Questions on ftp and downloading files from a remote site

Ace Stewart jstewart at rodan.acs.syr.edu
Fri May 31 01:25:29 AEST 1991


In article <J7cq31w164w at cccbbs.UUCP> dpavey at cccbbs.UUCP (doug pavey) writes:
>cryptkpr at cc.utah.edu (H. CARLTON DOE III) writes:
>> I will (and can) telnet or ftp to the machine where I'm
>> greated with a login prompt.  I try "guest" with a <cr> for
>> password and usually don't get any further.  What are the magic
>> words/phrases/incantations to get into these machines???

I missed the original thread of this; my apologies if had has already
been answered. There are two major topics here, one is guest accounts;
the other is anonymous FTP.

Hmmm...where to start? On many sites throughout the world, there is a
userid called "anonymous." This userid is only useable via FTP,
nothing else really. If you FTP to a site (icarus.cns.syr.edu is one
of my favourites, but I'm a prejudice person since it is a site I help
manage for anon-FTP  :)  )    you are greeted with a login prompt, and
then are greeted with a password prompt. 

Type 'anonymous' for the userid prompt. The best thing to type at the
password prompt is your userid at host (clearly type this, its helpful to
some site admins  :) 

You are then in FTP and logged into a remote directory of the system,
if that site does indeed have anonymous FTP to begin with. If not, you
will then be told that you couldn't connect to that host using the
anonymous account, so try another machine.

After that, cd, ls, dir, get, put, etc. will all work and you may get
the files you are interested in. One rule of thumb is that there is
usually a README file at the top level, or in the directory "pub;"
please read those if you've logged onto the site for the first time.


Part II:

Also, and MIT is a good place for these, are what are now termed
"guest accounts." These accounts have the userid: guest and manytimes
have the password: guest. You can log in, and then connect to anywhere
throughout the Internet. 

You can't receive email on that host, since other people are using it.
But, for the most part, its a cheap way to log onto somewhere else if
you need to. It's handy, for sure.




Hope this all helps; and that I said it all right. Flames to me, and
questions to me, I like this stuff. Cheers!

--Ace
-- 







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