Using ARCHIE by Telnet or EMail

In this section the some important commands for accessing Archie using Telnet or Email are described. Brackets "[...]" indicate optional parameters.

Note: A new version of the archie server (3.0) is now available. Some of the commands for interactive telnet access and the e-mail interface described below are slightly different from previous versions (2.11 and before). To find out which version of Archie is installed, issue the version command.

Using Telnet for ARCHIE access

The most important commands are:

exit, quit, bye
Exits archie.

help [command-name]
Calls the on-line help. If issued with command-name, the help request is restricted to the specified topic. To exit from the on-line help press the RETURN key.

whatis string
Searches the database of software package descriptions for string. The search is case-insensitive.

prog string / prog pattern
find string / find pattern
Searches the database for string or pattern which represents the name of the resource to be found in the database. Searches may be performed in a number of different ways specified in the variable search (set command) which also decides the interpretation of the parameter as string or pattern. The result is a list of FTP site addresses with matching entries, the size of the resource, its last modification date and the directory to find it. The number of hits is limited by the maxhits variable (set command). The result of prog can be sorted in different ways, depending on the value of the sortby variable (set command). By default, the variables search, maxhits and sortby are set to, respectively, exact match search on string, 1000 hits and unsorted resulting list.

mail [email] [,email2] ...
Sends the result of the last command in a mail message to the specified e-mail address(es). If issued with no argument, the result is sent to the address specified in the variable mailto (set command). Very useful, if long results are obtained.

set variable value
Sets one of the archie's variables. Values of these variables affect how archie interacts with the user.

Note: Use the help command for a detailed description of all commands, parameters, patterns and variables!

Using EMail for ARCHIE access

Note: The electronic mail interface to an archie server recognizes a subset of the commands described in Using Telnet for ARCHIE access. Most useful commands and particularities to the e-mail interface are described below. If an empty message, or a message containing no valid requests is received, it will be considered to be a help request.

Command lines begin in the first column. All lines that do not match a valid command are ignored.

help
Sends you the help file.
Note: The help command is exclusive, ie, other commands in the same message are ignored.

path return-address
set mailto return-address
Specifies a return e-mail address different from that which is extracted from the message header. If you do not receive a reply from the archie server within several hours, you might need to add a path command to your message request.

list pattern [pattern2] ...
Provides a list of the sites in the database that match pattern and the time at which they were last updated. The result is a list with site names, sites IP address and date of the last update in the database.

whatis string [string2] ...
Searches the database of software packages descriptions for each string. The search is case insensitive.

prog pattern [pattern2] ...
find pattern [pattern2] ...
Searches the database for each interpretation of pattern which represents the name of a resource to be found in the database. If multiple patterns are placed on one line, in that case, the results will be mailed back in one message. If multiple prog lines appear, then multiple messages will be returned, one for each prog line. Results are sorted by FTP site address in lexical order. The search is case insensitive.

quit
Nothing past this point is interpreted. Useful when a signature is automatically appended at the end of your mail messages.