Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's) on the usenet. This file contains some of the more frequently asked questions on the net. These are the questions answered in this FAQ. If you have any questions, comments or criticism, please E-mail me at stan@vm.temple.edu. This file is available via anonymous ftp from ftp.temple.edu, from Temple's Listserv, and from Temple's gopher server which is cronkite.ocis.temple.edu. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1) What is archie? 2) What is telnet? 3) What is ftp? 4) What are USENET/BITNET/FREENET/FIDONET/UUNET? 5) What are *.tar files and what can wedo with them? 6) How can we get to Compuserve, MCI, etc. mail from the internet? 7) What is the LISTSERV service? 8) How can I find someone's e-mail address? 9) What are the *.gif files and how can we view them? 10) How can I add my "signature" to outgoing mail? 11) Interactive commands to write and talk to other users. 12) What is gopher & irc? 13) Books and Periodicals that may be of use. 14) VMS, BITFTP, and those pesky binary files 15) Files files files, what do all those extensions mean? 16) Job sources via The Internet ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1) What is Archie? Archie is a program which lets you search for specific software programs and other files that are available via Anonymous FTP on The Internet. Archie is usually available on most Unix systems and on various and sundry other systems. In general, to use archie, you type ARCHIE filename where "filename" is the name of the thing you're looking for. For example, to find a source for the PKZip program, you can type ARCHIE PKZIP. To find out if your system has archie, you should speak with the person who runs your system. Also, try looking at the archie help files. If your system does not have an archie client (program) available on it, you can telnet to archie.ans.net. Login as archie and follow the instructions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2) What is telnet? Telnet is a program which allows you to log onto a remote computer from your local computer. The catch is that both of your computers must by on an ethernet style network such as The Internet and both must be running telnet software. If this is true, you can log onto one computer from another (assuming you have authorization to use both computers) even if the two computers are thousands of miles apart. To find out if your system has telnet access, ask your local system administrator. The general form of the telnet command is: TELNET hostname where "hostname" is the name of the remote computer you wish to use. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3) What is FTP? The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is used to transfer files from one computer to another connected over a network. For exmple, if you have an account on a machine and would like to get or put your file there, then you would type FTP hostname where "hostname" is the name of the host with which you wish to transfer files. and at the password prompt, type in your password and then type "get file" to obtain a file and "put file" to transfer a file there. Typing ftp without the address of the machine would go into its command mode and have a "ftp>" prompt. To get help at that prompt type "?". Note that the ftp service is often used in conjunction with archie to locate and copy public domain software programs via The Internet. You will also see the term "anymous ftp" often. An anonymous ftp server is a system which lets anyone with Internet access to get files off it without having an account on that system. You just log in as userid anonymous and use your E-mail address as your password. Thousands of public domain software packages are available via anonymous ftp for just about any hardware platform in existence. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4) What are USENET/BITNET/FREENET/FIDONET/UUNET? Usenet: Usenet (also known as Readnews) is a huge collection of electronic discussion groups. Usenet was born on the UUCP network, but its now most commonly used on The Internet. Usenet is also available via BITnet though its slower that way. What you do is to use a program called a Usenet interface to access these newsgroups. Some popular Usenet interface programs are tin and rn (Unix), nnr and netnews (IBM CMS), Anu-News (Vax VMS). What happens is that when you start any of these programs, you will be shown a menu of perhaps thousands of newsgroups. Each newsgroup covers a specific topic. To find out if you can use Usenet from your location, ask your system manager. Note that another collection of electronic discussion groups is called Listserv. Usenet and Listserv work very differently. For more information on Listserv refer to question 7 in this faq file. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ BITnet: BITnet (Because It's Time Network) is a service of CREN (Corporation for Research and Educational Networking) and consists of computers called nodes at many locations including major educational, research, and corporate institutions in all 50 states and 32 foreign countries. Using BITnet will enable one to communicate electronically with users at any of the other member institutions. Note that Bitnet is not Internet. They are two distinctly different networks, however, users on BITnet can communicate with users on The Internet. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Freenet: Freenets are open-access, free, community computer systems. One such system is the Cleveland Freenet. sponsored by CWRU (Case Western Reserve University). Anyone and everyone is welcome to join and take part in the exciting project -...... There's no charge for the registration process and no charge to use the system. *** To register, telnet to any one of : freenet-in-a.cwru.edu freenet-in-b.cwru.edu freenet-In-c.cwru.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ FIDONET: An e-mail group of bbs operators. They operate somewhat like a usenet group with various echoes or conferences on different subjects. People call their local BBS with fidonet and leave messages. The local BBS relays these messages to the net so there is world-wide distribution. This is by phone-line and not instantaneous like an internet connection. Mail routing is normally done for 1 hour each day. Thus, it sometimes takes quite a while for messages to travel long distances. But, the system is pretty cheap, so many BBSes are starting to offer it. You may become a "point" off of your local fidonet BBS by just asking the sysop. When you're a point, you can receive mail directed to you personally (like having your own internet/bitnet address). Until then, you can just read the echoes, which are basically just discussion groups under Fidonet. To send mail from the Internet you need the Fidonet zone, area and node Check my signature file below notice that format for fidonet mail. If you want to mail to someone you need that number on the lesft which you then translate to the format on the right.........Good luck! * Fidonet: 1:273/203 Joe.Johnston@f203.n273.z1.fidonet.org * For anyone interested in FidoNet, there is a whole subdirectory called FIDO in the MSDOS directory on SIMTEL20, containing extensive information, including explanation of FidoNet, guide for its nodes, latest Fido BBS, and gateways between FidoNet and Internet (Text files), in addition to programs and utilities (Binary files). To get these files, either FTP to WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.Mil (192.88.110.20) or send e-mail (with no subject) directly to: BITNET: LISTSERV@NDSUVM1 or LISTSERV@RPIECS Internet: LISTSERV@VM1.NODAK.EDU or LISTSERV@VM.ECS.RPI.EDU In the body of the mail message write the command: /PDGET format PD:filename.filetype encoding where: format is MAIL, NETDATA, BITSEND, or PUNCH. encoding is ASIS, TRANSLATE, UUENCODE, OLDUUE, or XXENCODE. filename.filetype is the name and extension of the file to get. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ UUNET: UUNET is basically the collection of hosts which connect the internet via modem connections and UUCP software. Its a poor mans internet. Often Usenet news is transferred to some sites via UUCP. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5) What are *.tar files and what can we do with them ? *.tar files are tape archive files that are in an archived format to be stored on tape or some other medium. They allow one to store may files, directories and subdirectories in just one file. Usually they are compressed *.tar.Z and one has to first uncompress (using %uncompress ) them and then prompt% tar -xvf name.tar to extract the files from the tar file. The option x is for extraction, v is for verbose and f is for file name (rather than a tape device). If you need more detailed information do a man tar. Note that other types of files are briefly explained in question 15. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6) What about private computer services? Compuserve: To send an E-mail message to someone who has a Compuserve account from the internet, you should just type mail account_number@compuserve.com at the prompt. For example, if you know that the account # is 12345,6789 then there address would be 12345.6789@compuserve.com. would do. Note that on The Internet, the comma in Compuserve addresses must be replaced with a period. To access Compuserve through the internet, telnet to hermes.merit.edu and type Compuserve at the prompt. There is a fee for this internet access which gets added to your Compuserve bill. MCIMAIL: MCIMail is a private service which allows you to receive and send mail via The Internet. For info about MCIMail, call 1-800-444-6245. To send an E-mail message to someone on MCIMail use userid@mcimail.com where "userid" is the name of the recipient's MCIMail account. Send E-mail to postmaster@mcimail.com if you need to find out the name of someone there. Prodigy: Prodigy is the name of another private service, which amongst other things, lets you exchange mail with Internet users. To send E-mail to a Prodigy user, use the address form of userid@prodigy.com. America On-Line Is yet another popular private service. Like the ones mentioned above, it has lots of stuff of interest to many people, including the ability to send and receive mail via The Internet. To send someone on America On-Line an E-mail message, use the form of the address as userid@aol.com Note to people who are thinking of participating in one of these services. Many computer stores sell kits for starting accounts on these services. The kits often cost around $30 US or so. Quite often, if you're resourceful, you can avoid these startup kit prices and still get on the service of your choice. The trick is to realize that many modems come with free startup kits for most of these services. They're the same ones you pay for separately in the stores. If you know someone who has just bought a modem, ask that person for his or her start up kit if the person's not going to use it. Also, most of these services will send you a free kit of you respond to one of their advertisements which appear in most of the popular computer magazines available at many bookstores. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 7) What is Listserv? Basically speaking, Listserv is a network of electronic discussion groups. These groups are called "lists" because whenever someone who participates in a particular discussion sends an E-mail message to the group, that message is then distributed via E-mail to the "list" of subscribers. Almost anyone can access Listserv lists. Some lists, due to nature of the topics that they cover, are restricted access, and a prospective subscriber must apply for access. Listservs are handled via the BITnet links. Internet users can access Listservs via various gateways. There are a number of commands you can send to Listserv which will give you information about Listservs. To review Listserv commands send E-mail to listserv@vm.temple.edu or to listserv@templevm. In the body of your mail type: GET LISTSERV REFCARD Listserv will send you a reference card of its commands. Pay particular attention to the LIST command which is how you get information about lists. Note that listserv@vm.temple.edu and listserv@templevm are the same computer. The computer at Temple which runs Listserv happens to be on both the BITnet and Internet networks. As a result, each account on this system has two addresses. Listserv@vm.temple.edu is Temple's Internet address for Listserv. Listserv@templevm is Temple's BITnet address for the same Listserv. Note that most Listservs are alike so you can send the same commands to any Listserver, not just Temple's. You can obtain a list of the Help-Net available archive files by sending an "INDEX HELP-NET" command to LISTSERV@TEMPLEVM. These files can then be retrieved by means of a "GET HELP-NET filetype" command, or using the database search facilities of Listserv. Send an "INFO DATABASE" command for more information on the latter. More information on LIstserv's commands is available in the "General Introduction Guide", which you can retrieve by sending an "INFO GENINTRO" command to LISTSERV@TEMPLEVM or LISTSERV@VM.TEMPLE.EDU. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8) How can I find someone's e-mail address? I am sorry to do this to you, but this is a rather long topic. To do it full justice, a separate article is written on the subject. This article is on Temple's Gopher as well as on the other Temple servers under the name of "finding people". You can get it the same way you got this file. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 9) What are gif files and how can I view them? GIF stands for Graphic Interchange Format. Compuserve developed this format for graphics files so that its many clients with all sorts of different computers can look at various pictures. Gif is a way to store files in a binary format that can be read on most of today's computers. In order to view these pictures, you can either get a gif viewing utility for pc's or view them using xv,xgif,xloadimage on X-stations. Some word processing programs and desk top publishing programs can also open GIF files. Many Gopher servers store gif files. Pictures of NASA space shots, weather maps, people, places, etc. are available via Gopher as well as anonymous ftp from many sources. When you transfer gif files via ftp or Kermit or whatever, you must treat them as binary files. In addition, there are some other propular graphics file formats such as JPEG and PICT. Each requires a specific program to read them, but these are usually in the public domain. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 10) How can you add "signatures" to your mail? If you are using elm mailer on unix systems, then all you have to is put your signature in a .signature file using a text editor and your .elmrc file so that the parameters "localsignature" and remote "signature" are set to the right files. To add a signature automatically to outgoing mail in CMS, use the mail feature. When you type mail, you will get into a screen which has the options menu on the title bar. In the "Options" menu, choose "send" and then "settings" and change the "Signature?" option to "automatic", and the "Signature File" option to the name of your signature file. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 11) Interactive commands (Tell, write, talk) Tell is the command that is used on CMS machines to write a message to the terminal of aother user who is also logged on to the system. The syntax TELL userid at host message Note that "userid" and "host" represent the full address of the person with whome you wish to talk with. The "host" must be a BITnet one, not Internet since TELL works only on BITnet. write username message [Control-D] The above command will write a message until you type on a line by itself. The tty is necessary if the user is logged in more than once. To "talk" to another user do just that. Just type %talk username ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 12) What are gopher, irc ? IRC is an full-screen interface to the internet relay chat system. It lets people talk to others around the world who are on the internet through specialized interest groups. Gopher is a distributed document delivery service. It works via The Internet. If you have only BITnet, you can't use Gopher. It allows a neophyte user to access various types of data residing on multiple hosts in a seamless fashion. This is accomplished by presenting the user a hierarchical arrangement of documents and by using a client-server communications model. The Internet Gopher Server accepts simple queries, and responds by sending the client a document. Gophers frequently include such services as archive ftp searches, on-line books through project gutenberg, News and Phone directories of many universities as well as pictures, public domain software, current weather conditions and hordes of other stuff. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 13) Useful Books: Order direct by calling 800-998-9938. (About $25.00) The Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog, by Ed Krol, O'Reilly and Associates "Zen and the Art of the Internet, A beginners guide", 2nd edition, ISBN 0-13-010778-6, by Brendan Kehoe, is available from Computer Literacy in California for $22 US (softbound) You can contact them by: Phone: 408-435-0744 Fax: 408-435-1823 Email: info@.clbooks.com US Mail: 2590 North 1st Street, San Jose, CA 95131 This book is also in the $25,00 range. "Nysernet: New Users Guide to Useful and Unique Resources on the Internet." NYSERNet, 111 College Place, Syracuse, NY 13244-4100, Attn: Joyce Vandenberg Useful Periodicals: Boardwatch Magazine (5970 S. Vivian St., Littleton, CO 80127 - editorial; 7586 West Jewell Ave, Suite 200, Lakewood, CO 80232 - subscription) Subscriptions: 1-800-933-6038; subscribe online at 303-973-4222, monthly, $36/year. Good coverage of bulletin board systems; some coverage of Internet. Internet (ed.): jack.richard@boardwatch.com Computer Underground Digest; "An open forum dedicated to sharing information among computerists and to the presentation and debate of diverse views." Very good articles on a variety of subjects. Issues posted in Usenet's alt.society.cu- digest newsgroup; can also subscribe by sending mail to TK0JUT2@NIU.BITNET. Back issues available via anonymous FTP from chsun1.spc.uchicago.edu which also has other online periodicals. Electronic Networking: Research, Applications and Policy (Meckler Corp., 11 Ferry Lane West, Westport, CT 06880), quarterly, $35/year for individual; research oriented. Matrix News (Suite 500, 701 Brazos, Austin, TX 78701-3243), monthly, $30/year ($20 for students; $40 overseas). Voice: 512-329-1087, FAX: 512-327-1274, Email: mids@tic.com Emphasizes Internet information, policy-oriented. "Netmonth." This is "the independent guide to Bitnet." It is an electronic monthly magazine. To subscribe, send email to LISTSERV@MARIST and in the body, type SUBSCRIBE NETMONTH Your_real-name, replacing Your_real_name by your name--not your userid or account name. A list of the currently available mailing lists is available in at least two places: the first is in a file on ftp.nisc.sri.com called 'interest-groups' under the netinfo/ directory. It's upadated fairly regularly, but is large (around 840K), so only get it every once in a while. The other list is maintained by Gene Spafford and is posted in parts to the newsgroup news.lists semi-regularly" -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 14) VMS, BITFTP, and those pesky binary files. Well I found this to be a significant problem, also. The help file the BITFTP@PUCC ships out tells you about how to fix it. I personally found this rather tedious, so I decided to automate the process by writing a small DCL program to do it for me (I am lazy by nature). The problem has to do with the VMS carriage_control attribute getting mangled when the file is sent through other computer types. It MUST be 'none' for the file to be usable on a PC or a MVS machine. The DCL program does it all for you! Once the file that you requested from BITFTP@PUCC gets into your RECEIVE directory -- you would type --> @FB. Then it'll create and/or move to a directory called [.FB] and do all of it's work there -- heck it even cleans up it's mess. The only problem with it is that you need double the room of the file, but you would if you were doing it by hand. The process has to make a brand-new file. Sorry, I can't do anything about it..... The program also has more 'how-to' info (1 or 2 pages inside the file) than the actual code that does the conversion (about 26 lines). You may feel free to contact me if you have any difficulties with it. The command to get this DCL program is (VMS) send listserv@templevm get fb com help-net I hope that it helps you folks out! Bob Martin -- acsmartin@eku.bitnet or acsmartin@acs.eku.edu ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 15) What do various file extensions mean? (Written by Scott Ehrlich) These are typical file extensions for files often retrieved via ftp. Extention Needed utility for uncompression --------- -------------------------------- .zip Requires PKUnzip .arj Requires ARJ .lha Requires LHArc .Z Requires UNIX uncompress .tar Requires TAR .hqx Binary -> Hexadecimal text converted file. Requires BINHEX or Stuffit to convert back to binary .sit Requires Stuffit .cpt Requires Stuffit or Compact Pro .sea Self-extracting (Self Extracting Archive) .bqs Compressed BASIC language program. Requires Unsqueeze. .gz Requires GNU gunzip .taz Requires UNIX uncompress then gunzip .zoo Requires Zoo .arc Requires PKxarc or PKunpak -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 16) Finding job sources via The Internet. There are several Usenet newsgroups where jobs are both advertised and where job seekers can post resumes. These groups are mostly found in the miscellaneous hierarchy. A few other hierarchies might have jobs groups too. As far as I know, there are no Listserv groups of this nature. If I am wrong, please let me know. For jobs in Higher Education, probably the best source is the Chronical of Higher Education. These folks have a Gopher server too. Its in the USA list and its well worth looking at.