Currently, archie tracks the contents of over 800 anonymous FTP
archive sites containing over a million files stored across the
Internet. Collectively, these files represent well over 50 gigabytes
of information, with new entries being added daily.
The archie server automatically updates the listing information from
each site about once a month. This avoids constantly updating the
databases, which could waste network resources, yet ensures that the
information on each site's holdings is reasonably up to date.
To access archie interactively, telnet to one of the existing
servers. {See Telnet, for notes on using the telnet program.} They
include
archie.ans.net (New York, USA)
archie.rutgers.edu (New Jersey, USA)
archie.sura.net (Maryland, USA)
archie.unl.edu (Nebraska, USA)
archie.mcgill.ca (the first Archie server, in Canada)
archie.funet.fi (Finland)
archie.au (Australia)
archie.doc.ic.ac.uk (Great Britain)
At the login: prompt of one of the servers, enter archie to log in.
A greeting will be displayed, detailing information about ongoing
work in the archie project; the user will be left at a archie>
prompt, at which he may enter commands. Using help will yield
instructions on using the prog command to make queries, set to
control various aspects of the server's operation, et al. Type quit
at the prompt to leave archie. Typing the query prog vine.tar.Z will
yield a list of the systems that offer the source to the X-windows
program vine; a piece of the information returned looks like:
Host ftp.uu.net (137.39.1.9)
Last updated 10:30 7 Jan 1992
Location: /packages/X/contrib
FILE rw-r--r-- 15548 Oct 8 20:29 vine.tar.Z
Host nic.funet.fi (128.214.6.100)
Last updated 05:07 4 Jan 1992
Location: /pub/X11/contrib
FILE rw-rw-r-- 15548 Nov 8 03:25 vine.tar.Z
archie Clients
There are two main-stream archie clients, one called (naturally
enough) archie, the other xarchie (for X-Windows). They query the
archie databases and yield a list of systems that have the requested
file(s) available for anonymous FTP, without requiring an interactive
session to the server. For example, to find the same information you
tried with the server command prog, you could type
% archie vine.tar.Z
Host athene.uni-paderborn.de
Location: /local/X11/more_contrib
FILE -rw-r--r-- 18854 Nov 15 1990 vine.tar.Z
Host emx.utexas.edu
Location: /pub/mnt/source/games
FILE -rw-r--r-- 12019 May 7 1988 vine.tar.Z
Host export.lcs.mit.edu
Location: /contrib
FILE -rw-r--r-- 15548 Oct 9 00:29 vine.tar.Z
Note that your system administrator may not have installed the archie
clients yet; the source is available on each of the archie servers, in
the directory archie/clients.
Using the X-windows client is much more intuitive---if it's installed,
just read its man page and give it a whirl. It's essential for the
networked desktop.