Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!purdue!haven!umd5!matthews From: matthews@umd5.umd.edu (Mike Matthews) Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions Subject: Re: Beginner's guide to downloading Summary: anonymous ftp Keywords: download FTP UUCP binaries Message-ID: <5899@umd5.umd.edu> Date: 9 Jan 90 00:03:20 GMT References: <4@amsdev.UUCP> Reply-To: matthews@umd5.umd.edu (Mike Matthews) Distribution: na Organization: University of Maryland, College Park Lines: 22 In article <4@amsdev.UUCP> timj@amsdev.UUCP (Timothy Jones) writes: >Can anyone out there point me in the direction of a good source of info on how >to access files listed as ANON FTP in many of your postings? I've been told >to download a file ... (does 'Catch-22' ring any bells here?). > [stuff deleted] >Tim Jones >AmSoft Development Well, that most likely refers to an "anonymous ftp" site file. To get to it is relatively easy, at least from Unix and if your Unix account has access to the Internet (or whatever net it is; never did get all those nets straight). From the Unix % prompt, type "ftp " where was hopefully given in the message. When it asks for your userid, just type "anonymous"; when it asks for the password, your real userid usually suffices. You have read-only access (for the most part) to the public libraries that FTP server has (ftp, btw, stands for File Transfer Protocol, in case anyone out there doesn't know). At this stage, it's just a matter of cd'ing to the right directory path, and "get"ing the files you want. If the file is binary, make sure you tell ftp about it (type "binary" at the ftp> prompt). I think that about covers it..