README of the ftp server where Linux was first uploaded | Hacker News Reader

README of the ftp server where Linux was first uploaded

6 pointsniels_olson2 comments

since apparently we can't post ftp links directly: ftp://ftp.funet.fi/README

Maybe get a pastebin link going?

# # Introduction to nic.funet.fi archive # # Status: Update in progress # Author: staff of ftp.funet.fi # Created: Sat Aug 22 20:31:58 1992 # Last modified: 2011-03-08 #

Welcome to FTP.FUNET.FI aka NIC.FUNET.FI

This is a Dell R710 server with 72GB of RAM and dual Quad-Core Nehalem EP processors (Intel Xeon E5540) giving 16 CPU threads. Storage is provided via fibre channel connections to the CSC Storage Area Network. Currently it uses 20TB on a EMC CX700 RAID subsystem for ZFS storage and it can be extended on the fly if required.

Operating system is Solaris 10 Unix from Sun Microsystems. We have a 10Gbit/s dedicated connection to Funet which connects at 10Gbit/s level to academic backbone networks like GEANT and Internet 2 through a nordic dark fibre network and of course inside Finland.

This system is owned by the finnish ministry of education and operated on their behalf by CSC primarily for the Finnish Academic and Research Network FUNET users. It is located in the town of Espoo in Finland.

Paper mail address: NIC.FUNET.FI coordinator Harri Salminen CSC POBOX 405 (street address is Keilaranta 14) FIN-02101 Espoo FINLAND

    This server group has many names.  Its "staff" will always be

at `nic.funet.fi', but othervice consider using philosophy: `name by function', thus FTP from ftp.funet.fi.

ftp.funet.fi traditional anonymous ftp service (also with http and IPv6 support) www.nic.funet.fi http access to our collections (shows index.html's if any) nic.funet.fi email and other administrative tasks (in practice ftp is also supported)

We have also several other names and may move some services to other computers as we see necessary.

CONTENTS:

    - Intro
    - What is considered proper conduct of anonymous FTP usage
    - Privacy issues
    - Contacts about material in here
	( GIFs and others )
    - Uploading
    - CD-ROMs
    - FTPD sources
    - Reporting a bug/problems
    - Physical disk structure is hidden behind logical one
    - Restrictions
    - Minimum of maximum retrieval rate
    - IP-reversal and valid "passwd" requirements
    - What is `Freely distributable' ?
    - Other services available from here
    - Many names of the server

INTRO:

    This system has plenty of freely distributable material on its FTPable

areas. We have also other services, see at the end of this document for pointers.

    If you have any questions regarding MATERIALS in this archive, read

first `Contacts about material in here' below. If you can't locate correct person/mail alias with it, try `problems@nic.funet.fi', but do not do that as your only attempt!

WHAT IS CONSIDERED A PROPER CONDUCT OF ANONYMOUS FTP USAGE:

    Like many systems world wide, ours offers  anonymous  logins for

FTP users. Such a service means: - You do not need to apply an account at this server, just use well known userid: anonymous (or ftp) and for a password please do enter your email address (in format: your_userid@your_site) according to the convention used since the 1970s in public FTP servers.

- While this service is called "anonymous" due to that well-known userid, it is considered good manners to identify yourself properly. (No, this is not truly anonymous.) (See PRIVACY ISSUES)

For those who have this privilege of using ftp, here are some do's and don'ts:

      - When you are working over long distance links, do limit yourself
	to off hours.  When working between the USA and Finland, try it
	after 4 PM OUR time ( 10 AM Eastern USA time.)  And remember that
	we wake up 10 hours before California.
	We are at time zone  `UTC +2h' and in summer 'UTC +3h'

      - Major portion material in this archive originates from various
	locations all over USA.  Sometimes those locations are well
	known.  Often not.  We try to indicate origins if we know them.
	DO try to use server nearest (network wise) to yourself, USA
	folks: please restrain  yourself to USA.

      - When you log in anonymous, system immediately identifies you, and
	if you are not limited by number of users, you are
	prompted with:

	331 Any password will work

	We'd still appreciate you to give your email address as password.
	We might someday spot problems on files and send warnings to those who
	have requested that(/those) file(s) (see PRIVACY ISSUES).

	If your FTP program uses  getpass(3) routine blindly (mostly old
	BSD networking source derived FTP programs), you can't enter
	more than 8 characters for password from the keyboard.  Ever.
	Try to install FTP program from /pub/local/src/net2+mea-ftp.tar.Z.
	You can then feed in a lot longer `passwords'.
	(It has replacement for getpass() which inputs 130 chars.)

	Alternatively, read the man-page of ftp-program (assuming you
	are using UNIX ftp client), and see what is said about ".netrc".

	Some machines have problems with @-characters at such addresses,
		UNIX:          stty erase ^? kill ^u
		IBM VM/SP CMS: CP TERM CHARDEL OFF,  CP TERM LINEND OFF

      - When you upload something, make sure it is freely distributable.
	For example some GIF images we have gotten are very obviously
	scanned from magazines, which have publication copyrights on them.
	This makes it illegal to copy those pictures `without the prior
	written consent of the publisher.' (And yes, WE WANT TO SEE THAT
	WRITTEN CONSENT FOR UPLOADING SUCH!)

      - See below more about what is `Freely Distributable'.
	After all, it is not always the same as Public Domain!

      - Don't do many parallel downloads, it will slow down the
	service for others and eventually even you. There's a maximum limit
        on simultaneous connections for FTP which is shown when you log in. 
        For HTTP we have had to limit the maximum connections from one
        IP to 10. 


      - REMEMBER: USING ANONYMOUS FTP IS A PRIVILEGE.  DON'T ABUSE IT!

PRIVACY ISSUES

    All file accesses, logins etc. are logged, and the logs are kept

for indefinite period of time pending disk space availability (months online, years offline.) to satisfy statistical and legislative requirements.

    If you want to be unidentifiable, that is entirely up to you, and

possible within rules of our server by using password of type:

inconnu@<your host identity>

If you want to be totally unknown, you must not use FTP, as it can never be used without revealing the IP address of your FTP client. Even if you had a firewall or proxy somewhere in between, they often keep track who's using them. In any case we don't collect email addresses for spammers and we might use them only in exceptional cases ourselves. For statistics we use the domain part of your hostname, not the hostname itself which in practice means organization and country level statistics which we need to maintain the service and it's funding. Please try to keep your reverse DNS working, especially if you are under .fi domain since we will try to give preference to finnish users in case we will someday again have to impose domain based speed restrictions on the service like in the early days of the Internet.

CONTACTS ABOUT MATERIAL IN HERE:

Example: An alias "xyz-adm" is to be addressed as "xyz-adm@nic.funet.fi", please don't use HTML email or something else that might be interpreted as SPAM by our filters. Plain old english or finnish text is the best! Please note, that many of the old /pub areas are not actively maintained and most of the content is actually automatically updated from a master site which you should be able to deduce from the /pub/mirrors/some.site/ directory path.

Alias Area Description ============================================================================= astro-adm pub/astro/ (amateur) Astronomy related material csc-adm pub/csc/ Centre for Scientific Computing, FI cpan-adm pub/CPAN/ Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (master) culture-adm pub/culture/ Cultural information doc-adm pub/doc/ Documents gnu-adm pub/gnu/ GNU material graphics-adm pub/graphics/ Graphics software ham-adm pub/ham/ Radio-Amateur related information pics-adm pub/pics/ JPEG encoded images languages-adm pub/languages/ Programming languages linux-adm pub/Linux/ Linux neural-adm pub/sci/neural/ Neural Networks papers-adm pub/sci/papers/ Scientific papers sci-adm pub/sci/ Scientific information in general tex-adm pub/TeX/ TeX unix-adm pub/unix/ UNX software etc. mirror-adm pub/mirrors Mirror maintenance

Specials ========

mirror-adm Generic mirror maintenance if you don't know exactly who or which area managers are responsible for the mirror. Please check first the master site in case they have the same issue too, we just try to mirror them sometimes with some exclusions to save space.

problems FTP server software problem reporting address. You can use it also if you can't otherwise get in contact with the appropriate area managers

managers Everything archive related, which isn't proper for area maintainers or doesn't have an area manager and thus goes to the general the system managers and coordinators.

    If you can logon (anonymously) and read this file, you probably

do not have problems with your/our ftp software, therefore you should contact above mentioned area administrators.
If you don't find suitable alias to approach, try: managers at ftp.funet.fi

UPLOADING:
See file /README.UPLOADER for detailed procedure and explanations.
For short: there are directories that are world writable, BUT THIS SYSTEM DOES NOT LET UPLOADED FILES TO BE VISIBLE/RETRIEVABLE BEFORE AREA-MAINTAINERS CHECK AND APPROVE THEM.
What we expect uploader to do when uploading anything is stated in
/README.UPLOADER. Read it!

CD-ROMs
Every now and then we are asked for a CD-ROM of this archive; so far
there are none available with the exception of the Euroscene 1 collection based on part of the Amiga area. We don't expect many exceptions...
Reasons for this are multiple, not the least of them being our
unwillingess to do the effort of publishing such a set. Arranging the publishing on this kind of directly government funded system is not so easy in legal wise when it comes to direct money making as of selling those CD-ROMs... Also it doesn't too well fit to our main business idea of providing all the WAN network services the Academic and Research community needs. The whole archive on CD-ROM would take thousands of CD-ROMs and require lots of manpower to figure out what should or shouldn't be on each cd-rom and how to finance it. We are a network service provider, not a cd-rom store.
Some software collections are available commercially, with technical support, on CD-ROM from other sources (e.g. most Linux distributions). That may even be a major revenue source for maintaining those collections so they might not even allow cd-rom versions by others. Some other collections however are specifically available as CD-ROM images (.iso) that you can burn yourself and even distribute according to their copyright statements. So please read the fine print before redistributing collections available from us.
FTPD SOURCES:
For a simple to maintain ftp server, you might want to look at www.pureftpd.org, we have used it successfully in several different places. Another Very Secure choice might be vsftpd available from http://vsftpd.beasts.org that is being used by many large sites.

REPORTING A BUG:
If you observe odd behaviour of this server, which is not of what you
believe to be correct, please contact problems@ftp.funet.fi and in the report have attached a session log which shows the wrong functionality. However, check at first what we state about "Restrictions" below!
Such log should start from your FTP session startup, and it should contain:
- Descriptions about your (computing-) environment relevant with attempted FTP access; - Maker and model of the computer where you ran your FTP session, - TCP/IP software model and maker (quite many system do not come with builtin TCP/IP -- VMS-machines are one such example.) - UNEDITED (verbose, unabridged) session transcript showing EVERYTHING you sent to this system, and what were the responses.
Note: Reports about corrupted files belong to archive area keepers; they handle those files; "problems" handles the server subsystem.
Bugs/problems relating to ARCHIVED MATERIAL: Select by list under: `Contacts about material in here' Uploads: Select by list under: `Contacts about material in here'. If no suitable one can be found, check also /README.UPLOADER. In outmost despair (ONLY then! postmaster@ftp.funet.fi) Bugs/problems relating to other parts of system software: Problems group: <problems@ftp.funet.fi> ("system software" does not mean anything under /pub/") If you can get /README without trouble, don't contact <problems>, but one of earlier mentioned area administration aliases.

WHAT IS `FREELY DISTRIBUTABLE' ?
Freely distributable does not mean the same thing as PD (public domain). A big portion of the software available here is not in the public domain, although it is freely distributable. Many are copyrighted by some person or organization, but can be distributed freely; there may be limitations on the manner of distribution and/or the usage of the programs. There may also be certain rules concerning the distribution of modified versions (derivate work) of the programs, like saying that if you redistribute a modified version you must include in the distribution the date and author of the modification. Also on many programs you must include a note crediting the original author of the program if you use his code in your own programs.
An example of this is the Free Software Foundation's GNU software. GNU software may be distributed freely, provided that the sources are included, an offer to distribute the sources is included or that a pointer to where the sources can be gotten from is included. On FTP.FUNET.FI, all the GNU source code published is available from the directory pub/gnu. Some GNU binaries are available from other directories as well; although we have tried to include a pointer to the sources and the copyright information in these other directories, too, it might be that we have neglected some. This note is here to point you to the sources in pub/gnu. For further information, the GNU copyright is in the file pub/gnu/COPYING.

We have multiple filesystems that are all mounted via mountpoints under the /.m/ directory. We may move mirrors and other directories from one filesystem to another without notice, so please refer to our directories with the official /pub/ or /index/ path instead of the physical /.m they map to and might be shown to you by various user agents. Especially all /.m/mirror/ filesystems are all symlinked via the /pub/mirrors/ directory and the subdirectories try to match those on the original site.

A very concise history of NIC =============================

1988 Finland gets it's first internet link of 56Kbit/s via the NORDUnet co-operation and major part of the traffic was from FTP 1989 Funet saw a need for a FTP-server that would allow better access to the internet content (web was still a dream) from Finland. Decision to set up NIC.FUNET.FI was made and Request for Proposals sent out 1990 First NIC.FUNET.FI, a SUN 4/330, with dual 40Mhz SPARC processors, 128MB RAM and 6GB of usable disk space which made it then among the largest FTP servers in the Internet. Our international internet connectivity for whole Funet was 64Kbit/s so mea develops an ftpd with speed limits More hardware details are available in historical/First-NIC-Hardware.txt 1991 Linus Torvalds offered a small OS for public distribution which our volunteer Ari Lemmke decided to call Linux and the name stuck... International connection was upgraded to 128Kbit/s 1992 We had about 20GB of external disks and a motherboard upgrade making it in practice a SUN 630-41 MP International connectivity was upgraded to 1Mbit/s 1994 Second NIC with 275Mhz Alpha processor, 320MB of memory and 100GB+ disk space (DEC AXP3000-900) International connection for Funet upgraded to 2 x 2Mbit/s 1999 Third NIC with four processors and 4GB of memory (a SUN 450) was taken in use. Under 1TB made from well over hunred old and new disks in two RAID racks (DEC and Eurologic) International connections used 155Mbit/s links with redundancy 2003 A user survey to determine whether users still need NIC is made with an encouraging response 2006 The fourth version of NIC from Fujitsu-Siemens Computers with 16GB of memory and four processors is taken into production initially with 3TB+ EMC CX300 SAN storage array. A SUN V240 is in a support role. 2.5Gbit/s and 10Gbit/s international links 2007 5-6 TB SAN storage added. Dark fibers with support for many lightpaths deployed in the Funet backbone. 2010 Fifth version of NIC, a Dell R710, with dual Quad-Core Nehalem EP (2,53Ghz Intel Xeon 5540) processors, 72GB of RAM and storage from the CSC storage area network (initially 10TB+ from a EMC CX700) taken into use under Solaris 10 and the ZFS filesystem. Network connection is now 10Gbit/s to the Funet backbone and multiples of 10Gbit/s to the rest of the Internet.

More historical pieces of information can be found in various files around NIC and especially a more generic Internet-history in a concise web format at http://www.nic.funet.fi/index/FUNET/history/internet/

There's also a more verbose article of NIC now and then at the CSCnews 3/06 available at http://www.csc.fi/english/csc/publications/cscnews/back_issu...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com