, for those connected to the Internet, FTP (file transfer protocol) and Telnet (remote login). It is beyond the scope of this guide to describe these basic tools. Guides to email, FTP and Telnet are available elsewhere on the network, and the example in the BITFTP section of this guide shows how to obtain them. Part 1 EXPLORING THE NETWORK GOPHER What is GOPHER The Internet Gopher client is used to search for and retrieve files from Gopher servers anywhere on the Internet. It is thus a distributed document delivery service. Gopher servers store files containing text or binary data, directory information (loosely called phone book), images or sound. Links to other Gopher ser- vers result in network wide cooperation to form the global Gopher web, often called Gopherspace. Gopher clients also provide gateways to other information systems (World-Wide Web, WAIS, archie, WHOIS) and to network services (Telnet, FTP). Gopher is often the most convenient way to navi- gate in an FTP directory and to download files. The Gopher client presents information to the user as a series of nested menus (resembling the organization of a directory with many subdirectories and files). However, the subdirectories and the files may be located either on the local Gopher server or on Gopher servers situated at remote sites. As far as the user need know, all information items presented on the menus appear to come from the same place. Who can use GOPHER In order to use an interactive Gopher client on your computer, you must be on the international TCP/IP network (the Internet). Electronic mail access to Gopher is also available, so that any- one on any other network who can send and receive mail with the Internet can also explore Gopherspace (see GopherMail in the sec- tion How to get to Gopher). How to get to GOPHER Local clients Public domain Gopher clients are available for: MS-DOS, MS- Windows, OS/2 Macintosh, CMS, VMS, NeXT, Unix, X-Windows. The clients are available by anonymous FTP from many sites (e.g. boombox.micro.umn.edu in the directory /pub/gopher). See the list of freely available client software in Appendix A. Remote clients If you do not have a Gopher client on your computer, you can use a remote Gopher client via an interactive Telnet session, or by electronic mail to a GopherMail site. Some sites make Gopher clients available for anonymous public use. To access a remote Gopher client, telnet to one of these sites: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | info.anu.edu.au Australia (login: info) | | tolten.puc.cl Columbia | | ecnet.ec Ecuador | | gopher.chalmers.se Sweden | | consultant.micro.umn.edu USA | | gopher.uiuc.edu USA | | panda.uiowa.edu USA (login: panda) | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ At the login: prompt type gopher (unless specified otherwise) and the top-level Gopher menu for that site will be displayed. Users are requested to use the site closest to them. GopherMail You can communicate with gopher by carrying out email conversa- tions with a GopherMail server. A list of GopherMail servers is given below. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | gopher@earn.net France | | gopher@ftp.technion.ac.il Israel | | gopher@join.ad.jp Japan | | gopher@nig.ac.jp Japan | | gopher@nips.ac.jp Japan | | gopher@solaris.ims.ac.jp Japan | | gophermail@ncc.go.jp Japan | | gopher@dsv.su.se Sweden | | gophermail@calvin.edu USA | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ Using GOPHER Gopher client implementations look slightly different on differ- ent platforms, because they take advantage of the platforms' capabilities (mouse, graphic functions, X Window System). However all implementations offer the same set of functions and commands. After issuing the gopher command, you will be connected automati- cally to a default Gopher server which was specified when your Gopher client was installed. The format of the command is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | gopher | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where hostname is optional, and can refer to an alternative Gopher server you wish to use instead of your default server. The Gopher client presents a simple menu-driven interface which doesn't require any special training or knowledge from the user. Here is a sample menu: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Internet Gopher Information Client v2.0.12 Information About Gopher 1. About Gopher. 2. Search Gopher News 3. Gopher News Archive/ 4. comp.infosystems.gopher (Usenet newsgroup)/ 5. Gopher Software Distribution/ 6. Gopher Protocol Information/ 7. University of Minnesota Gopher software licensing policy. 8. Frequently Asked Questions about Gopher. 9. gopher93/ 10. Gopher| example server/ 11. How to get your information into Gopher. --> 12. New Stuff in Gopher. 13. Reporting Problems or Feedback. 14. big Ann Arbor gopher conference picture.gif Press ? for Help, q to Quit, u to go up a menu Page: 1/1 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Any item can be selected from the menu by typing its line number, then pressing the RETURN key, or by moving the cursor (-->) next to the item and pressing the RETURN key. Each item on the menu may be: * a subdirectory * a text file * a binary file * a sound file * an image file * a phone book (directory information) * an index-search * a Telnet session Items on the Gopher menu have an identifying symbol next to them. In the example above, "" means a full text index-search, "/" means a subdirectory, "" means an image file, and no symbol means a text file. Some Gopher clients are not able to handle certain file types (e.g. sound files), and some clients display only files of types they can handle or files they suppose you are interested in. Others display all types of files. When an item is selected from the Gopher menu, it is processed according to its type, as shown below. If you select an item which represents a sound file, an image file, or a Telnet ses- sion, the Gopher client looks for the appropriate software on your computer to carry out the task of displaying the image, reproducing the sound, or starting the Telnet session. When the task is completed, control is returned to the Gopher client. a subdirectory its contents are displayed. You can view the direc- tory above the present one using the up command. a text file the file is displayed. You can browse through the contents of the file, search for a particular string in the file, print the file on a local printer or copy (save) the file onto your local disk space. The last two functions may not be available to you - this will depend on your local conditions. a binary file the file is simply copied onto your local disk space, under a name specified by you. Binary files are binhexed Macintosh files, archives (.zip, .tar,...), compressed files, programs, etc. a sound file the file is played through your local audio device; this is only possible if you have a suitable audio device, with a utility to drive it. Only one sound file can be active at a time; you will be warned if you try to play a sound before a previous one has finished playing. an image file the remote file is displayed on your computer screen if an image viewer exists on your computer. a phone book you are prompted for a search string. The phone book will be searched according to the procedures set up by the institution which owns and maintains it. an index-search Gopher indexes are available to help users locate the information in a set of documents. You will be prompted for a search string, which may be one or more words, and may contain the special operators and, or, and not. The search is case-insensitive, and the or word test is non-exclusive. E.g.: terminal and setting or tset will find all documents in the index which contain both the words terminal and setting, or the word tset. The result of the index-search is presented in the form of a Gopher menu, where each menu item is a file containing the specified search string. a Telnet session Telnet sessions are normally connections to text- based information services such as library cata- logues. At any time, it is possible to terminate the session (quit), to cancel the current processing (the command to do this will vary with Gopher clients), or to get the on-line help (help). Most Gopher clients allow you to keep track of the exact location of Gopher items which you expect to use often, storing the infor- mation as a series of bookmarks. Your collection of bookmarks can be presented in the form of a customized Gopher menu. This facil- ity is useful when you often need to reach a file or a service located far from the top-level directory. Whichever Gopher server you are connected to, you can access oth- er Gopher servers by exploring the Other Gopher servers in the rest of the world branch of the menu. Gopher servers are present- ed in geographical regions, to make them easier to find: * Africa * Europe * Middle East * North America * Pacific * South America and then by countries within each region. Using GOPHERMAIL If you send the word help in the subject line of an e-mail mes- sage to one of the GopherMail servers, you will get instructions and information on using the system. The following information has been obtained from the help file. You start a conversation with a GopherMail server by sending it an email message (with any or no subject and any or no message body). GopherMail will reply by sending you its main Gopher menu. Your email reply should contain the text of that menu, with the options you want to follow up marked by an "X" (or "x") anywhere near the beginning of the line, before the menu numbers for those options. This process is repeated as many times as necessary. Some items on Gopher menus are databases or college phone books. To search for a particular name or keyword(s), you simply send the name or keyword(s) on the Subject: line of the message in which you have put an "X" against the phone book or WAIS database menu option. To save a few keystrokes, instead of putting X's at the start of menu lines, you can insert lines at the top of the reply which contain an "X" followed by the menu number that you want, such as: x3 X15 The link information which the Gopher server will use to connect to the items on the menu is shown at the bottom of each email message, after the menu. You can make the GopherMail conversation more efficient by editing your replies to contain just the Gopher link information for the items you want. You can build a type of bookmarks file by saving the links that you want to use again. Here's what you need: Name=About GopherMail <- Optional, it returns in the Subject: Type=0 <- Required, see below for a list of types Port=70 <- Required only if different from port 70 Path=0/gophermail.helpfile <- Usually required, depends on the link Host=gopher.earn.net <- Required. MUST be the last line Supported types are: 0 Text File 1 Directory 2 CSO name server 4 Mac HQX file 7 Full Text Index (these are often WAIS database searches) 9 Binary File s Sound Binary and Sound Files are sent as uuencoded files. GopherMail's options include: * Message splitting after a certain file size * Menu splitting after a certain number of menu items * Re-using links saved in a bookmarks file * Requesting the Gopher menu for a specific hostname * Requesting the help file * Selecting menu items using fewer keystrokes * Requesting items from the Info-Mac Archive * Requesting Gopher items with their raw link information Many email gateways have size limits on email messages, so GopherMail output can be split into several messages if it exceeds a certain size. You can specify a maximum number of menu items to send in one message, or maximum size in bytes for text, HQX, binary and sound files. There are two ways to specify size limits. The first way is to put Menu=50 and/or Split=30000 (for example) in the Subject: of your e-mail message. This would limit the output to 50 menu items per message, and would send files in messages of no more than 30,000 bytes. The other way is to include these same instructions in the body of the message, on separate lines. For example: Split=25K Menu=75 You can include text after the 25K. The "K" or "k" becomes "000" (which is a near approximation to 1024!). Lines like these appear in all GopherMail menu messages, after the menu items and before the link information. They contain default values. You should edit these lines to contain the values that you want, and all subsequent menus will contain your pre- ferred Menu= and Split= values. Setting these values to 0 (zero) has the effect of not splitting messages at all. The default is to split menus after 100 items, and files after 27,000 bytes. If Split= or Menu= appear in the Subject: of the message, these will override the values set in the message body. You can specify a different host when requesting a top level Gopher menu by placing a fully qualified domain name as the Sub- ject: of your message (such as gopher.tc.umn.edu). You can also specify a port other than the default of 70 by placing it after a fully qualified domain name in the subject (e.g. darth.sdsc.edu 800). GopherMail was written in Perl by Fred Bremmer in September 1992. Nick Hengeveld helped with the TCP portion, and Matt Ranney pro- vided the book on Perl and helped with some regular expressions. Several friends helped to find bugs and suggest improvements. VERONICA Veronica helps you find Gopher-based information without doing a menu-by-menu, site-by-site search. It provides a keyword search of more than 500 Gopher menus, so it is to the Gopher information space what archie is to the FTP archives. Veronica does not have to be started as another connection or another application, it is accessible from most top-level Gopher menus or from the Other Gopher servers... branch. A comprehensive description of veronica search methods is avail- able from the veronica menus. A brief description is given here. When you choose a veronica search, you will be prompted to enter a keyword or keywords. The simplest way to search with veronica is to enter a single word and hit the RETURN key. It does not matter whether the word is upper case or lower case. The veronica server will return a Gopher menu composed of items whose titles match your keyword specification. Items can be accessed as with any Gopher menu. E.g.: eudora will give you a list of menu titles which contain eudora, such as: Electronic Mail: Eudora on Macintosh, Micro-08 Modem Setting Eudora Slip. A UNIX-based Eudora reader for those that ... Eudora: Popmail for the Macintosh. Eudora. etc. The search string may contain keywords optionally separated by and, or and not. If there is no operator between two keywords, and is assumed. E.g.: eudora and macintosh will give you a list of menu titles which contain both eudora and macintosh, such as: Eudora: Popmail for the Macintosh. v4.1 EUDORA: E-MAIL FOR THE MACINTOSH. Micro News: Eudora - A Mailer for the Macintosh. Eudora: Electronic Mail on Your Macintosh. ACS News - Eudora Mail Reader for Macintosh. etc. "*" is the wildcard character. It can replace any other character or characters at the end of a keyword. E.g.: desk* will give you a list of menu titles, such as: The Help Desk. Keene State College Press Release COMPUTER ON EVERY DESK. DESKQview/X... An alternative to Windows???. Ethernet at Your Desktop/ etc. Learning more about GOPHER The Internet Gopher is developed by the Computer and Information Services Department of the University of Minnesota. Bug reports, comments, suggestions, etc. should be mailed to the Gopher devel- opment team at: gopher@boombox.micro.umn.edu.. Mailing list: gopher-news@boombox.micro.umn.edu To subscribe to the gopher-news mailing list, send a mail message to: gopher-news-request@boombox.micro.umn.edu Usenet newsgroup: comp.infosystems.gopher Veronica is being developed by Steve Foster and Fred Barrie at the University of Nevada. Bug reports, comments, suggestions, etc. should be addressed to: gophadm@futique.scs.unr.edu WORLD-WIDE WEB What is WORLD-WIDE WEB World-Wide Web (also called WWW or W3) is a hypertext-based information system. Any word in a hypertext document can be spec- ified as a pointer to a different hypertext document where more information pertaining to that word can be found. The reader can open the second document by selecting the word (using different methods depending on the interface; in a mouse based system, a user would probably place the mouse over the word and click the mouse button); only the part of the linked document which con- tains relevant information will be displayed. The second document may itself contain links to further docu- ments. The reader need not know where the referenced documents are, because they will be obtained and presented as they are needed. World-Wide Web uses hypertext over the Internet: the linked documents may be located at different Internet sites. The World-Wide Web also provides access to many of the other tools described in this guide, and is becoming widely used as the major means of access to Internet resources. Special index documents have been created in the WWW information space and these can be searched for given keyword(s). The result is a new document which contains links to documents selected from the index. If you were reading this document on a hypertext system, instead of this all too short explanation about hypertext, you would have a selectable pointer to a complete hypertext information web with examples and more pointers to other definitions. For instance, in the first document you might read: ----------------------------------------------------------------- The WorldWideWeb (W3) is the universe of network-accessible information, an embodiment of human knowledge. It is an initiative started at "CERN", now with many participants. It has a body of software, and a set of protocols and conventions. W3 uses "hypertext" and multimedia techniques to make the web easy for anyone to roam browse, and contribute to. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Selecting hypertext would display the following explanation for you: ----------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT IS HYPERTEXT Hypertext is text which is not constrained to be linear. Hypertext is text which contains "links" to other texts. The term was coined by "Ted Nelson" around 1965 (see "History"). HyperMedia is a term used for hypertext which is not constrained to be text: it can include graphics, video and "sound", for example. Apparently Ted Nelson was the first to use this term too. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Then you could learn more about links and Ted Nelson. The links in WWW are not confined to text only, so the term hypermedia is more accurate - for example, the link to Ted Nelson might point to a file containing a picture of Ted Nelson. The picture would be displayed on your screen, if your computer had a suitable screen and an image viewer. Who can use WORLD-WIDE WEB You must be on the international TCP/IP network (the Internet) in order to use a client on your computer to access WWW. If you are on the Internet, but don't have a WWW client on your computer, you can still enter the World-Wide Web because several sites offer public interactive access to WWW clients (see the Remote clients section under How to get to World-Wide Web below). If you have e-mail access only, or if you are not on the Internet, then you can not fully exploit the vast potential of WWW. However, a mail-robot is available at the address: listserv@info.cern.ch which gives e-mail access to WWW-accessible files. (see E-mail access section under How to get to World-Wide Web below). How to get to WORLD-WIDE WEB Users access the World-Wide Web facilities via a client called a browser, which provides transparent access to the WWW servers. If a local WWW client is not available on your computer, you may use a client at a remote site: this can be an easy way to start using WWW. Local clients Use of a local client is encouraged since it will provide better performance and better response time than a remote client. Public domain clients for accessing WWW servers are available for: Macintosh, MS-DOS, VMS, VM/CMS, MVS, NeXT, Unix, X-Windows. All these platforms support a simple line mode browser. In addi- tion, graphical clients are available for: Macintosh, MS- Windows, X-Windows, NeXT and Unix. See the list of freely avail- able client software in Appendix A. Remote clients To access a remote WWW client, telnet to the client site. If you are new to WWW, you should telnet to info.cern.ch. No login is needed for this, and you will immediately enter the WWW line mode browser. Most remote clients are at sites with WWW servers holding infor- mation on specific areas. Telnet to the client site, and at the login: prompt enter www; no password is needed. Some of the pub- licly accessible clients were locally developed. The following remote client sites are available: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Site Country Specialization | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | info.funet.fi Finland | | www.huji.ac.il Israel Environment | | info.cern.ch Switzerland (CERN) High-energy physics | fatty.law.cornell.edu USA Law | | www.cc.ukans.edu USA History | | www.njit.edu USA | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ Using CERN as the entry point you will find information about WWW itself, with an overview of the Web and a catalogue of the data- bases sorted by subject. E-mail access You can obtain WWW files via mail to listserv@info.cern.ch using a SEND command. The SEND command returns the document with the given WWW address, subject to certain restrictions. Hypertext documents are formatted to 72 character width, with links num- bered. A separate list at the end of the file gives the addresses of the related documents. A good file to start with would be: http://info.cern.ch./hypertext/DataSources/bySubject/Overview.html Note that, despite the name listserv in the address of this mail- robot, it is not a LISTSERV server. A note of caution from the WWW developers and maintainers: As the robot gives potential mail access to a *vast* amount of information, we must emphasise that the service should not be abused. Examples of appropriate use would be: * Accessing any information about W3 itself; * Accessing any CERN and/or physics-related or network develop- ment related information; Examples of INappropriate use would be: * Attempting to retrieve binaries or tar files or anything more than directory listings or short ASCII files from FTP archive sites; * Reading Usenet newsgroups which your site doesn't receive; * Repeated automatic use. There is currently a 1000 line limit on any returned file. We don't want to overload other people's mail relays or our server. We reserve the right to withdraw the service at any time. We are currently monitoring all use of the server, so your reading will not initially enjoy privacy. Enjoy! The W3 team at CERN (www-bug@info.cern.ch) Using WORLD-WIDE WEB The line mode browser: The line mode browser is a simple user interface: references are shown as a number in square brackets next to each referenced word. Type the number and hit the RETURN key to follow a refer- ence. For example, here is the beginning of the Subject Catalogue on the CERN server: ----------------------------------------------------------------- The World-Wide Web Virtual Library: Subject Catalogue THE WWW VIRTUAL LIBRARY This is a distributed subject catalogue. See also arrangement by service type[1], and other subject catalogues of network information[2]. Mail to maintainers of the specified subject or www-request@info.cern.ch to add pointers to this list, or if you would like to contribute to administration of a subject area. See also how to put your data on the web[3] Aeronautics Mailing list archive index[4]. See also NASA LaRC[5] Agriculture See Agricultural info[6], Almanac mail servers[7] the Agricultural Genome[8] (National Agricultural Library, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture) Archaeology[9] Separate list Astronomy and Astrophysics[10] Separate list. 1-64, Back, for more, Quit, or Help: ----------------------------------------------------------------- To access WWW with the line mode browser, type: www. The default first document will appear on your screen. From this point, you should be able to navigate through the WWW universe by reading the text and following the instructions at the bottom of the screen. If you want to start with a document other than the default, or if you want to change some other aspect of the usual interaction, a number of command line parameters and options are available. The full format of the www command to invoke the line mode browser is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | www > | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where: docaddress is the hypertext address of the document at which you want to start browsing. keyword the supplied keyword(s) are used to query the index specified by docaddress. A list of matching entries is displayed. Multiple keywords are separated by blanks. Options are: -n non-interactive mode. The document is formatted and displayed to the screen. Pages are delimited with form feed characters (FF). -listrefs adds a list of the addresses of all document references to the end. Non-interactive mode only. -pn sets the page length to n lines. Without a number, makes the page length infinite. Default is 24. -wn sets the page width to n columns. The default is 78, 79 or 80 depending on the system. -na hides references in the text. Useful when printing out the document . -version displays the version number of the software. The following commands are available when using a line mode brow- ser either as a local client or as a remote client. Some are dis- abled when not applicable (e.g. Find is enabled only when the current document is an index). CAPITAL letters indicate accepta- ble abbreviation; angle brackets (<>) indicate an optional param- eter. Help gives a list of available commands depending on the context, and the hypertext address of the current docu- ment. Manual displays the on-line manual. Quit exits WWW. number type in one of the numbers shown in [] and hit the RETURN key to follow the link associated with the ref- erence. RETURN hit the RETURN key to display the next page of the cur- rent document (without a reference number). Up, Down scrolls up or down one page in the current document. Top, BOttom goes to the top or the bottom of the current document. Back goes back to the document you were reading before. HOme goes back to the first document you were reading. Next, Previous goes to the next or previous document in the list of pointers from the document that led to the current one. List gives a numbered list of the links from the current document. To follow a link, type in the number. Recall if number is omitted, gives a numbered list of the documents you have visited. To display one specific document, re-issue the command with number. keyword queries the current index with the supplied keyword(s). A list of matching entries is displayed with possible links to further details. Find can be omitted if the first keyword does not conflict with another WWW com- mand. Multiple keywords are separated by blanks. Go docaddress goes to the document represented by the given hypertext address, which is interpreted relative to the current document. Extra command available on Unix versions only: Print prints the current document, without the numbered docu- ment references. The default print command is lpr, but it may be defined in your local working environment by the variable WWW_PRINT_COMMAND. Other interfaces: When using a graphical interface, you access the WWW functions by pressing mouse buttons. Words are highlighted or underlined to indicate where a link exists. To follow a link, click on the word. The most famous graphical interface is Mosaic, which is the state-of-the-art point and click interface. Mosaic is a WWW brow- ser which also displays images and plays sounds, with the help of local utilities. Navigation within the web is intuitive and addi- tional features (mailing feedback, customizing, etc.) are easy to use. Mosaic also provides an interface to the other information systems (WAIS, Gopher, etc.) thus giving access to all Internet resources from a single interface. Implementations for Macintosh, MS-Windows and X-Windows are available via anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the directory /Web. A good alternative for users without a graphical environment is Lynx. Lynx is a full screen browser for WWW using arrows and tab keys, cursor addressing and highlighted or numbered links to nav- igate within the web. Lynx has no image or sound capabilities: any images or sounds are replaced by a tag at display time and the corresponding files can be retrieved separately. Unlike the line mode browser, documents containing embedded images or enhanced document formats (e.g. formulaires) are handled properly by Lynx. A demonstration version of Lynx is available using Tel- net to www.cc.ukans.edu (login as www). Implementations for vari- ous Unix flavours and for VMS are available via anonymous FTP from ftp2.cc.ukans.edu in the directory /pub/WWW/lynx. Examples WWW gives you access to an information universe. Let's say you want to know how many film versions of The Three Musketeers have been made. You browse The WWW Virtual Library and select Movies: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Cardiff's Movie Database Browser. CARDIFF'S MOVIE DATABASE BROWSER. UK Postal Quiz [1] There's now a way to set permanent[2] links to specific names and titles. Movie title substring searching.[3] (for non-forms browsers) Movie people substring searching.[4] (for non-forms browsers) Lookup titles by genre.[5] (uses plot summary info. 652 titles so far, many more on the way) List my votes[6]. If you've voted for movies, your votes are here. On this day in history..[7](who was born and who died) The rec.arts.movies top 40 films[8] and bottom 40 films.[9] Top 20[10]s of busy people. Famous marriages.[11] 1-18, Up, for more, Quit, or Help: 3 ----------------------------------------------------------------- You select Movie titles, and then type three musketeers as key- words: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Movie Info (27/27) Example, to search for movies with the word ``alien'' in their title, type ``alien''. This will return details on several movies, including Aliens Note: if the title begins with A or The, leave it out. If you're determined to include it, then put ', A' or ', The' at the end of the of the substring e.g. Enforcer, The Gauntlet, The Searching is case insensitive. [1] Rob.H[2] Robert.Hartill@cm.cf.ac.uk FIND , 1-2, Back, Up, Quit, or Help: three musketeers ----------------------------------------------------------------- You find that there have been seven film versions of the story: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Movie Info TITLE SUBSTRINGS. Here are the results from the search for three musketeers Three Musketeers, The (1921)[1] Three Musketeers, The (1933)[2] Three Musketeers, The (1935)[3] Three Musketeers, The (1939)[4] Three Musketeers, The (1948)[5] Three Musketeers, The (1974)[6] Three Musketeers, The (1993)[7] I haven't found the item you wanted ?, why ?[8] Note titles in quotes (") are TV series. [9] Rob.H[10] Robert.Hartill@cm.cf.ac.uk FIND , 1-10, Back, Up, Quit, or Help: 1 ----------------------------------------------------------------- You decide to look for more information on the 1921 version: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Movie Info MOVIE DETAILS. THREE MUSKETEERS, THE (1921) 1921 Cast Leon Barry[1] ......Athos Charles Belcher[2] ......Bernajoux Nigel De Brulier[3] ......Cardinal Richelieu Marguerite De La Motte[4] ......Constance Bonacieux Douglas Fairbanks[5] ......D'Artagnan Sidney Franklin[6] ......Monsieur Bonacieux Thomas Holding[7] ......Duke of Buckingham Boyd Irwin[8] ......Comte de Rochefort Barbara La Marr[9] ......Milady de Winter Mary MacLaren[10] ......Queen Anne of Austria Adolphe Menjou[11] ......Louis XIII Eugene Pallette[12] ......Aramis Lon Poff[13] ......Father Joseph Willis Robards[14] ......Captain de Treville George Siegmann[15] ......Porthos Charles Stevens[16] ......Planchet 1-37, Back, Up, for more, Quit, or Help: 11 ----------------------------------------------------------------- You're hooked! You decide to look for more information on Adolphe Menjou, search more titles, find Oscar winners, etc. Learning more about WORLD-WIDE WEB World-Wide Web is being developed at CERN (European Particle Physics Laboratory) by the World-Wide Web team led by Tim Berners-Lee. Bug reports, comments, suggestions, etc. should be mailed to: www-bug@info.cern.ch On-line documentation is available from info.cern.ch, via anony- mous FTP or using the remote WWW client. Mailing lists: www-talk@info.cern.ch To subscribe send an e-mail message to www-talk- request@info.cern.ch Usenet newsgroup: comp.infosystems.www Mosaic is being developed at NCSA (National Center for Supercom- puting Applications), Urbana Champain, Illinois, by Marc Andrees- sen and Eric Bina. Bug reports, comments, suggestions, etc. should be mailed to: mosaic@ncsa.uiuc.edu On-line documentation is available from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu, via anonymous FTP, or from www.ncsa.uiuc.edu, using a WWW client. Lynx is being developed at the University of Kansas by Lou Mon- tulli. On-line documentation is available from ftp2.cc.ukans.edu, via anonymous FTP, or from www.cc.ukans.edu, using a WWW client. Part 2 SEARCHING DATABASES WAIS What is WAIS WAIS, Wide Area Information Server, are databases containing mostly text-based documents (although WAIS documents may contain sound, pictures or video as well). WAIS databases are referred to as sources. The databases may be organized in different ways, using various database systems, but the user is not required to learn the query languages of the different databases. The WAIS client uses natural language queries to find relevant documents which contain the words of the query. WAIS databases are avail- able on topics ranging from Agriculture to Social Science. Who can use WAIS You must be on the international TCP/IP network (the Internet) in order to use a WAIS client on your computer to access WAIS sourc- es. If you have e-mail access only, or if you are not on the Inter- net, you can still exploit some of the potential of WAIS. An interface which gives e-mail access to WAIS databases is avail- able at the address: WAISmail@quake.think.com (see E-mail access section under Using WAIS below). How to get to WAIS There are many WAIS servers throughout the network. A directory- of-servers database is available at several sites, which can be queried to find out what databases are available on a particular subject. The directory-of-servers database is also available via anonymous FTP from ftp.wais.com in the directory /pub/directory- of-servers in the distribution wais-sources.tar.Z as file directory-of-servers.scr. If you do not have access to a WAIS client, at least two demon- stration sites are available to allow you to get acquainted with WAIS. You can telnet to: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | quake.think.com (login: wais) | | sunsite.unc.edu (login: swais) | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ The two demonstration sites above run swais (Screen WAIS), a sim- ple WAIS client for Unix. Using WAIS There are many freely available WAIS client programs for various operating systems (Unix, VMS, MVS, MS-DOS, OS/2 and Macintosh) and for specific environments (e.g. X-Windows, Openlook, NeXT, and MS-Windows). See the list of freely available client soft- ware in Appendix A. The client interface differs slightly on different platforms, but the queries are performed in the same way whatever interface is in use. * Step 1: The user selects a set of databases to be searched. * Step 2: The user formulates a query consisting of keywords to be searched for. * Step 3: When the query is run, WAIS asks for information from each selected database. * Step 4: Headlines of documents satisfying the query are dis- played. The selected documents contain the requested words and phrases. Selected documents are ranked according to the number of matches. * Step 5: To retrieve a document, the user simply selects it from the resulting list. The WAIS client retrieves the docu- ment and displays its contents on the screen. * Step 6: If not enough documents are found, the user can state the question differently or can select a set of documents. * Step 7: A further search will look for documents which have a large number of words in common with the selected documents. E-mail access: You can query WAIS databases and retrieve documents by sending commands in the body part of an e-mail message to WAIS- mail@quake.think.com. The Subject: line is ignored. The impor- tant commands are given below (a vertical bar (|) indicates a choice of parameters): help to get the help file maxres number to set the maximum number of results (i.e. docu- ments) to be returned. search source-name | "source-name1 source-name2 ..." keywords where: source-name is a source name as found in the directory-of-servers (with or without the .src ending). Use double-quotes (") to group several sources to be searched. keywords are the words you would normally type into a query. You may specify several search requests in a mail message. If you don't know what sources you can search, just try anything. If the source name is not recognised, you will be given a list of sources. retrieve docid retrieves a document from a database. docid is a Document IDentifier as returned by a search. You may put more than one retrieval request in a mail mes- sage, but you must leave a blank line between requests. The docid must be written exactly as returned by a search request, including any spaces. You can retrieve non-text documents as well as text. If the document is of type TEXT or WSRC you will get the result directly. Other types will be UUENCODED before being transmitted. DocID: docid same as retrieve. This form is identical to the form which is returned by a search request, which makes it easy to use the reply mail function to retrieve results. Examples When you log in to the demonstration site at quake.think.com, you have immediate access to the directory-of-servers database via the swais client software. To find recipes using papaya, you would select the recipes database and give papaya as the keyword. Here are the results of the search: ----------------------------------------------------------------- # Score Source Title Lines 001: 1000 (recipes) arielle@ta Re: Dawn's Muffins, Pt III 339 002: 1000 (recipes) arielle@ta Re: Muffins 3 632 003: 1000 (recipes) arielle@ta Re: Pineapple 678 004: 750 (recipes) arielle@ta Re: Pork and Papaya Salad 33 005: 750 (recipes) arielle@ta Re: Bread 681 006: 500 (recipes) roder@cco. Re: NONFAT BAKERY COLLECTION 423 007: 500 (recipes) shiva@hoss Re: Juice Recipes 65 008: 250 (recipes) arielle@ta Re: Prawn Salad 49 009: 250 (recipes) arielle@ta Re: COLLECTION: Lots of Avoca 447 010: 250 (recipes) mecca@acsu Re: REQUEST: blender-made fru 29 011: 250 (recipes) Ann.Adamci Re: Re: REQUEST: blender-made 38 012: 250 (recipes) patth@Pani Re: Re: REQUEST: blender-made 49 013: 250 (recipes) arielle@ta Re: Avocados 459 014: 250 (recipes) red_trek@d Re: VEGAN: red beans and rice 78 ----------------------------------------------------------------- You can then select any of the above documents for viewing. Here is the Pork and Papaya Salad recipe: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: rec.food.recipes From: arielle@taronga.com (Stephanie da Silva) Subject: Pork and Papaya Salad Message-ID: <5BBP2SB@taronga.com> Date: Mon, 29 Mar 1993 06:51:47 GMT Lines: 23 1/4 cup dried currants 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar 1/4 cup walnut oil 1/4 cup chicken broth 1 tablespoon honey 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1 pound cooked boneless pork loin roast 1 head Belgian endive Bibb lettuce leaves 2 papayas, seeded, peeled and sliced lengthwise 2 avocados, seeded, peeled and sliced lengthwise 1/4 cup broken walnut pieces In a small bowl pour enough boiling water over currants to cover. Let stand 5 minutes; drain. For dressing, in a screw-top jar combine vinegar, oil, chicken broth, honey, and cinnamon. Cover; shake well. Trim fat from pork; slice thinly. Separate leaves of Belgian endive. Line 6 salad plates with lettuce leaves. Arrange pork, endive, papaya, and avocado on plates. Sprinkle with currants and walnuts. Drizzle dressing over salads. Stephanie da Silva arielle@taronga.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- If you give more than one keyword, then all documents containing any of the keywords will be listed. Learning more about WAIS A bibliography of documents, services and sources for WAIS is maintained by Barbara Lincoln Brooks of WAIS Inc. The bibliography is available from ftp.wais.com in the directory /pub/wais-inc-doc along with many other WAIS documents. WAIS Inc. provides commercial WAIS software and services. The support for the freely available version, called freeWAIS, is assumed by the Clearinghouse for Network Information Discovery and Retrieval (CNIDR). For information on freeWAIS software contact freewais@cnidr.org There are currently four main FTP sites for WAIS documentation and software: ftp.cnidr.org ftp.wais.com quake.think.com sunsite.unc.edu Mailing list: wais-discussion@wais.com To subscribe send a mail to wais-discussion-request@wais.com Usenet newsgroup: comp.infosystems.wais WAIS was developed at Thinking Machines Corporation. Part 3 FINDING NETWORK RESOURCES ARCHIE What is ARCHIE Archie is a service which helps users to locate files and direc- tories on anonymous FTP servers anywhere on the Internet. Administrators all over the world register anonymous FTP servers with the archie service; once a month the archie service runs a program which scans the directories and filenames contained in each of the registered FTP servers, and generates a grand merged list of all the files and directories contained in all the regis- tered servers. More than 1000 anonymous FTP sites are now repre- sented in this list, which is referred to as the archie database. The archie database currently contains more than 2,100,000 file- names. The archie database is made available on several archie servers, all of which contain the same information. Administrators can also provide a short description of software packages contained in the files or directories at their site, but do not have to do so. The descriptions may or may not be kept up to date: there is no pressure on administrators to do this. Files made available at anonymous FTP sites contain software packages for various systems (MS-Windows, MS-DOS, Macintosh, Unix, etc.), utilities, information or documentation, mailing lists or Usenet group discussion archives. At most FTP sites, the resources are organized hierarchically in directories and subdi- rectories. The archie database contains both the directory path and the file names. Who can use ARCHIE The archie database is available to all users of the Internet, and can also be accessed via electronic mail. See the section Using ARCHIE below for details. How to get to ARCHIE The archie database is maintained in the following locations: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Host Country | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | archie.au Australia | | archie.edvz.uni-linz.ac.at Austria | | archie.univie.ac.at Austria | | archie.uqam.ca Canada | | archie.funet.fi Finland | | archie.th-darmstadt.de Germany | | archie.doc.ic.ac.uk GB | | archie.ac.il Israel | | archie.unipi.it Italy | | archie.kuis.kyoto-u.ac.jp Japan | | archie.wide.ad.jp Japan | | archie.kr Korea | | archie.sogang.ac.kr Korea | | archie.nz New Zealand | | archie.rediris.es Spain | | archie.luth.se Sweden | | archie.switch.ch Switzerland | | archie.ncu.edu.tw Taiwan | | archie.ans.net USA | | archie.internic.net USA | | archie.rutgers.edu USA | | archie.sura.net USA | | archie.unl.edu USA | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ There are three ways to access the archie database: via a local client, interactive Telnet session or electronic mail. Each type of access is described below in the Using ARCHIE section. Using ARCHIE You are requested to respect a few basic rules when you look for information on an archie server: * avoid connecting during working hours; most of the archie servers are not dedicated machines - they have local func- tions as well. * make your queries as specific as possible; the response will be quicker and shorter. * user interfaces installed on your computer help to reduce the load on the server sites, so please use them. * use the archie server closest to you and, in particular, don't overload the transatlantic lines. The three ways of accessing the archie database, via a local client, via an interactive Telnet session or using electronic mail, are described below. Note that version 3.0 of the archie server is now available, and some of the commands for interactive access and the e-mail inter- face are slightly different from previous versions of the server (2.11 and earlier). Command formats marked with a (+) are valid in version 3.0 only, those marked with a (*) are acceptable only in previous versions. You can use the version command to find out which version is installed at any particular server. Using a local client: You are encouraged to use a local archie client because the archie server does not then have to provide you with an interac- tive interface: requests from your local client to the archie server will be non-interactive, and will thus place less of a burden on the server. Server performance will be increased and response time will improve for all users. Public domain clients for accessing archie servers are available for: Macintosh, MS-DOS, OS/2, VMS, NeXT, Unix and X-Windows. All these platforms support a simple command line client; the xarchie client for the X Window System provides a graphical user interface. The clients are available from the archie sites using anonymous FTP, and are in the directories /pub/archie/clients or /archie/clients. Archie client command and parameters A graphical interface (GUI), enables you to access the archie functions by pressing mouse buttons in order to select menu options. Archie clients written for use without a graphical user interface require you to type in the command archie, followed by one or more parameters. If you omit the parameters you are given a list of the possible parameters with a short description of each one. A description of the parameters is given below, where angle brackets (<>) indicate an optional parameter and a vertical bar (|) indicates a choice of parameters. +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | archie <-parameters> string | pattern | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ where the optional parameters are: o specifies an output file name to store the results (not available with all clients). l lists the result one match per line. This form is suitable for parsing by programs. t sorts the result by date. m# specifies maximum number of matches to return (# within the range 0 to 1000). The default value is 95. h archie-server specifies which archie server should be used; if this parameter is not given, then the query will be sent to the default archie server, if one is defined. L lists known servers and current default server. The following group of optional parameters determines the kind of search performed on the database. They are mutually exclusive. s a match occurs if the file/directory name contains string. The search is case insensitive. c as above, but the search is case sensitive. e string must EXACTLY match (including case) the file/ directory name in the database. This is the DEFAULT search method. r searches the database using pattern. It contains special characters which must be interpreted before performing the search. There may be slight differences in the options available with different clients on different platforms. The result is a list of FTP site addresses which contain files or directories matching the argument, together with the size of the file, its last modification date and its directory. By default, the list is sorted by host address. See the Examples section below for an example of archie output. Using Telnet: You can use Telnet to connect to an archie server interactively (see the list of servers in the section How to get to ARCHIE above). At the login: prompt enter archie. The login procedure leaves the user at the prompt archie> indicating that the server is ready for user requests. Archie servers respond to the commands listed below; the way they respond can be defined using the special command set, which changes the values of a set of variables described at the end of this section. The following commands are available: exit, quit, bye exits archie. help invokes the on-line help. If a command-name is given, the help request is restricted to that com- mand. Pressing the RETURN key exits from the on- line help. list provides a list of the FTP servers in the database and the time at which they were last updated. The result is a list of site names, with the site IP address and date of the last update in the data- base. The optional parameter limits the list to sites matching pattern: the command list with no pattern will list all sites in the database (more than 1000 sites!). E.g. list \.de$ will list all German sites site(*) site-name lists the directories and subdirectories held in the database from a particular site-name. The result may be very long. whatis string searches the database of software package descrip- tions for string. The search is case-insensitive. prog string | pattern find(+) string | pattern searches the database for string or pattern. Searches may be performed in a number of different ways specified in the variable search, which also determines whether the parameter is treated as a string or as a pattern. The search produces a list of FTP site addresses which contain filenames matching the pattern or containing the string, the size of the file, its last modification date and its directory path. The number of matches is lim- ited by the maxhits variable. The list can be sorted in different ways, depending on the value of the sortby variable. By default, the variables search, maxhits and sortby are set to, respective- ly, exact match search on string, 1000 hits and unsorted resulting list. A search can be aborted by typing the keyboard interrupt character; the list produced at that point will be displayed. See the Examples section below for an example of the prog command and its results. mail <,email2...> places the result of the last command in a mail message and dispatches specified e-mail address(es). If no mail address is specified as a parameter, the result is sent to the address spec- ified in the variable mailto. show displays the value of the given variable. If issued with no argument, it displays all vari- ables. The archie variables are shown below with the details of the set command. set variable value changes the value of the specified archie vari- able. The variables specify how other archie com- mands should operate. Variables and values are: compress(+) compress-method specifies the compression method (none or com- press) to be used before mailing a result with the mail command. The default is none. encode(+) encode-method specifies the encoding method (none or uuencode) to be used before mailing a result with the mail command. This variable is ignored if compress is not set. The default is none. mailto email <,email2 ...> specifies the e-mail address(es) to be used when the mail command is issued with no arguments. maxhits number specifies the maximum number of matches prog will generate (within the range 0 to 1000). The default value is 1000. search search-value determines the kind of search performed on the database by the command: prog string | pattern. search-values are: sub a partial and case insensitive search is performed with string on the database, e.g.: "is" will match "islington" and "this" and "poison" subcase as above but the search is case sensitive, e.g.: "TeX" will match "LaTeX" but not "Latex" exact the parameter of prog (string) must EXACTLY match the string in the database (including case). The fastest search method of all, and the default. regex pattern is used as a Unix regular expres- sion to match filenames during the database search. sortby sort-value describes how to sort the result of prog. sort-values are: hostname on the FTP site address in lexical order. time by the modification date, most recent first. size by the size of the files or direc- tories in the list, largest first. filename on file or directory name in lexi- cal order. none unsorted (default) Reverse sorts can be carried out by pre- pending r to the sortby value given (e.g. rhostname instead of hostname). term terminal-type > tells the archie server what type of termi- nal you are using, and optionally its size in rows and columns, e.g.: set term xterm 24 100 Using electronic mail: Users limited to electronic mail connectivity can access the archie servers. The domain addresses of the servers are listed in the section How to get to ARCHIE (e.g. archie@archie.ac.il). The electronic mail interface to an archie server recognizes a subset of the commands described in Using Telnet. These are described below. An empty message, or a message containing no valid requests, is treated as a help request. Archie commands are sent in the body part of the mail message, but the Subject: line is processed as if it were part of the main body. Command lines begin in the first column; all lines that do not match a valid command are ignored. help sends you the help file. The help command is exclusive, so other commands in the same message are ignored. path return-address set mailto(+) return-address specifies a return e-mail address different from that which is extracted from the message header. If you do not receive a reply from the archie server within sev- eral hours, you might need to add a path command to your message request. list pattern requests a list of the sites in the database that match pattern, with the time at which they were last updated. The result is a list with site names, site IP addresses and date of each site's last update in the database. site(*) site-name lists the directories and subdirectories of site-name in the database. whatis string searches the descriptions of software packages for each string. The search is case insensitive. prog pattern find(+) pattern uses pattern as a Unix regular expression to be matched when searching the database. If multiple patterns are placed on one line, the results will be mailed back in one message. If several lines are sent, each containing a prog command, then multiple messages will be returned, one for each prog line. Results are sorted by FTP site address in lexical order. If pattern contains spaces, it must be quoted with single (') or double (") quotes. The search is case insensitive. compress(*) causes the result of the current request to be com- pressed and uuencoded. When you receive the reply, you should run it through uudecode, to produce a .Z file. You can then run uncompress on the .Z file and get the result of your request. set compress(+) compress-method specifies the compression method (none or compress) to be used before mailing the result of the current request. The default is none. set encode(+) encode-method specifies the encoding method (none or uuencode) to be used before mailing the result of the current request. This variable is ignored if compress is not set. The default is none. Note: set compress compress and set encode uuencode would produce the same result as the former compress command. quit nothing past this point is interpreted. Useful if a signature is automatically appended to the end of your mail messages. Description of pattern A pattern is a specification of a character string, and may include characters which take a special meaning. The special meaning will be lost if "\" is put before the character. The spe- cial characters are: . (period) this is the wildcard character that replaces any single character, e.g. "...." will match any 4-character string. ^ (caret) if "^" appears at the beginning of the pattern, then only strings which start with the substr- ing following the "^" will match the pattern. If the substring occurs anywhere else in the string it does not match the pattern, e.g.: "^efghi" will match "efghi" or "efghijlk" but not "abcefghi" $ (dollar) if "$" appears at the end of the pattern, then the searched string must end with the substring preced- ing the "$". If the substring occurs anywhere else in the searched string, it is not considered to match, e.g.: "efghi$" will match "efghi" or "abcdefghi" but not "efghijkl" Examples If you are using an archie client, and enter the command: archie -s eudora or if you send, by e-mail or during a Telnet session, the com- mand: prog eudora or find eudora then archie will send you the following results: Host ftp.ascii.co.jp (133.152.1.1) Last updated 03:38 8 Aug 1993 Location: /pub/MAC DIRECTORY drwxrwxr-x 2048 bytes 00:00 6 May 1992 eudora Host ftp.ascii.co.jp (133.152.1.1) Last updated 03:38 8 Aug 1993 Location: /pub/MAC/eudora FILE -r--r--r-- 281139 bytes 00:00 21 Oct 1991 eudo- ra1.2.2.sit.hqx Host ftp.ci.ua.pt (192.80.21.201) Last updated 04:53 9 Aug 1993 Location: /pub/NetNews/comp.binaries.mac FILE -rw-r--r-- 438 bytes 12:04 10 Jul 1993 Eudora1.3.readme Host ftp.ci.ua.pt (192.80.21.201) Last updated 04:53 9 Aug 1993 Location: /pub/NetNews/comp.binaries.mac FILE -rw-r--r-- 278912 bytes 12:04 10 Jul 1993 Eudo- ra1.3.sit.bin etc. If you send the command list \.de$ by e-mail or in a Telnet ses- sion, then you will get the following results: alice.fmi.uni-passau.de 132.231.1.180 12:31 8 Aug 1993 askhp.ask.uni-karlsruhe.de 129.13.200.33 12:25 8 Aug 1993 athene.uni-paderborn.de 131.234.2.32 15:21 6 Aug 1993 bseis.eis.cs.tu-bs.de 134.169.33.1 00:18 31 Jul 1993 clio.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de 134.99.128.3 12:10 8 Aug 1993 cns.wtza-berlin.de 141.16.244.4 16:08 31 Jul 1993 etc. If you send the command whatis compression by e-mail or in a Tel- net session, then you will get the following results: RFC 468 Braden, R.T. FTP data compression 1973 March 8; 5p. arc PC compression program deltac Image compression using delta modulation spl Splay tree compression routines squeeze A file compression program uncrunch Uncompression program unsqueeze Uncompression programs Learning more about ARCHIE However you communicate with the archie server, on-line help is available. If you have any questions about archie, write to the Archie Group, Bunyip Information Systems Inc. at info@bunyip.com. Bug reports, comments, suggestions, etc. should be mailed to archie-group@bunyip.com. In addition, the database administrator at a particular archie server can be contacted at archie-admin@address.of.archie.server, e.g.: archie-admin@archie.ac.il. Mailing list: archie-people@bunyip.com To subscribe send a mail to: archie-people-request@bunyip.com Archie was developed by Alan Emtage, Peter Deutsch, and Bill Hee- lan from the McGill University Computing Center, Canada. Archie is now supported by Bunyip Information Systems Inc., Canada. HYTELNET What is HYTELNET Hytelnet is a simple hypertext browsing system whose database contains addresses of Internet sites which can be reached via Telnet (these include libraries, Campus-Wide Information Systems, Gopher, WAIS, WWW systems, and Freenets), information about Tel- net itself, information about using library catalogues, and an Internet glossary. The database is downloaded and stored locally, so it is possible to add new information to the local version of the database - perhaps to include new sites, or some local help information. An html version of the Hytelnet database is now available for use on World-Wide Web servers. It is clearly important to possess the most uptodate version of the database, and there is an electronic mailing list which keeps its members informed about new versions of the Hytelnet program, and about changes and additions to the database files. Commands embedded in the Hytelnet system make it easy for users to initiate Telnet sessions to sites selected from the database. Who can use HYTELNET Versions of Hytelnet are available for Unix, VMS, IBM PC, and Apple Macintosh computers which are connected to the Internet (worldwide TCP/IP network). The IBM PC version uses Neil Larson's HYPERRES browser, and the other versions listed above use the same file format as HYPERRES. An html version, suitable for use with a World-Wide Web (WWW) server, is now available. How to get to HYTELNET Hytelnet is normally used as a local system, but the Unix version is available for trial use via Telnet at access.usask.ca, with the login hytelnet (all lowercase, no password required). It is not possible to start Telnet sessions from this trial version. The WWW version of the database can be viewed at the University of Kansas using the URL (Universal Resource Locator): http://www.cc.ukans.edu/hytelnet_html/START.TXT.html. This ver- sion of the database can be downloaded to a local WWW server using the URL http://www.cc.ukans.edu/hytelnet_html.tar.Z. The files which will constitute a local Hytelnet system are available via anonymous FTP from ftp.usask.ca, in the directory /pub/hytelnet. The database files, for use with all versions of the software, are included in the directory containing the IBM PC version. Using HYTELNET The Hytelnet database is constantly being updated, with new sites being added to it regularly. Updates to the html version follow within a week of updates to the master version. Local system: The Unix version of the Hytelnet system is described here. Other versions are quite similar. Hytelnet is started with the command: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | hytelnet < options > | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ It is not necessary to specify any options, but the following options are available: path location of the default database, if it is not stored in the same directory as the Hytelnet client. filename Hytelnet displays the contents of this file, instead of its usual default start file. filename is assumed to be in the default Hytelnet database if no path is speci- fied. -secure disables external commands; no Telnet sessions can be started if this option is selected -name disable use of Internet name; no Telnet sessions can be started if this option is selected. -number disable use of Internet number; Telnet sessions can be started quoting the Internet name, but not the number. After starting Hytelnet, you are presented with the following menu: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to HYTELNET version 6.6 October 10, 1993 What is HYTELNET? Library catalogs Other resources Help files for catalogs Catalog interfaces Internet Glossary Telnet tips Telnet/TN3270 escape keys Key-stroke commands ............................................................. Up/Down arrows MOVE Left/Right arrows SELECT ? for HELP anytime m returns here i searches the index q quits ............................................................. HYTELNET 6.6 was written by Peter Scott E-mail address: aa375@freenet.carleton.ca ----------------------------------------------------------------- The words enclosed in angle brackets (<>), are usually references to files which contain information, but they may be references to system commands. In the menu above, is a reference to a file which contains help information about Hytelnet. This refer- ence is highlighted when Hytelnet starts; using the downarrow key you can move down the list to highlight each reference in turn. The contents of any reference can be viewed by pressing the right arrow key while the reference is highlighted. The uparrow key is used to move back to the previous reference. Some references point to files containing menus, which are used in the same way as the first menu described above. The left arrow key is used to return to a previous menu, and takes effect imme- diately from anywhere within a menu (in other words, it is not necessary to step backwards through the contents of the present menu in order to backtrack to the previous menu). Some of the reference files contain large amounts of information (e.g. GLOSSARY contains a glossary of Internet terms, SYS000 contains information on using the most common library catalog packages, SITES2 contains references to other files which contain information on a large number of internet resources, together with their IP addresses). Reference files may contain the text of a Telnet command, com- plete with IP address; selecting one of these will initiate a Telnet session. You will be asked to confirm that you really want to do this before a Telnet connection is started. The keystrokes available are: Downarrow move down to the next item on the current menu. Uparrow move to the previous item on the current menu (if any). Rightarrow select the currently highlighted item. Leftarrow move back to the previous menu (if any). q quit from Hytelnet. m return to the first menu. i an index file is maintained, which contains the name of every file in the Hytelnet database, with a sentence describing its contents. After pressing i, you will see the prompt Search Index. You should type a string of characters, and you will be shown a list of files in the local database whose title contains the string. You can select any of these in the usual way. Slightly different keystrokes may be available for Hytelnet clients on different platforms, but all clients will offer the same functionality. Examples Starting Hytelnet with no options specified, you see the follow- ing menu: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to HYTELNET version 6.6 October 10, 1993 What is HYTELNET? Library catalogs Other resources Help files for catalogs Catalog interfaces Internet Glossary Telnet tips Telnet/TN3270 escape keys Key-stroke commands ............................................................. Up/Down arrows MOVE Left/Right arrows SELECT ? for HELP anytime m returns here i searches the index q quits ............................................................. HYTELNET 6.6 was written by Peter Scott E-mail address: aa375@freenet.carleton.ca Search Index: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Using the downarrow key to highlight Other resources, then press- ing the rightarrow key, you will see the following: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Other Telnet-accessible resources Archie: Archive Server Listing Service Campus-wide Information systems Databases and bibliographies Distributed File Servers (Gopher/WAIS/WWW) Electronic books Fee-Based Services FREE-NETs & Community Computing Systems General Bulletin Boards HYTELNET On-line versions NASA databases Network Information Services Whois/White Pages/Directory Services Miscellaneous resources ----------------------------------------------------------------- Selecting the first item on this list, you will see: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Archie: Archive Server Listing Service Advanced Network & Services, Inc (USA) Deakin File Server (Australia) Finnish University and Research Network Server (Finland) Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel) Imperial College, London (England) InterNIC Directory and Database Server Johannes Kepler University, Linz, (Austria) McGill School of Computer Science Server (Canada) Melbourne (Australia) National Central University, Chung-li, (Taiwan) Rutgers University Archive Server (USA) Sogang University (Korea) SURAnet Server (USA) Technische Hochschule Darmstadt (Germany) University of Lulea (Sweden) University of Nebraska, Lincoln (USA) University of Quebec at Montreal Victoria University, Wellington (New Zealand) Vienna University (Austria) ----------------------------------------------------------------- and selecting the last item on this list, you will see: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Vienna University (Austria) TELNET ARCHIE.UNIVIE.AC.AT or 131.130.1.23 login: archie If you have any problems with archie, send mail to archie-admin@univie.ac.at # Bunyip Information Systems, 1993 # Terminal type set to `vt100 24 80'. # `erase' character is `?'. # `search' (type string) has the value `regex'. ----------------------------------------------------------------- At this point, if you press the rightarrow key, you will see the following: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Vienna University (Austria) TELNET ARCHIE.UNIVIE.AC.AT or 131.130.1.23 login: archie If you have any problems with archie, send mail to archie-admin@univie.ac.at # Bunyip Information Systems, 1993 # Terminal type set to `vt100 24 80'. # `erase' character is `?'. # `search' (type string) has the value `regex'. TELNET ARCHIE.UNIVIE.AC.AT Proceed (y/n)? ----------------------------------------------------------------- at this point you can use rightarrow or y to start a Telnet ses- sion, or either leftarrow, uparrow or n to cancel the Telnet ses- sion. Learning more about HYTELNET Hytelnet and its database of Internet-accessible Telnet sites was developed by Peter Scott, Systems Department, University of Sas- katchewan Libraries. He can be contacted at aa375@freenet.carleton.ca. Peter Scott's article Using Hytelnet to Access Internet Resources can be obtained by sending an email message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU; the message body should con- tain the line: GET SCOTT PRV3N4 F=MAIL The Unix version was developed by Earl Fogel of the University of Saskatchewan; enquiries about this version should be directed to fogel@herald.usask.ca. The Macintosh version was written by Charles Burchill of the University of Manitoba; enquiries to burchil@ccu.umanitoba.ca. Inquiries about the html version should be directed to Lou Montulli at montulli@edu.ukans.cc.stat1 You can join a mailing list, HYTEL-L, which will inform you about new versions of the Hytelnet program, and about new, updated, or deleted files. To subscribe to HYTEL-L, send mail to LISTSERV@KENTVM.KENT.EDU (or LISTSERV@KENTVM.BITNET). The body of the mail message should contain the single line: subscribe hytel-l Your Full Name Part 4 FINDING PEOPLE AND COMPUTERS WHOIS What is WHOIS The WHOIS service provides a way of finding e-mail addresses, postal addresses and telephone numbers of network users. It may also deliver information about networks, networking organiza- tions, domains and sites. This service was originally called NICNAME, but WHOIS is now the name in widest use. The Internet Registration Service maintains an important database of networking information, the InterNIC database. The names of the administrative and technical contacts for registered domains are automatically entered into the database when domain or IP number applications are processed by the Internet coordination authority. Each entry of the database has a handle (a unique identifier), a name, a record type, and various other fields depending on the type of record. This database will be used as an example in the descriptions below. Before April 1, 1993, the Network Information Center (NIC) of the Defense Data Network (DDN) was the Internet coordination authori- ty and it maintained a database known as the NIC database. The NIC database is now restricted to information about the .mil domain. Many documents still refer to this database. Individual Internet sites also maintain databases, containing information about their site only. Many academic sites maintain their own database with information about their staff members and students. The information held in these databases is made available by WHOIS servers which receive requests from WHOIS clients, using the WHOIS protocol, search one of the databases, and send back information. The current implementation of WHOIS has limitations which mean that it is not efficient at dealing with a large vol- ume of information and numerous requests: the various WHOIS ser- vers have no knowledge of each other, a database is maintained at each server site, and, finally, new functionalities have been implemented locally at various sites and not propagated to other sites. A new extended protocol, WHOIS++, is being specified. It will include the various local enhancements to the WHOIS service, it will have an improved query syntax and its architecture will allow a real distributed directory service for the entire Inter- net. The WHOIS++ protocol will be made available shortly. Who can use WHOIS WHOIS is available to all users on the international TCP/IP net- work (the Internet). WHOIS servers can be accessed using a local WHOIS client, which will interact with the server across the Internet, or via an interactive Telnet session. In addition, the InterNIC offers an electronic mail interface to the database it maintains. These methods are described below in the Using WHOIS section. WHOIS servers should only be used for isolated queries about spe- cific information. It is not usually acceptable to make an extended series of queries in order to obtain large sections of the directory. Such a strategy is unfair both because of exces- sive consumption of server resources, and because the directory information belongs to individuals. In particular, extracting lists of people for commercial purposes is strictly prohibited. How to get to WHOIS A list of registered WHOIS sites is available via anonymous FTP from rtfm.mit.edu in the file /pub/whois/whois-servers.list. Each individual WHOIS server offers information about the organization to which it belongs: it doesn't share a common directory with other WHOIS servers and doesn't know where to find information about other institutions. The InterNIC database is used in the examples at the end of this section; its address is whois.internic.net. The WHOIS database of the European IP Networks is held at whois.ripe.net. Using WHOIS The three methods of using WHOIS are described below; angle brackets (<>) indicate an optional parameter. Using a local client: Unix computers have a native whois command. On non-Unix machines, ask your system administrator whether your computer has a WHOIS client or not. The format is: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | whois <-h site-name> identifier | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ This will search the database on the specified site for an entry which contains identifier, where: site-name is the domain address of the site which hosts the data- base you want to query (e.g. whois.internic.net). On some installations, the default value is still set to the old NIC database site (nic.ddn.mil). identifier is a name (person, host, domain or network), an IP num- ber or a handle. Special characters may be used in identifier to specify the search: . before identifier will cause a name-only search. ! before identifier will cause a handle-only search. ... or . after identifier will cause a partial search: every- thing starting with identifier will match. @ in identifier will cause a search on the e-mail addresses. * before identifier will return the entire membership list of the entry that matches identifier (e.g. a site and its registered users). % before identifier will return only the membership list of the entry that matches identifier (e.g. the regis- tered users of a site). The special characters may be used together. The results are displayed in one of two ways: * a full detailed display for a single match, * a list of summary lines for multiple matches. In both cases, the handle is shown in parentheses after the name. Using Telnet: WHOIS databases may or may not have Telnet access; the InterNIC database does, and the functions shown below are available there. No login is required for this service. In the following descriptions, CAPITAL letters indicate accepta- ble abbreviation; angle brackets (<>) indicate an optional param- eter. WHOIS invokes the information retrieval program. ? displays a short on-line help message. HElp accesses the full on-line help. Q, QUIT, RETURN key exits WHOIS identifier searches the database for an entry which contains iden- tifier. The default action is to do a broad search, looking for matches in many fields: handle, name, nick- names, hostname, IP number, etc, and finding all record types. keyword may be used to narrow the search to a specific record type. keyword may be one of: PErson limits the search to persons. DOmain limits the search to domains (e.g. DO EARN.NET). HOst limits the search to hosts (e.g. HO PRINCETON). NEtwork limits the search to networks (e.g. NE EBONE). Organization limits the search to organizations (e.g. O CREN). NAme same as leading '.' in identifier. HAndle same as '!' in identifier. PArtial same as trailing '.' in identifier. Mailbox same as '@' in identifier. EXPand same as '*' in identifier. SUBdisplay same as '%' in identifier. Full or '=' shows detailed display for each match. SUMmary or '$' shows summary always, even if just one match. Special characters may be used in identifier to specify the search: . before identifier will cause a name-only search. ! before identifier will cause a handle-only search. ... or . after identifier will cause a partial search: every- thing starting with identifier will match. @ in identifier will cause a search on the e-mail addresses. * before identifier will return the entire membership list of the entry that match identifier (e.g. a site and its registered users). % before identifier will return only the membership list of the entry that matches identifier (e.g. the regis- tered users of a site). ~ before identifier will return the entries that match identifier only, not a complete membership list. The special characters may be used together. Unless Full or SUMmary are specified, the results are displayed in one of two ways: * a full detailed display for a single match, * a list of summary lines for multiple matches. In all cases, the handle is shown in parenthesis after the name. Using electronic mail: Requests can be sent via electronic mail to the database main- tained at the InterNIC; messages should be sent to mail- serv@internic.net. The commands are normally sent in the Subject: field, with the body part of the mail being ignored. If the Sub- ject: line is empty, the first line of the body part of the mes- sage is interpreted as a WHOIS command. Requests are processed automatically once a day. This electronic mail interface recognizes all the commands described in Using Telnet. Requests should be prefixed with the word WHOIS. Examples If you are using a local client, and enter the command: whois \!EARN... (remark: "\" is required to shield "!" from the Unix shell) or if you e-mail the command: whois !EARN... you will get the following results: EARN (EARN-HST) SEINE.EARN.NET 193.52.216.1 European Academic Research Network (EARN-DOM) EARN.NET To obtain detailed information on the second item, enter or send the command: whois EARN-DOM and you will get the following result: European Academic Research Network (EARN-DOM) EARN Office PSI - Batiment 211 91405 Orsay CEDEX FRANCE Domain Name: EARN.NET Administrative Contact: Bovio, Daniele (DB355) hi@EARNCC.EARN.NET +33 1 6941 2426 (FAX) +33 1 6941 6683 Technical Contact, Zone Contact: Grange, Nadine (NG4) grange@EARNCC.EARN.NET +33 1 6941 2426 (FAX) +33 1 6941 6683 Record last updated on 15-Dec-93. Domain servers in listed order: SEINE.EARN.NET 193.52.216.1 DNS.NIS.GARR.IT 192.12.192.5,131.114.2.5 LUMIERE.CIRCE.FR 130.84.8.14 For a partial search, enter: whois hi@ear... and you will get the following result: Bovio, Daniele (DB355) hi@EARNCC.EARN.NET EARN EARN Office PSI - BP Batiment 211 91405 ORSAY CEDEX, France FR +33 1 6941 2426 (FAX) +33 1 6941 6683 Record last updated on 09-Dec-93. Learning more about WHOIS The WHOIS service is documented in an Internet Request For Com- ments (RFC 1400). If you have any questions about WHOIS write to action@internic.net. Bug reports, comments, suggestions, etc. should be mailed to action@internic.net. X.500 What is X.500 X.500 is a protocol which specifies a model for connecting local directory services to form one distributed global directory. Local databases hold and maintain a part of the global database and the directory information is made available via a local ser- ver called a Directory System Agent (DSA). The user perceives the entire directory to be accessible from the local server. X.500 also supports data management functions (addition, modification and deletion of entries). Each item (entry) in the X.500 directory describes one object (e.g. a person, a network resource, an organization) and has a unique identifier called a Distinguished Name (DN). The entry consists of a collection of attributes (e.g. for a person this might be last name, organization name, e-mail address). The entries are found by navigating through a Directory Information Tree (DIT). At the top of the tree is the World, which is subdi- vided at the next level into countries, and at the next into organizations. Information on people, resources, etc., is stored within organizations. While most of the information available today via X.500 is about people and organizations, the design of the X.500 directory is also suitable for storing information about other entities (or objects), such as network resources, applications or hardware. Several projects utilize these directory capabilities (e.g. the Internet RFCs (Request For Comments) are listed in the global directory). X.500 is an OSI (Open System Interconnection) protocol, named after the number of the CCITT (International Telegraph and Tele- phone Consultative Committee) Recommendation document containing its specification. The Paradise project aims to encourage the use of X.500 in European countries. Who can use X.500 Although X.500 is part of the OSI standard definition, OSI access is not necessary to use the directory services. Many X.500 servi- ces are available both on the Internet, and by electronic mail. See the section Using X.500 below for details. How to get to X.500 There are three ways to access the X.500 services: via a local client, via an interactive session (Telnet or X.25 access) to a remote client, or by electronic mail. Each type of access is described below in the Using X.500 section. In addition, network tools such as WWW and Gopher provide access to X.500 directory services through gateways. Public access to an X.500 client via Telnet or X.25 is an easy way to start querying the X.500 directory. Public access user interfaces are available at: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Telnet (login) Public X.25 Country | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | jethro.ucc.su.oz.au (fred) Australia | | elem4.vub.ac.be (dua) 222100611 Belgium | | x500.denet.dk (de) Denmark | | login.dkuug.dk (ds) Denmark | | nic.funet.fi (dua) Finland | | x500.tu-chemnitz.de (x500) Germany | | ashe.cs.tcd.ie (de) Ireland | | x500.ieunet.ie (de) 272432590024 Ireland | | jolly.nis.garr.it (de or fred) 22225010083212 Italy | | zoek.nic.surfnet.nl (no login) Netherlands | | elc1.mat.torun.edu.pl (de or dish) Poland | | chico.rediris.es (directorio) 2142160234013 Spain | | hypatia.umdc.umu.se (de) 240374810306 Sweden | | nic.switch.ch (dua) 22847971014540 Switzerland | | dir.ulcc.ac.uk (dua) UK | | paradise.ulcc.ac.uk (dua) 23421920014853 Paradise | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ To connect to one of these sites, use either Telnet or X.25 and at the login: prompt type the appropriate login name (given above in brackets). Most remote clients use the national language, with the facility of switching into English. Using X.500 X.500 is used primarily to search for information about people (postal address, telephone number, e-mail address, etc.). The basic fields for searching are a person's name, the name of the person's organization (and department within the organization) and the country. In the following, angle brackets (<>) indicate an optional param- eter; a vertical bar (|) indicates a choice of parameters. Using a local client: In the X.500 world, a local client is called a Directory User Agent (DUA). Public domain and commercial DUAs are available for numerous platforms ranging from mainframes to personal computers. They range from simple command-line based clients to clients based on sophisticated graphical user interfaces which require a pointing device. For a comprehensive list of DUAs, their description and where to find them, consult the Internet document RFC 1292 / FYI 11 - A Catalog of Available X.500 Implementations. Using Telnet or X.25: DUAs provided by remote sites may have line-oriented, menu-driven or X Window System based user interfaces; examples of each are given below: * line-oriented: de, dish, fred * menu-driven: sd (formerly known as widget) * X Window System: Xdi, Xlookup (or xlu), pod The capabilities of these DUAs range from basic search facilities to full X.500 functionality. The X-Windows based DUAs require a local setup. Novice users are recommended to try de (directory enquiries) since it has a very simple user interface. de was designed as a public access DUA and is accessible from any kind of terminal. It supports the basic X.500 functions: read, search, and list. Users who are new to querying the X.500 directory should use de's Sim- ple query mode. de invokes the X.500 interrogation user-interface. q exits de. ? displays the on-line help on the specified topic, or general help if no topic is specified. ^C (Ctrl-C) is the interrupt character. It aborts a search in progress or resets the current query specification. * (asterisk) will list all entries of the specified field. It is also the wildcard character and can replace any other character in a name. It can appears anywhere in the name, e.g.: smit* or *smit* are valid string formats. - (dash) resets the default value to a blank string. When de is invoked, the user is requested to fill in four fields to specify a request. In all fields, the value from the previous request is the default value. Press the RETURN key to accept it, or enter a new value. All searches are case insensitive. The four fields to be filled in are