Exercise 1: FTP review

A couple of things about FTP, a program that lets you transfer files from your lab-top to your AFS account.
  1. First of all, while Windows98 does not mind spaces, the operating system of the computer which runs the web-server does. This means that whenever you edit a file do not use any spaces, use the under_score instead. When you download files or images from the web, check whether they have spaces in their filename. If so, simply remove them when the computer asks you for the name under which to save the image.
  2. Last time, we transferred an entire folder from your computer to AFS. From now on, you will most likely only transfer individual files. There are two file-transfer modes that are important to distinguish.
  3. Please use AbsoluteFTP to transfer files. Log into your AFS account, which most likely has the same username and password as your Novell account. Once logged in, select the window entitled FTP Access to RHIT's AFS Filesystem - HTML, if it is not already selected. Click on the + symbol in front of your Public directory. This should bring up an HTML folder. Double-click on the HTML folder. You should now be in the place where the web-server will look for your files. AbsoluteFTP will transfer all files to that folder now. Move the window out of the way.
  4. Now select the Local(YourUserename) - RHIT window. Select the source directory which houses the files you want to transfer. Select the file(s) you wish to transfer. If you wish to transfer more than one file, hold down the ctrl key when clicking on the filename.
  5. Click on the COPY icon at the top menu bar.
  6. Single click on the HTML folder in the FTP Access ... window and click on the Paste icon in the top window bar.
  7. If the files to transferred are known to the FTP program it will simply transfer them. For an unknown file format, as judged by their extension, FTP will ask you whether the file should be transferred in ASCII or Binary mode. The rule of thumb is that images, i.e. any file that ends in .jpg, .gif, or .bmp is a binary file and has to be transferred as such. A binary file is made up of little pixels, such as can be found in stadium screens. Any .html document will always be transferred as an ASCII file.
  8. When you are done, simply exit AbsoluteFTP.