What Is (and What's In) The Phish.net Ar
The Phish.Net Archives was started as a computer on the Internet to hold everything you might want that pertains to Phish, most culled from (or direct records of) the Phish.Net. But the Phish.Net Archives have changed a bit, and the online resources now available to PhishHeads have been reorganized:
At the beginning of 1994, the rec.music.phish community raised over $2000 to put towards a dedicated archive site. That money went towards the founding of the Brown University NetSpace project, which currently houses the Phish archive site, amoung a number of other projects. The idea of the server is to make information available to Phish fans as easily and in as useful a form as possible. In order to make that possible, we have a number of ways to get information from the archives.
The text files mentioned above are available on request. There is an automated server running on the archive that responds to email requests for files. To find out how the server works (not detailed here because it's constantly changing) send mail to phish-archives@phish.net with the word "help" in the subject.
It used to be that email requests for files were handled by a person (Lee). When the number of requests got above about 30 per day, Lee couldn't handle it anymore and wrote a script to deal with it. Thus, as soon as your email reaches the archive, a reply is sent out to you. Some of the files that the archive will send you are quite large and might take a while to get to you. Some networks are faster than others. If it's not there in 12 hours, assume there's some problem.
The World Wide Web is probably the best way to access information over the internet. If you already understand the web and have a web browser, the URL for the archive is http://www.phish.net/ (which is currently http://www.netspace.org/phish/).
The WWW is a collection of servers, distributed around the world that serve documents written in HyperText Markup Language (HTML). This language is a standard way to present multimedia information to clients running on machines across the 'Net. HyperText is quite similar to Apple's HyperCard, except that it's free, and clients run on a variety of machines, including UNIX workstations, MacIntoshes, PC's, etc. You can navigate through HTML pages, which often contain pointers to other pages, as well as pointers to ftp and gopher sites.
In order to navigate the Web, you need a Web Browser, such as Netscape, Mosaic, MacWeb, WinWeb, or Lynx. Mosaic and Netscape both have a mouse driven graphical user interface (GUI) that make surfing the net as easy as pointing and clicking. If you don't have a web browser, you can get one via ftp from the archive site. Use your favorite FTP method (see the above section on FTP) to connect to www.phish.net and go to /pub/Software/. If you're on a Mac or a DOS (PC Compatible) machine, you'll want to download a program called "NetScape". The Mac version should run as-is if you download it using Fetch. The PC version is compressed using PKZip, so you need to get the pkz204g package to decompress the program. Mosaic is available for free from the NCSA: ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu, as are the Mosaic FAQ, and other WWW pages with useful information. Netscape is available free from a number of ftp sites, eg ftp.princeton.edu.
Once you have a Web Browser, you can get to the Phish Archive by going to the File menu and selecting "open URL" or "Open Location", and entering the URL given above.
Folks have been asking how to access files that are in the anonymous ftp space from web pages. One way is to use an ftp:// URL, but that's going to be slow for the user, and it's going to bog the machine down very quickly. What'll be better is a gopher:// URL. The only problem with gopher is that you need to specify the type of the image in the URL.
For those who already understand ftp: the host is www.phish.net; log in as anonymous, send your ID as password, cd to /pub/phish and enjoy!
A good ftp tool is CuteFTP (thanks Matt Barclay
Ftp is a protocol for transferring files accross the internet - the file you ask for is (exactly) recreated on (a floppy or hard drive on) your machine. Ftp allows you to get single or multiple files; if you wanted, you could "get" a copy of every digest from 1993. I can't imagine anyone wanting to do that.
Ftp can be done from ANY networked computer. I am only familiar with Mac & Unix (& maybe a little DOS), so the only programs I can suggest are "ftp" for Unix & "Fetch" for the Mac. If you have a networked mac & you don't have Fetch or something like it, ask around; someone at your site should have a copy. IBMs, VAXen, CRAYs, even Apple IIe's are examples of other computers that can use ftp if they're on a network. The explanation of ftp here is based on Unix, because that's where ftp started, and because it's the simplest way to describe things.
First, you need to connect to the archive site. The archive site is really a machine, called www.phish.net, so when you connect to it on a Unix machine, simply type "ftp www.phish.net" It will tell you when you have connected, & it will ask you for a name. You should enter the name "anonymous". It will then ask for a password; enter your userid or your name. You will then be presented with an ftp prompt. On a Mac running Fetch, all of this information is entered beforehand in the appropriate fields, and Fetch uses the information you have provided to go through the same steps when you click "Open connection".
Next you want to change to the Phish subdirectory. If you are on a Unix machine, you are doubtless aware of the cd & ls commands; use them in the same way in ftp. cd lets you change directories; ls gives you a listing of the contents of the directory. On a mac, you need not worry about these commands; Fetch does it for you. Fetch displays directories as folders, files as pieces of paper; to change into a directory, double-click on it & fetch will present you with a listing of what's in that directory. Get to the Phish subdirectory by first changing into the "pub" directory, then the "phish" directory. Take a look into any of the folders that you see in the Phish directory. In Unix you can move back a folder level by typing "cd ..", in Fetch you can simply hold down the mouse-button on the directory name above the fetch window & see a listing of previous directories. To get a file in Unix, type "get
All the digests and many of the files on the archive are stored using the GNU compression utility. A decompressor for these files that runs on Macintoshs or IBMs can be found in the /pub/Software directory.
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