This document provides some information about transferring files and remote login for the Clemson University and Department of Computer Science networks.

ftp

The File Transfer Protocol (ftp) program provides a means of transferring files from one file system to another over a network. On Unix systems the command is usually ftp followed by the node (computer) name of the computer that you want to connect to. If the connection is made, the user is prompted for the userid and then the password for the account to be accessed on the remote system. If the connection is successful then all of the files on the remote account are accessible, and files can be transferred both to and from the remote account. Thus to connect to a remote system you must 1) know the name of a node on that system that accepts ftp connections, and 2) know the userid and password for an account on the remote system. (Some nodes accept ftp connections with a userid of "anonymous" and any password but allow access only to a restricted set of files in this mode.)

Accessing your files on the university network

To access the files on your U: drive on the Clemson University network from the CS network:

1. Use the command

   ftp ftp.netware.clemson.edu

2. When prompted for a account id use

   .yourid.x.students.clemsonu

   where yourid is your userid (on the university network) and x is the first letter of your userid. Thus, for example, the ftp account id for user joecool would be .joecool.j.students.clemsonu . Note that the periods before yourid, x, netware, and clemsonu are required.

3. When prompted for a password, enter your university system password (not your CS system password unless they are the same).

4. If the connection is successful, you will be in your U: directory on the university system.

Accessing your files on the CS network from another system

If you want to ftp to your CS Department account, you have to ftp to a specific computer. For example, you can ftp to yoda from a system that supports ftp from the command line with the command

ftp yoda.cs.clemson.edu

ftp commands

You can navigate around the file system in the remote computer by using normal Unix commands such as ls and cd. When you have located a file that you want to download from the remote system to the system that you are using, you can do this with the command

get filename

To copy a file from the system that you are using to the remote system, use the command

put filename

You can get or put multiple files by using wild cards in the file names with the mget and mput commands. For example, to copy all files ending with .java from the remote system to the local system, use the command

mget *.java

The help command will list all of the ftp commands, and the command

help commandname

Visual ftp

The ftp programs that run under Windows 95 and some other systems use a GUI. For these programs the procedures are similar to using the ftp commands in a Unix system, but it is all done with a graphical interface. Instead of using commands such as get and put, the file to be transferred is selected and a direction button is selected to indicate the direction of the transfer. Remember that you must connect to yoda to access your files on the CS network.

Binary/Ascii mode

When executable or other non-text files are transferred, it is more reliable to transfer the files in binary mode. This is done in a command-line ftp program by issuing the binary command, which makes subsequent transfers operate in binary mode. In a visual system there is usually a binary button that can be selected. For text files (including program source files such as .java files), it is best to use ascii mode to ensure that the end-of-line characters are correctly translated between different systems.

telnet

A telnet program allows a user on one system to login to a remote system and issue commands in a command window of the remote system, just as if the user were physically sitting at the remote platform and using it. It is not possible to telnet to your account on the Clemson network, but you can telnet from the Clemson network (or from your personal computer if you have a telnet program and are connected to the internet) to your account on the CS network.

To telnet to your CS account, you must telnet to a specific node, just as with ftp, and you can only telnet to yoda from outside the CS network. On a Unix platform, the command is telnet, and on a Windows platform a visual interface is normally used. For example, to telnet to your CS account from another Unix platform (or other command-line system), use the command

telnet yoda.cs.clemson.edu

to connect to yoda, then login giving your userid and password as usual.

When you are connected via telnet, it is the same as having a single command window on a CS Solaris platform. You cannot open additional windows, so you can't execute programs that do that. This means, for example, that you have to use an editor such as vi rather than a visual editor such as textedit. You can have multiple telnet sessions, however. For example, you can start two telnet sessions on your PC and connect each one to your CS account. This would give you the equivalent of two command windows on a CS Solaris platform, so you could, for example, edit files in one window and compile programs in the other.

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Last Modified: 13 January 1999