#! /bin/sh # # This program is called from AQgetentry to send a help message # # usage: AQhelp "destination" "username" PATH=/aeneas/ftp/archive/bin:/usr/local:/bin:/usr/ucb:/usr/bin export PATH WHO="$2"; export WHO ADDRESS="$1"; export ADDRESS /usr/lib/sendmail -ba "$1" << xxx Subject: How to use the ATHENA-DIST archive server From: ATHENA-DIST archive service In-reply-to: message from $WHO To: $1 This message comes to you from the ATHENA-DIST archive server, archive-server@ATHENA-DIST.MIT.EDU. It received a message from you asking for help. The archive server is a mail-response program. That means that you mail it a request, and it mails back the response. The archive server is a very dumb program. It does not have much error checking. If you don't send it the commands that it understands, it will just answer "I don't understand you". The archive server has 4 commands. Each command must be the first word on a line. The archive server reads your entire message before it does anything, so you can have several different commands in a single message. The archive server treats the "Subject:" header line just like any other line of the message. You can use any combination of upper and lower case letters in the commands. The archives are organized into a series of directories and subdirectories. Each directory has an index, and each subdirectory has an index. The top-level index gives you an overview of what is in the subdirectories, and the index for each subdirectory tells you what is in it. "help" command: The command "help" or "send help" causes the server to send you the help file. You already know this, of course, because you are reading the help file. No other commands are honored in a message that asks for help (the server figures that you had better read the help message before you do anything else). "index" command: if your message contains a line whose first word is "index", then the server will send you the top-level index of the contents of the archive. If there are other words on that line that match the name of subdirectories, then the indexes for those subdirectories are sent instead of the top-level index. For example, you can say index or index programs or index appetizers You can then send back another message to the archive server, using a "send" command (see below) to ask it to send you the files whose name you learned from that list. (Footnote: "index programs" and "send index programs" mean the same thing: you can use the "send" command instead of the "index" command, if you want, for getting an index. If your message has an "index" or a "send index" command, then all other "send" commands will be ignored. This means that you cannot get an index and data in the same request. This is so that index requests can be given high priority.) "send" command: if your message contains a line whose first word is "send", then the archive server will send you the item(s) named on the rest of the line. To name an item, you give its directory and its name. For example send recipe african-stew or send program rckeep Once you have named a category, you can put as many names as you like on the rest of the line; they will all be taken from that category. For example: send recipe choc-chip-1 choc-chip-2 choc-chip-3 Each "send" command can reference only one directory. If you would like to get one recipe and one program, you must use two "send" commands, one beginning "send recipe" and the other beginning "send program". You may put as many "send" commands as you like into one message to the server, but the more you ask for, the longer it will take to receive. See "FAIRNESS", below, for an explanation. Actually, it's not strictly true that you can put as many "send" commands as you want into one message. If the server must use uucp mail to send your files, then it cannot send more than 100K bytes in one message. If you ask for more than it can send, then it will send as much as it can and ignore the rest. "path" command: The "path" command exists to help in case you do not get responses from the server when you mail to it. Sometimes the server is unable to return mail over the incoming path. There are dozens of reasons why this might happen, and if you are a true wizard, you already know what those reasons are. If you are an apprentice wizard, you might not know all the reasons but you might know a way to circumvent them. If you put in a "path" command, then everything that the server mails to you will be mailed to that address, rather than to the return address on your mail. For example, if you say path pyramid!rutgers!zakkaroo!jj then all mail sent by the server will be sent to that address. EXAMPLES: These examples are to demonstrate the format of mail messages. They do not actually reflect the contents of the archive server. 1) Find out the list of recipes that are in the archive. Send this message: To: archive-server@ATHENA-DIST.MIT.EDU Subject: hi there send index recipes 2) Get the chocolate-chip-cookie recipes from the archive (you have learned their file names from the list that was sent to you in step 1). To: archive-server@ATHENA-DIST.MIT.EDU Subject: send recipe truffles send recipe choc-chip-1 choc-chip-2 choc-chip-3 choc-chip-4 send recipe choc-chip-5 choc-chip-6 choc-chip-7 3) Get the eggnog recipes, and send them over the best path to my site: To: seismo.css.gov!garp!aeneas.mit.edu!archive-server path myname@site.uucp send eggnog1 eggnog2 eggnog3 NOTES: The archive server acknowledges every request by return mail. If you don't get a message back in a day or two (depending on how close you are to garp!aeneas.mit.edu on the network) you should assume that something is going wrong, and perhaps try a "path" command. If you aren't getting anywhere and you don't know a wizard to help you, try putting path myname@site.uucp in your message, where "myname" is your mailbox name and "site" is the uucp name of your machine. The delays in sending out large items from the archives are intentional, to make it difficult to get copies of everything in the archives. If you are new to the network and would like to get all back issues of everything, you should post a request to a regional newsgroup asking whether someone who is geographically near you can provide them. Don't send mail with long lines. If you want to ask for 20 recipes in one request, you don't need to put all 20 of them in one "send" command. The archive server is quite able to handle long lines, but before your mail message is received by the archive server it might pass through relay computers that will choke on long lines. The archive server does not respond to requests from users named "root", "system", "daemon", or "mailer". This is to prevent mail loops. If your name is "Bruce Root" or "Joe Daemon", and you can document this, I will happily rewrite the server to remove this restriction. Yes, I know about Norman Mailer and Waverley Root. Norman doesn't use netmail and Waverley is dead. FAIRNESS: The archive server contains many safeguards to ensure that it is not monopolized by people asking for large amounts of data. The mailer is set up so that it will send no more than a fixed amount of data each day. If the work queue contains more requests than the day's quota, then the unsent files will not be processed until the next day. Whenever the mailer is run to send its day's quota, it sends the requests out shortest-first. If you have a request waiting in the work queue and you send in another request, the new request is added to the old one (thereby increasing its size) rather than being filed anew. This prevents you from being able to send in a large number of small requests as a way of beating the system. The reason for all of these quotas and limitations is that the delivery resources are finite, and there are many tens of thousands of people who would like to make use of the archive. xxx echo "`date`" help $ADDRESS >> /aeneas/ftp/archive/requestqueue/out.log