[comp.os.minix] File Transfer with Minix

nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu (John Nall) (11/29/90)

Up until this point, I've done all my file transfers to/from Minix
by taking the easy way out - use DOS for file transfers, and then
use dosread/doswrite to transfer data to/from Minix itself.

The time has probably come now to get DOS out of the loop.  I know
there are several choices: (a) kermit (b) zmodem (c) uucp, (d) ?.  
Of course, I'd *really* like to use ftp, but we can't always have our
ruthers :-)

So, within what is available, is there any sort of general concensus
as to what is best?  Since I've never had any interest in this before,
I haven't paid much attention to what was said on the net about it.
(As someone within another group put it so well: "the current is always
flowing in the river, but one is not usually thirsty....")

Since this may be of general interest (is it?) if anyone who has some
input can e-mail me, I will summarize for the net.  (Yes, I really will
summarize!)  The term "best" should be defined as solid, well-documented,
easy to use, fast, in that order.




--
John W. Nall		| Supercomputation Computations Research Institute
nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu  | Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306
   WB4LOQ (why? I dunno....everyone else seems to be doing it.  _._)

awb@uk.ac.ed.aipna (Alan W Black) (11/30/90)

In article <1483@sun13.scri.fsu.edu>, nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu (John Nall)
writes:
|>Up until this point, I've done all my file transfers to/from Minix
|>by taking the easy way out - use DOS for file transfers, and then
|>use dosread/doswrite to transfer data to/from Minix itself.
|>
|>The time has probably come now to get DOS out of the loop.  I know
|>there are several choices: (a) kermit (b) zmodem (c) uucp, (d) ?.  
|>Of course, I'd *really* like to use ftp, but we can't always have our
|>ruthers :-)
|>
|>So, within what is available, is there any sort of general concensus
|>as to what is best?  Since I've never had any interest in this before,
|>I haven't paid much attention to what was said on the net about it.
|>(As someone within another group put it so well: "the current is always
|>flowing in the river, but one is not usually thirsty....")
|>
|>Since this may be of general interest (is it?) if anyone who has some
|>input can e-mail me, I will summarize for the net.  (Yes, I really will
|>summarize!)  The term "best" should be defined as solid, well-documented,
|>easy to use, fast, in that order.
|>
|>
|>
|>
|>--
|>John W. Nall		| Supercomputation Computations Research Institute
|>nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu  | Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306
|>   WB4LOQ (why? I dunno....everyone else seems to be doing it.  _._)
                           
I understand the problem.  When I first started using minix I had to use
about four machines to do the transfer.  Copy the file to a sun in another
institute.  Use their machine to ftp to MSDOS, use another machine to
change to 3.5" disks, then back to my own and use tos to read it (that's
on my Atari).  Only to discover I forgot to set binary on the ftp :-(

Now I have a terminal link from my atari and use the term.c (from Felix
Croes (croes@fwi.uva.nl) which has get and put using zmodem builtin.  
This is easy to use and can transfer binary files.  This does mean I had
to compile the zmodem stuff on the Sin I am connected to, but that's
no problem.

I have never used kermit and feel that my life is probably better
without it :-)

I also have a 386 machine at home which is not connected to any of our
machines at work (use a modem ? across British Telecom telecom ?  I think
that would be very unreliable).  To transfer stuff to and from that machine
and also my atari (when its large), is to use a Sun Sparcstation floppy.

There are two ways to do this.  First you can use Richard Tobin's nsf
mounter for Minix disks.  It allows you to simply mount a minix disk on a
sparcstation.  Its great but you need to be root to mount the disk and
I don't have any root passwd's to machines with floppy drives.

The second and I think easiest is to simple tar stuff onto the floppy
such as
   tar cvf /dev/rfd0 minix-stuff
And take the disk home extracting it with
   tar xv /dev/floppy 
I used to use the minix tar programs to do the taring on the sun but
have found it unnecessary -- though I avoid having symbolic links in
the directory I'm transfering.

Alan

Alan W Black                          80 South Bridge, Edinburgh, UK
Dept of Artificial Intelligence       tel: (+44) -31 225 7774 x228 or x223
University of Edinburgh               email: awb@ed.ac.uk