Newsgroups: comp.archives.admin Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!ox.com!msen.com!emv From: emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) Subject: archive normal form In-Reply-To: emv@msen.com's message of Tue, 25 Jun 1991 17:54:54 GMT Message-ID: Sender: usenet@ox.com (Usenet News Administrator) Organization: MSEN, Inc. Ann Arbor MI References: <1991Jun25.063045.22031@mel.dit.csiro.au> Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1991 21:53:25 GMT Lines: 71 Let me explain and justify this format for recording archive information, in the hope that it'll get wide use. I'll be converting the "MSEN Archive Service file verification" section of comp.archives postings to this format so I want to get it right. I believe I've sketched out something which would let you verify every file that's available for anonymous FTP or semi-public FTP that's out there; Here's a sample example. 19910520220500 f export.lcs.mit.edu /contrib ups-2.31.tar.Z 963435 ftp,30 19910520223700 f export.lcs.mit.edu /contrib ups-2.31.README 9758 ftp,30 19910528125400 f ftp.uu.net /tmp ups-song.ms 1237 ftp,21 19910529094400 f ftp.uu.net /tmp ups-song.au 1456032 ftp,21 19910530012300 d msen.com /debug/ups emv,case 19910624112800 w prep.ai.mit.edu /pub/gnu gawk* bug-gnu-utils 19910411185329 f nis.nsf.net,anonymous,guest . $read.me 1024 postmaster $date f $site $dir $file $size $owner $date w $site $dir $wildcard $owner $date d $site $dir $owner here's what the fields are. 19910520220500 $date: Date in ISO 3307 format (YYYYMMDDhhmmss[.xxxxxx]) Sorts easily, easy to parse, microsecond resolution, will be used in NNTP2. (d,f,w) $type: directory, file, or wildcard specification. Directories have ($site, $dir, @owner). Wildcards have ($site, $dir, $wildcard, @owner). Files have ($site, $dir, $file, $size, @owner). Any other type can be added as long as suitable definitions for the following fields can be provided. export.lcs.mit.edu $site: System name. The default assumption is login with user "anonymous", any password acceptable; the entry for nis.nsf.net shows a situation where there's something different from the default that's needed; in that case it's interpreted as ($site, $user, $pass) or even ($site, $user, $pass, $acct) XXX should ascii,binary be in here somewhere too? XXX should some notion of explicit file types be here? There are three sorts of things to describe, files, directories, and wildcard specifications. Files are operated on with the DIR, GET, and MGET commands. Directories are operated on with the CD and DIR commands. Wildcards are operated on with the DIR and MGET commands. gawk* $wildcard: wildcard file specification. Specified according to local host conventions. The $date variable for this should be set to the latest change date for the files that match the wildcard file specification. /contrib $dir: Directory. cd to this directory. In the special case where no cd command needs to be (or should not be) issued, treat "." as a no op. ups-song.au $file: File name. 1456032 $size: File size, in bytes, when properly transferred to a different machine. Systems which report sizes in blocks need to translate. emv,case $owner: comma-separated list of owners. First one should also be a mail address (e.g. emv@archive.msen.com). The rest can be group names or any other key words, tags, or identifiers which you might choose to use, or names of mail addresses. XXX this is pretty wide open.... -- Edward Vielmetti, MSEN Inc. moderator, comp.archives emv@msen.com