The Online World resources handbook
by Odd de Presno
Possible problems when trying to retrieve ONLINE??.ZIP
======================================================
CONTENTS:
---------
1. Decompress problems
2. Double spacing between lines (line feeds)
3. Only email access to Internet with mail size restrictions
or, "I only get part of the book"
4. UUDECODEing problems
5. This file
1. Decompress problems
======================
Some people are unable to decompress the ONLINE??.ZIP file. These
are the two most common reasons:
a. NONE or INCOMPATIBLE VERSION OF PKUNZIP
MS-DOS users should use PKUNZIP.
The version of PKUNZIP that was used when compressing the
book is incompatible with your version. We were required
to use a version younger than 2.xx, and used ver. 2.04g.
Your version of PKUNZIP should not be older than 2.xx!
(PKUNZIP 2.04g, Info-ZIP's UNZIP50 patchlevel 1, or later
versions are good.)
Macintosh users should retrieve the TOW.MAC file (send the command
GET TOW.MAC in an email to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.NODAK.EDU, or get it
from ftp://listserv.nodak.edu/public/TOW/TOW.MAC).
Users of other computer platforms should look for these tools:
Unix - Portable unzip 5.1, Portable zip 2.0
VM/CMS - arcutil 2.0 (uncompress only)
Amiga - PKAZip 1.01, Portable unzip 5.1, Portable zip 2.0
Atari - STZip 0.9 beta
VMS - Portable unzip 5.1, Portable zip 2.0
OS/2 - PKZIP/PKUNZIP 1.02, Portable unzip 5.1, Portable zip 2.0
More information about decompression tools is available in a Frequently
Asked Questions (FAQ) file for the Usenet news groups comp.compression
and comp.compression.research. A copy of this FAQ is available by ftp
in rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet/news.answers/compression-faq/part[1-3].
b. TRANSFER PROBLEMS
Remember to sign on to an anonymous FTP host with user name
"anonymous" (without the quotes) and to use your email address
as your password.
If retrieving the file by anonymous FTP, remember to set
the type 'binary' before transferring the ZIP file! Type
'binary' on the command line before using the GET command.
Sometimes setting it to binary is not enough because the byte
order of your host and the other host are not the same. That's
why most ftp programs have a mode called TENEX, which tells
each end to use binary mode but to sort out the byte ordering
differences between the two machines. If your ftp client does
not have the TENEX command you can make it do the same thing by
issuing these two commands:
ftp> binary
ftp> quote "TYPE L 8"
The double quotes are required.
If you used Kermit to transfer binary files to your PC, you
must tell your mainframe Kermit to SET FILE TYPE BINARY before
starting the transfer. Mainframe Kermit programs default to
text mode. Setting the PC Kermit to binary is not enough - you
must do it on both ends.
CHECK THE FILE SIZE
The size should be exactly the same as the original file as
reported by the source. The step which changed the size is the step
which caused the corruption. It is easy to check the size of the
retrieved file.
a. On the Unix command line, use the command 'wc' as in
'wc online.txt' (for the text version).
Version 3.2 files should give these results:
21066 132939 952328 online.txt
1680 9540 427245 online32.zip
Version 2.9 files should give these results:
21486 134884 970027 online.txt
1725 9893 432771 online29.zip
b. The DOS command DIR ONLINE27.ZIP should give
ONLINE28 ZIP 425 818 17.09.96 17:28
You should get the same figure by using the Unix ls -l command.
2. Double spacing between lines
===============================
More and more people are trying to get me to foster particular formats for
their own favorite pieces of a wide variety of hardware and software. The
response is what it must be to maintain a worldwide distribution network:
The Online World handbook will continue to be published in plain ASCII so
these file can be used by any software on any computer.
Thus the book manuscript file ends each line with a cr/lf--which allows DOS,
Mac and Unix people to each see the files though Unix only requires the lf,
and Macs only require the cr. "cr/lf" are abbreviations for line feed and
carriage return.
Solution: Use a utility program to convert end_of_line characters, or do it in
your capable word processor. There are many such utilities around as freeware.
3. Only email access to Internet with mail size restrictions
============================================================
One user wrote:
"The system to which I have permission to login does not give me
access to remote ftp files. I have only the ability to send and receive e-
mail. Also, my systems administrators have decided on a file size limit
(for transmit _or_ receive) of 50000 bytes. If someone is gracious enough
to send me e-mail, it must be in "chunks" no larger than 50000 bytes. How
can I get a copy of the book?"
The solution:
Try to retrieve the book by electronic mail to ftpmail@ftpmail.bryant.vix.com .
Write the following retrieval commands in your mail:
connect ftp.simtel.net
binary
chdir /pub/simtelnet/msdos/info
uuencode
chunksize 50000
get
quit
Replace " with the desired file name. In FTPMail's help file,
"Chunksize" is defined as "split files into SIZE-byte chunks (def: 64000)."
4. UUDECODEing problems
-----------------------
One user wrote about his attempt to retrieve the book through ftpmail:
> I got parts (6parts I think) of online1.6 via ftpmail, below is
> the header of part 001.
> Apprantly they are (binary uncompressed uuencoded). I collected
> them one by one download them into my PC (286 IBM compatible msdos
> version 3.1). I tried unsuccessfully to decode them with
> UUDECODE.COM I extracted from KIDART MSDOS1, below is copy of this file.
He then showed an output sample from UUDECODE.COM:
>begin 444 ftpmail
>
>---------- sample UUDECODE.COM -------
>h_Input file error.Output file error.start not found.End not found. exists. Abo
In my reply to him, I wrote:
This is the reason why I asked you to retrieve it as one large file if
possible. When retrieving it in parts (chunks), then you must first paste
all the parts together in the correct order.
The resulting work file must start with something like this:
Section 1 of uuencode 5.21 of file online16.zip by R.E.M.
begin 644 online16.zip
The last lines of this work file must be something like this:
"````
`
end
sum -r/size 14872/429757 section (from "begin" to "end")
sum -r/size 49550/311897 entire input file
The reason why I say "something like this" is that you may have tried to
retrieve another version, and that there may be small differences in the
text as prepared by ftpmail.
There should be no blank lines in your work file, and the right margin of
the text should be straight. If any of the lines are longer than others,
then that may indicate line noise during retrieval.
The ftpmail error message above simply says that this start (begin) and end
was not found in the file, and therefore it was unable to complete the
task.
Through ftpmail, it may be easier to retrieve the full-text ascii version
rather than the zipped version. Hopefully, you will be able to do this in
a way to let you avoid the complexities of uudecoding.
5. This file
------------
is the TOW PROBLEMS file. The most recent version of this file is at
ftp://listserv.nodak.edu/public/TOW/TOW.PROBLEMS. It can also be retrieved
by email from LISTSERV@LISTSERV.NODAK.EDU . Put the following command in the
text of your mail:
GET TOW.PROBLEMS
For more information about The Online World resources handbook, add the line
GET TOW.MASTER
or check http://home.eunet.no/~presno/
op053097