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archie is a database query program that contacts anonymous FTP sites around the world and asks each site for a complete list of all its files. archie then indexes this information in its own internal database. You can search this database for the location of files on the Internet. Because updating archie databases is obviously a time-consuming process, the databases are updated usually only about once a month. Thus, it’s possible—although unlikely—that the location archie gives you is incorrect.
archie is a popular service. The various archie servers around the world can get very heavily loaded, and requests can take a while to complete. Some sites place limits on the number of simultaneous connections, to keep the servers from becoming too slow to use. If you try an archie server and find that it’s fully loaded, you can either try a different server or wait a few minutes and try again.
ON THE WEB:
Many archie servers now support inquiries via Web forms. To conduct archie searches, go to the following URL for a list of archie gateways to the Web. From this page, you can link to many of the mirror sites of the archie database. It’s usually quickest to link to the site closest to you.
Table 31.4 lists some of the archie servers available worldwide.
| Server | IP Address | Location |
|---|---|---|
| archie.unl.edu | 129.93.1.14 | USA (NE) |
| archie.internic.net | 198.49.45.10 | USA (NJ) |
| archie.rutgers.edu | 128.6.18.15 | USA (NJ) |
| archie.ans.net | 147.225.1.10 | USA (NY) |
| archie.sura.net | 128.167.254.179 | USA (MD) |
| archie.au | 139.130.4.6 | Australia |
| archie.uni-linz.ac.at | 140.78.3.8 | Austria |
| archie.univie.ac.at | 131.130.1.23 | Austria |
| archie.cs.mcgill.ca | 132.206.51.250 | Canada |
| archie.uqam.ca | 132.208.250.10 | Canada |
| archie.funet.fi | 128.214.6.102 | Finland |
| archie.univ-rennes1.fr | 129.20.128.38 | France |
| archie.th-darmstadt.de | 130.83.128.118 | Germany |
| archie.ac.il | 132.65.16.18 | Israel |
| archie.unipi.it | 131.114.21.10 | Italy |
| archie.wide.ad.jp | 133.4.3.6 | Japan |
| archie.hana.nm.kr | 128.134.1.1 | Korea |
| archie.sogang.ac.kr | 163.239.1.11 | Korea |
| archie.uninett.no | 128.39.2.20 | Norway |
| archie.rediris.es | 130.206.1.2 | Spain |
| archie.luth.se | 130.240.12.30 | Sweden |
| archie.switch.ch | 130.59.1.40 | Switzerland |
| archie.twnic.net | 192.83.166.10 | Taiwan |
| archie.ncu.edu.tw | 192.83.166.12 | Taiwan |
| archie.doc.ic.ac.uk | 146.169.11.3 | United Kingdom |
| archie.hensa.ac.uk | 129.12.21.25 | United Kingdom |
To connect to one of these servers, telnet to it and log in as archie. Each server is slightly different, but most are basically the same. After you log in to a server, you get a prompt such as
archie>
where you can enter your search commands. Different servers have different default search values. To determine what the default setup is for the server that you connect to, use the show search command. The show search command returns one of the following values:
| regex | archie interprets your search string as a UNIX regular expression. |
| exact | Your search string must exactly match a file name. |
| sub | Your search string matches if a file name contains it as a substring. This is a case-insensitive search. |
| subcase | Similar to the sub search type, except that the case of the letters in the string must match. |
You can set the desired search type by using the set search command as shown here:
archie> set search search-type
When you have your search set up the way you want it, you use the prog command to search by filename. For example, the following pair of commands
archie> set search sub archie> prog linux
performs a case-insensitive search of the archie database for all files that contain the substring linux. For each match that archie finds, it reports the host computer that has the file, along with the full path name of the file on that host.
If you get confused or just need some assistance when you’re using archie, just type help at the archie> prompt. This will give you information on how to get help in archie. From the help> prompt, type a ? to see a list of subtopics that you can get help on.
After you find the information you’re looking for, you need to exit archie by typing exit or quit at the archie> prompt.
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