Archive-name: gopher-faq
Last-modified: 1992/09/08
Common Questions and Answers about the Internet Gopher, a
client/server protocol for making a world wide information service,
with many implementations. Posted to comp.infosystems.gopher and
news.answers every two weeks.
The most recent version of this FAQ can be gotten through gopher, or
via anonymous ftp:
pit-manager.mit.edu:/pub/usenet/comp.infosystems.gopher/gopher-faq
Those without FTP access should send e-mail to mail-server "-at-" rtfm.mit.edu
with "send usenet/news.answers/finding-sources" in the body to find
out how to do FTP by e-mail.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q0: What is Gopher?
A0: The Internet Gopher client/server provides a distributed
information delivery system around which a world/campus-wide
information system (CWIS) can readily be constructed. While
providing a delivery vehicle for local information, Gopher
facilitates access to other Gopher and information servers
throughout the world.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q1: Where can I get gopher?
A1: via anonymous ftp to boombox.micro.umn.edu. Look in the directory
/pub/gopher
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Q2: What do I need to access gopher?
A2: You will need a gopher "client" program that runs on your local
PC
or workstation
There are clients for the following systems. The directory
following the name is the location of the client on the anonymous
ftp site boombox.micro.umn.edu (134.84.132.2) in the directory
/pub/gopher.
Unix Curses & Emacs : /pub/gopher/Unix/gopher1.02.tar.Z
Xwindows : /pub/gopher/Unix/xgopher1.1a.tar.Z
Macintosh Hypercard : /pub/gopher/Mac_client/
DOS w/Clarkson Driver : /pub/gopher/PC_client/
NeXTstep : /pub/gopher/NeXT/
VM/CMS : /pub/gopher/Rice_CMS/ or
/pub/gopher/Vienna_CMS/
VMS : /pub/gopher/VMS/
A Macintosh application MacGopher is available via anonymous ftp
from ftp.cc.utah.edu:
Macintosh Application : /pub/gopher/Macintosh
Another Macintosh application, "GopherApp" is available via
anonymous ftp from ftp.bio.indiana.edu:
Macintosh Application : /util/gopher/gopherapp
A port of the UNIX curses client for DOS with PC/TCP is available
via anonymous ftp from:
DOS w/ PC/TCP : /public/dos/misc/dosgofer.exe
A beta version of the PC Gopher client for Novell's LAN Workplace
for DOS is available from lennon.itn.med.umich.edu
LWP for DOS : /gopher
All of the above clients can also be fetched via a gopher client
itself. Put the following on a gopher server:
Type=1
Host=boombox.micro.umn.edu
Port=70
Path=
Name=Gopher Software Distribution.
Or point your gopher client at boombox.micro.umn.edu, port 70 and
look in the gopher directory.
There are also a number of public telnet login sites available.
The University of Minnesota operates one on the machine
"consultant.micro.umn.edu" (134.84.132.4) See Q3 for more
information about this. It is recommended that you run the client
software instead of logging into the public telnet login sites. A
client uses the custom features of the local machine (mouse,
scroll bars, etc.) A local client is also faster.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Q3: Where are there publicly available logins for gopher.
A3: Here is a short list, use the site closest to you to minimize
network lag.
Hostname IP# Login Area
------------------------- --------------- ------ -------------
consultant.micro.umn.edu 134.84.132.4 gopher North America
gopher.uiuc.edu 128.174.33.160 gopher North America
panda.uiowa.edu 128.255.40.201 panda North America
info.anu.edu.au 150.203.84.20 info Australia
gopher.chalmers.se 129.16.221.40 gopher Sweden
tolten.puc.cl 146.155.1.16 gopher South America
It is recommended that you run the client software instead of
logging into the public telnet login sites. A client uses the
custom features of the local machine (mouse, scroll bars, etc.) A
local client is also faster.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Q4: How can I add to the information in gopher?
A4: You can do this by running a gopher server. Servers are available
for a number of systems. Use anonymous ftp to
boombox.micro.umn.edu (134.84.132.2) and look in /pub/gopher. The
following servers are available there:
Unix : /pub/gopher/Unix/gopherxx.tar.Z
VMS : /pub/gopher/VMS/
Macintosh : /pub/gopher/Mac_server/
VM/CMS : /pub/gopher/Rice_CMS/ or /pub/gopher/Vienna_CMS/
MVS : /pub/gopher/mvs/
DOS PC : /pub/gopher/PC_server/
When you have your server ready you can publish it to the world by
sending e-mail to the maintainters of the "Other gophers" list:
gopher "-at-" boombox.micro.umn.edu
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Q5: Who Develops Gopher Software?
A5: Gopher was originally developed in April 1991 by the University
of Minnesota Microcomputer, Workstation, Networks Center to help
our campus find answers to their computer questions.
It has since grown into a full-fledged World Wide Information
System used by a large number of sites in the world.
Many people have contributed to the project, too numerous to
count.
The people behind the much of the gopher software can be reached
via e-mail at gopher "-at-" boombox.micro.umn.edu, or via paper mail:
Internet Gopher Developers
100 Union St. SE #132
Minneapolis, MN 55455 USA
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Q6: How can I set up a "CSO" phone book server? Where is the
software?
A6: CSO phone book servers are also known as "qi" servers. The
software implementation can be gotten via anonymous ftp from
uxc.cso.uiuc.edu (128.174.5.50) as /pub/qi.tar.Z. You may also
see this referred to as "ph", which is what most of the clients
are called.
There is also an archive of the mailing list for qi/ph software on
the same machine. It's in /pub/info-ph.archive.
This software is supported by Steve Dorner <s-dorner "-at-" uiuc.edu>
Contact him for more information.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q7: Why can't I access the University of Minnesota's UPI news?
A7: The University of Minnesota has a site license for UPI news, we
are not allowed to distribute it off of our campus. We get our
UPI news from Clarinet. For more information about getting UPI
news send mail to info "-at-" clarinet.com. For information about
setting up your own gopher-UPI server search the gopher-news
archive for UPI.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q9: What are the type characters for the different Gopher Objects?
A9: Normal IDs.
0 Item is a file
1 Item is a directory
2 Item is a CSO (qi) phone-book server
3 Error
4 Item is a BinHexed Macintosh file.
5 Item is DOS binary archive of some sort.
6 Item is a UNIX uuencoded file.
7 Item is an Index-Search server.
8 Item points to a text-based telnet session.
9 Item is a binary file! Client must read until the connection
closes. Beware.
T TN3270 connection.
Experimental IDs.
s Sound type. Data stream is a mulaw sound.
g GIF type.
M MIME type. Item contains MIME data.
h html type.
I Image type.
i "inline" text type (used by panda).
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q10: When I do full-text searches I always get every document back, Why?
A10: This is a problem occasionally encountered with Unix full-text
indexes. It is caused by setting up the link incorrectly to a
gindexd port.
The Path= field should be *blank* when pointing to a gindexd
index.
Otherwise the client will send the path to the gindexd daemon,
which interprets everything as a keyword. This path is
likely to contain a pathname that is common to all of the indexed
files. Thus a search generates hits on everything.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q11: When I try to build the UNIX software I get an error from make:
"Must be a separator on rules line #. Stop" Why?
A11: This is a problem with older makes that don't understand the
"include"
keyword. One easy way to cope with this problem is compiling GNU
make, which does understand the include keyword.
If this is too difficult, remove the line:
include Makefile.config
from all the Makefiles and paste in a copy of Makefile.config at
the top of each Makefile.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q12: What is the relationship between Gopher and (WAIS, WWW, ftp)?
A12: Gopher is intimately intertwined with these two other systems.
As shipped the Unix gopher server has the capability to:
- Search local WAIS indices.
- Query remote WAIS servers and funnel the results to gopher
clients.
- Query remote ftp sites and funnel the results to gopher
clients.
- Be queried by WWW (World Wide Web) clients (either using
built in gopher querying or using native http querying.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q13: Are papers or articles describing gopher available?
A13: Yes. Here are some references:
_The_Internet_Gopher_, "ConneXions", July 1992, Interop.
_Exploring_Internet_GopherSpace_ "The Internet Society News",
v1n2
1992,
_The_Internet_Gopher_Protocol_, Proceedings of the Twenty-Third
IETF, CNRI, Section 5.3
_Internet_Gopher_, Proceedings of Canadian Networking '92
_The_Internet_Gopher_, INTERNET: Getting Started, SRI
International, Section 10.5.5
_Tools_help_Internet_users_discover_on-line_treasures, Computerworld,
July 20, 1992
_TCP/IP_Network_Administration_, O'Reilly.
Gopher will also be in the forthcoming O'Reilly Book:
"The Whole Internet".
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q14: On a DECstation I get the error message "/etc/svc.conf no such file
or directory" when running the gopherd server, why?
A14: This is caused by the chroot() call in gopherd. It can be easily
fixed by running gopherd with the -c option.
Alternatively you can copy /etc/svc.conf into a directory named
"etc" inside the gopher-data directory.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q15: The boolean searching terms don't work for my full-text index, why?
A15: This is probably because the searching is being provided by WAIS.
WAIS opts to return all documents that contain a search phrase
within certain limits. WAIS searches do return the documents with
the highest "score" at the top, those documents will have the
closest relevance.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q16: When linking the Unix gopher server with WAIS I get undefined symbols,
such as:
log_file_name
logfile
PrintStatus
find_value
Sources
NumSources
A17: This happens if you make gopherd before linking in the WAIS ir/ui
directories. The fix is to "make clean" or remove
gopherd/{waisgopher.o,Waisindex.o} and then remake gopherd. Or
link the ir/ui directories first.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q18: Why don't my WAIS indexes work? I never get anything back for
searches.
or Why do I get "Dangling file" error messages in my logfile?
A18: The problem could be in the server. The server should be run
using the -c option if you want WAIS to work. Another solution is to
patch the WAIS code so that it doesn't check the files on the disk.
Search the gopher-news archive for "dangling". This will turn up a
single document with the patch.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q19: My gopher server doesn't work under inetd, why?
A19: It could be that your inetd server only supports a limited amount
of arguments. For instance, the maximum number of arguments to an
inetd server is 5. You can get around this by combining arguments:
i.e.
gopherd -I -c
becomes:
gopherd -Ic
You may also leave the port specifier off of the command line.
The gopher server automagically finds out the port it's running on.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Q20: This is not a bug report, just a curiousity. I managed to install
gopher on my PC, more or less by myself, which is a pretty good
accomplishment, for someone who hasn't installed hardly anything on a
PC. I then proceeded to load my PC/TCP kernel, ETHDRV, and try to
start up gopher. It said it couldn't initialize that stack(?). I have
to load this whenever I use PC/TCP. Incredibly, when I did not load
ETHDRV, Gopher came up immediately and telneted to our local server.
How does it know what kernel to load?
A20 Dr. Science says,
The Internet Gopher program is not actually computer program at
all, but a collection of magical incantations handed down from Dark
Age conjurors. It works by sending magical "demons" through the air,
which scour the world for information, and then return to cast
illusions containing the answer.
When you use the Gopher, your computer isn't actually doing
anything at all. Instead, these demons have mesmirized you with an
evil magical spell, which was invoked by the pattern of
finger-movements peculiar to the typing of the letters G-O-P-H-E-R on
your keyboard. This spell transmits demonic information directly to
your brain.
Scientists aren't certain of the long-term effects of demonic
mesmirization, although former presidents have suffered only minor
medical side-effects from it. Indeed, since Magic and Science are
usually opposed to each other, most Scientists are usually
close-minded about such issues, and will usually respond with some
vacuous non-answer about "packet drivers", "stacks", and other such
jargon.
Unlike conventional scientists, Dr. Science is very open-minded and
is willing to deal with such issues in a frank and honest manner.
This is why people come to him with questions, and why they've learned
to rely on and live by his answers.
Dr. Science
"I'm not a real doctor; I have a Master's Degree.... in SCIENCE!"
:-) :-) :-) :-)
There's always room for a little humor in a FAQ..
