Getting files from WATSERV1 at Waterloo. Leroy J. Dickey 1991-07-02 There are a number of files that may be of interest to people interested in APL and J on the file server "watserv1.waterloo.edu", located at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. This note is intended to explain how to find out what files are available and how to get them. There are two sections below, one about using "ftp" and one about using "e-mail". If your machine is connected to the network and supports FTP (File Transfer Protocol) you may transfer files or if you have access to e-mail on Usenet, O-net, Bitnet, InterNet, FidoNet, or a number of other commercial, educational, or recreational services, e-mail service may be available. Downloading via FTP: Here is a short list of ftp commands that you may find useful in getting files from watserv1. This is not intended to be a complete manual on the use of ftp, but only a bare-bones skeleton of the things that I find useful. ftp watserv1.waterloo.edu This is the "ftp" system command that many use to initiate an ftp connection to watserv1.waterloo.edu, (also known as "129.97.129.140"). Signon as "anonymous", and when asked for your password, give your userid. cd languages/apl/J Change the directory to languages/apl. dir Display the contents of the current directory. cd [dir] Change to the subdirectory that you specify. For instance, the the directory "j/pc" contains J for the IBM PC. binary Condition the ftp environment for a binary file transfer. hash Condition the system to give an indication of transfer activity. This command is recommended only for interactive use, and not for e-mail use (see below). get [file] Initiate download of "file" from watserv1 to your calling system, in the current directory at the time ftp was executed (first command, above). You may expect a pause while the transfer takes place. quit Terminate the connection to watserv1.waterloo.edu, and resume the session on the calling system. Apply the decoding procedure appropriate to the file just obtained. In case of problems with this procedure, consult your system adminstrator and/or local network wizard. E-mail access: It is hoped that eventually there will be a mail server at waterloo for the same range of software to those who have e-mail access but no ftp access, but a userid for this mail service has not been announced yet. In the meantime, users who do not have ftp but who do have BITNET may find the service "BITFTP at PUCC" helpfull. For example this mail message (with no leading blanks) To: bitftp@pucc.bitnet FTP watserv1.waterloo.edu UUENCODE USER anonymous CD languages/apl BINARY GET index QUIT was successful in acquiring the index. Notice that the commands follow somewhat the structure of the commands listed in the previous section, but the command "hash" is not used. This is because it is not useful to the site PUCC to use that hash command. Messages similar to the may result in other pieces of software being mailed to you. For example, Once you have the index, you may see the name of some other file you want. For such a file, determine the directory path (which we shall refer to ``dp'') and the file name (which we shall refer to as ``fn''). One example you will have already seen, because in the the above example the file "languages/apl/index" splits up as: dp languages/apl fn index As another example, if you want the file "languages/apl/j/pc/j_pc_32.zoo", (the file that contains version 3.2 of J for the IBM PC), you would replace the "dp" for the directory path and "fn" for the file name according to this substitution: dp languages/apl/j/pc fn j_pc_32.zoo Prepare a little file to be a mail message to pucc: (As before, lines of the file have no leading blanks.) To: bitftp@pucc.bitnet FTP watserv1.waterloo.edu UUENCODE USER anonymous CD dp BINARY GET fn QUIT Of course, in the above, you replace "dp" by the appropriate directory path, and you replace "fn" by the file name. Use your local e-mail to send the file off. If all goes as intended, when PUCC gets your mail message, it does the "ftp" session for you, using the commands you have supplied. It wraps the file up in a "uuencode" package, and mails it to you. When you get the file, you may have to combine several files together, remove superflous blank and mail header lines, and uudecode the file.