Using FTP in Education

The original FTP program

The originators of the Internet wrote a small program for transferring files between computers on the net. It was called FTP, for File Transfer Protocol. This program had a few simple commands, like open and close (an FTP site), quit (the program), get and put files, and set the file transfer mode to ascii (text) or image (binary). More modern versions of ftp programs, such as Fetch for the Macintosh, convert many of these commands into a windows environment, where one only has to use a mouse to select the desired actions. From your cougar> prompt, you can still execute all of these commands.

Anonymous FTP and FTP Programs

Over the years, certain computers became famous for being a repository of freeware and shareware. Yahoo! maintains a list of anonymous FTP sites, including SunSITE and Wash U. While most computers require of one a user id and password (which are not easy to come by), these sites and others permitted people to connect to them through a process known as anonymous ftp. Until the last few years (with the advent of gopher and web browsers), one used an "ftp program" to connect to a computer through anonymous ftp. Users typed the word "anonymous" when prompted for their User Id, and give their complete IP address when prompted for a password. Such ftp programs are still useful for some purposes. In the Mac lab we use Fetch and in the Windows lab we use WS_FTP.

What web browsers did for anonymous FTP.

Over the last few years, the gopher protocol and then hypertext transfer protocol enabled more sophisticated means of using ftp. Now, to get free software or shareware over the net is almost a "no brainer." To take one example, the search engine and Internet index Excite (www.excite.com)
makes it about as easy to get free games and educational software as things could get. You can try this for yourself.

Link to Excite.
Click on Computers & Internet.
You'll see "Free Software! Enter name/category.
When you do this, you'll see a list of possible programs to download.
Click on one. You may have to click on a couple of links.
Eventually, you'll be offered a dialog box, and one of the options will be "Save File"
Be sure you are downloading the file into your directory under the Andris login. (It also helps to put it in its own special folder (I can show you how to create one), because many of these programs have several files attached to them and it's helpful to keep them all in one place.
Often times the files are compressed, usually in .zip format, but not always. We have a decompression program for .zip files.
If you double click the downloaded compressed file that you have put in your folder, it will call up WinZip. WinZip is fairly intuitive. Your goal is to Extract all of the files that are compressed, which can be accomplished by Selecting All from the Edit menu and Extracting. I'll help you if you get stuck.
Once the file is extracted, you should run it, usually by clicking on a .exe file.
Evaluate the program. If you don't like it, dump it from your file. If you think it's good, you might want to share the information with others, including your classmates.

What web browsers did for web publishing

In order to publish a web page, you have to put the file associated with it in the folder called html that was assigned to you when you got your cougar username, the folder that you can see if you log on to cougar and type ls. Until the last couple of years, one used an FTP program to log onto the file server using username and password, and then put the web page and associated files into the html folder.
Now that is all done automatically with the browser. The way it works in Netscape Gold or Communicator is as follows:

Have your page up in the editor. It helps to have just saved the file.
Choose Publish (under File in Communicator, the lightning bold in Navigator Gold).
Be sure you select all associated files with your page (you may have none, but if you are using images, they will need to be transferred, too.)
Put in the proper URL. In Netscape Gold, it is ftp://cougar.siue.edu/./html, in Communicator it is ftp://cougar.siue.edu/./html/filename.html where 'filename.html' is the name of the file you are transferring, usually index.html for a default home page.
Type in your username and password.
The publication will take place. You will either get an ftp error message, or a success message.

What you need to know about Unix

Our local server, cougar, uses a Unix operating system, which is similar in some ways to the old command line syntax DOS system, but more complicated or powerful, depending on how you look at it. While the new web browsers make web publishing without a knowledge of Unix possible, if you want to do anything at all with managing your site, such as create subdirectories and change the access permissions on your site, you will need to know a little Unix to find your way around on a remote file server.

If you're using an ftp program that uses command line syntax, then you'll have to type these commands in. If you're using a mouse and pull-down menu driven progam, point and click until you find the analogous way to navigate the directories and get the files you want. On the Macintosh, a good ftp program is Fetch. On the Windows side, use WS_FTP.

Let's Do It!

Again, Judi Harris in Way of the Ferret listed some good ftp prospecting sites.However, be aware that she put this reference together in 1994. One example of such an ftp project is Project Gutenberg.

Project Gutenberg (uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/etext/gutenberg/) has a goal of putting 10,000 electronic books on-line by the year 2001. Here at SIUE we have the goal of getting 1000 Illinois teachers on-line in that same time frame. The files at Project Gutenberg are either text files (.txt) or compressed files (.zip). Look only at the .txt files at this time. You will need a compression utility such as MacGzip or PKUNZIP to look at the other files. Be bold! The following is a list of the files put on the Gutenberg server just in May of 1995!

May 1995 Trees and Other Poems, Joyce Kilmer (US/NJ/NY)    [treesxxx.xxx] 263 
May 1995 Poems of Rupert Brooke (Britain)                  [rupbrxxx.xxx] 262 
May 1995 Dome of Many-Coloured Glass, Amy Lowell [Mass, US][domcgxxx.xxx] 261 
May 1995 Introduction to Browning, Hiram Corson [Brit/Amer][inbroxxx.xxx] 260 
May 1995 Ballads of a Cheechako, Robert W. Service [Canada][bcheexxx.xxx] 259 
May 1995 The Poems of A.L. [Adam Lindsay] Gordon[Australia][agordxxx.xxx] 258 
May 1995 Troilus and Crisyde, by Geoffrey Chaucer [England][troicxxx.xxx] 257 
May 1995 MPG Motion Picture of Rotating Earth [from space] [earthxxx.zip] 256

In case the UIUC archive is busy, here are three other sites that have the Project Gutenberg texts, where you can practice your ftp-ing :

To take just one more example, several sites are available for music resources. For example, a good site is ftp.leo.org.

Updated October 7, 1997 by Jim Andris