Having ftp available gives you a very powerful tool. However, it still leaves the basic problem of sorting out where in the world a particular file can be found. This is where the archie program comes in.
Various sites around the world have set up archie servers, which essentially contain databases of all the file names on all the ftp sites they have encountered. If you make an archie query from one of these databases then you will be supplied with a list of all the ftp sites and file pathnames on those sites where your required file can be found. You can then use a standard ftp session to retrieve the files that you located.
There are many archie sites in the world - a list of some of the hostnames and associated countries is as follows.
| archie.au | Australia |
| archie.univie.ac.at | Austria |
| archie.belnet.be | Belgium |
| archie.bunyip.com | Canada |
| archie.cs.mcgill.ca | Canada |
| archie.funet.fi | Finland |
| archie.univ-rennes1.fr | France |
| archie.th-darmstadt.de | Germany |
| archie.ac.il | Israel |
| archie.unipi.it | Italy |
| archie.wide.ad.jp | Japan |
| archie.hana.nm.kr | Korea |
| archie.uninett.no | Norway |
| archie.icm.edu.pl | Poland |
| archie.rediris.es | Spain |
| archie.luth.se | Sweden |
| archie.switch.ch | Switzerland |
| archie.ncu.edu.tw | Taiwan |
| archie.doc.ic.ac.uk | UK |
| archie.hensa.ac.uk | UK |
| archie.sura.net | USA (MD) |
| archie.unl.edu | USA (NE) |
| archie.internic.net | USA (NJ) |
| archie.rutgers.edu | USA (NJ) |
| archie.ans.net | USA (NY) |
In order to use one of these sites you just telnet to one of the hostnames in the list and login as archie. Some simple information is then returned by the archie server, though for a beginner the most useful thing to find and use is the command.
archie> help ?
This will give you a list of all the commands available and if you subsequently ask for help on a particular command from the list then it will be explained in more detail. When you have finished with help, pressing Ctrl-c or Ctrl-d will return you to the archie> prompt.
The simple way to use archie to locate a specific file is with a command like:
archie> find posix.1
which, after a short search time, will produce a list of all the sites known to contain the required file and the pathnames at those sites to the file itself. It is then a simple matter to use a conventional anonymous ftp to retrieve the file itself.
You must remember that the database stored by each of the archie sites is its own snapshot of what files are available in the world and, consequently, a particular file may not be on record at all sites.