Subject: Lists of anonymous ftp sites

5. *****
 Q: Is there a list of ftp sites (for certain kind of programs)?

 A: I have gathered (earlier in collaboration with Rhys Weatherley)
a list of MS-DOS and astronomy FTP sites and their moderators. It is
available from Garbo archives by anonymous FTP, WWW or mail server
as ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/moder.zip. It has become quite
popular. If readers have additions and/or corrections for that list,
I would very much like to receive such information. Your help in
maintenance would be very much appreciated. The help is needed to
make the list as covering as possible, and to keep it up to date.
   There also is a generic /pc/doc-net/ftp-list.zip now by Perry
Rovers. He took on the maintenance in December 1993 from Tom Czarnik
who retired from from the maintenance in spring 1994 due to not
having enough time to continue. Before Tom, the list was maintained
by Jon Granrose. Perry has done a very good job with the list.

 A2: There is a system called archie at the McGill University in
Canada. It keeps a list of where you can find programs archived. The
idea is roughly the following. For example if you wish to know which
anonymous ftp sites have tsbat47.zip, you may search archie database
with: prog tsbat. To connect to archie use
    telnet quiche.cs.mcgill.ca
and the userid archie. (Please note that the mcgill archie has long
been off-line, and you may have to find another archie.) Then
explore on from that point. Note that archie also accepts email
requests of information. To use that option send email to
archie@cs.mcgill.ca, use e.g. archie-request as your subject line,
and put send help as your message. The snag with archie is that by
necessity its information lags behind the situation of at least for
the most active anonymous ftp sites. Another snag is that you have
to know at least the stem of the filename you are looking for.
   The archie service is also available at several other sites. Note
one problem. One does not know how comprehensive the data base at
each alternative site is.
   Since the McGill archie server has quite a heavy load (and may be
now out altogether), consider using an archie site near you. See
ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/moder.zip for one list of the archie
servers.
 * For the most up-to-date list, write to an Archie server and give
   it the command `servers'.
Before using archie try getting "Updated Internet Services List" or
at least see ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/moder.zip for the current
archie servers, since for example the McGill University system was
persistently broken at one time, and specifically asked not to be
used.
   For a critical view (which I share) on archies see the item
"Jul 21 Cave Newt (30) Archie is not useful (Actually: Re: ..."
in ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/tspost21.zip.

  A3: With the introduction of the World Wide Web there are now much
better search engines available than archie. Some of them can be
found through my WWW link page http://uwasa.fi/~ts/http/
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