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Archie, originally developed at the Computer Science Department at McGill University in Montreal, is a public domain tool offering an electronic directory service for locating files on anonymous ftp sites. The Archie database currently indexes more than 2,100,000 files contained in more than 1000 anonymous ftp sites around the world.
The files made available at anonymous ftp sites are software packages for all common operating systems (MS-DOS, Windows 3.x, Windows95, Windows NT, OS/2, Macintosh, Unix, etc.). This includes all kinds of software executables, utilities such as device drivers, documentation files, Usenet group discussion archives and so on. Archie tracks information concerning the directory path, file name and ftp site of all files, indexing them by file name using the naming convention of each individual site rather than a common one. File retrieval using the Archie service requires knowledge of at least some part of the file name. In this way Archie enables one to locate a file without the bother of logging into many different anonymous ftp servers and performing individual searches. Archie databases are automatically updated about once a month, providing sufficiently up-to-date information without overloading the network.
It should be borne in mind that individual Archie sites have different policies as to which anonymous ftp sites they retrieve and on how often they update their site listings. Furthermore, as the content of the anonymous ftp sites varies from region to region, file retrievals on different Archie servers will often lead to different results.
The Archie database is maintained in the following locations:
| Location | Address |
|---|---|
| Australia | archie.au |
| Austria | archie.edvz.uni-linz.ac.at |
| Austria | archie.univie.ac.at |
| Canada | archie.uqam.ca |
| Finland | archie.funet.fi |
| France | archie.univ-rennes1.fr |
| Germany | archie.th-darmstadt.de |
| Israel | archie.ac.il |
| Italy | archie.unipi.it |
| Japan | archie.wide.ad.jp |
| Japan | archie.kyoto-u.ac.jp |
| Korea | archie.hana.nm.kr |
| Korea | archie.sogang.ac.kr |
| New Zealand | archie.nz |
| Spain | archie.rediris.es |
| Sweden | archie.luth.se |
| Switzerland | archie.switch.ch |
| Taiwan | archie.ncu.edu.tw |
| United Kingdom | archie.doc.ic.ac.uk |
| USA | archie.ans.net |
| USA | archie.internic.net |
| USA | archie.rutgers.edu |
| USA | archie.sura.net |
| USA | archie.unl.edu |
There are three ways to access the Archie database. This may be achieved by use of a local client, by an interactive telnet session or by electronic mail. Users are requested to respect a few basic rules when requesting information from an Archie server:
Usage of local clients is encouraged since they provide quickest and very easy access to the archie servers. This non-interactive use of the servers facilities provides good performance of the servers and therefore better response time for the user.
Public domain clients for accessing archie servers are available for all common platforms. The clients are usually available for anonymous FTP from the archie sites in the directories /pub/archie/clients or /archie/clients. All platforms support a simple command line client. In addition, graphical interfaces are available for most platforms.
Examples are:
Recently very comfortable Archie gateways have been developed in the World Wide Web for easiest use of the Archie database. Dependent on the capability of the WWW-browser used to handle forms, file search can be performed by filling out simple query forms or otherwise by using searchable documents. The latest list of Hypertext Archie Gateways can be found on http://web.nexor.co.uk/archie.html
To access an archie server interactively, telnet to one of the existing servers as listed in the section Where to find ARCHIE?). At the "login:"-prompt enter archie. The login procedure ends leaving the user at a "archie>" prompt. The server is now ready for user requests using designated Archie commands.
Users limited to electronic mail connectivity can access the archie servers by sending mail to the domain address of one of the servers listed in the section Where to find ARCHIE?. The Archie commands are sent in the body part of the mail.