Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2012 with funding from
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
http://archive.org/details/uiucnet69293univ UMTVERStTY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY M URBANA-CHAMPA1GN
A Publication of the Computing and Communications Services Office
UNIV OF ILL,
JAN 2 5 1993
The University of Illinois Campus Network
Vol. 6 No. 1 Dec. 1992 -Jan. 1993
Icon Key Exploring the Power of
Novices the Internet Gopher INTERNET TREASURES of the Golden Gophers) in an effort to Experienced users provide the UM students and staff with a flexible Campus-Wide Information Sys- tem (CWIS) for disseminating news, an- nouncements, and other kinds of informa- Network Administrators now, most UlUCnet users have at tion to the university community. In order MSS\ least heard about gopher. The furry to make it easy for departmental informa- Bylittle rodent who burrows through tion providers to maintain control over AISS clients gopherspace on the Internet has been fea- their own data, the gopher team sought to tured twice in CCSO's Updates newsletter develop a "distributed document delivery (vol. 3 no. 4 and vol. 3 no. 8) and once in system"—that is, a system in which the Everyone the semi-monthly UIUC faculty/staff data could physically reside on multiple newspaper Inside Illinois (vol. 12 no. 11). computers in multiple locations. Their National publications for computing and solution was a TCP/ IP-based client-server Platform/Operating System networking professionals and hobbyists protocol and a set of applications that pro-
(e.g., MacWeek, Network World, Computer vided for the coordination and linking of Shopper) have also been tracking the devel- {continued on page 2) HH opment of this increasingly popular and PC compatibles (DOS™) ubiquitous Internet tool. So, ^^ whyanotherarticleabout //^\*gr gopher? Well first, if you haven't yet read about or Macintosh™ seen gopher, you should make a point ^ "*** of it. Gopher is the S3 X Window System™ only application that truly makes navigating and using many services on the In- ternet as natural as choosing an H NeXT™ entree from a dinner menu. Yet, for all its elegant simplicity, there is tremendous power behind gopher's intuitive interface. CCSO'S IBM™ VMD Unleashing this power is a matter of un- mainframe, VMD derstanding a little bit about how gopher works and discovering some of its less obvious capabilities. UNIX™ mainframes and workstations E Back to Basics For the sake of the uninitiated, let's review a little bit about the history and PH nature of the Internet gopher. Gopher was Any platform born at the University of Minnesota (home Gopher... the server to which it is linked. Today abreast of the latest server software re- most servers contain more than just text leases and be willing to upgrade the server (continued from page 1) files and links to other servers. In addition as necessary. Although the Unix-based
servers across cam- to holding hundreds of text files, the main server is the most powerful, it is also pos- ^^^TulPaf^Raame time presenting gopher server here at UIUC (a NeXT work- sible to set up a gopher server with limited that information to the end-user in a way station) includes an engine for browsing capabilities on a Macintosh or PC. Such
such that it all appears to come from the and downloading files from popular ftp servers might be appropriate for a small same place. sites, gateways to the archie file archive department that wants to publish its own Over the last two years, gopher has database and the WAIS (Wide Area Infor- text-based information but does not have evolved from a system primarily intended mation Servers) distributed-database sys- the resources to purchase and maintain a to distribute text documents to a highly tem, direct links to several types of elec- complex Unix workstation. customizable environment for providing tronic phone books, the ability to do full- Now let's consider the client side of access to many different types of files and text searches on many of the documents gopher. The client is the computer and popular network services. Gopher has archived on our local server and remote software that communicates with the been adopted by hundreds of sites across text databases, preconfigured telnet ses- server. It provides a friendly front-end for the Internet—including the University of sions for connecting to popular electronic the end-user to view and select the ser- Illinois—as the CWIS/information server library catalogs and information servers vices available on the server and all its of choice. Today, the same method that across the Internet, and, of course, links to links. Gopher clients have been developed was used to link multiple servers at the every other gopher server in the world and for many different types of computers and University of Minnesota campus is now all the unrestricted services they offer. operating systems and often differ in terms article used to link gopher servers all over the The Minnesota gopher development of "look and feel" (see the related on
globe. The result is a seamless network of team is constantly working on expanding page 8, "How Six Gopher Clients Stack
information servers, all of which can be the capabilities of the server software. In Up" ) . Nevertheless, all gopher clients have easily accessed through a single, menu- order to maintain a state-of-the-art gopher several features in common. driven interface. server, the server administrator must keep (continued on page 3) Due to the superhuman efforts of co- administrators Paul Gibbs and Lynn Bilger,
the University of Illinois gopher service is Gopher Object Types now internationally recognized as one of the best in gopherspace. Later on, we'll Normal Types: investigate some of its features in detail.
But, if you haven't yet had a chance to Item is a file access gopher or want to know how you 1 Item is a directory can use it to distribute your own informa- 2 Item is a CSO (qi) phone-book server tion, get a copy of the document called 3 Error Gopher at the University of Illinois, available in the rack just outside the CCSO Resource 4 Item is a BinHexed Macintosh file Center, 1420 DCL (you can also request a 5 Item is DOS binary archive of some sort
copy by sending an e-mail message with 6 Item is a UNIX uuencoded file your campus mail address to uiucnet 7 Item is an Index-Search server ©uiucedu). This document provides all 8 Item points to a text-based telnet session the information necessary to get started 9 Item is a binary file with gopher. It describes what gopher is, connection summarizes what's contained in the UIUC T TN3270 gopher server, outlines the numerous methods for accessing gopher, and enu- Experimental Types: merates the many options for getting in-
formation into gopher. s Sound type. Data stream is a mulaw sound g GIF type Gopher Server(s) and Clients M MIME type. Item contains MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Like so many networked applications Extensions) data today, gopher exploits the client-server h html type. (HyperText Markup Language used by the World Wide model. The server is the machine that holds and organizes the data. To a certain Web, a hypertext application for finding and accessing resources extent, what you can do with gopher de- on the Internet)
pends on your server. A very simple server I Image type might only hold plain text files. By linking i "inline" text type (used by panda, a proprietary version of gopher this simple server to another gopher server, used at the University of Iowa) however, users have access to information and services on both the simple server and 004.66977344 . 1X17 V.k L5>(
Dec. 1992 -Jan. 1993 3
Gopher... The CMS client on VMD can display the displayed in the menu on the client, 3) a of files assigns the label selector string for retrieving the object (usu- (continued from page 2) names sound and
The most obvious similarity among PC Gopher II, on the other hand, doesn't object is located), 4) the domain name of
gopher clients is that the information and even know about sound files. It can nei- the host on which the object resides, and 5) services available on the server are pre- ther display their names nor play them. the telnet port number that listens for re-
sented to the end-user as a series of nested Suffice it to say, not all gopher servers and quests on that host. The raw information menus. This type of menu structure is clients are created equal. transmitted from server to client for item 1
intended to resemble a hierarchical file in the menu above looks like this: system, a concept already familiar to most A Gopher Conversation computer users. When a user first con- Before leaving the topic of clients and Welcome to the U of Illinois Gopher
nects to a server, he or she sees the top- servers, it's worth taking a few moments O/Welcome gopher.uiuc.edu 70
level menu. This is more or less equivalent to consider what actually takes place dur- to the "root" directory of a tree-structured ing a gopher session. When you start The first symbol in the text stream
file system. Like a root directory, the top- gopher, your client opens a TCP connec- (shown in black ink) is the object type, in "0". level menu often contains files and other tion with a gopher server (usually the server this case Every item displayed in a menus, which are analogous to at the address specified in the client's con- gopher menu has an object type associated subdirectories (or folders) in a file system. figuration file). The client sends a car- with it. It is the object type that tells the
These submenus may, in turn, contain files, riage-return / line-feed to the server, which client what the specific item is. The client additional submenus, or other kinds of in gophertalk means, "Tell me what you've uses this information to determine how to objects (such as telnet sessions, index got to offer." The server responds by re- display the item in the menu (for example, searches, links to ph servers, etc.), and so turning a stream of carefully formatted graphical clients typically display text on. text about the contents of the top-level documents as pieces of paper, menus as
The gopher file system metaphor is menu, after which the TCP connection is folders, ph searches as telephones, and so
more obvious in some clients than others. closed. Yes, closed! Even though it ap- on) and what to do with the item, should
For example, menu items that contain pears as if your client is maintaining a the user decide to select it. Type is a text submenus in the Unix curses client termi- continuous connection with the server, cli- file (see the table on page 2 for the list of
nate with a slash (/), the standard symbol ent-server conversations in gopher are typi- object identifiers and the types they repre- for a directory in the Unix environment. cally very brief. The server returns just sent). Immediately following the object TurboGopher for the Mac and NeXT Gopher enough information to the client so that type is the actual text that is displayed in
1 .3 represent the menu hierarchy as fold- the client can initiate another TCP connec- the menu (shown in blue ink). The next ers within folders. Other clients identify tion and perform another action such as three pieces of information tell the client
menus in some consistent but less intuitive retrieving a file or opening a menu. For how to access item 1 on the menu. If you
manner. All menus in the X Window example, when you connect to the U of I select menu item number 1, your client System client, for instance, are preceded Gopher server with the Unix curses client would open a TCP session with the host by a "»" symbol, and PC Gopher II for DOS you see the menu: named gopher.uiuc.edu at port 70. Once uses the symbol
directory. 1 Welcome to the U of Illinois Gopher. lector string "0/ Welcome" to the server. Another characteristic shared by go- 2. Campus Announcements (12/1/92)/ The server would respond by sending the
pher clients is their ability to speak and 3. What's New? (12/3/92). complete text of the welcome message back interpret the gopher client-server protocol 4. Information about Gopher/ to your client.
While this might seem self-evident, it's 5. Keyword Search of Gopher Menus As it happens, gopher.uiuc.edu is the important to note that as new options and 6. U of Illinois Campus Information/ alias of UIUC's main gopher server, so services are added to gopher, new terms 7. Champaign-Urbana & Regional Infor- selecting item 1 would initiate another
are added to the gopher vocabulary (in mation/ brief interaction with our local server . But fact, a full-fledged extension to the gopher 8. Computer Documentation/ not all menu items on our local server protocol called Gopher+ has been pro- 9. Libraries/ point to objects that reside locally. For posed). An older client will not know 10. Newspapers, Newsletters, and example, if you were to select the menu
what to do if a message from the server Weather/ item called 12. Phone Books (PH)/, the
includes a term it doesn't understand. This 11. Other Gopher and Information Serv- following information would be displayed won't necessarily result in something cata- ers/
strophic. It just means that your client may 12. Phone Books (PH)/ 1. U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign not be able to make use of all of the services 13. Internet File Server (ftp) Sites/
constraints of the machine on which it is than is displayed on the screen. For each 5. X.500 Gateway (experimental)/
installed. For example, some gopher cli- menu choice, the server sends five sepa- ents (NeXT Gopher, Xgopher 1.2, Unix rate pieces of information: 1) the object (continued on page 4) curses, etc.) can actually play sound files. type, 2) the specific text that should be — , —
Dec. 1992 -Jan. 1993
served that the functionality and sophisti- UIUC's gopher server, the ftp option is Gopher... cation of the individual components are listed on the main menu with the title (continued from page 3) often sacrificed for the convenience of in- Internet File Server (ftp) Sites. Several
If you then selected item number 2, the ter-application compatibility and ease of popular ftp sites are listed by name. Addi- raw information sent back from the server use. Is the same thing true for gopher's tionally, most of the well-known ftp sites would be: implementation of well-known Internet in the world are organized alphabetically services such as ftp, telnet, archie, WAIS, into submenus in this same menu. For
1 Internet-wide e-mail address searches /Phone etc.? Well, that's a difficult question to most of the sites in the alphabetical listing, Books/.other gopher.miCTO.umn.edu 70 answer. For many services, the answer a brief summary of what the site contains depends specifically on which gopher cli- is provided. The same method used to
Object type 1 means that the item is a ent you are using. Some services are "cli- move up and down through gopher's menu menu (or directory). The domain name ent intensive," and if the gopher client hierarchy (usually point and shoot or point gopher.micro.umn.edu indicates that by doesn't do it's job well, it will pale when and click) can be used to browse the direc- selecting this item, you would not be open- compared to a stand-alone counterpart. tory contents of any ftp site in the list. ing a connection with our local server. But there are at least a few instances where And, if you've got the right client, you can Rather choosing this item will point your gopher's ability to pull together multiple use the same technique to transfer any file client to a menu on the server at the Uni- resources actually makes it more powerful from the remote ftp server to your client versity of Minnesota. The menu appears than using a stand-alone application. Let's machine. as if it is on our local server, but in reality take a closer look at several of the services All gopher ftp transactions involve three it comes from somewhere else. This is how offered through gopher and determine how computers: 1) the remote ftp host, 2) the go- gopher establishes transparent "links" with they measure up to alternative methods of pher server providing access to that host, and other servers. access. 3) your client. Problems can occur anywhere Why should you care about any of this? along this pipe, but the most common prob-
I can think of several good reasons. First Gopher as Document Delivery System lem is that many gopher clients can only dis- there may be an occasion when you want From the outset, gopher was conceived play and transfer text files. So, when you are to know where the information in gopher as a document delivery system, and it's browsing an ftp site, it may look as if there are actually originates, something that is not fair to say that this is one of the things that very few files available, when in fact, your necessarily apparent from the menu entry. gopher does best. All gopher servers and client is only showing you the files types that Many gopher clients have the ability to clients, no matter how primitive, know it can actually transfer. For example, PC display the raw information that lies be- how to handle text documents. Most cli- Gopher II cannot handle binary file trans- hind a menu choice. With the Unix curses ents can display text documents on the fers. When browsing ftp sites with this client, you can view this information by screen, save them to a file, and /or print client, you will only see files with object pressing the = (equal) sign. Second, occa- them. A few clients also offer the option of type (plain text). Then there are clients sionally a server will identify an object mailing the document to another person that will only show you the files it thinks incorrectly. If you try to retrieve a binary on the Internet. you want to know about. The Unix curses file with your client, and the server has Here at UIUC, gopher's text delivery client can transfer binary files, but it only told your client that the file is plain text, the talents are fully exploited. There is hardly displays files that it thinks will be of inter- transfer will be unsuccessful. Having ac- a local event, announcement, or news item est to a Unix user. Thus, files with the cess to raw server data can help diagnose that doesn't make it into gopher. Special extensions .zip, .exe, .sit, etc. are not visible problems such as this. It's also fascinating Campus Announcements have their own when browsing ftp sites with this Unix cli- to consider how effortlessly one can hop top level entry on our gopher menu. One ent. Finally, there are clients, such as the from one server to another in gopher with- could spend hours, if not days, browsing CMS software on VMD, that can display out thinking about a single network ad- through the menu called U of Illinois Cam- the names of all file types, but can only dress. pus Information. Lurking beneath this transfer ASCII files. This client is good for menu choice is literally everything you browsing ftp sites, but you have toexitgopher
Integrated Services wanted to know about the U of I, but were and run a separate ftp application to actu-
Gopher's strongest selling point is its afraid to ask, neatly organized into menus ally fetch the file. The only clients I know ability to integrate a variety of network and submenus. The full text of several of that can successfully display and trans- services into a single application, so that local publications including The Daily Mini, fer all types of binary files are TurboGopher users don't have to learn multiple soft- Inside Illinois, the Campus Crime Bulletin, for the Mac and Xgopher L2. It's a good ware packages, commands, and network and others can be found under the News- bet that most gopher clients will be able to addresses to take advantage of them a papers, Newsletters, and Weather menu. display and transfer all file types as soft- revolutionary step towards making the Gopher is rapidly becoming the official ware development continues. But for now, Internet accessible to the common man. vehicle for disseminating important UIUC gopher's ftp capabilities are definitely lim- client. However, if you've ever had experience text-based information. ited by the versatility of your with commercially available integrated software—the kind that combines word Gopher as FTP Client Gopher as Archie Client processing, database, spreadsheet, graph- Ftp, the TCP/ IP file transfer protocol, is Gopher's implementation of the archie ics, and telecommunications capabilities one of the areas in which gopher shines service exemplifies how the integration of
that is, if the right client. On itimtcd on page 5) into a single package—you may have ob- you have ...... —
Dec. 1992 -Jan. 1993 5
Gopher... Host ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (continued from page 4) Location: /mac applications can improve performance. DIRECTORY drwxr-xr-x 512 Now 18 00:05 eudora
Loca t i on : /mac /eudora The archie service, called Search of Most F 1 LE -rui-i r 459636 Oct 18 1991 eudora 1.2. 2. .si FTP Sites (archie), can be found beneath the main menu item Internet File Server Figure 1: Partial results of an archie search on the character string "eudora" using the stand- (ftp) Sites. Archie is a searchable database alone Unix archie client. of the file holdings of all major anonymous ftp sites on the Internet. You can feed ternet Gooher Information Client w1 archie a filename (or part of a filename) Search of Most FTP sites < archie): eudora and archie will return a list of all the ftp
1 uuor td.comg/src/uni xmac /eudora// sites that have a file matching your query. Ids
2 metten . fenk . mau . n I 5 /pub /mac/eudora// Prior to gopher, the only way to query i 3 mesun . eu . net§/comp/mac/ma I /eudora//
4 ak i u gw . tohoku . ac . /pub /mac /comm/MacTCP /eudora// archie was to telnet to one of several archie . j p£
5 . ma i I er . cc . fsu . edu? /pub /mac /eudora / / servers or use a stand-alone archie client. 6 f tp.uu.net$/systems/mac/eudora//
Archie would send back the desired infor- 7 pinus.slu. se^/pub/mac/ma i l/eudora//
8 dorm . rutgers . edu£ /pub /Mac /eudora// mation. Then, if you wanted to actually 9 sre . doc . i c . ac . ukg/comput i ng/systems/mac/eudora//
file, to ftp i get the you would have open an 10 ux 1 . cso . u uc . edu£ /mac/eudora//
t i /pub /Mac/eudora// connection with one of the sites listed by 11. miki ,cs. tech. ac. jp§
12. biom3.uni v-lyonl . frS /pub /mac /comm /eudora- 122 hqx
15. . . f tpmai I /Solaris. ims.ac. jp /pub /unix /mac /eudora// The gopher archie gateway is integrated 16. ..Solaris. ims.ac.jp/pub/unix/mac/eudora-J/eudoral . 2. 2J6.si t hqx
18. p I aza. aarnet . edu. au£ /micros/mac/ma i lers/eudora// archie query on gopher will not only pro- vide you with a list of ftp sites and directo- Press 3 for Help, 3 to Quit, J to go up a Page: 1/6 ries, but can literally take you to one of Figure 2: Partial results of an archie search on the character string "eudora" using the gopher those ftp sites. And, if your gopher client archie service. knows how to transfer the file, you can grab it during the same transaction. \mmmmimm-\i i •HH.mrraiiMi Comparing an archie query using the ux 1 . cso . u i uc . edu? /mac /eudora/ Unix stand-alone client with the same — > 1. .no tar query on gopher will demonstrate exactly
2. 1 . 2Changes how powerful gopher's archie service is. 3. 1 2man. glue. si t.hqx
4. 1 . 2man pm . s i t hqx
5. 1 . 3Changes know e-mail package called Eudora. Fig- 6. README ure 1 on this page shows part of the results 7. ReleaseNotes.
8. append i x-d returned by doing an archie query on the 9. beta/
1 > character string "eudora" using the stand- 10. comm . i .sit. hqx < HQX 11. diskcopy.hqx
"eudora" resides, the transaction is over. 16. sr i a 1 pop . c The gopher archie service can take you 17. tables/ several steps further. Figure 2 shows the Press f or Help, to Quit, to a menu Page: 1/1 information returned by gopher on the S J) J go up same query. Every item followed by a Figure 3: The file contents of menu item 10 in Figure 2 above. Items that are files in this menu double slash (//) is a directory. By selecting can be ftp'd to the client machine. Items that are directories (followed by a slash) can be opened item 10 in the menu, you can view the just like any other gopher menu. entire contents of the mac/eudora direc- tory on uxl.cso.uiuc.edu as shown in Fig- Gopher as Telnet and Tn3270 Tool from a gopher menu, it is important to ure 3. At this point, you have actually Gopher has the ability to launch pre- realize that your gopher client is not actu- opened an ftp connection with uxl and are configured telnet sessions. Many gopher ally opening the telnet session. In fact, inside the mac/eudora directory. From servers, including our own, provide ac- choosing a telnet session will cause you to here, if your client permits, you can trans- cess to on-line library catalogs and other temporarily leave gopher. The gopher fer any of the files listed in the directory to kinds of information servers. With go- client will look for the telnet application on your local computer. Unfortunately, be- pher, you can easily access these systems your client machine and pass the neces- cause ftp and archie are tied together on without knowing their domain name or IP sary address information off to the telnet gopher, many of the same limitations that address by simply making a menu choice. program. Gopher will also display any apply to ftp also apply to archie. However, when you select a telnet session (continued on page 6) bases, which can be searched by keyword Gopher... and a few simply don't work. Also, unlike and cover a wide variety of subjects. (A many stand-alone clients, the ph clients
i detailed description of WAIS and how it built in to gopher do not allow a user to log special information you need to know, works is given in the October 1 992 issue of in to a Nameserver to modify his or her such as the login id and password to give UlUCnet, vol. 5 no 6.) The gopher imple- own entry. Despite these minor shortcom- the remote host. Your telnet program will mentation of WAIS lacks many of the fea- ings, between the many ph Nameservers then try to contact the specified host using tures found in dedicated WAIS clients. and other electronic directory services the information provided by gopher. When Most notably, with gopher you can only (such as whois databases, the experimen- you close the session, you will be returned search one WAIS database at a time, and tal X.500 directory, and the utility called to gopher. WAIS's unique search refining tool called netfind), gopher offers a set of compre- Whether a telnet session is successful or relevance feedback is not available. How- hensive tools for finding someone on the not depends on several factors. Most criti- ever, gopher does offer one feature that Internet, unmatched by any other client- cal is making sure that your gopher client most WAIS clients do not: it allows you to server application. knows how to find your telnet client. The see the names and search all of the public gopher clients on CCSO machines have WAIS databases that are available. Per- Gopher as File Viewer/Player been configured to launch telnet sessions haps someday, a full-featured WAIS client If you are fortunate enough to have the for you. If you install a gopher client on will be built in to the gopher software. right software and hardware, gopher can your desktop computer, you may have to be used to view images and play sounds. do something special so that gopher knows Gopher as Electronic Phone Book Sounds and images are experimental ob- how to find telnet. Under the menu item Phone Books ject types in Gopher and only a few clients
Gopher can also launch remote login (PH) is a collection of electronic phone know what to do with them. Moreover, sessions with computers that require 3270 directories (often called white pages) that like the telnet function in gopher, sound terminal emulation, such as IBM main- can be used to look up the e-mail address and image files are not actually played or frames. In principle, tn3270 sessions work and / or other information about people on viewed by the gopher client. The client just like telnet sessions in gopher and are the Internet. The first item in this menu, U looks for another program on the client subject to the same restrictions. Thus, of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, pro- machine that knows how to process the gopher must be able to find the tn3270 vides access to our local CCSO Nameserver, file. For example, if the application Giffer is program on your client machine. Addi- also known as ph. Many other institutions installed on your Mac, when you down- tionally, your gopher client must know have used the ph program to set up their load a GIF (graphics interchange format) about the tn3270 object type. Neither PC own electronic directory services. They file, TurboGopher will ask you if you would
Gopher II nor the CMS Gopher on VMD can be found mixed in with other types of like Giffer to display it for you. Similarly, recognize the tn3270 object type. The DOS electronic directories in the submenu Xgopher 1.2 will pass GIF files off to the X client simply does not display tn3270 ses- Phonebooks at other institutions. application called xloadimage. sions in its menu system. The CMS client Each gopher client represents ph direc- displays the session as type T but returns tories in some consistent way. Some cli- Finding Things in Gopher the message "cannot process this type." ents use the term CSO, which stands for Well, after many words and pages, In general, the ability to open telnet and CSO Nameserver. Others use an icon re- we've only begun to scratch the surface of tn3270 sessions with gopher is a tremen- sembling a telephone or telephone book. gopher, which leads us to the last major dous convenience. The gopher server at In any case, ph searches comprise a spe- topic in this article—with so much infor- the University of North Texas, which you cific object type in gopher and are handled mation on so many gopher servers all over can find under Other Gopher and Infor- somewhat uniquely. Most searches con- the world, how does one actually find mation Servers/Recommended Gopher ducted in gopher are actually handled by specific information in gopher, and once Servers for Exploration/University of a gopher server—that is, the client asks found, how can one keep track of where
North Texas/, has an exhaustive menu of you to enter a search string, it then sends the information is located? Gopher actu- telnet and tn3270 sessions to reach library your search string to a gopher server, the ally provides several tools for locating in- catalogs all over the world. Although it is server looks for items matching your search formation. There is a special object type in not possible to open a remote login session string, and finally the results of the search gopher called an index-search server. Index with a host that is not listed in a gopher are returned to your client. Ph queries, on searches often have the word "search" as menu, if you would like certain libraries or the other hand, involve a direct conversa- part of their menu entry and, like other information servers added to the list of tion between the gopher client and a ph object types in gopher, have a distinctive libraries and terminal-based sessions on server; a gopher server does not partici- abbreviation or icon associated with them. the UIUC gopher server, simply send an e- pate in these transactions (except to pro- A gopher administrator can create an in- mail request to our local gopher adminis- vide the address of the ph server). In order dex search for any large body of text con- trator at the address [email protected]. for a gopher client to conduct a ph search, tained in a gopher menu. This can help
it must know how to speak the ph proto- you to rapidly zero in on the documents of Gopher as WAIS Client col, which is something quite different interest. For example, if you are searching Among the many services offered by than the gopher protocol. Most gopher the electronic version of the Daily Illini for gopher is a gateway to the WAIS (Wide- clients today have a built-in ph client. Some all recent articles about the women's vol- Area Information Servers) databases. are easy to use but not very powerful, leyball team, you could go to the Daily WAIS is a collection of distributed data- others are powerful but not very intuitive, (continued on page 7) Dec. 1992 -Jan. 1993 7
VERONICA does not eliminate duplicate instance, bookmarks are created by select- Gopher... items, so a given search can result in many ing a gopher menu item and then choos- (continued from page 6) repetitions of the same service, document, ing the Set Bookmark... option from the
Illini Newspaper menu and choose the or menu. Finally, VERONICA does not Gopher menu (see Figure 4 on this page). Word Search of Latest Month item. When tell you where each title comes from. If Consult the on-line help or written docu- asked to enter a search string, enter the your client has the ability to show the mentation of your gopher client for more word "volleyball." All DI articles from the technical information behind each menu details on bookmarks. last month that contain the word "volley- item (as described earlier in this article), ball" will be listed as a separate menu. then you can find out the domain name of Gopher Broke? But how did we find the Daily Illini in the source, but not all clients have this As we've seen, a gopher session can the first place? The UIUC main gopher capability and not all users know how to involve many computers and many appli- server has a wonderfully useful resource interpret this information. VERONICA can cations. It's not uncommon, however, for on the top level menu called Keyword be found on our local server by doing a things to go wrong in gopher. Occasion- Search of Gopher Menus. This item con- Keyword Search of Gopher Menus on the ally a specific server function like ftp will tains an index of the titles of every menu string "veronica" or by browsing the menu go down, or a server can go down alto- on our server. To find the Daily Illini called Other Gopher and Information gether. And, of course, certain clients sim- amidst the megabytes of information and Servers. ply cannot perform specific tasks. As you multitudes of menus on the server, do a Bookmarks. Navigating gopher is nor- become well acquainted with your gopher Keyword Search of Gopher Menus on the mally an up or down proposition. You client, you'll get a sense of what it can and string "daily illini." Or, suppose you know can gradually work your way down cannot do. If you perform an operation that there is a link to a searchable version through a series of menus and wend your regularly and suddenly it doesn't work, of Roget's Thesaurus somewhere on our way back up again, but lateral movement the problem probably lies with the server. server, but you haven't a clue where to is generally not possible. Suppose you If on the other hand, you've never had look. Just do a keyword search on the find a file or service in gopher that you success doing something like a tn3270 ses- word "thesaurus" and you will be taken know you'll want to access time and time sion with your client, chances are that it directly to the Roget's Thesaurus menu. again in a menu far removed from the top. does not support this function or is im- VERONICA. The Keyword Search of Most gopher clients allow you to create properly configured. Hopefully the fore- Gopher Menus handles searching menus and save so-called bookmarks. A book- going explanation of what takes place dur- on our own gopher server, but what about mark keeps track of exactly where a go- ing various types of gopher transactions the hundreds of other servers on the Inter- pher item is located, regardless of whether will help you to determine the source of net? Let me introduce you to VERONICA. it resides on your local server or a remote any difficulties you might encounter. If VERONICA stands for "very easy rodent- gopher server. To go to that item again, you suspect that there is a problem with oriented net-wide index to computerized you need only ask gopher to display your our local server, send an e-mail message to archives" and does for gopher what archie bookmarks and select the bookmark as [email protected] (you can also send com- does for anonymous ftp archives (now you would any other gopher item. Creat- ments and suggestions about gopher to we're all waiting for Betty, Reggie, and ing a collection of bookmarks is like creat- this address). Jughead to appear on the Internet). ing your own customized gopher menu. Despite occasional problems, gopher is
VERONICA is a utility that indexes the The commands for creating, viewing, and likely to open up the Internet to a much titles of all levels of menus for most gopher selecting bookmarks vary from client to wider audience. Whether you are a power sites on the Internet. VERONICA works client. In Turbo Gopher for the Mac, for user or network neophyte, this rapidly like any other index search. You enter a evolving net- word or group of words that you are look- work tool has ing for, and VERONICA creates a custom much to offer. In menu of all titles on all menus throughout its infancy, go- gopherspace that match your query. By pher was called a selecting an item in the custom menu, you distributed docu- are transparently connected to the gopher ment delivery server on which it is located. system. Today it
VERONICA is a relatively new service is referred to as a and there are still a few problems to be distributed infor- worked out. First of all, VERONICA is mation delivery very slow and bound to become slower as system. Who more users begin to use it. Developers are knows what to- hoping to eventually distribute morrow may VERONICA searches among multiple serv- bring? ers, which should lessen the burden of any -Lynn Ward single VERONICA server. Secondly, many gopher servers point to popular items on Figure 4: A menu of bookmarks sailed in TurboGopher for the Macintosh. other gopher servers leading to a great Each menu item in the Bookmarks window can be instantly accessed by deal of redundancy among servers. selecting it. How Six Gopher Clients Stack Up
Xgopher provides support for a variety sources file called Xgopher. This plain text
1 CLIENTS FOR CLIENTS of different file or object types including: file contains all the settings for Xgopher, image files (image files are displayed by including the host name of the default xloadimage, a separate utility that can dis- gopher server; the name of the default
play many different types of graphics file bookmarks file; the prefixes used for each PS3 formats), sound files (sound files can be gopher object type; the default screen col-
played if Xgopher is installed on a work- ors; the default fonts; the specific text used The cover story of this issue describes station that supports sound), Unix binary for all menus, buttons, and dialog boxes; how the Internet gopher can be a files, ph queries, index searches, and telnet the specific applications used to play sound
very powerful tool if you're using and tn3270 sessions. An options panel files, display image files, and conduct tel- the right client software and if that client is under the Other Commands menu allows net and tn3270 sessions, and many other properly configured. Over the last several you to tell Xgopher whether you want to parameters. Any of the default settings months, I've had the opportunity to work see all files or just the file types that it can be changed to suit the preferences of with about ten different gopher clients, knows about. If you opt to see all files, the end-user. several of which have already been super- Xgopher will display unknown types with Xgopher is installed on uxl, ux2, ux4, seded by new, more powerful applica- a prefix. Any file type in a gopher uxa, and uxh and can be accessed by any- tions. To describe each of these clients in menu or directory, even unknown types, one with an X terminal or a desktop com- detail would fill a book, and for most go- can be transferred to the client machine puter running an X server application such pher clients there is a user's guide, on-line (for unknown file types, Xgopher defaults as MacX. Questions and comments about help, and /or a man page that gives techni- to binary transfer mode) with the copy Xgopher should be directed via e-mail to cal information and instructions for use. selected item to file command. Allan Tuchman at the address a-
is brief six clients, option is 1 [email protected]. Below a sketch of gopher The bookmarks , each for a different computing platform. also extremely flexible This review highlights the strengths and in Xgopher 1.2. TurboGopher 1.0.5 for the Mac weaknesses of each client and, in a few Xgopher can / •"" Although there are several cases, provides some important undocu- maintain mul- ' ' fe- \\ gopher clients available for mented technical information. A sum- tiple bookmark the Macintosh, TurboGopher mary of the features of each client can be files, any of which 1.0.5 stands out among the found in Table 1 on page 10. All of the may be loaded during crowd. TurboGopher cannot play clients discussed in this review can be a single session. Also, the book- sound files or display raw gopher downloaded from the anonymous ftp host mark file is compatible with the information, but it handles al- boombox.micro.umn.edu. They are lo- Unix curses client, so you can use most every other gopher opera- cated in subdirectories (named according the same bookmarks when di- tion with the greatest of ease and to platform) under the /pub/gopher direc- aling in from home. speed. The ftp function works tory. Several clients are also available at The ph client in Xgopher particularly well. To transfer a the CCSO Resource Center, 1420 DCL. is fairly powerful, but not file to your Mac, just double click Note: The comments below refer to the quite as intuitive as other on its icon. If thefileisBinHexed, specific version of the client that was re- implementations. The user TurboGopher will un-BinHex it viewed. Since many developers continue is prompted to enter a query as it transfers the file to your local to work at improving their software, some in the Query name field and disk. This gopher client even of the bugs and other peculiarities de- results are displayed in the recognizes Unix and DOS binary scribed here may have been or will be fixed box below. A Show Fields files and will intuitively transfer them in a later release. menu displays the names in binary mode. of the fields available on When you get your copy of Xgopher 1.2—the Latest and Greatest the selected ph server TurboGopher, be sure to down- One of the newest kids on the block is and the intended con- load the helper-applications the latest release of Xgopher, an X Window tents of those fields. SitExpand, CptExpand, and Giffer. System client written by Allan Tuchman, There is some minimal If these programs are installed on senior research programmer here at CCSO. on-line help, but in order your Mac, TurboGopher will offer Xgopher can handle just about any gopher do anything more complex to decompress files that have been function that's currently available. The than a simple query on the archived with the Stufflt or Compac- interface is very simple to use (see Figure name field, one must already tor utilities (files with a .sit or .cpt
1 on page 9). Most commands are avail- be well acquainted with the syn- extension) and display GIF able by clicking on buttons in the main tax of ph commands. image files immediately af- window. Less commonly used commands X Window System gurus can ter such files have been are tucked away in a pull-down menu totally customize Xgopher by downloaded. called Other Commands. modifying the application re- (continued on page 9) UMP* Dec. 1992 -Jan. 1993 9
Gopher Clients... ngophei
Quit #• Other Commands Help The ph client in TurboGopher is very select an item from the list easy to use. Unfortunately it has a major bug. You can only enter a single name gif s when doing a search on the name field. If you enter a first and a last name, the client bambi. gif
barton gif sends the query to the server improperly
batman, gif "501: and you'll get the message No beverly matches to your query." Since the name
bigcat02. gif field is the most common field for doing ph
bigcatlG gif gif lookups, this is a big problem. In order to
biLbo2
billtcat. gif do a query with TurboGopher' s ph client, blackcountach for either the person you are looking must
bladel. gif have a very unique last name or you must blastoff know some additional information about blueghibli the person, such as his or her phone num- bora
bronze gif ber or address.
buggsb2. gif TurboGopher supports both telnet and
c&s#9 gif tn3270 sessions only if the appropriate applications (NCSA Telnet and Brown's letch Info about Previous Add directory Remove TN3270) have been installed on your hard selection directory Directory as bookmark bookifsark disk. Additionally, in order to conduct a Bookmarks tn3270 session, a copy of your config.tel file must be located in your System Folder. » UIUC Gopher Information Service
NeXT workstation sitting on their desk, signed to run on dumb terminals, so there Version 1 .01 of the curses client doesn't NeXT Gopher 1 .3 offers a slick interface and are no fancy icons or mouse support. Navi- do a very good job at recognizing object good overall functionality. Two notice- gating menus involves either moving the types. When it displays executable DOS able shortcomings are its inability to suc- cursor to the desired item or entering its files during an archie search, it assigns cessfully display and transfer files other number and then pressing the
10 Dec. 1992 -Jan. 1993 UUP*
kernel or Novell's LAN Workplace for DOS. not items within menus such as an index Clients... Gopher This client uses the extended IBM charac- search. d from pa ter set to create a pseudo-graphical inter- PC Gopher II also supports telnet ses- problem, send an e-mail message to face, complete with pull-down menus, siz- sions if it is properly configured. Be sure [email protected] or call the CCSO systems able windows with scroll bars, and sup- the Allow Telnet Sessions box is checked consultants at 333-6133. port for a Microsoft-compatible mouse. in the configuration window. Also, in Let's first consider the strong points of the order to conduct a telnet session, you must PC Gopher II 1.05r3 DOS client. PC Gopher II supports index set a DOS environment variable so that While there are several Gopher clients searches, has a respectable and fully func- gopher knows where to find your telnet available for the DOS environment, PC tional ph client, can display the technical application. To accomplish this, a line can
Gopher II is the only one that does not information about an item, and supports be added to your autoexec.bat file or the require the user to load a commercial TCP/ bookmarks. Unfortunately, the bookmarks batch file that starts gopher. IP stack such as FTP Software's PC/TCP feature is limited to selecting menus only, (continued on page 16)
TurboGopher NeXT Gopher Unix Curses PC Gopher II Supported Features Xgopher 1.2 CMS Gopher 2.2.0 1.0.5 1.3 Gopher 1.01 1.05r3
displays text files yes yes yes yes yes (size limited yes by available memory)
displays image files yes yes (GIFS only) yes yes (on certain Unix no no workstations)
displays names of all yes (the user can opt yes yes (according to no no yes menu items/files to display all documentation, regardless of object filenames, even but no success type unsupported types) during testing)
plays sound files yes no yes yes (on certain Unix no no workstations)
transfers text files yes yes yes yes yes yes
transfers binary files yes (unknown types yes no yes no no (limited types) are transferred in binary mode by default)
transfers all binaries yes yes no no no no
archie searches on all yes yes no yes yes (sometimes yes file types
archie searches on yes yes yes yes yes (sometimes yes text files
WAIS searches yes yes yes yes yes no
telnet sessions yes yes yes yes yes yes
tn3270 sessions yes yes (config.tel file yes yes no no must be in System folder)
ph searches yes (interface not yes (a bug limits yes (uses yes yes yes very intuitive) searches on the separate ph "name" field to a client, NeXT Ph) single name)
whois searches yes yes yes yes yes no
index-searches yes yes yes yes yes some, but not all (general)
displays technical yes no yes yes yes no info about menu item
recognizes most many, but not all yes no no no yes object types
bookmarks yes (supports yes no yes yes (only menus/ ves (only menus/ multiple bookmark directories) directories) files)
Table 1: Comparison of the features of six different gopher clients. Dec. 1992 -Jan. 1993 11
work administrators and end-users primary source for the support and train- The ACN is on the Move Again may have quite intentionally configured their ing of network administrators. Dave will CAMPUS NEWS software to use the IP address in order to also provide information and instruction bypass this problem. However, the do- to CCSO's full and part-time consultants main name problems of the MVS/CAS in order to keep them up to date on net- computer have long since been resolved, work applications and technologies. Computers, like people, occasion- and now the use of the hostname is desir- Steven Hinkle, CCSO's other new hire, ally relocate. In the case of net- able, if not imperative. will concentrate on the end-user side of worked systems, this often means The new IP address for the MVS/CAS networking. Steven, now a Research Pro- that the computer, again like a person, will system will be announced in January, but grammer/Systems Consultant for User have a new address. Such is the case for the AISS will continue to discourage clients Services, received his B.S. in computer sci-
MVS/CAS system on the Administrative from using it, except in cases where there ence from the University of Buffalo in Computing Network (ACN). In mid-De- is a temporary problem with the domain August of '92. At Buffalo, while working cember, the TCP/ IP interface for the ACN's name service. Finally, these changes will toward his degree, he also served as a MVS/CAS system was moved to a router in no way affect ftp and outgoing telnet consultant for a variety of computer sys- on the FDDI ring at the University of Illi- sessions on the VM/PROFS system. Nor tems, including PCs and Macs, IBM CMS nois at Chicago. By connecting this com- will it affect the Internet or BITNET elec- mainframes, DEC VAX clusters running puter to the FDDI ring, AISS hopes to tronic mail addresses of PROFS users. VMS, and Sun clusters running SunOS. As improve the performance of the MVS/ -Lynn Ward a newcomer to the U of I and CCSO, Steven CAS system on the network and to in- is still in the process of acquainting himself crease the number of possible TCP/IP con- with our network, systems, and services. nections it can handle. However, the move His role in User Services will include offer- CCSO Beefs Up Network also means that the IP address for access- ing short courses for end-users on how to ing this system via ftp and telnet will Support Staff and Services use the network, writing end-user docu- already have changed by the time this mentation, consulting on network-related article hits the streets. For this reason, CAMPUS NEWS problems, and supporting popular net- AISS encourages all clients to begin using work applications for PCs and Macs such the fully-qualified domain name MM as NCSA Telnet, Eudora, NUPop, Trumpet, UICMVSA.AISS.UIC.EDU when access- etc. ing the MVS/CAS system rather than us- UlUCnet is no longer just a tool for David and Steven make a fine comple- ing its numerical IP address. And, in engineers and computer scien- ment to CCSO's existing network support general, users are urged to always use the tists. Thousands of students, fac- staff, Randy Cotton of the NDO, Declan hostname as opposed to the IP address, ulty, and staff use the network every day Fleming and Leslie Rankin (manager and because the IP address might change again for routine activities. CCSO is increas- assistant manager of the CCSO sites), and sometime in the future, whereas the ingly aware of the need to provide high- the many CCSO staff members involved hostname for this machine will never quality support services to end-users and with LAN maintenance. Recently, Declan change. network administrators. Two new staff has been working with faculty to make If you are accustomed to accessing the members, David Ruby and Steven Hinkle, instructional software available at CCSO's ACN by typing its IP address when you were hired this fall to augment existing networked sites. He also started a Novell invoke your TCP/IP applications (e.g., tel- support staff. Users group, which provides a forum for net, ftp, etc.), simply substitute David Ruby, a U of I graduate with a Novell LAN administrators to share infor- UICMVSA.AISS.UIC.EDU for the numeri- major in Spanish and minor in computer mation and discuss specific topics of inter- cal IP address when issuing commands to science, comes to CCSO from the UIUC est (for more information on the Novell open a session on the MVS/CAS system. College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, where Users group, send e-mail to Declan at d-
For example, if you ordinarily open a ses- for two years he served as the network [email protected]). sion by typing the command tn3270 administrator for one of the largest and CCSO systems consultants are also 131.193.163.4, use the command tn3270 most complex in-building networks on spreading the gospel of UlUCnet. Through uicmvsa.aiss.uic.edu instead. campus—the 400+ node network in Lin- a relatively new "outreach" program, con- In addition, all references to the ACN's coln Hall. While managing the Lincoln sultants are providing on-site seminars to old numerical IP address (131 .193.163.4) in Hall site, Dave worked extensively with faculty and staff about the services and batch files, login scripts, telnet configura- PCs and Macs on Token Ring, Ethernet, applications available on UlUCnet, with tion files, and user documentation should and LocalTalk networks. David is now an eye toward offering special courses on be replaced with the host name part of CCSO's User Services group and how to use the network for teaching and UICMVSA.AISS.UIC.EDU. This step is holds the title Research Programmer / Net- research. Meanwhile, CCSO managers are especially important because, during the work Consultant. Currently, he is assist- taking a fresh look at how to best meet the transition of moving the ACN's telnet ing Randy Cotton, network consultant for ongoing network support needs of this server from the VM/ PROFS machine to the Network Design Office, with a backlog campus. Their goal is to develop a flexible, the MVS/CAS system last year, there was of troubleshooting requests. Dave's re- well-rounded program that will maximize initially a problem accessing the latter sys- sponsibilities at CCSO will evolve as needs the effect of CCSO's support and training tem with the host name. Thus, many net- dictate. It is anticipated that he will be a efforts. inn Ward MacTCP 1.1.1 Available at CCSO Resource Center CAMPUS NEWS Installing MacTCP 1.1.1 for the First Time number given as the IP Address. Click on If you don't already have a copy of the More... button and you should see a
MacTCP on your system (as will be the window that looks like Figure 1 on this case for individuals who have purchased page. Write down the information entered new Macs), ask your building network in the boxes labeled Obtain Address, Rout- This fall, Apple Computer rolled out administrator to assist you with the instal- ing Information, IP Address (class and several new models of desktop and lation of the software. He or she can help subnet address), and Domain Nameserver portable computer and, with them, you determine whether your IP address Information. All of this information must an incremental upgrade of the Macintosh will be static or server-allocated and be entered in the new version of MacTCP operating system. The new OS, called whether the address needs to be registered when you install it. System 7.1, reportedly offers better font with the UlUCnet hostmnster (the person Once you have recorded this configu- handling, improved stability and perfor- who keeps track of IP addresses and do- ration information, you can throw the files mance, improved support for new CPUs main names for all systems attached to named MacTCP, AdminTCP and MacTCP (so that system upgrades are not required UlUCnet). Prep in the Trash (you may, however, when new products are introduced), and want to first copy these files to a floppy the incorporation of Apple's multimedia Upgrading to MacTCP 1.1.1 disk in case your installation runs amuck). technology known as QuickTime. Mac TCP 1.1.1 is downwardly compat- Then, copy the new MacTCP and One thing that System 7.1 does not of- ible with earlier versions of the Macintosh AdminTCP files into your System folder. fer, however, is compatibility with MacTCP operating system and can be installed on For Macs running System 7 or higher, place versions 1.1 and earlier. MacTCP, Apple's Macs running System 6.x, 7.0, and 7.0.1. the files in the Control Panels folder within implementation of the TCP/IP protocol Before installing the new version of your System folder. Once the new files are suite, provides a standard interface for MacTCP, open your existing copy of in place, open MacTCP though the Con- developing TCP/IP-based software (e.g., MacTCP through the Control Panel and trol Panel and configure the software to NCSA Telnet, Fetch, Eudora, etc.) for the record the current settings of the software. match the settings you recorded from your
Mac. Virtually every Macintosh connected First, if there is a LocalTalk icon and an previous version. If you have any prob-
to the campus backbone has a copy of Ethernet icon in the MacTCP window, note lems with the installation or you install it MacTCP installed in its System folder as a which one is selected. If the LocalTalk icon and discover that your network applica- control panel device. is selected, record the name of the tions do not work, contact your building To address the compatibility problem AppleTalk zone that appears beneath it (if network administrator for assistance. between System 7.1 and MacTCP, Apple a name appears). Then, write down the -Lynn Ward has released MacTCP 1.1.1. MacTCP 1.1.1 is available free to University staff and students through a product site license. All UlUCnet users who have ordered or Obtain Address: IP Address: received a new Macintosh with System O Manually Class: B 1 Address: 128.0.0.0 7.1 pre-installed, as well as users who have upgraded an older Mac to System (•) Seruer Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0 7.1, should obtain and install this latest O Dynamically version of MacTCP. The software is avail- I Sl able on all of the Macintoshes in the CCSO Net I Subnet Node Resource Center, 1420 DCL. It is located Bits: 16 8 8 in the AppleShare volume called RC_MACs in the folders /Public/Com- Net: [32768 munications/Eudora 1.3bl09/Mac TCP Subnet: !o *«<$< Software and /Public/Communications/ Routing Information:- Network/Mac TCP/ver 1.1.1. Remember Gateway Address: Node: \o to bring your own floppy disks (double- sided, double density will do) to copy the H 28.1 74.33.1 ! Domain Name Server Information: files. Domain IP Address Default According to a press release, in addi- IfJWHW 128.174.5.58 ® tion to providing compatibility with Sys- uiuc.edu 128.174.5.50 tem 7.1, the new MacTCP offers "better o
OK | ( Cancel support for extension products, such as ) uiuc.edu 128.174.5.59 o <> AppleTalk Remote Access (ARA), SLIP (Serial Line IP) and PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol) drivers, as well as support for Figurel: The MacTCP configuration window.
larger 'Hosts' files." —
Dec. 1992 -Jan. 1993 13
Customizing Telnet Sessions on a PC
NET TIPS
Table 1 Machine-Specific Entries in a Sample Config.tel File
name=library #descriptive name for library system Although telnet the TCP/IP remote host="garcon.cso.uiuc.edu:625" #domain name and port number of library system login application, is probably one hostip=128.174.5.58 #IP address of library system
of the first pieces of software to nfcolor=WHITE #screen color settings for all sessions with library which new UlUCnet /Internet users are nbcoIor=blue introduced, very few people have the time rfcolor=red or inclination to learn about and exercise rbcolor=cyan all of the options available in the software. ufcolor=black In fact, it's probably safe to say that most ubcolor=white people on campus don't even have the scrollback=200 complete documentation for the version name=uxl #descriptive/short name for uxl of telnet they use. This is unfortunate. hostip=128.174.5.59 #IP address for uxl While you may not have time to read the erase=backspace #backspace key functions as standard backspace manual from cover to cover, browsing the table of contents or index could expose copyfrom=library #borrow other parameters from entry named library you to some features that you might find name=vmd #descriptive/short name for VMD very useful. This month's Net Tip focuses host=vmd. cso.uiuc.edu #domain name for VMD on customizing the telnet environment keymap=vmd.tbl #use custom keyboard map file called vmd.tbl for this on a DOS-based PC so that you can easily #session. connect to a specific host without having to remember its full domain name or IP address and preconfigure various session parameters with such hosts. (In the next issue of UlUCnet, we will look at the eter is described in detail in the user's that doesn't have a specific name entry in equivalent procedures for the Macintosh.) manual and briefly in a comment on the your config.tel file and also determines
same line in the config.tel file. Lines or the settings of parameters that are not oth-
About the Config.tel File parts of lines that begin with a pound sign erwise specified in a named entry. If you
Normally, unless someone has care- (#) are comments. are not satisfied with the default values for fully preconfigured your telnet software for The beginning of the config.tel file screen colors, the scrollback mode, the you, when you open a remote login session contains important information about the default keyboard map, etc., you can change with NCSA or Clarkson Telnet, you must network configuration of your machine them. Any changes you make will affect type the name of the executable file that and default settings for the Telnet soft- all sessions that do not have a specific starts the telnet software followed by the ware. Many of these parameters were prob- entry in your config.tel file. full domain name or IP address of the re- ably preset by your network administra- Following the default settings for tel- mote host (e.g., telbin uxl.cso.uiuc.edu). tor (or whoever installed the software), net, you should see several other machine-
Additionally, the screen colors, keyboard and it's generally best not to fuss with specific entries in your config.tel file. mappings, scrollback settings, echo mode, them if your software is working prop- Remember, each machine-specific entry and other parameters will be the same for erly. Somewhere toward the middle of the begins with the line name=value where every session. You can simplify the login file, however, you should see groups of value is replaced with a descriptive name process and customize the parameters that lines with each group headed by a line for the system. The parameters following govern the sessions with specific hosts by beginning with the keyword "name" (e.g., the keyword name may be on separate modifying the telnet configuration file called name=uxl) Each of these groups de- lines, or they may be on the same line, each config.tel. scribes the parameters to be used when separated from the next by a semi-colon, The config.tel file is a plain text file that communicating with a specific machine colon, or space. In addition to the systems
contains the default settings used by the on the network and the keyword name is already specified in your config.tel file, Telnet software. The format of the file is used as a delimiter to separate one ma- you can add entries for the machines you quite straightforward. Lines that contain chine-specific entry from the next (as well access on a regular basis. The example in
a parameter name followed by an equal as to provide a short, descriptive name for Table 1 shows three machine-specific en- sign and a value (in the form keyword= each system, which can be used in lieu of tries in a config.tel file (with comments)
value) are read and used by the Telnet its IP address or domain name). Gener- one for accessing the on-line library sys- software (and related utilities) when open- ally, the first name entry begins with the tem (beginning with name=library), one ing a session and communicating with a text name=default. This entry contains for accessing the CCSO Unix machine uxl remote host. The meaning of each param- the default values used for any session (continued on page 14) 14 Dec. 1992 -Jan. 1993 rarest
Customizing Telnet... Table 2: A Partial List of Machine Specific Parameters for the Config.tel File
mtinued from vase !
Parameter Description
(beginning with name=uxl) , and one for name= value User-assigned name for system. Replace value with a short accessing the CCSO IBM mainframe VMD name you can remember easily. (beginning with name=vmd). host=/«//t/. qualified, domain, name The domain name for the system you want to reach. Replace Once you have added machine-specific fully. qualified. domain. name with the actual domain name of entries to your config.tel file, you can ac- the host you want to contact. If you want to designate a port cess these systems by typing the name of number as well, separate it from the domain name with a your telnet executable file followed by the colon and surround the entire value with double quotation marks (e.g. host="garcon.cso.uiuc.edu:625"). value entered for the name of the entry.
For example, to open a session with the i , • ii ii ii ii ii ii iiiiii ii ii II TlOSTip — TTTT TT . ff Tt TT .TTTT TT . TTTTTT The IP address of the host you want to contact. If the IP library, you could type: telbin library. The address is not included, telnet will contact one of the Telnet software will look in your config.tel nameservers listed in your config.tel file to resolve the domain name given with the host parameter. Including the file for an entry with the name library and IP address will generally speed up the time it takes to con- use the parameters specified after nect to the specified host. name=library until it encounters the next name=»fl/M« entry in the file—in the case erase=(backspace or delete) Determines the function of the backspace key for the session. Some hosts prefer the backspace key to be delete and others of our example, name=uxl. Note that the prefer the backspace key to be backspace. Set this parameter entry for VMD only contains values for to erase=backspace or erase=delete. name, host, and keymap. When param- eters are not specified in an entry, the scro!lback= m/mmc value Determines the number of lines that can be viewed in scrollback mode. Scrollback per line saved. values defined in the entry name=default uses 86 bytes Set your scrollback value to a small number if you are con- will prevail. Thus a machine-specific en- cerned about running out of memory. The typical range is try can be very brief, containing only val- 100 to 200 (e.g., scrollback=200). ues for the keywords name and host or hostip; or the entry can be quite extensive, The following parameters set the screen colors for the ses- containing custom values for every pos- sion. Possible colors are black, green, blue, magenta, cyan, sible parameter. red, yellow, and white. When typed in upper case, fore- You can add as many machine specific ground colors will appear in high-intensity and background colors will blink. entries to your config.tel file as you like.
Most users find it convenient to add the nfcolor=co/or normal foreground color names of systems that they access regu- nbcolor=ro/or normal background color larly via telnet or ftp. A list and descrip- rfcolor=co/or reverse foreground color tion of some of the parameters that you can rbcolor=a>/or reverse background color ufcolor=co/or underline foreground color include in each entry are given in Table 2. ubcolor=co/or underline background color The list is taken from the config.tel param- eters for Clarkson Telnet (CUTCP) version copyfrom=™me Causes the session to use the same parameters specified in
file. example, 2.2D. If you use NCSA Telnet 2.3, you will another named session in the config.tel For copyfrom=uxl would cause the current entry to use the notice some slight differences in the way same parameters as those specified for the session named certain parameters are handled. Consult uxl unless alternative parameters were explicitly designated. the user's manual for the complete list of machine-specific parameters for each ap- keymap=filename.tbl Uses the custom keyboard mapping as specified by the value entered for Clarkson Telnet provides the user plication. filename.tbl. with a default keymap for vtlOO sessions and a 3270 keymap for tn3270 sessions. The user can create additional custom Editing the Config.tel File keyboard mappings and associate them with a particular The config.tel file can be edited with a session by using this parameter. Otherwise default.tbl will be used for sessions using vtlOO emulation and tn3270.tbl for plain text editor or word processor. If you sessions using 3270 emulation. use a word processor such as WordPerfect or Microsoft Word, you must export the edited file to ASCII format when saving config.old or some other unique name Do not modify or delete any line in the your changes, in order to remove any ap- (do not use the name config.bak be- config.tel file if you are uncertain about plication-specific codes that may have been cause your text editor may use it as a its function. added to the file by your word processor. default backup name, and you could Here are some additional pointers to keep potentially overwrite your original In the machine-specific section of the in mind when editing the file: during the editing process). Taking this file you are likely to encounter entries precaution will enable you to resurrect with parameters such as nameserver=# • Before editing any line in your your original telnet configuration in and gateway=#. These entries have config.tel file, be sure to make a copy of the event that your modifications probably been preconfigured by the the original file with a name like cause Telnet to malfunction. (continued on page 15) maw Dec. 1992 -Jan. 1993 15
Navigating and Using the Internet: A Hands-on Course with a Heart
CAMPUS NEWS information services—are not always easy tronic mail, and other basic network tools to understand and/or access. such as telnet and ftp will be covered in A thread that runs throughout the detail. Students will also have the oppor- MM course is the rather gray area of what con- tunity to investigate more specialized ap- stitutes acceptable and unacceptable be- plications, such as Gopher, the World-Wide Anew course will be offered through havior on the Internet. For spoken com- Web (WWW—a hypertext application the Graduate School of Library munication and the printed word, there used for locating and accessing informa- and Information Science this are both well-defined social rules for inter- tion on the Internet), WAIS, Archie, and spring: LIS450CC, Advanced Problems action and a body of law to deal with Hytelnet (a hypertext application for fa- in Librarianship—Telecommunications. transgressions. In the datasphere, how- cilitating telnet sessions with on-line li- The course combines the learning of real- ever, few laws exist and the norms of con- brary catalogs and information servers). world skills for navigating the Internet duct are still being formed. A class session Throughout, the focus is on using net- with a survey of the major uses of and will be devoted to topics such as the Morris work-based resources to extend each issues related to the Internet. Professor Internet Worm and the West German student's personal and professional infor- Greg Newby will teach the course. Newby, hacker who was caught by Cliff Stoll. mation resources. Students will be encour- who presented a similar course at Syra- These and other examples will lead to aged to identify ftp sites, databases, or cuse University, also hopes to offer discussions about how the end-user can mailing lists and newsgroups containing LIS450CC to students at remote networked better recognize and be prepared to deal information pertinent to them. They will sites through UIUC's extramural program with situations requiring ethical judgment also be encouraged to interact with their in the fall of '93. within a networked environment peers or experts in various fields by using Professor Newby's course will concen- During the first seven sessions, stu- network tools, and to consider the elec- trate on computer networking as a me- dents will spend about half of each class in tronic dissemination of their thoughts, find- dium for human communication. Famil- a computer lab acquiring hands-on experi- ings, and papers. iar forms of human communication—the ence. The Unix operating system, elec- The balance of the course is a survey of telephone, postal service, and face-to-face various perspectives on computer net- interaction—will be compared and con- working. First, a foundation in human trasted with networked communication. communication theory and practice will Computer networking shares qualities be laid, and, from there, various aspects of with traditional communications media, computer networking will be addressed. but also has important differences. The The history of networking and many types norms and standards of networked com- of computer networks and protocols for munication are not yet well established, data transfer will be treated in detail. Cor- and the channels of communication—for porate communication, information stor- example, ftp, mailing lists, and various age and retrieval services, and public ac- cess to networked services will also be covered. Finally, the course will address Even if you do not have a copy of the Customizing Telnet... questions about the future of computer entire Telnet user's guide, have the sec- (continued from page 14) networking—e.g., how NREN (the Na- tion pertaining to the config.tel file on tional Research and Education Network) person who installed your telnet soft- hand for reference as you make your and an increased network presence in li- ware and should not be changed unless changes. braries and K-l 2 schools might change the you are certain that they are incorrect. users and uses of Internet. The nameserver entries instruct telnet Finally, editing a config.tel file for the LIS450CC will meet on Mondays from to ask specific machines on the campus first time can be a little intimidating. If 12:00-3:00 p.m. during the spring semes- net to translate domain names into IP you are uncertain about what you are ter. Non-LIS grad students and auditors addresses. The gateway entry specifies doing, your building network adminis- are invited to attend, space permitting. the address of the machine that con- trator can probably provide some assis- Many of the readings for the course as nects your building network to the cam- tance. Additionally, the CCSO micro- well as the syllabus may be obtained via pus backbone. computer consultants are well-versed anonymous ftp from the host on Clarkson and NCSA Telnet and can gpx.lis.uiuc.edu. These materials are lo- If a comment wraps around to a second be reached at 244-0608. cated in the directory pub/netinfo. Spe- or third line, be sure that each line be- - Li/ nn Ward cific questions about the course can be gins with a pound sign (#). directed to [email protected]. - t
( Computing & Communications j
i Sendees Office 1120 DCL Campus MC 256 1304 W.Springfield Ave.
Urbana.IL 61 801
SCIENCE 306klfKflSttLIBRARY CAMPUS MC-522
Gopher Clients... text files. Thus, file transfers are extremely For More Information (continued from page 10) limited and archie queries produce unpre- For the most up-to-date information dictable results. Also, occasionally binary about gopher and the gopher software The general syntax of the line should files (such as GIF files) are misconstrued as distribution, browse the documents and be: text files and PC Gopher II tries to display the Gopher Software Distribution menu them. Additionally, the memory con- under the Information about Gopher set g_te\=c:\telnet_directory\ telnet_dpp -h straints of PC Gopher II prevent it from menu on UIUC's main gopher server. c:\telnet_directory\ config.tel %%a %%p displaying the complete text of even mod- -Lynn Ward erately sized files. Such files must be saved where telnetjiirectory is replaced by the to disk and read or printed with a text name of the directory in which your telnet editor or word processor. Hopefully, many program is stored and telnetjipp is the of these problems will be ironed out in the name of your telnet program's main ex- next incarnation of this DOS client. In the About UlUCnet ecutable file (e.g., telbin.exe, tn.exe, etc.) meantime, if you have a Unix account, you UlUCnet provides timely informa-
When telnet is invoked by PC Gopher II, may prefer to use the Unix curses client tion about the campus network. It is the parameters %a and %p are replaced instead. published by the Computing Services with the IP address and port information Office and is edited by Lynn Ward. provided by the gopher server (if you type CMS Gopher 22.0 Comments and suggestions for topics the set command at the DOS command CMS Gopher 2.2.0 is quirky, to say the are welcome. Permission to reprint all prompt instead of including it in a batch least. On the one hand, it recognizes and or part of UlUCnet for non-profit pur- file, use a single percent sign in front of the displays the names of almost all object poses is granted, provided full a and p parameters [e.g., %a %p]). When types. However, it can only display and acknowledgement of the source is using PC Gopher II in conjunction with transfer plain text files. To save a text file, given. Feel free to reach us via elec-
Clarkson and NCSA telnet, it may be nec- the file must first be loaded into the XEDIT tronic mail ([email protected]), cam- essary to surround the % %a % %p param- editor (there is no save command in go- pus or U.S. mail (UlUCnet, Comput- eters with double quotes in order for telnet pher itself). Although the client supports ing Services Office, 1120 Digital Com- to properly recognize a port number. For ph and archie searches, with a few rare puter Laboratory, MC 256, 1304 W. example, the g_tel variable in my exceptions index searches fail and return Springfield Ave., Urbana, IL 61 801 ), or autoexec.bat file looks like this: an error message. The most ironic short- by phone at (217) 244-0681. coming of this client developed for IBM For a free subscription, just send set g_tel=c:\telnet\telbin.exe -h c:\telnet\ mainframes is that, while it can launch us your name and (preferably cam- config.tel "%%a %%p" telnet sessions and communicate clum- pus) address; be sure to include your
sily with Unix hosts, it does not support department and mail code if you send
PC Gopher II is a memory hog and does tn3270 sessions with other IBM main- a campus address. UlUCnet is also not support or display tn3270 sessions, so frames. An attempt to launch such a ses- available in electronic form. Recent there is no reason to use the larger applica- sion will result in the error message "Can' issues are posted to the Netnews news- tion tn3270.exe as the telnet program file. process this file type." A new version of group uiuc.pubs.uiucnet. Back issues There is still much work to be done CMS Gopher is available, but as of this are available for download from the before PC Gopher II can compete with the writing, has not been installed on VMD. anonymous ftp host ftp.cso.uiuc.edu clients mentioned above. This client only Perhaps some of the oddities just noted in the directory doc/net/uiucnet and recognizes, displays, and transfers ASCII are corrected in release 2.3. from the UIUC Gopher server. UX1 LSX A Publication of the Computing and Communications Services Office
*r~? ^?S~7S~~P ^7 ON»V OF M-U
M*R 2 6 1993 UBRAr wj \y \^y \^/ UBLIB SCI LWW
The University of Illinois Campus Network
Vol. 6 No. 2 Feb. -Mar. 1993
Icon Key
Audience Free-Nets: Letting the Network Out and Novices the Community In Experienced users
sociated with an institution that has Inter- MISCELLANEA net connectivity (or wealthy enough to Network Administrators pay for their own connection). Fortunately, MM this situation will change in the very near future. Members of the UIUC Graduate
is a certain irony about being a School of Library and Information Science AISS clients There member of the Internet commu- are spearheading a movement to establish nity. With a few keystrokes, you a Free-Net in Champaign-Urbana. can deliver a message to a friend or col- Everyone league halfway across the globe; but send- What is a Free-Net? ing electronic mail to a neighbor equipped A Free-Net is a community owned and with a computer and modem may be im- operated online information system, avail- Platform/Operating System possible, unless he or she happens to be a able free of charge to anyone with access to student or employee of the University. In a computer and modem. The Free-Net the fall of '92, anyone on the Internet could concept originated with Dr. Tom Grudner, ras download or read online the speeches and formerly a staff member of the Department PC compatibles (DOS™) position papers of U.S. presidential candi- of Family Medicine at Case Western Re-
dates Bill Clinton and George Bush, but to serve University. In 1 984 Grudner set up a obtain comparable information on seekers small electronic bulletin board to allow of local and state offices we were forced to health professionals to answer questions Macintosh™ turn to more traditional media. And, and deliver general health information to
even when information of local interest is the public. The project
available on the Net, it may not be acces- was so successful sible to the audience who could most that—with the fi- X Window System™ a benefit from it. For example, students nancial backing and staff at the University of Nottingham, of AT&T, the UK (and hundreds of other sites around Ohio Bell Tele- the world), can read the enthusiastic en- phone Com- NeXT™ n dorsement of an Urbana veterinarian or pany, and Uni- scan the spring schedule of the Krannert versity Hospi- CCSO'S IBM™ Center for the Performing Arts by linking VMD to the UIUC Gopher server. Yet, well mainframe, VMD over half the population of Champaign county is unable to make use of this valu- UNIX™ mainframes able resource. Simply put, the numerous m and workstations resources on the Inter- net are currently only available to commu- f^n nity members fortu- ImU Any platform nate enough to be as-
(continued on page 2) 3
Feb. -Mar. 1993
time" friendship with someone across town Free-Nets... • Internet Connectivity. Most Free-Nets who knows the best local fishing holes. tinned from page 1 1 are affiliated in some way with a college or BBS into a comprehensive multi-user com- university. If the Free-Net system is con- • Moderated Discussion Groups and munity information service known today nected to the campus network and the Sponsored Information Areas. Free-Nets as the Cleveland Free-Net. The first ver- campus network is connected to the Inter- are first and foremost community infor- sion of the Cleveland Free-Net opened its net, standard TCP/IP applications (telnet, mation systems. The success of the system ten dial-up ports to the public in 1986, and, ftp, etc.) may be available. It is also pos- often rests on the willingness of local pro- like its progenitor, provided a venue for sible to install other popular network ap- fessionals and organizations to sponsor lay people to get information and advice plications such as Gopher, HYTELNET information areas. For example, local doc- from professionals in the Cleveland area. (an application for accessing remote data- tors, lawyers, auto-mechanics, accountants, Seven years and several incarnations later, bases and library catalogs), and WAIS. agronomists, etc. could upload electronic the system now boasts over 350 separate These services are, of course, especially brochures and fact sheets and/or answer information and communications features beneficial to community members who specific questions posed by users (Q&A (including many Internet services) and wouldn't otherwise have access to them services normally take the form of moder- handles up to 12,000 logins per day. ated newsgroups); the minutes of city coun- • Electronic mail. Any registered user In 1989,Grudner founded the National cil or school board meetings could be Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN), can exchange e-mail with any other user posted by a committee member; govern- on the system. If the Free-Net has Internet a non-profit agency dedicated to helping ment officials could interact electronically connectivity, users can send mail to other communities develop Free-Nets and and with their constituency. The possibilities delivering high-quality network broadcast- receive mail from anyone on the Internet for distributing information both rapidly and possibly other networks such as BIT- ing services (called cybercasts) to NPTN and creatively are almost limitless. NET, CompuServe, GEnie, etc. affiliates. There are now at least 11 active • Free-Nets scattered throughout the U.S. Cybercasting Services. Through a spe- • Usenet Network News. The FreePort Canada, and New Zealand with many cial arrangement with American Cyber- software with comes bundled Network casting Corporation, all more scheduled to come online this year, NPTN provides News server (NNTP) software, the Net- including Prairienet, the Champaign-Ur- affiliates with cybercasting services, high- news transport software C-NEWS, and a bana Free-Net. quality information features on a variety simple, menu-driven news reader. Thus, of subjects. The multi-faceted Teledemo- all users can read and contribute to a selec- cracy Project, for example, provides users What Can I Find on a Free-Net? tion of world-wide Usenet newsgroups. with 1 ) the full-text of Supreme Court De- Every Free-Net has its own personality, cisions, 2) a weekly summary of three U.S. reflecting the interests and dedication of • Special Interest Groups. Special Inter- est Groups, or SIGs, are unmoderated dis- Senate and three House bills with infor- the community that supports it, but there representatives cussion groups on topics of local interest. mation on how voted on are common characteristics among the sys- Any registered user can ask the Free-Net each measure, 3) a congressional contact tems. First, most Free-Nets use one of two system administrator to create a SIG. SIGs file with the names, addresses, phone num- commercially available software packages, bers, look and behave like Usenet newsgroups, and committee assignments of feder- Freeport or Community Information Exchange but they are not exported to other Usenet ally-elected officials, and 4) occasional (CIX). Both products run on Unix systems short-term features as the Campaign sites, so most or all participants are geo- such and offer a user-friendly front end to many '92 information service. Besides free graphically proximate to one another. It different kinds of services. The Free-Net can be fun to interact with a fellow angler cybercasting services, fee-based subscrip- interface uses the metaphor of an elec- tions to electronic services, journals, from Cambridge via the alt.fishing Usenet news tronic city. Each item on the main menu newsgroup; but a Free-Net Fishing SIG and magazines can be made available to takes the user to a different location in the offers the possibility of establishing a "real- ALL registered Free-Net users (in which city, and each location offers different ser- case, the Free-Net picks up the tab), or to a vices (see Figure 1). For example, the Post select group of subscribers who are billed Office is a place to send, receive, and man- CLEVELAND FREE-NET DIRECTORY >» periodically. age electronic mail. The Library may offer «< access to local and distant electronic li- 1 The Administration Building • K-12 Educational and Recreational 2 The Post Office brary catalogs as well as electronic books 3 Public Square Programming. Free-Nets provide com- 4 The Courthouse & Government Center and newspapers. Users can go to the Pub- munity youths with the opportunity to 5 The Arts Building lic Square to engage in real-time interac- 6 Science and Technology Center explore the vast potential of telecomputing. 7 The Medical Arts Building tive conversations with other system users 8 The Schoolhouse (Academy One) NPTN's Academy One cybercasts offer or vote on community issues. Free-Net 9 The Community Center & Recreation Area programs for students, parents, educators 10 The Business and Industrial Park menus can be totally customized, so ulti- 11 The Library and school administrators. Interactive 12 University Circle mately it is up to the system administrator programs such as simulated spaces 1 The Teleport to design an electronic city that guides the 14 The Communications Center shuttles, journeys to "virtual worlds," and 15 NPTN/USA TODAY HEADLINE NEWS user intuitively to the specific services avail- the "TeleOlympics" use Free-Net's elec- able on the system. h=Help, x=Exit Free-Net, "go help"=extended help tronic mail and conferencing features to Even though services vary from system allow participants to interact with one an- to system, most Free-Nets offer a set of Figure 1: The Cleveland Free-Net main menu; other and coordinate these world-wide core services. These include: electronic city. an (continued on page 3) Feb. -Mar. 1993 3
will seek to engage community members and Free-Nets... funding (and other types of support) to organizations in the creation and maintenance acquire basic hardware (a dedicated, mid- ; anted from page 2) of the various information and activity areas to range Unix workstation; 32 phone lines, be found there. events. The NPTN Student News Net- modems, and a terminal server; and a col- work distributes electronic versions of lection of terminals and modems to be placed school newspapers. Academy One's Daily at public access sites) and to hire a full-time Volunteers Welcome Report Card is an eight page briefing for director and half-time systems administra- Prairienet offers the Champaign-Urbana educators on "America's progress toward tor. The Prairienet director would ulti- area an opportunity to break down the com- better schools." A special NPTN news- mately be responsible for fund-raising, pub- munication barriers between the "have nets" group called the Educator Contact File lic-relations, and enlisting the aid of local and the "have nots." University staff and facilitates communication among teachers information providers (professionals and students, who already have Internet access, who are interested in coordinating organizations) to sponsor community-based can take advantage of Prairienef s commu- telecomputing projects. A special area of information areas on the system. A number nity-oriented services. In addition to commu- the net might also be reserved for teen or of UIUC departments interested in using nity information services, community mem- youth SIGs and other recreational services. Prairienet to disseminate information have bers will also have free access to Internet appli-
These are just a few of the many items already pledged sponsorship if matching cations, making it possible for them to com- you'll encounter on a Free-Net. To really funds can be raised in the community. municate electronically with people at the get a feel for what a Free-Net is like, try In its start-up phase, Prairienet will offer University or anywhere on the Internet. logging in to a remote Free-Net as a guest Champaign-Urbana residents services such If you are interested in volunteering time, with telnet. See the table on this page for as electronic mail, a large Usenet news feed, money, or expertise (perhaps you'd like to a list of Free-Nets (including the C-U pro- Special Interest Groups, community informa- sponsor an information area) to Prairienet, totype) , their domain names, and guest tion services, and links to various Internet send an e-mail message describing your inten- login IDs. facilities. The system will support 30-40 simul- tions to [email protected] or paper mail to taneous sessions and roughly 2000 registered Greg Newby, 410 DKH, MC 707, 1407 W. Who Pays for Free-Net Services? users. Subsequent phases of the project in- Gregory Dr., Urbana, IL 61801. Also, old Although there is no charge to get a regis- volve the expansion of hardware, information terminals, obsolete PCs, and slow modems tered accounton a Free-Net, monies are needed services, user capacity, and staff. can make fine public access terminal equip- to purchase core equipment (a multi-user Prairienet will be initially housed on cam- ment. If you own computer equipment server, phone lines, modems, etc. ) and the staff pus and will make use of existing campus (privately, not University inventory) that to run it. Also, in order for the Free-Net to computing services rather than duplicating no longer serves your needs, this too can be become a viable community resource, there is them. From the start, though, Prairienet will donated to the Prairienet cause. the additional cost of providing public access have a focus on community information and - Lynn Ward terminals in schools, libraries, and other places where people gather. Like public television and radio, Free-Nets rely heavily on corporate A Partial List of Free-Nets endowments and private donations. Regular users, for example, may be asked to contribute Name / Location Domain Name Login / Password annual, but strictly voluntary, dues.
Prairienet (prototype) gpx.lis.uiuc.edu visitor / guest About Prairienet: the C-U Free-Net Champaign-Urbana, IL TheChampaign-Urbana Free-Net project, dubbed Prairienet, has been under way for Heartland Free-Net heartland.bradley.edu bbguest roughly a year. Actively involved are mem- Peoria, IL bers of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (Greg Newby, Ann Youngstown Free-Net yfn.ysu.edu visitor Youngstown, Bishop, Leigh Estabrook, and Marie Erdman) OH as well as Mike Gardner of CCSO, David Lorain County Free-Net freenet.lorain.oberlin.edu guest Micko (former GSLIS student), and Cham- Elyria, OH paign resident Greg Smith. Greg Newby has drawn up a two-year Cleveland Free-Net hela.ins.cwru.edu visitor implementation plan, and although things are Cleveland, OH slightly behind schedule, real progress has been made. Free-Net presentations and demos Denver Free-Net freenet.hsc.colorado.edu guest Denver, have been given at community and school CO libraries. Tom Grudner of NPTN arranged for Tallahassee Free-Net freenet.fsu.edu visitor an Ameritech grant to cover cost the of the Tallahassee, FL Free-Port software for Prairienet. Newby and
Erdman installed the software on Newb/s Victoria Free-Net freenet. victoria, be. ca guest Unix workstation and have set up a working Victoria, B.C., Canada prototype. In order to go public with the system, the National Capital Free-Net freenet.carleton.ca guest organizing committee is actively soliciting Ottawa, Canada Eudora 1.3 Released Supports Terminal Server Login
where name is the either the first name, CLIENTS FOR CLIENTS est" to "lowest" to any message. For outgoing messages, the priority will not last name or login name of the person affect the speed with which your mes- you want to look up. For example, suppose you have a friend named Mar- M 13 sage is delivered, but it will let the re- cipient know how important you think garet who has an account on uxa, but early February, Steve Dorner put the the message is. Assigning priorities to you can' t remember exactly how to spell finishing touches on the long-awaited In incoming messages can serve to remind her last name and you don' t know her e- official Eudora 1.3 for the release of you about the relative urgency of mes- mail address. You could open a Ph Macintosh. Besides offering many new sages in a given mailbox window. Spe- window in Eudora and enter the fol- features that improve the overall function- cial priorities on incoming messages lowing information in the query box: software, this release should be ality of the are displayed in the Icon Bar of open [email protected]. Next click of special interest to modem users because messages and the Status column of on the Finger button. The finger server it supports the new login procedure for the mailbox windows. on uxa will return the names of every CCSO terminal servers. user on uxa whose real name contains
If you can't see message priorities in the the string "margaret". The output will in 1.3 New Features Eudora Status column, try another new 1.3 fea- look something like this: of the improvements in Eudora Many ture, Draggable Mailbox Column Di- direct response to end- 1 .3 came about as a viders. Place the mouse pointer on any user feedback. A file called 1.3Changes, Login name: margieS In real life: landers margaret m column divider and drag it to the right available with the software distribution, Shell: /bin/csh to expand the width of the column or to Directory: /srudents/homel/margie8 briefly describes all the features that have Last login Wed Dec 9 19:30 on ttysR from or-macCW the left to shrink it. The default width of since the last official been implemented the Status column does not display No Plan. release, Eudora 1 .2.2. Several of the more message priorities, but by dragging it to enticing options are highlighted be- In real life: Margaret Sarkissian new the right, priority icons will appear just Login name: msgl407 low: /students/homel/msgl407 Shell: /bin/csh to the right of the status indicator. Directory: Last login Fri Feb 12 05:49 on ttyqZ from mossberg
• Subject Editing. Have you ever re- No Plan. • Make Nickname Command. With the blank ceived an e-mail message with a previous version of Eudora, creating
Subject: field in the mes- In real life: Margaret D. Ford or ambiguous nicknames required either entering both Login name: mdf31042 header? If you save the message in /students/home0/mdf31042 Shell: /bin/csh sage the nickname and full e-mail address Directory:
it be diffi- in. one of your mailboxes, may manually or doing some creative copy- Never logged it about cult to remember what was ing and pasting. The Make Nickname No Plan, opening the message. without actually command under the Special menu can etc. edit the sub- Eudora 1.3 allows you to create nicknames automatically from ject of any incoming message. To use the addresses in the To:, Cc:, and Bcc: If the person you were looking for was this feature, turn on the Icon Bar with fields of selected outgoing messages, or Margaret Sarkissian, you could send the Switches... option under the Spe- the From: field of incoming messages. her mail by placing her login name, cial menu. the Icon Bar is on, you When You can also select multiple nicknames "msgl407", before "@uxa.cso.uiuc can enter/edit any text in the Subject: from the Nicknames window to create .edu", i.e., [email protected] . field that appears above the double line a group nickname with this option. of an open message. Editing the subject • Reply All Switch. Eudora can now be in this manner does not change the con- • Finger Client. The Ph option under the configured so that it will reply to all tents of the original message header, Special menu now includes a finger cli- recipients of a message by default. Pre- but it does change the subject line in the ent. Finger is a utility that produces vious versions of Eudora addressed re- mailbox window. detailed information about a user ac- plies to the sender only, unless the op-
count. It is especially useful when you tion key was depressed when making • Message Priorities. You can assign a know someone has an account on a the reply. The Reply All switch is found priority to both outgoing and incoming particular machine, but his/her e-mail in the Switches. . . option under the Spe- messages. Like subject editing, this func- address is not listed in the CCSO cial menu. Another switch called In- tion is only active when the Icon Bar is Nameserver. The syntax for a finger clude Self will add your name to the list turned on. Clicking on the small box in search is: of recipients when Reply All is turned the left hand corner of the Icon Bar on. opens a pull-down menu that lets you [email protected] page assign one of five priorities from "high- (continued on 12) UTO* Feb. -Mar. 1993 5
Ethernet Addresses:
Six Little Numbers That Could Save Your Network
ADMINISTRIVIA network, it's just like people sending pack- meaningless packets. No other node can ages of information to each other along the get a word in edgewise. Your phone starts
street. In order for a package to get to the ringing off the hook and your pager is right house, the correct address must be beeping mercilessly with messages from
used. Each machine on the network is unhappy users. Your packet sniffer helps
Administrivia is a //ere UlUCnet column con- identified to the rest of the network by its you determine that a card with the address tributed by David Ruby, network consultant unique Ethernet address, just as the ad- of 00 00 CO Al 03 ID is having a nervous for CCSO's User Services group. While nil are dress on a house is what identifies it to breakdown and needs to be turned off. invited to read the column, it is specifically whomever is walking down the street. If Right about now, you realize that you directed toward the often overworked and un- your network is healthy, you'll rarely have don't have a clue about the location of the derpaid people who keep our packets flowing— to deal with things at the network address machine with the address of 00 00 CO Al 03 departmental and building network adminis- level, but when something goes wrong, ID. Having a list of which cards are where trators. those numbers could be your lifeline. could save the day, which returns us to our theme: "document your network!" row do you keep track of where Sniffing Packets A network crisis doesn't have to be as I I everything is on your network?" If you don't have one yet, purchase or dramatic as the whole building network JL JLsomebody once asked me. This download a packet sniffer. Packet sniffers shutting down. A commonplace problem simple question can give even the best are programs that capture the packets fly- is a "stolen IP address." If you have a network administrator the shakes. The ing by on your network. They don't inter- building full of people telnetting and ftping, best way to keep track of where things are fere with the packets—they just copy them you're probably aware of the need to keep on a network is to maintain an organized down so you can actually see the traffic on IP numbers unique. If two people try to written log or a database of important your network. Much of what you'll see is use the same number simultaneously, nei- network information. But often networks just numbers and other data that are only ther one of them will be able to telnet or ftp. start out small. You don't start with a meaningful to your Ethernet cards. How- This is a particularly annoying problem network of 400 nodes, you build up to it. ever, each packet will have a few bits of because it's usually a case of an error in a Who needs to document anything when information that will always be useful. configuration file, so nobody knows they're your network is made up of three worksta- There will be a destination address and a stealing someone else's number. It's also a tions and a printer, right? Unfortunately, source address. There also will be a few difficult problem to track down because it all that wonderful "free time" you had numbers that specify the protocol in use. If only occurs when both people are trying to before your baby network grew into a you're trying to see what happens when telnet at the same time. If one user works monster is used up with learning things you send information to a network printer, in the morning and the other in the after- like how to make the network work, and you could watch all the packets that have noon, you'll never hear about it until the not in organizing. Most net admins don't the printer as the destination address with one weekend they both come in to catch up have time to think about documenting the your sniffer. If you're trying to figure out on their work. By capturing all the packets network until after it's almost finished. If why telnet is slow, you'd want to watch all with the IP number in question with your you're really lucky, the network gives you the packets that are using the TCP or IP packet sniffer, you can isolate the Ethernet a few days to look at your creation before protocol. Of course, to make anything of addresses of the competing machines. If it comes crashing down. I'm going to try to all this information, you'll need a list of the you have a list of where each address is pass on a few things you can do during physical location of every node on your physically located, this problem can be those mythical no-network-problems days network along with the Ethernet address corrected very quickly. that will make those all too familiar net- of each node. work-problem days a little less traumatic. To demonstrate the usefulness of packet Documenting Ethernet Addresses One of the many important pieces of sniffers, let's suppose you have a building The easiest way to document an Ether- information you should keep about your full of Macs and PCs with Ethernet cards. net address is to write down the address building-wide network (or even a small Users happily telnet out of the building, before you install the card into a computer. departmental LAN) is the Ethernet ad- connecting to various servers on and off On most Ethernet cards, the address is dress of each node. An Ethernet address is campus. All in all, the network is a fully marked on the card. Often the address is a unique combination of six hexadecimal functional roadway to the world and on a sticker on a chip, but it also can be numbers, which is encoded into the firm- people are happy. Then, something goes printed on the board itself. Unfortunately, ware of every Ethernet card. What's so horribly wrong. An Ethernet card some- it's not marked on the part of the card you important about this number? Pretend where on the net has fried a chip and won't can see once it's inside the machine. To your network is a street, and the nodes are shut up. It seems to be stuck in the trans- find out the address of a card that has houses. When nodes send packets to the mit mode and is flooding the network with (continued on page 6) —
Feb. -Mar. 1993
Ethernet Addresses... NetJTools directory at ftp.cayman.com. is given a certain prefix (or set of prefixes Also, some commercial packet sniffer pack- depending on how many cards they've (continued from page 5) ages include programs that will collect made), which makes up the beginning of already been installed, you may have to some Mac information (like chooser name, the address. In my example, 00 00 CO tells open the machine, and take the card out or the name of the hard drive, and the type us that Western Digital made the card and, hardly something efficient to do during a of Mac in use) along with the network therefore, it's a PC card as opposed to a building-wide crisis. One simple sugges- address. In a limited area, you could de- Mac card (since Western Digital doesn't tion, which may save many headaches termine the network address of each ma- manufacture Ethernet cards for Macs). A later, is to record the address in permanent chine by using this tool alone, but it's still semi-current listing of these prefixes can marker on the part of the card that shows a good idea to go and verify the addresses be found in RFC 1340, a document that once it's installed. If space is limited, try to yourself. provides various types of Internet address get the last three numbers written on the information. (RFC 1340 can be retrieved outside of the card (the first three numbers More about Ethernet Addresses via anonymous ftp from uxc.cso.uiuc.edu. aren't as important, a point we'll get into Let me conclude by providing a little This document is located in the RFC direc- later). Note that labeling the machine itself background on Ethernet addresses. First, tory and has the filename 1340.) You can isn't necessarily helpful. You can move the numbers in an address are in hexadeci- usually figure out the first three numbers Ethernet cards from machine to machine, mal (base 16) notation. The value in each of an Ethernet address by knowing which so unless you're careful, there is no guar- column can range from through 15; thus, company has which prefix. This is why antee that the same card will be in the same we need sixteen different symbols. The recording the last three numbers is more computer the next time you need to know first ten digits use the traditional decimal important if you only have room to write its address. Along the same lines, if you do symbols 0-9. For the six additional digits, down half of the address on the card itself. move an Ethernet card from one machine the letters A through Fare used (i.e., A=10, The only problem is that the list of Ethernet to another, remember to update your net- B=ll, C=12, and so on). The hexadecimal prefixes is always behind the times. In work log or database. number OF equals 15 in decimal. AF is 175 short, there is no substitute for keeping a
What do you do if you have a few ((10xl6)+15) in decimal. It's important not written or electronic log of critical network hundred machines with cards in them al- to ignore the letters when you write down information. ready? Do you have to open them all up? an Ethernet address because they are as - David Ruby (Note: If you have ques- Well, no. There is plenty of software that much a part of the address as the numbers. tions about packet sniffers or other techni- can help you here. On a PC, you can use The first three numbers (00 00 CO in my cal aspects of this article, contact Dave the diagnostic software that came with the earlier example) indicate who made the Ruby via e-mail at the address card. The diagnostic software will typi- card. Every manufacturer of Ethernet cards [email protected].) cally give you the Ethernet number as well as information like the card's hardware interrupt, base RAM address, base I/O address, and even the slot you put it in (if it's a micro-channel or EISA machine), all of which can be very useful for trouble- shooting later. If you use packet drivers on Network Design Update your PCs, you can also find out an Ether- UIUCNET NETWORK INSTALLATION NETWORK DESIGN net address by watching the driver as it NEW BACKBONE CONNECTIONS: (since 9/92) IN PROGRESS: IN PROGRESS: loads. When the packet driver software is 909 S. 6th - Div. of Mgmt. Info. Allerton House 911S.6th-AISS executed, the address of the card is echoed Architecture BMRL/Collegeof Medicine Assembly Hall to the screen. Coble Hall - Graduate College Center for Advanced Studies Campus Bookstore English - LAS Development Offfice Ceramics Bldg. Finding the Ethernet address for a Mac Coordinated Science Lab DCL - Workstation Lab ISR Residence Halls Chemical and Life Sciences Bldg. is easy if you are using a recent version of EASB - National Soybean Research Lab McKinley - Counseling Center Davenport Hall- Geography Engineering Library MacTCP. Go to the MacTCP module in EERL - University Police Sheffield Vivarium Grainger Flagg Hall University High School Illini Hall - Math control panel. that you've got your Notice Geological Survey Lab Illini Union two or three choices of networks Harker Hall - Ul Foundation NETWORK INSTALLATION Law Bldg. Housing Food Stores ANTICIPATED: Mumford Hall (LocalTalk, Ethernet, and perhaps Inst, of Government and Public Affairs Noble Hall 805 W. Penn. - Educ. Theory Annex EtherTalk). Click on the Ethernet icon Krannert Center Plant Sciences Lab Bioprocess Lab Mailing Center Agr. Roger Adams Lab while holding down the option key, and Burnsides Research Lab Main Library Temple Buell Architecture Bldg. the address of the Ethernet card will magi- Observatory Fire Services Institute Rehabilitation Center cally appear. But what if you're not using Stadium MacTCP or have the older version? You University Fire Station can download a free utility called Node University Press Informer that does the same thing as the MacTCP trick and allows you to save the
information to a file. To retrieve Node Informer, ftp the file called Node_Informer_l.l.sea.hqx from the pub/ .
Feb. -Mar. 1993 7
Customizing Telnet Sessions on a Macintosh
prompt you to enter a Session Name prompted to enter a name for the set. NET TIPS and a Window Name. For the Session After you have entered a name, click on Name, enter the fully qualified domain the OK button and the current settings name of the host to which you want to MM Q will be saved to a file with the specified connect. For example, if you wanted to name. If you use NCSA Telnet 2.4 or issue's Net Tips column fo- connect to the CCSO computer uxl, Last earlier, the icon for the configuration set cused on how to customize NCSA you would enter: uxl.cso.uiuc.edu (or file will look like the one on the left and Clarkson Telnet for the PC by you could enter the IP number of the below. If you use release 2.5, the icon modifying the config.tel file. Although host instead, but domain names tend to will resemble that on the right. NCSA Telnet for the Macintosh has a be easier to remember). For the Win- config.tel file that can be edited in a simi- dow Name, enter the name that you m* lar manner, there is a much simpler way to would like to appear on the title bar of ux1 configure telnet sessions on the Mac. To your session window. If you do not ux1 learn how, read on. enter a Window Name, telnet will pro- 5. The next time you want to start a ses- vide a default name. sion using the same settings, double Saving Telnet Configuration Sets click on the icon of the configuration set There are two ways to open a telnet Now click on the Configure button. A you just saved. This will both start the connection using NCSA Telnet for the menu of configuration options will ap- Telnet software (if it is not already run- Macintosh. The first time you connect to a pear. You can either accept the current ning) and open a telnet session with the host, you must use the Open Connec- defaults or change them (an explana- host you specified during step 2 above. tion... option under the File menu. You'll tion of each option is given in the user's manual). When you are satisfied with be prompted to enter the Session Name A Few Extra Pointers (domain name or IP number) of the remote the configuration settings, click on the Saving Multiple Sessions. A telnet machine and optionally to provide a name OK button. A telnet session window configuration set can contain more than a for the session window. You can also click will open and you will be prompted to single session window. If you are accus- on the Configure button and change many log in to the host you specified as the tomed to working with multiple sessions default parameters. Once you click on the Session Name. Log in to the host as at once (perhaps you keep both a uxl and button, assuming that you typed in the usual. OK a uxh session open most of the time), you correct hostname or IP address, the ses- can save multiple session windows in a 3. After you are logged in, you can further sion window will appear and you can log single configuration set. To create a con- customize the session. Move the ses- in to the specified host. This is the most figuration set that contains two or more sion window to the location on the desk- common method for logging in to a host sessions, open each session successively as top where you would like it to appear and it works perfectly well. However, if described in steps 1 through 3 above. Once every time you connect to this host. you log in to the same host or group of you have customized all sessions and Next, open the Session menu and ex- hosts every day, you can avoid typing the placed the session windows exactly plore the options for controlling the where session name and setting the desired pa- on the desktop, save the set appearance and nature of your session. you want them rameters each time you log in by creating as described in step 4. open the You can change the style and size of the When you a telnet configuration set. A telnet configu- set by clicking on the icon, the two or more display font, the maximum number of ration set is a separate file containing all of sessions saved in the set will open concur- lines in the session window, the func- the configuration information (hostname, rently. tion of the delete key, the echo mode, window name, scrollback setting, back- Adding Your Configuration Set to the and many other parameters. If you space /delete setting, window colors, fonts, Apple Menu. If your Macintosh is run- have a color monitor, you may want to etc.) about a particular telnet session. Once ning 7 or higher, can change the foreground and background System you add your a set has been saved, you can connect to the favorite telnet configuration sets to the colors also an option under the Ses- host using the identical settings by simply — Apple Menu. To so, the configu- sion menu. (Note: the customization do move double clicking on a configuration set icon. ration set icon (or an alias of the icon) to the options available in the Configuration The procedure for saving a telnet con- box and Session menu vary from one Apple Menu Items folder in your System figuration set is given in the Advanced folder. Once the set file is in this folder, version of telnet to the next. The most Features section of the Telnet user's you can start telnet and open the set by recent release, NCSA/BYU Telnet 2.5, manual, but it is actually quite easy and selecting its icon/name from the Apple offers the richest set of features to date.) can be as useful for novices as old pros. menu. Here are the steps involved: 4. When all aspects of the session are con- For help with questions and problems
figured as desired, it's time to save the concerning the configuration of NCSA 1 Start the Telnet software by double click- session information to a file. To do so, Telnet for the Macintosh, call the CCSO ing on the telnet application icon. open the File menu and select the Save Microcomputer Consultants at 244-0608.
2. Select the Open Connection... option Set... option. A standard Save dialog under the File menu. A dialog box will box will appear, and you will be - Lynn \\ 8 Feb. -Mar. 1993
Expanded Network Access to Library Services CAMPUS NEWS easy to tell whether the tn3270 software is on your computer. The sidebar on page 9, email questions to [email protected] How to Connect to Library Services via
TN3270 and Telnet, gives advice on how Selections to figure out whether tn3270 is available 1) ILLINET Online Network Services you tired of seeing the "Sorry, on a particular system and how to open a Are 2) Keyboard map all lines are in use" message when tn3270 or telnet session with the library. trying to connect to the online E - Exit library catalog? If so, there's good news Getting Started Enter your selection here===> ahead. CCSO and AISS are in the process If you have access to a TCP/IP 3270 of consolidating and expanding network emulation utility, you can establish a di- Figure 3: The ILLINET Online access screen rect connection with the main- access to library information services. ACN's IBM on illinet.aiss.uiuc.edu. Until recently, UlUCnet users could frame UICMVSA by opening a tn3270 ses- only access online library services through sion with the host named uicmvsa one of CCSO's two TCP/IP gateways, IO .aiss.uic.edu. Once connected, you should to emulate special keys found on an IBM Plus and LCSgated. Due to hardware con- see the ACN welcome screen, which is 3270-class terminal. For more informa- straints, these two gateways are limited to sometimes called the ABC screen (see Fig- tion, see the section called Keyboard Map- a total of twelve simultaneous connections ure 1 below). ping below.) Eventually, you should see
(eight ports are used by IO Plus and four the ABC screen shown in Figure 1. by LCSgated). AISS now offers a faster, CHICAGO (312) 996-4806 HELP DESK URBANA (217) 333-31 02 more robust service, which supports over EVSELEN Accessing Library Services Welcome 10 the UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS forty concurrent TCP/IP (telnet or tn3270) Administrative Computing Network Once you are at the ABC screen, type sessions and provides access to the full A Administrative Computing Network Services (ACN) the letter b and press the
To select a service, type the letter and press Enter at the Command ===> information on ILLINET Online, IBIS, and prompt To exit, type X and press Enter at the Command ===> prompt. mand==> prompt. For the most part, the CARL UnCover, see the Dec. 91 - Jan. 92 services labelled IOMENU (the full-screen issue of UlUCnet, vol. 4 no 5.) Since AISS ILLINET Online catalog), IBIS, and CARL is able to fully support network access to Figure 1: The welcome screen of the Adminis- function exactly as they do when accessed library services with its own equipment, trative Computing Network, often called the through CCSO's IO Plus gateway. (All CCSO probably will phase out its interim ABC screen. three are menu-driven systems with online library gateway services. Instructions on help. Most operations involve entering how to use AISS facilities to connect to single letter commands or filling in empty library services via the campus network fields with search criteria.) There is, how- are provided below. ever, one minor change that will affect Welcome to the ILLINET Online Network ILLINET Online (IOMENU) users. When you enter ILLINET Online, you will be Two Modes of Access Press b and
1 CARL UnCover-Joumal Contents Multi application is not available on all comput- a lower case b and press the
How to Connect to Library Services via TN3270 and Telnet
From a DOS Machine: If you use File menu and System 6.x users can use tn3270. If tn3270 is not available, open a public domain TCP/IP software Find File utility in the Apple menu to plain telnet session with illinet such as NCSA or Clarkson Telnet, change search for a file with the name tn3270.) If .aiss.uiuc.edu to access library services. to the directory containing the telnet soft- the tn3270 application is on your Mac, start (Note: Even if the tn3270 command doesn't ware and list all executable files beginning the software. A pop-up window will dis- work on your Unix system, it's possible with the letter "t" by typing dir t*.exe at play the names of all tn3270 settings files in that the tn3270 application is installed, but the DOS prompt. Look for the files called the current folder. If you see a file called has a different name. For more informa- tn3270.exe and telbin.exe in the directory AISS, ACN, UICMVSA, or something tion on the remote login utilities available listing. If the file tn3270.exe is present, similar, try opening it and it may take you on your system, talk to your system ad- open a session with UICMVSA by enter- exactly where you want to go. If not, click ministrator.) ing the command tn3270 uicmvsa.aiss on the Cancel button to close the window .uic.edu at the DOS prompt. If you can and select the Hostname option under the only find telbin.exe, open a plain telnet Settings menu. Enter the hostname From a DEC/VMS Machine: VMS session with the intermediary host by typ- uicmvsa.aiss.uic.edu into the dialog box machines may or may not have ing telbin illinet .aiss.uiuc.edu at the DOS and click on the OK button. Then, pull tn3270 installed. The best way to find out prompt. down the File menu and select Open Con- is to try opening a connection using the
nection. If all goes well, you should even- command tn3270uicmvsa.aiss.uic.edu. If Versions 2.05 and later of the commer- tually see a screen similar to that in Figure you get an error message like "unrecog- cial TCP/IP software PC/TCP incorporate 1 on page 8. (Note: The foregoing describes nized command verb - check validity and both telnet and tn3270 into a single appli- a quick and not-so-elegant method for set- spelling \TN3270\," the machine prob- cation with the filename tn.exe. To access ting up a tn3270 session. Talk to your ably doesn't have tn3270. If tn3270 is not library services with this package, change network administrator or read the manual available, open a plain telnet session with to the directory containing the PC/TCP to learn how to optimize the various set- illinet.aiss.uiuc.edu to access library ser- software and enter the command tn tings for your particular hardware.) vices. (Note: A popular set of TCP/IP tools uicmvsa.aiss.uic.edu at the DOS prompt. for VMS machines called Multinet by TGV If tn3270 is not on your Mac, use NCSA has a telnet utility that negotiates terminal Some DOS computers have a telnet.bat Tchwt to open a connection with type on the fly and switches to 3270 mode file that automatically invokes tn3270.exe illinet.aiss.uiuc.edu. when necessary. If this software is on your or tn.exe when you enter a command like system, you can use the command telnet telnet uicmvsa.aiss.uic.edu (for example, uicmvsa.aiss.uic.edu to access the ACN the DOS computers at CCSO public sites From VMD: Since VMD is an directly. For more information on the are set up in this manner). If there is a IBM mainframe, the version of remote login utilities available on your telnet.bat file on your computer, you might telnet installed on this machine provides VMS system, talk to your system adminis- want to try this command. If it takes you 3270 emulation by default (in fact, it works trator.) to the screen shown in Figure 1 on page 8, best when communicating with other IBM using the telnet.bat file is probably the mainframes). To open a direct connection best method to connect to UICMVSA and with the library, first link to the disk con- Dialing in from a Computer with other remote systems, even those requir- taining the telnet software by entering the a Modem: Although it is possible ing plain telnet. command linkto tcpip at the system to conduct a telnet or tn3270 session from prompt. Then, enter the command telnet the CCSO terminal servers, modem users If you use a different commercial or uicmvsa.aiss.uic.edu to open a session are urged to use the dial-up facilities pro- public domain TCP/IP package, or the with UICMVSA. vided by the library. Dialing either 333- suggestions above do not work for you, 2494 or 333-8269 will connect you to a pool contact your building network adminis- of modems maintained by the library. The trator or the CCSO Microcomputer Con- From a Unix Machine: Unix ma- brochure called Remote Access to ILLINET sultants (244-0608) for help. chines may or may not have tn3270 Online and IO Plus (IO+), available at the
installed (most CCSO-administered ma- main library and many departmental li- chines do). The best way to find out is to braries, gives detailed information on how From a Macintosh: Look for an try opening a connection using the com- to use the use the library's dial-up facili-
application called tn3270 or mand tn3270uicmvsa.aiss.uic.edu. If you ties. tn3270-MacTCP on your Macintosh. (Sys- get an error message like "Command not tem 7.x users can use the Find utility in the found," the machine probably doesn' t have . —
10 Feb. -Mar. 1993
Library Services... quired to send the equivalent of the PF3, gives the default keyboard maps for clear, and reset keys vary from one ver- PC /TCP's telnet/ tn3270 and Clarkson's (continued from pag sion of tn3270 to the next. Here are some tn3270 applications for DOS computers items at the UIUC campus, press the
To search a specific library or library system, type its scope code below entering any additional keystrokes. specific information about keyboard and press
Type the letter I and press the
MILO03t Press
- - - X Exit I Instructions O Other libraries local/etc directory. A set of comments ==> _ OR enter scope code • Although there are no fixed rules for at the beginning of the file explains how
Figure 5: The ILLINET Online welcome screen 3270 key mapping, there are a few com- it works.
Press
Services menu provides access to the li- the sequence
Chicago. Like the other three services,
However, getting on and off the LUIS sys- PF10 through PF12 continue to use the i.e., the same name you use when you tem is a little tricky. When you select top row of alpha-numeric keys:
3270 clear function. To exit the LUIS sys- quences
• If you access library services with plain cation such as IBIS or ILLINET Online, Keyboard Mapping telnet at the address illinet.aiss contact the UIUC Library Information Desk IBM mainframe applications such as .uiuc.edu, the special 3270 keys follow at 333-2290. the various library services offered on the the conventions for mapping PF keys - Lynn Ward ACN often make use of special keys that described above. The key combination are typically found on the IBM 3270 fam-
PF3, clear, and reset (use reset only if your .aiss.uic.edu, the keystrokes session locks up and you can't enter any you use will depend on how new commands). The bad news is that your specific tn3270 application there is no universal standard for key- maps your keyboard. The AISS publi- board mapping. Thus, the keystrokes re- cation TCP/IP— Use and Instructions mo* Feb. -Mar. 1993 11
UlUCnet E-mail to Fax Service Improved
to the fax gateway, and the ASCII text of machine is busy, the gateway will try to CAMPUS NEWS the message will be converted to a send it six more times at increasing bitmapped image that can be printed out intervals within a 90 minute window. When compared to the four retry /eight MM on the receiving fax machine. If you would like further details on how to use the e- minute window of the old fax gateway, old CCSO e-mail to fax gateway mail to fax gateway, pick up a copy of the new retry algorithm greatly in- Thehas been replaced with newer, creases the chances for successful trans- CCSO User Guide #301 , CCSO E-mail to Fax faster hardware (two fax modems Gateway at the CCSO Resource Center, mission. As in the past, the sender will running on ux2, an IBM RISC 6000/540) 1420 DCL. be notified via e-mail about the success and more flexible software. In the short or failure of the transmission. term, users won't notice much difference Future in the way the gateway works, but there Enhancements fax gateway software supports are plans to implement some exciting new The FAX files, files in the Hewlett features. PostScript Packard PCL Level IV language (the printer com- What is the E-mail to Fax Gateway? mand language used by HP LaserJet Series
If you are new to the campus network, II printers), and several other file formats. you may be unfamiliar with the e-mail to sanfax 100 Unfortunately, not all e-mail packages are fax gateway. In a nutshell, this convenient able to process such files correctly, and service allows you to send an e-mail mes- under some circumstances, when sage to any fax machine in the United PostScript or PCL files are incorporated Facts about the New Fax Gateway States and Canada. The procedure is quite into an e-mail message, the resulting fax The quality of the output and general simple. When preparing your e-mail mes- can be tens or hundreds of pages of raw performance of the new fax gateway sig- sage, enter the following information in printer instructions. A utility for sending nificantly surpasses its predecessor. Send- the To: or cc: field of the header of the PostScript, PCL, TIFF and other file types ers and recipients are likely to notice the message: to the fax gateway is currently under de- following changes and improvements: velopment. Once this utility is in place, it name_phone#@fax.uiuc.edu will possible to send faxes that include • A handsome cover page accompanies be graphic images and standard Adobe Replace the variable name with the name of every outgoing fax (it is no longer pos- PostScript fonts. the person to whom you are sending the sible to suppress the cover page as with presently restricted to desti- fax and replace the variable phone# with the previous fax gateway). Included on Faxes are but the phone number of the destination fax the cover sheet are a University banner nations in the U.S. and Canada, CCSO machine. For the name section of the ad- (with address and telephone number), does plan to offer an international e-mail are dress, you may use the letters A-Z and a-z, the name of the recipient, the phone to fax service. While domestic faxes currently free, there will a charge for the numbers 0-9, and the hyphen (-) and number of the receiving fax machine, be international faxes. specific infor- underscore (_) characters. However, the the e-mail address of the sender, the More mation about international faxes and sup- name section must not end with a digit. date, the subject of the fax (if the sender port for alternative file formats will be When entering the phone number, use fills in the Subject: field of the e-mail these services become only the numbers 0-9 with no punctuation header), and the total number of pages announced when marks. Off-campus fax numbers need not including the cover. In addition, a available. "9" include the prefix, which is normally header with a time/date stamp and e- Restrictions and Support used to get an outside line. Local off- mail address of the sender appears at The CCSO e-mail to fax gateway will campus numbers should not include the the top of every page. only accept messages from users in the "217" area code. Also, the "1" prefix is uiuc.edu and uic.edu domains. The fax only required for long-distance calls that • The resulting fax image is noticeably gateway is available to University faculty, are within the 217 area code (e.g., sharper than that produced by the old staff, and students, but is intended for 12174420001). There are no limits on the gateway. Unless special codes are em- University-related business only (so don't length of the text that precedes the bedded in the message (see the Future use it to order a pizza!). Abuse of the "@fax.uiuc.edu" part of the address, so Enhancements below), the default font gateway could result in the loss of CCSO it's possible to include the name and office is 10 point Courier at 12 characters per services for the offender. address or other information about the inch. recipient. For example: If encounter problems with the • Message line lengths are now limited to you new gateway, send an e-mail message to ][email protected] 80 characters per line. Lines longer than [email protected]. Sys- 80 characters will be truncated. CCSO Once you have finished preparing your tems Consultants (333-6133) can also an- • message, send it as you would any other e- If the first attempt to send the fax is swer basic questions about the service. mail message. The message will be routed unsuccessful because the receiving fax - Lynn Ward 1120 DCL Campus MC 256 1304 W.Springfield Ave. Urbana.IL 61 801
LIBRARY SCIENCE 306 LIBRARY CAMPUS MC-522
Eudora 1.3... the center. Eudora 1.3 is in the Software/ For More Information (continued from page 4) Mac/Communications/Eudora 1.3 folder. For more information on obtaining or The application itself and the CiscoNavs installing Eudora 1.3, contact the CCSO Attention All Modem Users! file (for modem users) are in the Program Microcomputer Consultants at 244-0608. As you may recall, CCSO is phasing in folder. Various pieces of documentation Bug reports should be directed to Steven a plan that will require all dial-in users to including the full 1.3 user's guide (in Dorner via e-mail at [email protected]. log in to the terminal servers before they PageMaker 4.2 format), release notes, a can access CCSO machines and other net- HyperCard stack of commonly asked ques- - Lynn Ward worked computers on and off campus (for tions and answers, etc. are located in the more information, see the October 1992 Documentation folder. If you are just issue of UlUCnet, vol 5 no. 6). Terminal upgrading from an earlier version of Eu- server login will be required to access CCSO dora, you shouldn't need anything else. machines as early as May 18, 1993. If you But, if you are installing Eudora for the use Eudora with a modem, it is critical that first time, ask a Resource Center consult- About UlUCnet you upgrade to release 1 .3 before terminal ant to help you figure out exactly which UlUCnet provides timely informa- server login is enforced. The latest release additional files you'll need. A printed tion about the campus network. It is of Eudora has a Dial-up username: field in version of the Eudora manual can be pur- published by the Computing Services the configuration box. Enter your ph alias chased at the Accounting and Distribution Office and is edited by Lynn Ward. into this field. You also will need to get the desk in the Resource Center. The price is Comments and suggestions for topics file called CiscoNavs and place it in the $6.00 and covers the cost of duplication are welcome. Permission to reprint all appropriate location in your System folder and binding. or part of UlUCnet for non-profit pur- (see the section called Upgrading to Eu- poses is granted, provided full dora 1.3 below). Upgrading to Eudora 1.3 acknowledgement of the source is
Once you have installed Eudora 1.3, Upgrading to Eudora 1.3 is a snap. If given. Feel free to reach us via elec- you will be prompted for two passwords your Mac is attached to the campus net- tronic mail ([email protected]), cam- when you send or check for mail. Enter work, just replace your old Eudora applica- pus or U.S. mail (UlUCnet, Comput- your ph password at the first password tion file with the new application file. Eu- ing Services Office, 1120 Digital Com- prompt and your login password at the dora 1 .3 will look for existing configuration puter Laboratory, MC 256, 1304 W. second prompt. and mailbox information in the Eudora Springfield Ave., Urbana, IL 61801 ), or folder inside your System folder. All your by phone at (217) 244-0681. Obtaining Eudora 1.3 previous Eudora settings will be used un- For a free subscription, just send Eudora 1.3 is available via anonymous less you decide to change them. us your name and (preferably cam- ftp from ftp.cso.uiuc.edu in the mac/ If you use Eudora with a modem, you pus) address; be sure to include your eudora directory. Be sure to grab Stufflt- also must install the CiscoNavs file. System department and mail code if you send
Expander.hqx because some of the ar- 7.x users should place the CiscoNavs file in a campus address. UlUCnet is also chived files in the Eudora distribution are the Preferences folder inside the System available in electronic form. Recent stubborn and can only be "unstuffed" with folder. (Do not just drag the CiscoNavs file issues are posted to the Netnews news- this application. onto the System folder. Unlike many Sys- group uiuc.pubs.uiucnet. Back issues
Eudora 1.3 can also be obtained at the tem 7 preference files, it will not be placed in are available for download from the
CCSO Resource Center, 1420 DCL. It is the Preferences folder automatically.) Sys- anonymous ftp host ftp.cso.uiuc.edu available on the AppleShare volume called tem 6.x users should copy the file to the top in the directory doc/net/uiucnet and Public, which is mounted on every Mac in level of the System folder. from the UIUC Gopher server. L5X
A Publication of the Computing and Communications Services Office
UNIV OF ILLIKC
JUL 02 1993
LIB SCI LIBRARY
The University of Illinois Campus Network
Vol. 6 No. 3 April-June 1993
Icon Key PCs are POPping
Novices with PC Eudora and NUPop
Experienced users CLIENTS FOR CLIENTS QUALCOMM, Inc. (current developer of Mac and PC Eudora) offers a Microsoft Windows version of Eudora that looks and
I feels very much like its Macintosh cousin. Network Administrators MM Like Eudora for the Mac, both NUPop AIS& When Eudora, the well-known e- and PC Eudora are POP (Post Office Proto- mail client for the Macintosh, col) clients. In order to use a POP client, you AISS clients was released at UIUC a little must have an e-mail account on a multi-
over two years ago, it literally revolution- user computer that is running POP server ized the way Mac users on the campus software (all CCSO-administered main- Everyone network (and eventually all over the world) frames including uxa, uxh, uxl, ux4 and processed their electronic mail. Eudora VMD support the POP protocol). Most of afforded people the luxury of preparing the actions you will perform with the cli- Platform/Operating System outgoing messages and reading and orga- ent (NUPop or PC Eudora) do not involve nizing incoming messages within the fa- network communications. For example, miliar confines of the graphical, menu- when you prepare a new message, you use rag driven Macintosh desktop. For most Mac a text-processor built in to the POP client. PC compatibles (DOS™) users—even those well acquainted with Reading, organizing, and replying to in- UNIX e-mail software and text editors—it coming mail are also desktop operations. was time to say, "Good-bye Elm and vi, The only time the network comes into play hello Eudora." is when you send or retrieve mail (or use Macintosh™ Shortly after Eudora was introduced, PC special network utilities such as ph, finger, users began clamoring for a similar e-mail etc.). package for DOS machines. Several DOS- X Window System™ based e-mail clients entered the a r public domain, but until fp%7y recently, most were either unstable, unsupported, or n NeXT™ lacking the extraordinary functionality and ease-of- use that made Eudora an CCSO'S IBM™ VMD overnight sensation. How- mainframe, VMD ever, two packages— NUPop and PC Eudora— UNIX™ mainframes previously available in beta (test) versions, are production software and workstations now m and hold promise for the user much DOS base. NUPop is a text-based application developed at Northwestern University f^\ Any platform that can run on both old and new PCs. For high-end PCs and compatibles, (continued on page 2) PC Eudora and NUPop... formatted word-processing files, • Built-in Ph Client. Standard queries spreadsheets, executable programs, etc., can tinued from pagi be sent to the CCSO Nameserver by e-mail. NUPop and PC Eudora get database with the built-in ph client PC Eudora and NUPop both possess a around this problem by encoding bi- found under the Special menu in PC rich set of features and configuration op- nary files in the format known as BinHex Eudora or the Utilities menu in NUPop. tions comparable to those found in Eudora (for more information about BinHex Ph makes it easy to look up e-mail ad- for the Mac. Some of the more outstanding format, see the November 1992 issue of dresses, phone numbers, and many of these are: UlUCnet, vol. 5 no. 7). The binary data other types of other information about is converted to a format that uses only people and units on campus. You can • Integrated Text Processor. Creating ASCII characters and is attached to the also use it to get weather, area code, new messages or replies is a breeze body of the e-mail message. When a campus timetable, and local restaurant with the intuitive word processing ca- BinHexed attachment is received by PC information. Also included in NUPop pabilities built in to NUPop and PC Eudora or NUPop, the attachment is are a finger client (for looking up infor- Eudora. Word wrap and the ability to automatically restored to its original mation about a user account on a spe- select, cut, copy, and paste blocks of text state and placed in a directory desig- cific host), the IP Finder (an nslookup are standard features. Both packages nated by the recipient. If the recipient client, which will return the numeric IP also allow the user to open existing text uses an e-mail package that cannot de- address associated with any fully-quali-
files in order to paste all or part of the code BinHexed files, a special utility fied domain name), a simple telnet cli- file into a new message. can be used to convert the file back to its ent for logging in to remote hosts, and a native format. webster client for looking up informa- • Nicknames/Groups. You only need to ASCII text files can be attached to tion on Webster Dictionary servers. type an Internet or BITNET address any NUPop or PC Eudora message and once to realize that such addresses are do not require special handling. They System Requirements often long and difficult to remember. simply appear as part of the body of the If you decide to run a POP client on With PC Eudora and NUPop you can message. your PC, which application should you create aliases (called Nicknames in Eu- use, PC Eudora or NUPop? Your choice
dora and Groups in NUPop) for the • Mailboxes and Folders. If you receive will be partially influenced (if not dic- people or groups with whom you cor- lots of e-mail, it's very helpful to be able tated) by your PC hardware and software.
respond regularly. Creating an alias to store it according to your own orga- The system requirements for PC Eudora involves entering a user's full e-mail nizational scheme. This need is ad- are not met by many PCs on the campus address and a short, easy-to-remember dressed in PC Eudora and NUPop with network. For optimal performance, PC nickname that corresponds to the full the Mailbox menu. Both packages come Eudora requires a 386 processor or better, address. For example, an alias for the preconfigured with a few essential mail- at least 2 MB of RAM, a sizable hard disk address of a colleague with the e-mail boxes such as IN, OUT, and Trash. (PC Eudora only requires 750 KB, but MS address [email protected] New mailboxes can be created by se- Windows uses roughly 10 MB without any might be "Mel." Once an alias is cre- lecting the appropriate command from other applications installed), mouse, and a
ated, you can use it in the To: or cc: field the Mailbox menu. Once a new mailbox color VGA or better resolution video sub- of the message instead of the full e-mail has been created, messages can be system (PC Eudora can run on a 286 ma- address. The client software takes care moved from one mailbox to another. chine with a Hercules monochrome graph- of expanding the alias to the full ad- When creating a mailbox in PC Eudora, ics or EGA video card, but performance
dress when it sends the message to the you have the option of designating it as will suffer). On the software side, two recipient. a folder, which is a mailbox that con- commercial products—Microsoft Win- Nicknames or groups can also con- tains other mailboxes rather than mes- dows version 3.1 and FTP Software's PC/ sist of multiple e-mail addresses or even sages. Mailboxes can thus be neatly TCP release 2.1 or higher—must be in- other nicknames. For example, the nick- organized into categories that form a stalled on your machine in order to run PC name "happy hour" might include the hierarchical filing system. Eudora. (For information about the UIUC full e-mail address (or alias) for each site-license for PC /TCP, contact the CCSO member of the gang you meet after • Automatic Message Retrieval. NUPop Accounting and Distribution Desk, 1420 work on Friday afternoons. Helpful and PC Eudora can be configured to DCL, 333-7752). Hint: You can use the copy and paste check for and download new mail from NUPop, on the other hand, can run on feature to copy an e-mail address from a POP account at regular time intervals. both low- and high-end machines. The the header of a message or the ph query A pop-up window and/or alarm sig- pseudo-graphical user interface (consist-
window into your list of nicknames or nals the arrival of new incoming mes- ing of windows, buttons with drop-shad- groups. sages. (Note: because NUPop is a DOS ows, and pull-down menus) uses only char-
application, it is only convenient to take acters from the ASCII and IBM extended • Binary and ASCII File Attachments. advantage of timed message acquisi- ASCII character sets. Thus, even a plain One of the shortcomings of electronic tion when running NUPop as a back- monochrome video card and monitor will mail is that many systems can only pro- ground process under multitasking suffice. The NUPop executable and asso-
cess plain ASCII text, and thus it is often software such as MS Windows.) ciated files take up roughly 700 KB of hard not possible to send binary data such as (continued on page 3) . ^m& April-June 1993 3
e s s tilities inetow PC Eudora and NUPop... ile dit roup Mail ox ageTGHHiE I elp Date: 8S-29 -93 (continued from page 2) _™_ uzoa wminm m^mt ialing. . disk space and require 470 KB of free RAM <> To: < > Cc: after DOS and memory resident programs 1 are loaded. The only special software re- quired by NUPop is DOS version 3.0 or higher and a packet driver for your network interface card . (Packet drivers for common brands and models of network cards are free and ftp'able from many locations on the Internet. In any case, most PCs on UlUCnet already have a packet driver in- stalled. For more information on packet drivers, see the NetWord and Admin- istrivia columns in this issue.) Power users can run NUPop in a DOS win- Figure 1: NUPop commands can be executed and menus can be opened with a mouse or by dow as a background operation under pressing the
For example, to open the Options menu, file server volume mounted on the PCs at mentation, including test versions of new use the key combination
) Figure 1 . The space bar acts as a toggle for source Center staff can help you copy the lated files are located in the /pub/nupop selecting and unselecting messages within appropriate files onto your own disks). (continued on page 4) PC Eudora and NUPop... More PC Eudora Facts and Features PC Eudora Flaws Although the system requirements of PC Eudora is also not without short- (continued from page 3) PC Eudora are steep, the learning curve is comings. Several options that appear in directory and subdirectories. You may not. Many of the commands in the File and various menus have not yet been imple- download and use these files, but CCSO Edit menus (as well as the mouse move- mented, notably the Undo/Cut/Copy/ staff will not offer assistance on test versions ments and keystrokes for managing indi- Paste commands under the Edit menu (the of the software. vidual windows) are identical to those in standard Windows shortcut keys for these other MS Windows applications. The functions do work) and some of the Installation and Support menus and commands unique to the Eu- switches under the Special menu. Also, at The NUPop installation procedure may dora application are largely self-explana- present, PC Eudora offers no support for be difficult for network novices. However, tory and more or less identical to the Mac modem users. an excellent installation manual and draft version. One of the most disconcerting aspects user's guide are available in PostScript for- Although PC and Mac Eudora are very of PC Eudora is that it does not conform to mat from the CCSO Resource Center and similar, the Windows version offers a con- the Windows Multiple Document Interface come highly recommended. If you do not venient feature not yet available on the (MDI) standard. Every Eudora entity (the have access to a PostScript printer, you can Mac. An icon bar appears across the top of menu bar, each open message and mail- buy a spiral-bound, printed copy of the every open mailbox window, providing box, the configuration menu, etc.) exists in documentation for $5.00 from the CCSO quick access to message management com- an independent window and appears in Accounting and Distribution Desk, 1420 mands such as Reply, Reply All, Forward, the Windows Task List as a separate task. DCL. This manual should answer most of Redirect, Print, and Trash. Once one or If you open a message, for example, the your questions about installing and config- more messages are selected from the mail- opened message window may hide uring NUPop. If you need further assis- box, clicking on the appropriate icon will Eudora's main menu or the icon bar on the tance, try contacting your building or de- produce the desired result (see Figure 2). Mailbox window. Thus, it's often neces- partmental network administrator. CCSO Finally, PC Eudora takes full advan- sary to bring the application or a Mailbox can also offer assistance with the proper tage of the Windows multitasking envi- window into the foreground in order to configuration and operation of NUPop. ronment. As a background application, reply to or print an open message. In MDI- Send requests for NUPop support by e-mail PC Eudora can check for mail regularly compliant applications, documents and to [email protected]. Bug reports and sugges- without any direct user intervention. For other items generated by an application tions should be sent by e-mail directly to users who are heavily dependent on e- are all contained within a single window NUPop developer Philip R. Burns at mail and want a package that will notify and constitute a single task. It is impos- [email protected]. them as soon as new mail has arrived, PC sible to cover up the menu bar with a
Eudora is a good pick. document created by the application. Ac- cording to PC Eudora developers, this problem, which was a limitation of the software tool kit used to build PC Eudora, PC Eudora will be addressed in a future release. File Edit Mailbox Message Transfer Special Help
to James Renals, 04:05 PM 5/30/93, UlUCnet Newsletter How Get PC Eudora PC Eudora can be downloaded from Subject: UlUCnet Newsletter the anonymous ftp server ftp.cso.uiuc.edu. Date: Sun, 30 May 93 16:05:07 GMT application and related files are found X-Ph: [email protected] The IsPhalham.rtPinnn.nn.iili in the pc/pc-eudora/windows directory. The PC Eudora distribution includes the
following files:
pcex.exe - Self-extracting archive of the 02:l»3 - I • Ed Krol PM 5/29/93 Ed Krol 02:*»3 PM 5/29/93 - unistart PC Eudora application (where the vari- Ed Krol 02:ii3 PM 5/29/93 - unistart able X stands for the current version Janes Renals OH: 05 PM 5/30/93 Gl UlUCnet Ne us let tie number [pcel0.exe as of this writing]) Sandra Gorringe 08:37 AM 5/31/93 E NEWSLETTER SUBSCR Lynn Ward 08:39 AM 5/31/93 - Re: NEWSLETTER SU README.TXT - A file containing basic information about the PC Eudora dis-
tribution files (if you download this file,
it's a good idea to rename it because the archived application file [pcex.exe] also
includes a file with the name readme.txt)
(continued page Figure 2: An icon bar appears along the top of every open mailbox ivindow in PC Eudora. on 5) I rare April-June 1993
PC Eudora and NUPop... tory on this host. CCSO will not provide Eudora and Eudora for the Mac are so or beta versions of the soft- similar that the should an- (continued from page 4) help on alpha Mac manual ware. swer most PC Eudora questions (except those regarding installation). The manual ftpvar.lst - A list of FTP Software Value Installation and Support is available in PostScript format from the Added Retailers located outside the US Instructions for installing PC Eudora ftp host ftp.qualcomm.com (change to the are given in the readme.txt file included in pceudora/windows directory and down- wsocket.dll - An MS Windows dy- the self-extracting archive pcex.exe. As load the self-extracting archive called namic link library required to run PC with NUPop, installing and configuring 1_3EUMAN.EXE). Spiral bound copies of Eudora (this file is included with PC/ PC Eudora may be too difficult for begin- the Mac Eudora user's guide are sold at the
TCP2.11) ners, especially if PC/TCP has not yet CCSO Accounting and Distribution Desk, been installed. If you do not have experi- 1420 DCL, at $6.00 per copy. If you have PC/TCP version 2.11 or ence modifying your autoexec.bat file, cre- Although CCSO is not yet officially later, the only file you should need is ating directories and plain text files, and supporting PC Eudora, staff members will pcex.exe. Place this file in its own direc- installing new Windows applications do their best to help users with the instal-
tory (e.g. , C:\EUDORA) and decompress manually, seek out the help of an experi- lation and operation of the software. Send it by typing its full name. You should see enced user or your network administrator. e-mail requests for help to [email protected], an executable file named pcapp.exe and a The readme.txt file describes the informa- and someone will get back to you as text file called readme.txt. The readme.txt tion that should be entered into the con- quickly as possible. Bug reports and com- file gives further information for installa- figuration window under PC Eudora's ments or suggestions about the software tion. Special menu once the software has been should be sent directly to the PC Eudora The authoritative ftp source for PC Eu- installed. developers at the e-mail address pc-eudora- dora is ftp.qualcomm.com. The most re- Aside from the readme.txt file, there is, [email protected]. cent production and test versions of PC as of yet, no documentation written spe- - Lynn Ward Eudora are found in the pceudora direc- cifically for PC Eudora. However, PC
NetWord: Packet Driver
Another BPD problem was that each communicate with each and every net- NETWORD network application developer had to pro- work interface card. vide software support for many different Packet drivers also allow different net- brands and models of network interface work applications to identify themselves cards. This meant updating and develop- to the driver and keep track of each appli-
packet driver is a piece of soft ing new software to support every new cation. More than one application can talk ware that provides an interface card that came on the market. to the packet driver at a time, so it is A between a network application So, before packet drivers there were possible to run multiple network applica- (e.g., NCSA Telnet, Novell NetWare, LAN two problems: 1 ) a network interface card tions (as long as they use different protocol Manager, etc.) and a PC network inter- could only support one network applica- stacks) without any single one taking con- face card, usually an Ethernet card. tion at a time, and 2) network application trol of the network card. This means you In the olden days before packet driv- developers had to continually provide soft- can potentially access a Novell or LAN ers (BPD), a network application typi- ware updates to support new network Manager server and run TCP/IP applica- cally talked to the interface card directly cards. Packet drivers provide a solution to tions concurrently. and took control of the card. This meant both problems. When a packet driver is Most public domain TCP/IP-based that the card could only support one loaded, it serves as an intermediary be- applications for the PC use packets driv-
network protocol (e.g., TCP/IP, IPX, XNS, tween a network application and the net- ers. Also, a special version of IPX (Novell's
etc.) at a time. For example, if you had work interface card. The network applica- native network transport protocol) devel- loaded the software necessary to access tion talks to the packet driver and the oped at Brigham Young University sup- your Novell LAN server, the card would packet driver talks to the card. This means ports the packet driver interface. There are have only been capable of sending and that the network application no longer also some special programs that allow receiving Novell (IPX) packets. In order needs to know how to communicate with packet drivers to coexist with Microsoft to use a TCP/IP package on the same hundreds of different network interface Windows and two other well-known open machine, you would typically have had cards; it only needs to know how to talk to network interface specifications, NDIS (a to reboot and load the TCP/IP software a piece of software that conforms to the standard developed by Microsoft and that talked directly to the card, at which packet driver interface specification. Not all 3Com) and OD7 (a standard developed by point you would no longer be able to network applications know how to com- Novell and Apple). For more detailed access your Novell server. municate with packet drivers, but if they information about packet drivers, see the do, they no longer need to know how to Administrivia column on page 8. - Lynn Ward —
Plugging in to Electronic Journals
phers to describe serial publications whose quality control. Virtually anyone with an INTERNET TREASURES primary method of dissemination is elec- e-mail account can publish on the Internet. tronic text as opposed to the printed page. Even if a title appears in an ejournal cata- MM Broadly speaking, the genre includes ev- log, there is no guarantee that the publica- erything from counter-culture magazines tion is good or even mediocre. Only a (often called Zines) and newsletters to peer- handful of electronic journals are subject Piublish or perish." This all-too-fa- reviewed academic journals. Today, the to any type of peer review, so in most cases miliar maxim has controlled the several hundred electronic journals avail- there is no board of distinguished scholars lives of many young academics as able on the Internet are dominated by less making decisions about what does and they make their way down the tenure track, formal publications dealing with science, doesn't get published. Finally, the visual resulting in an astonishing proliferation of technology, and computer communica- presentation of many ejournals leaves both general and increasingly specialized tions. However, as scholars become in- something to be desired. Most are pro- professional journals. To a certain ex- creasingly aware of the economic and prac- duced as plain ASCII text files and lack the tent—by making all phases of publication tical advantages of electronic publication, tables, figures, illustrations, and typo- faster, cheaper, and easier—computer tech- all of academia will eventually participate graphical effects that bring the printed nology has contributed to this flood of in the flowering of this new medium. page to life. Although most of these prob- scholarly output. Widespread availability lems will undoubtedly be solved within of word processing and desktop publish- EJournal Pros and Cons the next several years, for now we must ing hardware and software, for example, So, what exactly do electronic journals either accept the drawbacks of ejournals or has significantly reduced the time and ex- have to offer over and above printed jour- ignore a burgeoning outlet for serious pense involved in editing and printing nals? First, ejournals are extremely inex- scholarship. academic journals. Most editors today pensive to produce, distribute, and store require authors to submit a typescript and no paper, postage, or shelf space is re- EJournal Catalogs electronic copy of any article accepted for quired. A single issue may use as little as If you would like to know the names publication. Editorial changes can be made 15 to 150 KB of computer storage space, and types of electronic journals available directly in the electronic version, which is and not a single tree has to die on its behalf. today, there are several sources to which ultimately used to produce camera-ready Because ejournals are so economical, there you can turn. Michael Strangelove at the copy in house or passed on to a profes- are usually no subscription fees. Typi- University of Ottawa compiled and main- sional typesetter. Working with electronic cally, one subscribes to and receives tains the Directory of Electronic journals and text eliminates the costly, labor-intensive ejournals by electronic mail. Ejournals can Newsletters. This document identifies, de- step of rekeying and manually typesetting also be produced far more rapidly than scribes, and provides instructions on how an article. It also reduces the possibility of printed journals, thus delivering impor- to subscribe to roughly 140 different elec- introducing new errors into the text, espe- tant or time-critical information in a timely tronic publications on topics as diverse as cially when inputting complex equations, fashion. Perhaps most significantly, elec- drosophila, ethnomusicology, postmodern lengthy passages in a foreign language, or tronic journal articles can be indexed and culture, librarianship, and so on. A lengthy other technical material. searched with tools as simple as word introduction provides information on other The recent infusion of computer net- processing software or as sophisticated as network resources for electronic publica- working technology into the international full-text retrieval systems using multiple tions, a bibliography on the present and thesauruses, soundex routines, and fuzzy future ramifications of electronic publish-
logic. When it comes to plowing through ing, and an informative article by Charles
volumes of text, the human hand, eye, W. Bailey, Jr. entitled "Getting an ISSN and brain will never be able to com- [International Standard Serial Number] for pete with even a run-of-the-mill an Electronic Journal." Strangelove's di- desktop computer running rectory can be retrieved in two ways, by e- text searching soft- mail or anonymous ftp. To request the ware. directory through e-mail, send a message Electronic to [email protected]. The body of the publishing message should consist of these following also has its two lines and nothing else (note the spell- down side, at ing of ejournl and directry): least for the research community has added some in- time-being. get ejournll directry teresting twists to the academic publish- Since ejournals get ejournl2 directry ing arena. With electronic mail and file are the excep- transfer, now scholars can easily share data tion rather than the rule, many of the ad- The directory will be sent to your e- and collaborate on articles over long dis- vantages listed above have not yet been mail address as two separate, rather lengthy tances without the delays associated with realized by scholars in most disciplines. messages. You can also grab the sending disks and paper over land and Moreover, coverage of topics outside of Strangelove directory from the anonymous sea. Computer networking has also given science and technology is sparse, and it's ftp server ftp.eff.org. Change to the /pub/ rise to a new and important publication difficult to know what's available unless journals directory and get the file called medium, the electronic journal. you happen to trip upon one of the few EJournal.Directory2.1.Z. This file is in The term electronic journal, or ejournal, catalogs of electronic journals (we'll trip is used among librarians and bibliogra- upon them later). Then there is the issue of (continued on page 7) EJournals... out an issue to all subscribers. Although vide you with advice and the tools neces- the procedure for subscribing to particular sary to get started. Before you begin pro- (continued from page 6) journals may vary, the usual method is to duction, you may want to acquaint your- UNIX compressed format and must be send an e-mail message to a designated self with common electronic publishing uncompressed before it can be used. address (e-mail addresses are provided in conventions along with the problems typi- There are two other well-known direc- the catalogs listed above). The body of the cally associated with this medium. The e- tories that include descriptions and sub- message should contain the text subscribe mail discussion list vpiej-l@vtvml .bitnet is scription information for electronic publi- listname Your Name (e.g., subscribe psyc for people specifically interested in schol- cations—the Kent State Directory of Schol- Sigmund Freud) or some variation of this arly electronic journals and electronic pub- arly Electronic Conferences (copyright 1992 basic command. If you normally append a lishing. To subscribe, send an e-mail mes- by Diane Kovacs) and the so-called List of signature to your e-mail messages, leave it sage to listserv@vtvml . bitnet and enter the Lists. Unlike Strangelove'sdirectory, which off. Subscription requests are often handled following text in the body of your mes- limits itself to serial journals and newslet- automatically by list processors, which will sage: sub vpiej-1 Your Name. Another ters, these works also catalog moderated interpret the lines of your signature as bad useful resource is the peer-reviewed elec- and unmoderated e-mail discussion or unknown commands. After subscrib- tronic journal called EJournal, which, ac- groups. If you're just looking for ejournals, ing, you will receive e-mail notification cording to the Strangelove directory, fo- you'll have to sift through many unrelated that your name has been added to the list cuses on "theory and praxis surrounding items when working with these two docu- or that your subscription could not be the creation, transmission, storage, inter- ments, but both are invaluable tools for processed. In the latter case, read the error pretation, alteration and replication of elec- anyone looking for specialized informa- message and try subscribing again, mak- tronic text." Back issues of EJournal are tion on the Internet. ing the necessary adjustments. available on the CICNet gopher server. To The Kent State directory is on the anony- subscribe to Ejournal, send e-mail to mous ftp server ksuvxa.kent.edu in the li- EJournal Archives listserv@albnyvml .bitnet and enter the line brary directory (ksuvxa is a VAX/VMS sys- Back issues of ejournals are often ar- sub ejrnl Your Name in the body of the tem, so, even though the name of the directory chived and can be obtained by e-mail or message. is LIBRARY.DIR, use the command cd li- ftp. There are also several sites on the CCSO staff can provide you with infor- brary [not cd library.dir] to change to the Internet that hold extensive collections of mation on how to convert word process- directory). The catalog itself is broken up into electronic publications. The newest and ing files to plain ASCII text for dissemina- eight files, ACADLIST.FILE1 through most comprehensive collection is managed tion on the net and how to format your ACADLIST.FILE8, each covering one or sev- by Billy Barron, well known for his direc- publication for optimal presentation. For eral major subject areas. To find out what is tory of online library catalogs {UNT's Ac- assistance along these lines, contact Lynn in each file, get and read the file called cessing Bibliographic Databases). It resides Ward at [email protected] or Lynn Bilger ACADLIST.README. This file will tell on a host owned by CICNet, a regional at [email protected]. you how to retrieve the other files using ftp network serving Big Ten universities and Once you are ready to begin distribu- or e-mail. It also gives general instructions other institutions in the Midwest. The tion, you should establish an electronic on how to subscribe to electronic publica- CICNet collection is accessible by Gopher mailing list on CCSO's main list server. tions and conferences. (from the UIUC Gopher Main Menu, go to Non-commercial, university-related mail- The List of Lists is a directory of special Other Gopher and Information Servers/ ing lists can be set up for faculty and staff interest group mailing lists available on USA/A11/CICNET gopher server/Elec- at no cost. The list manager software (a the Internet and is updated quarterly. tronic Serials). This gopher menu offers UNIX program called Majordomo) will au- Entries are listed alphabetically by e-mail access to over 200 serial publications. You tomatically add new subscribers to your list name and provide more or less the can look for items alphabetically, by gen- mailing list or, in the case of private lists, same type of information as the Kent State eral subject heading, or by Library of Con- send the subscription request to you (the directory. Because the list is not organized gress subject classification. If you want to list owner) for approval. When ready to by subject matter, this resource is a little collect all of the back issues of a single send out an issue of your publication, sim- awkward to use, but a simple text search- journal from the CICNet archive, it may be ply create an e-mail message addressed to ing tool like the find utility in your word faster to ftp to ftp.cic.net. The journals are your list name (e.g., esoteric _news@ processor or text browser can help you organized alphabetically in subdirectories listserv.cso.uiuc.edu) and incorporate the locate items of interest. An electronic copy beneath the /pub/nircomm/gopher/e-se- text of your ejournal into the body of the of the List of Lists can be ftp'd from rials/alphabetic directory. message. All list subscribers will receive a ftp.nisc.sri.com. The file, called interest- The bulk of the CICNet electronic seri- copy. For more information on setting up groups, is in the /netinfo directory and is als collection currently derives from two and managing a mailing list, contact Paul roughly 1.2 MB. A hardcopy, indexed other ftp archives, red.css.itd.umich.edu Pomes at [email protected]. version of the catalog is published by (maintained at the University of Michigan Electronic publishing is just one of Prentice Hall under the title Internet Mail- by Paul Southworth) and ftp.eff.org, a many ways to make information available ing Lists (ISBN 0-13-327941-3). It can be host maintained by the Electronic Frontier on the Internet. Unlike other types of ordered directly from the publisher by Foundation, an organization dedicated to Internet information services, managing a calling 1-515-284-6751. issues of privacy, civil rights, and public mailing list requires very little technical policy as they pertain to national and in- knowledge and is an efficient and inex- Subscribing to EJournals ternational computer networks. pensive vehicle for disseminating infor- Most electronic journals are distributed mation worldwide. to subscribers by e-mail. Usually the per- How to Start Your Own EJournal son or group responsible for the publica- If you, as an individual or member of a - Lynn Ward tion makes arrangements to set up a mail professional society, are interested in pub- reflector or LISTSERV, which makes it lishing an electronic newsletter or journal, possible to use a single command to send CCSO and other organizations can pro- 8 April-June 1993
Once Upon A Packet Driver...
ADMINISTRIVIA The packet driver, in turn, dutifully di- documentation for the Crynwr collection. rected IP packets to the TCP/IP applica- If for some reason wuarchive.wustl.edu tion and server related packets to the server is unreachable, another good anonymous program. So today, if a packet driver is ftp source for packet drivers is vax.frp.com. installed, many network applications can Public domain drivers are in the /pub/ Packet drivers are a daily part of life coexist happily ever after. packet. driver/pubdom directory and for the modern network adminis- Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) trator. They're just another one of Stalking the Wily Packet Driver drivers are in the /pub/packet.driver/oem those voodoo magic things that net admins Vocabulary Alert. Packet drivers cir- directory. configure, and, when the gods are pleased, culate under several assumed names, so it all works. We, however, have heard the you may not recognize a collection of them, Configuring the Wily Packet Driver story of the packet driver and know what even when they are right under your The packet driver has to know the exact it is supposed to do and why. Lean closer nose. This is because many people and details of the Ethernet card with which it is to the page (or screen depending on how organizations have been involved in the going to communicate in order to correctly you're reading this), and we'll tell you the evolution of the packet driver, and their pass commands and packets to the right tale of the wily packet driver. names are often prefixed to the collection places. The typical syntax for loading a
Once upon a time, back in the olden name as a whole. The original specifica- Crynwr packet driver is: days, when LANs were everything a lab of tion was created by John Romkey and is
IBM PCs and clones could hope to become, currently maintained by James van drivername software_interrupt [liardwarejnterruptl users only ran one network program at a Bokkelan at FTP Software, Inc. The collec- [VO_address] [RAMjiddress] time. These were not modern times like tion of drivers themselves was originally today, when you might be logged into a supported and maintained by Russ Nelson, where hardwareJnterrupt, l/0_address, and few servers and have telnet and PC Go- who previously worked at Clarkson Uni- RAM_address are in hexadecimal notation pher sessions running, all while trying to versity and now works at Crynwr Soft- and correspond exactly to the settings of ftp a large file from a site in Austria. No, ware. A packet-driver compatible version the Ethernet card (these settings are usu- these were simpler times when your of IPX was developed at Brigham Young ally controlled by jumpers and/or dip autoexec.bat file consisted of a PATH state- University. Thus, packet drivers are often switches on the card, or set by software ment and an additional line or two that referred to as the "FTP Software packet that came with the card). For example: logged you into your LAN server. drivers," the "Clarkson packet drivers," One day, the Internet became available the "Crynwr packet drivers," and even the wd8003e 0x60 0x5 0x280 OxdOOO to these isolated LANs. Entire buildings "BYU packet drivers." The current term were networked so that individual PCs for the large public domain collection of The syntax for each different packet could access Internet hosts across campus packet drivers is the Crynwr collection, driver varies slightly, but it is always use- and around the world. At around the but some ftp sites still call them the Clark- ful to know these parameters when install- same time, a strange and new program son drivers. ing a packet driver or any other software was distributed—telnet it was called. A In addition to the generic name for the or hardware that uses memory and hard- few brave network administrators installed collection, there are many different flavors ware resources (upper memory blocks, telnet on their lab machines, configured it of packet drivers, at least one if not several interrupt requests, etc.) on your PC. according to the instructions, tried to con- for every brand and model of Ethernet If you are installing a brand new card, nect to a campus mainframe to read their card, and each has a different filename. So, you must be sure that the hardware inter- e-mail and... their PCs froze up impres- where do you find them? Some Ethernet rupt and memory settings do not conflict sively. It seemed that the network card card vendors provide a packet driver along with any other devices in the machine. was unable to run two network programs with the software that comes with the card. Many Ethernet cards, however, were in- simultaneously, so the programs fought it For example, Standard Microsystems Cor- stalled in pre-packet driver days, which out to determine who (if either) would poration (the company that took over means you'll have to use some method of ultimately have access to the network. For Western Digital's Ethernet card division) determining the settings of the card. This a while, it was impossible for applications includes the 8003PKDR.EXE driver on may involve running diagnostic software using the TCP/IP protocols (such as telnet their diagnostics diskette. or opening up the machine and using the and ftp) and programs using IPX (Novell The largest single collection of public documentation for the card to check what NetWare's native transport protocol) to domain packet drivers is the Crynwr col- the jumper settings mean. As always, coexist, but eventually a software utility lection. The Crynwr drivers can be found write down the settings, if you haven't called the packet driver came along to on hundreds of anonymous ftp hosts on already, and put them in a safe place for keep the peace. the Internet. A reliable source for the most later referral. The packet driver promised to mediate recent drivers is wuarchive.wustl.edu, One dp, from us to you—remember access to the network interface card so that which is a mirror of the well-known that once you've loaded a packet driver, all network programs could get along. Of SIMTEL20 archive. The collection is found programs that try to access the Ethernet course, network applications had to prom- in the mirrors/msdos/pktdrvr directory. card (including the card's own diagnostic ise to recognize the packet driver and abide The file 00-index.txt in this directory lists programs) usually bump into the packet by its wishes. Telnet all of the files in the directory their and IPX (as well as and driver instead of the card . This means that other network programs) were rewritten purpose (this file is reprinted in Table 1 on if you misconfigure your packet driver to check for packet drivers and to give the page 9). The archive named drivers.zip packet driver control of the network card. contains the executable files and detailed (continued on page 9) . .
April-June 1993 9
Packet Drivers... driver and WINPKT in your autoexec file. number to each network application in The two lines might look something like use. Like WINPKT, PKTMUX directs the (continued from page 8) this: correct packets to the correct applications, and then try to use a diagnostic program to but it has the additional benefit of being see what you did wrong, the diagnostic wd8003e 0x62 0x5 0x280 OxdOOO able to differentiate between multiple pro- program will see the settings of the packet winpkt 0x60 0x62 grams using the same network protocol. driver software, not the Ethernet card it- With PKTMUX loaded, you can run up to self. Remember to comment out any packet Confusing? Yes, but not nearly as con- eight TCP/IP programs at once (or a com- driver calls in the autoexec.bat file before fusing as trying to run more than one TCP/ bination of TCP/IP programs and applica- trying to figure out what went wrong. IP program at a time with packet drivers. tions using other protocols) and each will Running Multiple TCP/IP Applica- be assigned a unique channel number. Nifty Tricks for You and Your Packet Driver tions under Windows. One of the big Installing PKTMUX is not for the faint of We've yet to touch on one critical piece advantages of the Windows environment heart. Configuration depends on exactly of information that is usually given when is that you can run multiple applications which network applications you plan to run the packet driver is loaded, the software simultaneously. Suppose that, while you and many other variables. The software interrupt. What is a software interrupt are sorting a large database in one window comes with a 50 page document providing anyway? The short answer is, just set it to and downloading a large file with ftp in basic installation instructions and examples
0x60 and don't worry about it. The long another, you'd like to send a file to a printer of how to use PKTMUX with various appli- answer is that packet driver-compatible on your Novell network and read your e- cation combinations. Software and docs are programs look at a point in memory for mail on uxl . The database is not a network bundled together in the file called sending and receiving commands. Nor- operation, so it can go about its business pktmuxx.zip (where x is the current version mally, the location is 0x60 and many net- without worrying about the other three number) and is available at wuarchive work programs check this location by de- applications. The packet driver will let .wustl.edu as shown in Table 1 fault. The software interrupt is not some- you print while accessing your e-mail, and thing you set on the Ethernet card; it is WINPKT lets you do both operations while Sigh! purely software related, and really packet within Windows. But what about the ftp So, let's review. In order to run most driver related at that. session? Well, packet drivers can distin- public domain TCP/IP packages or to run Using Packet Drivers and Windows. guish between different network proto- a TCP/IP program together with another If you want to run telnet from within Win- cols like IPX and IP, but not the programs network protocol, you need a properly dows, you'll have to understand a little bit that use them. So, if you try to run more configured packet driver, and all of your more about the software interrupt. Among than one TCP/IP program (e.g., telnet, ftp, network applications must be packet driver other things, Windows is a memory man- NUPop, PC Eudora, etc.) simultaneously aware. If you want to run packet driver- ager. Windows is able to use both ex- in Windows, the packet driver will assume aware applications under Windows, you tended and virtual memory to load very all IP packets belong to just one of those need to know the software interrupt as- large programs and /or run multiple DOS applications. When this happens, either signed to your packet driver and need to sessions. This involves moving data in none of the programs will work or your install WINPKT. Finally, if you want to and out of the conventional 0-640 KB range machine will lock up completely. To solve run several TCP/IP programs concur- so DOS programs can get to data as needed this problem, Graham Robinson developed rently, you need to install PKTMUX. Con- Unfortunately, it also shuffles around the a packet multiplexor program called fusing? Tricky? Well, yes. Kind of makes area of memory that the packet driver PKTMUX. you long for the olden days. resides in and strangles it. What's recognizes multiple network needed PKTMUX -Dave Ruby and Lynn Ward is a program to communicate between Win- programs by assigning a separate channel dows and the packet driver, a Windows- packet-driver driver. Happily, there is such a beast named WINPKT.COM. It comes with the Crynwr collection and is Table 1 also commonly distributed with some net- 00-index.txt work programs for the PC. Remember how we said you could set Directory PD1
FTP and VMD
TIPS let's assume you've used a tn3270 pro- filemode, uses one or two characters to NET gram to log in to VMD. If you execute the indicate the minidisk on which the file ftp command at the VMD system prompt resides and the status of the file. When MM in order to open an ftp session with uxl, naming files, both the first and second VMD is the client and uxl is the server. On parts must be typed explicitly, but the the other hand, if you had used telnet to filemode defaults to "A" (your personal (Editor's Note: This article assumes a working log in to uxl and started an ftp session with minidisk) unless otherwise specified. knowledge of ftp. If you are not yet familiar VMD from the UNIX system prompt, uxl VMD filenames require special treat- with the ins and outs [or puts and gets} offtp, is the client and VMD is the server. Note ment during an ftp session. First of all, see Appendix B of CCSO User Guide #401, that in both of these cases, your desktop when typing a VM/CMS filename after a FREE SOFTWARE'How to find ifHow to computer is neither client nor server. put or get command, the parts of the get ifHow to make it usable (uncompress it), Users often want to move files from filename should generally be separated by available at the CCSO Resource Center, 1420 VMD to their desktop computer. This is a period rather than a space. Secondly, DCL and at most CCSO sites.) where things get a little hairy. If you've when moving a file "from" another oper- logged in to VMD with tn3270 software ating system "to" VMD, you must be sure Mastering ftp, the TCP/IP file from your desktop computer and then to give a valid target filename—that is, one transfer utility, is no small task. execute an ftp command at the VMD sys- that contains both a filename and filetype Aside from memorizing a num- tem prompt (or press a special key combi- (and optionally a filemode). For example, ber of obscure commands, in order to use nation) to open an ftp session with your if you are trying to get a file from a UNIX ftp successfully, you also need to know Mac or PC, VMD is the local host and your system called README, you would have about different operating systems, file sys- desktop computer is the remote host or to give both the original name and a VM/ tems, file naming conventions, file com- server. In a geographical sense, this is CMS-compatible target filename after the pression formats, and lots of other techni- counter-intuitive because your PC is "more get command (e.g., get README cal minutia. Using ftp to transfer files to or local" than VMD. But during an ftp ses- README.TEXT). If the original filename from VMD (or any IBM mainframe run- sion within a tn3270 session, your PC acts has two parts already (e.g., uiucnet.index), ning the VM/CMS operating system) pre- as if it were two different pieces of equip- you need not specify a target filename sents some additional obstacles. In the ment: 1) a terminal connected directly to unless you want the file to have a different following paragraphs, we'll explore some VMD and 2) a host on the Internet running filename on VMD (e.g., get uiucnet.index of the common questions and problems an ftp server. Whenever you ftp from or get uiucnet.index uiucnet.text). If the that arise when trying to use ftp with VMD. VMD to another machine, your terminal original filename has three or more parts tells VMD to open an ftp session with separated by periods, the target filename Client versus Server another node on the Internet. It just hap- must be changed so that it only has two Regardless of platform, one of the most pens that, in this case, the host running the parts (e.g., get virus-detective. 506- difficult ftp concepts to grasp is which end ftp server is your desktop computer, but it strings.hqx virus.detectiv). Finally, if the of the connection is the client (or local host) could just as easily be a mainframe in New first or second part of the original filename and which the server (or remote host). The Zealand. VMD doesn't really know or is longer than 8 characters, the extra char- point of confusion arises because your care where the ftp server is located; it only acters will automatically be removed from desktop computer can be the client, the knows its name or IP address. the name when the file is transferred to server, or neither, depending on how you When VMD is the client, the put com- VMD. start the transfer. A good rule of thumb is mand is used to move files from VMD to When transferring a file from VMD to that the client is always the computer from the server and the get command is used to another machine, the same rules apply. which you initiate the transfer. For ex- move files from the server to VMD. When For example, to put the file called UN- ample, if you open an ftp session with VMD is the server, the reverse is true READ NOTEBOOK AO onto another sys- VMD by typing a command like ftp that is, the put command is used to move tem, separate the parts of the name by a vmd.cso.uiuc.edu, the computer on which files from the client machine to VMD and period rather than a space and leave off the you executed the command is the client. If the get command is used to move files filemode unless it is required because the you type the command from the operating from VMD to the client. Either way, there file is on a minidisk other than "A." If you system prompt of your desktop PC or are some special issues to consider when do not specify a target filename, the VM/ workstation, your desktop computer is the moving files to and from VMD. CMS filename will usually be adapted to client and VMD is the remote host. Simi- conform to the naming conventions of the larly, if you start an ftp application that Filenames remote system. For example, if you try to asks you to enter the name of the host you Every operating system has its own put the file UNREAD NOTEBOOK AO want to contact (such as Fetch for the Macin- rules for naming files. Filenames on VMD onto your PC, the resulting DOS filename tosh or WFTP for Windows), the client is (and other VM/CMS systems) consist of will be unread.not. the machine on which that application is three parts separated by spaces, for ex- installed, usually your desktop worksta- ample, UNREAD NOTEBOOK AO. The Transfer Mode: ASCII vs. Binary tion. first part may contain no more than eight Another peculiarity of VMD (and many Things get a little more complicated characters and is the filename proper. The other IBM systems) is that plain text files when you start an ftp session from within second part describes the contents or na- conform to the EBCDIC rather than the a telnet or tn3270 session. Under these ture of the file and is thus referred to as the ASCII standard for using numerical val- circumstances, the computer into which filetype. The filetype is also limited to you are logged is the client. For example, eight characters. The third part, the (continued on page 11) .
April-June 1993 11
FTP and VMD Shortcuts help cms wmac or help cms rmac at the DOS Users. If you want to establish an system prompt. ontinued from page 10) ftp connection with your desktop com- ues to represent printable characters. In puter, there may be a few short cuts you VMD as FTP Server EBCDIC, an uppercase "A" has the deci- can take. For example, if you're using The most complicated aspect of using mal value of 193, while in ASCII the same Clarkson University's tn3270 program to an ftp client to open a session with the ftp character has the value of 65. In order to conduct a remote login session with VMD, server on VMD is the login procedure. safely transfer a text file from an ASCII once you've executed the linkto tcpip com- Aside from knowing your login name and system to an EBCDIC system or vice versa, mand, you can initiate an ftp session by password, you must also know the name the ftp transfer mode must be ASCII. If the pressing
tng Symbols 10 Delete a I, : 5 ••• Not available • 11 Review the VMD as FTP Client periods; for example, wmac all notebook. 6 Screen Co:. Many users find it easier to invoke the Once you've executed the wmac com- ftp client on VMD and ftp "from" VMD "to" mand, the standard Macintosh Save dia- / other machines rather than the reverse. No log box will appear. You can either accept Figure 1 : Vie VMSECURE User Selection Menu. matter where you're going, there is one the default filename and folder or change method of starting an ftp session on VMD them as you would when saving any file to that will always work. First, link to the your Mac. 4. Select option 2, Minidisk Link Mode minidisk on which VMD's TCP/IP applica- To move files in the other direction and Passwords. You will then see a tions are stored by typing the command (from your Mac to VMD), use the com- screen similar to that shown in Figure 2. linkto tcpip at the system prompt. Then mand: enter the ftp host, is command where host Systems Center. Inc. the IP address or fully-qualified domain rmac filename filetype [filemode] name of the computer with which you want [(options] to communicate. Once connected to the host, you'll be prompted to enter your where filename and filetype are the name username (or "anonymous," for anony- and type you want the file to have on mous ftp archives) and perhaps your pass- VMD. A standard Mac Open dialog box word. Once logged in, you will be pre- will appear and you can select the file you sented with a Command: prompt and can want to transfer. enter any valid ftp command supported by Files transferred using wmac and rmac the VMD client, including common ftp com- are treated as ASCII files by default unless mands such as dir, put, get, mget, ascii, you add the (binary option to the com- binary, etc. For a complete list of com- mand; for example, wmac pceudora sea Figure 2: The VMSECURE Minidisk Link mands available to you, enter the command (binary. To see a complete list of options Mode and Passwords menu. help at the ftp Command: prompt. for wmac or rmac, enter the command (continued on page 12) .
[Computing and Communications j
i Services Office 1120 DCL Campus MC 256 1304 W.Springfield Ave.
Urbana, IL 61801 LIBRARY SCIENCE 306 LIBRARY CAMPUS MC-5 2 2
FTP and VMD 1 Use your client to initiate an ftp session For More Information (continued from page 11) withtheremotehostvmd.cso.uiuc.edu. When it comes to ftp, VMD is a strange sort of beast. Aside from the points dis- 2. Once connected, you will be asked to cussed above, you may encounter addi- 5. the tab key, to the Using move Read enter your username and password as tional VMD-specific quirks. If you have field. a Pass: Type read password of usual. You will then see a message that problems or questions about doing file eight characters or less and then tab to looks something like "230 LYNNWARD transfers between VMD and another com- the Write Pass: field. Type another logged in; no working directory de- puter, contact the CCSO Systems Consult- password of eight characters or less in fined." ants at 333-6133. this field. (It's a good idea to enter different passwords for read and write 3. Link to your personal minidisk by en- - Lynn Ward access to your minidisk.) Do NOT cre- tering the command cd userid.191, ate a password for the Mult: field! where userid is your VMD login name; for example, cd lynnward. 191. You 6. To view your newly created passwords, will then see an error message like "Per- About UlUCnet press your keyboard equivalent of the mission denied to LINK to UlUCnet provides timely informa- 3270 key. If are satisfied with PA2 you LYNNWARD 191; still no working di- tion about the campus network. It is them, press F12 (or your keyboard rectory." Ignore this message and go on published by the Computing Services equivalent) to save the passwords. to step 4. Office and is edited by Lynn Ward.
Note: Any VMD user who knows your Note for Fetch Users: To link to your Comments and suggestions for topics minidisk passwords can link to your minidisk, go to the Remote menu and are welcome. Permission to reprint all minidisk during his or her terminal ses- choose the Send FTP Command... op- or part of UlUCnet for non-profit pur- sion. Keep this information confiden- tion. Then enter the command: cwd poses is granted, provided full tial unless you want others to be able to userid.191, where userid is your VMD acknowledgement of the source is access your files. login name. You will see both of the given. Feel free to reach us via elec- error messages previously described, tronic mail ([email protected]), cam- Once you know your minidisk name and another dialog box will tell you that pus or U.S. mail (UlUCnet, Comput- and write password, you can open an there is still no working directory. Click ing Services Office, 1120 Digital Com- ftp session with VMD using virtually on Okay and go on to step 4. any ftp client. The login procedure is puter Laboratory, MC 256, 1304 W. IL described below (a typical login ses- 4. Enter the command quote acct Springfield Ave., Urbana, 61801),or sion is shown in Figure 3): writepass, where writepass is your by phone at (217) 244-0681. minidisk write password. You will fi- For a free subscription, just send
ftp vmd.cao.uiuc.edu nally be connected to your minidisk us your name and (preferably cam- and can use your ftp client as usual to pus) address; be sure to include your 220 Conned i/nnward manipulate files the client and server. on department and mail code if you send (password for I yonward le entered here) a campus address. UlUCnet is also
i lynnward. 191 Note for Fetch Users: To enter your available in electronic form. Recent quote sect private write password, go to the Remote menu issues are posted to the Netnews news- and choose the Send FTP Command... option. Send the command acct group uiuc.pubs.uiucnet. Back issues the Figure 3: A typical login session with the writepass, where writepass is your are available for download from VMD ftp server. minidisk write password. anonymous ftp host ftp.cso.uiuc.edu in the directory doc/net/uiucnet and from the UIUC Gopher server.