Part Three

FTP Maintenance (Uploading Your Files to the Server)

For PC Users (WS-FTP)

For Macintosh Users (Fetch)

Basic Linux Telnet/ SSH

Plain file manipulation

Directory manipulation

Account management
          Full applications for on-line work
Zip/Unzip Files - SITE BACKUP

Teach Yourself UNIX in a Week
Learning the Unix Operating System

FTP Access

Now that we know where the files have to be located in order to be visible from the Internet, just how do we put the files there? There are several ways, depending on your computer system. For the Macintosh, a program called "Fetch" is used. Microsoft Windows systems use "WS_FTP." Look further in this manual for detailed instructions on each of these programs.
 

FTP Maintenance (Uploading Your Files to the Server)

Online services which offer an Internet gateway, such as AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy may have a built-in FTP interface. If you have a PPP Internet account, you need an FTP program.

If you are using FrontPage, you must create your new web on the "localhost" system. This is accomplished by selecting "create new web," and then entering "localhost" in the line where it asks for the web location. Once you have completed your web on your computer, you can then select the "publish web" option from the file menu in FrontPage Explorer. You will be prompted for your IP address and web name and then it will send it to our servers. Please note that you will be prompted for a user ID and password, and depending on your system configuration it may be the one that we issued you or it may be the one that you entered when you first installed FrontPage. If one does not work, then simply try the other. If you have forgotten what that password was, then you will need to reinstall FrontPage and select a new one.

NOTE: If you are using FrontPage, you should NEVER use regular FTP to upload your files. This will damage the extensions. Stick with one or the other all the time.

For instructions for the most popular FTP client software for both PC and Macintosh users, see the instructions to follow.

For PC Users (WS_FTP)

USERID
PASSWORD
FTP HOSTNAME

Each time you run WS_FTP the Session Profile window will be displayed. A profile contains the information needed to connect to your website. Creating a profile now will eliminate the need for you to configure the software each time you wish to connect to the web server via FTP. To create a profile, click the "New" button and enter a generic profile name at the top of the Session Profile window, such as "My Website." Next, enter your Host Name/Address (yourdomain.com), User ID (yourdomain), and Password for your website as illustrated in Figure 1A.

Next you need to click "OK" to continue. This will connect you to the webserver, where you will connect directly to the root ("home") directory of your account. WS_FTP will display a split screen where files on the left-hand side are within your own computer. You will see several folders on the right-hand side such as www, and infobots which are landmarks suggesting a successful connection to your website, as illustrated in Figure 1B.

Figure 1B

You need to double click on www to get to your web directory. This is where all your files will be downloaded, and/or you will create subdirectories. The only system directory that you may need to use is cgi-bin; this directory is reserved for custom scripts. To make your home page load automatically, name the HTML document "index.htm" in lowercase and upload it to the www directory of your account. To upload a file or files, simply highlight the file(s) on the left and click the right arrow button (->) in the center of the window. Be sure to upload HTML documents and scripts in ASCII mode and images in Binary mode. To transfer a file to a subdirectory, double-click the appropriate subdirectory to open it before transferring the desired file(s). To create a new directory, click on the MkDir button when you are inside the www directory or subdirectory.

As soon as a file is uploaded to the web server, it is available for all to see. If, after uploading a file, you are still unable to see the updated file via Netscape, try hitting the "Refresh" or "Reload" button. If that fails, you need to clear both disk and browser cache. This function can be found by selecting Options>Network Preferences in Netscape. Remember that you must first be connected to the Internet through your local Internet service provider in order to connect to the web server.

For Mac Users (Fetch)

USERID
PASSWORD
FTP HOSTNAME

The hostname tells your FTP software to connect to the web server upon which your web site resides.

Each time you run Fetch, the New Connection... window will be displayed. A profile contains the information needed to connect to your web site. Creating a profile now will eliminate the need for you to configure the software each time you wish to connect to the web server via FTP. To create a new profile, select "New Connection..." from the File menu. Next, enter the Host (yourdomain.com), User ID (yourdomain), and password for your web site as illustrated in Figure 2A.

Don't worry about the Directory option right now. When you have your Host, User ID, and Password entered, click on the OK button.

The next window which will pop up will look virtually the same as Figure 2B, except that yourdomain will be in the popup window.

Bookmarking the Connection

You should take the time, now that you have established your connection, to make it easier for you to get here next time. Under the Customize menu, select New Shortcut. A window will pop up called Bookmark Editor, as shown in Figure 2C. It will already have your name, Host, and User ID filled in. Under Type, choose File from the popup menu. If you would like Fetch to remember your password so you won't have to type it in each time, type in your password in the Password field. Now, under the same Customize menu, choose Preferences, and under the General tab, make sure the connection you just entered is selected as the default shortcut. Next time you open up Fetch, your shortcut will be opened automatically and all you'll have to do is click the OK button!

Refer again to Figure 2B. You need to double-click on www to get to your web directory. This is where all your files will be downloaded, and/or you will create subdirectories. The only system directory that you may need to use is cgi-bin; this directory is reserved for custom scripts. To make your home page load automatically, name the HTML document "index.htm" in lowercase and upload it to the www directory of your account. To upload a file or files, simply drag them from your hard drive onto the Fetch window when you are in the appropriate directory or subdirectory. Be sure to upload HTML documents and scripts in Text mode and images in BINARY mode. Or to make life easier, click on the Automatic button as shown in Figure 2B, and Fetch will decide the proper format. To transfer a file to a subdirectory, double-click the appropriate subdirectory to open it before transferring the desired file(s).

To insure that the Automatic selection works properly, make sure the selections under the Upload tab in the Preferences window looks the same as Figure 2D below.

As soon as a file is uploaded to the web server, it is available for all to see. If, after uploading a file, you are still unable to see the updated file via Netscape, you need to hit the Reload button in the Netscape button bar. Remember that you must first be connected to the Internet through your local Internet service provider in order to connect to the web server.

Telnet is much like a DOS program in both use and appearance, requiring specific typewritten commands. There are "power" uses for Telnet, but only Advanced Users will be able to understand or implement them. The novice user will probably not need to use Telnet very much or very often, but some basic knowledge of it will be useful.

Connect With Telnet
You will need a Telnet program to access your Telnet account. If you use Windows, you should have a Telnet program already on your system. To find out, do the following:

Go to Start, select Run and type telnet into the entry box.

Once you have a Telnet program, launch it, and be sure that you have a live connection to the Internet.

• Enter yourdomain.com  or your IP Address into the entry box for HOST, and click on the Connect button, (exact label will vary depending on the Telnet program you are using)
• When you are connected, you will be prompted for your User ID (or userid or login)  Type in your User ID.
• You will then be prompted for your password. Type in your Password.

Once you are logged in you will see several lines of text scroll down the screen. When it is finished you will see a blinking cursor after a word that may look something like this:
username:~$
This is called the prompt, and indicates the name of the server machine you are logged into.  That is where you will begin entering your commands.

General Info For Advanced Users
 Some of the programs available at the shell prompt are:
      mail - a primitive email program
      pine - a more powerful email program
      ftp - to FTP onto other sites
      telnet - to telnet to other sites
      pico - an easy to use text editor
      vi - a not so easy to use (but standard) text editor
      Joe - another easy to use text editor
      lynx - a text-based world wide web browser.

 In general, it's a pretty complete POSIX environment. You access these programs by typing in their names, and then following commands relevant to each program. If you need help with any of  the programs, at the shell prompt, type man and the name of the  program to get instructions for that program online. If your problem is not knowing the name of the program, try apropos subject (i.e. apropos mail). It is important to remember that Unix is case sensitive.  "Index.htm" is not the same as "index.htm."

Plain file manipulation
     mv

mv fred wilma

 This moves fred to a file named wilma. This is the Unix way of renaming a file.

mv fred flintstones/fred

 This moves fred to a file named fred in the subdirectory flintstones. This example could have been written mv fred flintstones/ as well, and the filename fred would have been retained in the new directory.

After executing this command, there will no longer be a fred file in the current directory.
 

cp

cp fred wilma

 This copies fred to a file named wilma.

 cp fred flintstones/fred

 This copies fred to a file named fred in the subdirectory flintstones.
 

rm

rm flintstones

 This removes a file named flintstones.

 rm -rf flintstones

 This removes a directory named flintstones. The -r removes the directory, the -f forces it to remove files without asking you before it deletes each one.

Directory manipulation

In order to keep track of the possibly millions of files on-line, Unix systems have a directory tree, which enables meaningful classification of files. For example, the most essential system programs are kept in /bin/, user home directories are all under /home/, and everything having to do with the WWW is under /www/. More specifically, your home directory is /home/you/ and the directory for your WWW files is /home/you/www/.

pwd

pwd This prints out your working directory: where you are. When you give a filename to a command without specifying some other directory, the filename is looked up, manipulated, or created in your current working directory.

mkdir

mkdir flintstones

 This makes a subdirectory of the current directory named flintstones.

cd

cd flintstones

 This changes the directory to the subdirectory named flintstones.

 cd /home/domain/www/flintstones

 This changes the directory to the home directory of the flintstones.

 cd /home/flintstones/www

 This changes the directory to the WWW directory of the flintstones.

 cd

 With no arguments, cd returns you to your home directory.

 rmdir

rmdir flintstones This removes the subdirectory flintstones. The directory must be empty for this to work.

Account management
 ln (redirecting file access)
Type ln -s fred.html index.html to redirect all file accesses from index.html to the file fred.html.

passwd (changing your password)
 Type passwd to change your password.  You may also use  Brain  to change your password.

zip/unzip
Type zip to zip files and unzip to unzip files. This program is compatible with the zip program for DOS. For example:

 zip myzip file1 file2 file3

 This puts the files file1, file2, and file3 into a new zip archive called myzip.zip. On the other hand, if you had the archive myzip.zip and wanted to get back the files:

 unzip myzip

 Typing zip or unzip by itself will give you a usage summary, showing nearly all the options availible.

du (disk usage)
The Unix command

du -s directory
shows how much disk space is used by a directory and everything below it. While we work on creating the complicated command needed to automatically check all the directories you are associated with, you can find out how much space is in use by the WWW files for a domain with

du -s /home/domain/www
If you don't have anything much in your home directory or mail spool, this comes close to the total space you have in use. (You would know if you did have other things in your home directory, and could use du -s $HOME to check on that.)

locate (find files)
The normal Unix methods of locating files have one thing in common, they are slower than molasses on a winter night in Alaska. So instead, we use a powerful program called locate. Type locate file_name and the server will immediately locate all files that contain the file_name. (Provided such files have been on the machine at least one day.)

Full applications for on-line work
pico (editing files)
When you need to edit a file on-line, after using rlogin or telnet to log in to our machine, type pico filename to edit the file called filename. Pico is the easiest editor availible to learn. Text that you type is inserted at the cursor. Your terminal's arrow keys should move the cursor through the file.

 Some commands that you will need are printed at the bottom of the screen. The keys to press are presented as '^X'. This long-standing shorthand in the computer world means the same as Control-X, in other words, hold down the Control or Ctrl key on your keyboard and type an 'x'.

 Of course, other editors are availible on the system, so if you already know vi, emacs, or joe, or if you have someone to teach you the basics of these programs with you, feel free to use them. Even ed is still there for those of you updating World Wide Web pages with a teletype.

lynx (browsing WWW)
If you, for one reason or another, don't have a better WWW browser availible and want to see a page (maybe you just edited it, or you want to check this manual while on-line) type lynx URL to view the URL. (For example, lynx http://www.GracefulWeb.com/.) This simple browser of course can't show you graphics, and is bewildered by tables, but otherwise will show you what you need to see.

 Use the up and down arrow keys on your keyboard to move the cursor from link to link. Press the right arrow, or the enter key, to follow a link. Press the left arrow to back up.

 Press space to scroll down one screen of text, or press 'b' to scroll up one screen. (If the cursor is in a fill-out form, you must use the up and down arrow keys.)

 Press 'z' to abort the loading of a page. Press 'q' to leave the program.

 It's possible that once you see the speed of lynx, you may just start using it intentionally.

 The current version of lynx does have a few bugs, some of which were not present in older versions. If you see a page that doesn't display properly, try lynx2.4.2 (as in lynx2.4.2 url) with it. Hopefully there will soon be a single best version availible that will make this note unnecessary.
 

Zip/Unzip Files

This puts the files "file1", "file2", and "file3" into a new zip archive called "myzip.gz". On the other hand, if you had the archive "myzip.gz" and wanted to get back the files, you would type: gunzip myzip

Backup a site

To backup a complete site , login to telnet/ssh.

While in yout main dir type:
tar -zcf site_backup.tar.gz /public_html

This will create a file named site_backup.tar.gz in your main dir. To restore this file as a site type:
gunzip site_backup.tar.gz
hit enter, then type:
tar -xvf site_backup.tar

hit enter and your all done.