LINGUIST List 4.141

Sun 28 Feb 1993

FYI: How to get the LSA E-mail List by ftp

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Directory

1. , Revised instructions for getting the LSA email list by ftp

Dear Colleagues,

 For reasons which are beyond me (I am very far from being in charge
of the machines on which the linguistics archives are maintained), there
has been some difficulty with the instructions I gave for getting the
LSA email list. Herewith a revised (and tested) set of instructions:

 First, this only works if you are logged onto a computer that is on
the Internet. If your email address ends in a period followed by two or
three letters, then you're on the Internet (if there are any "%" signs
in it, however, all bets are off). Even if you think you're not on the
Internet, you might be; more and more Bitnet sites have recently been
adding Internet connectivity, and it takes some time for all the users
to get the word. Consult your local computer gurus for details.

 Second, most Internet computers have a program called "ftp" (which
stands for "file transfer protocol"). It allows a user on one Internet
computer to log onto another (located anywhere) and transfer files from
it at very high speeds (a typical speed is 27 Kilobytes per second,
though conditions vary), much faster than modems. To use ftp, you must
run it on your host computer and give it a network address, in this
case, the address is linguistics.archive.umich.edu, so the command is:

 ftp linguistics.archive.umich.edu

Here's something like what might happen next:

 220 apollo21.aal.itd.umich.edu FTP server (Domain/OS sr10.3 30-Aug-91) ready.
 Name (141.211.160.33:2C9A): anonymous
 331 Guest login ok, send E-mail address as password.
 Password:

 Third, once you are connected (the command above should connect you
and produce a login prompt - if it doesn't, either try again later or
consult your local system gurus), you should log in as "anonymous"
(without quotes, natch). This allows anybody at all to log in, with
restricted privileges. You will be asked for a password. In fact,
anything at all will work, but the polite convention is to use your
email address as a password, so that the folks maintaining the site
will have some idea who's using it.

 Once you're logged in as "anonymous", you will find yourself in a
directory with a lot of subdirectories. These are the University of
Michigan public-domain archives (msdos.archive.umich.edu,
mac.archive.umich.edu, etc.). You want to get to the linguistics
subdirectory, and the command to do that is:

 cd linguistics

 Once you're in that directory, you can use the "ls" command to view
the files and other subdirectories that are there.

Here's what 'ls' shows:

ftp> ls
 200 PORT command successful.
 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls (0 bytes).
 00index.ling
 00readme.txt
 LSA.email.list
 fonts
 handouts
 lexica
 linguist.list
 software
 uploads
 226 Transfer complete.
 103 bytes received in 0.612 seconds (0.164 Kbytes/sec)

(ftp gives you a lot of irrelevant technical information. Ignore it).
As can be seen, the email file is called "LSA.email.list" (the capitals
are important; Unix is case-sensitive), and you get it with the command:

 get LSA.email.list

 This command will open a network connection and copy the file back to
the machine you're ftp-ing from. It will wind up on your home directory
there. Unless you have a network connection from your desktop machine -
in which case you probably don't need these directions - it will *not*
be on your personal hard disk. To put it there, you will need to
download it whatever way you can on your local system. Once again,
consult your local gurus about that; conditions vary a great deal.

 To get out of ftp, the command is "quit".

 I might add, pursuant to Fritz Newmeyer's posting, that the current
copy of the directory apparently has many errors. Once you get it,
check your own entry and send any corrections to

 zzlsagallua

Cheers,
-j