From: [email protected] (John Van Essen)
Subject: DOOM-related Downloads via E-mail (98/03/01)
Newsgroups: rec.games.computer.doom.announce,rec.games.computer.doom.help
Followup-To: poster
Organization: RGCD Support Team
Approved: [email protected]
Summary: Describes how to get files from a DOOM-related FTP site via e-mail.

Rec-games-computer-doom-announce-archive-name: howto-ftpmail
Posting-Frequency: monthly

|            () Getting DOOM Files via E-mail. . (98/03/01)

|   [ Mar 01 - Updated URLs and IP addresses, added info about # of parts]

   If you do not have FTP access, but can receive and process uuencoded
   multi-part e-mail messages (with a uudecode program), you can fetch
   files by e-mail from some of the FTP servers hosting the DOOM archives.

   The primary DOOM Archive and some of the mirrors also run a service
   called ftpmail that connects to an FTP server, performs FTP operations,
   and mails the results back to the user that requested the service.

   This means that the FTP transfer rate for ftpmail fetches is very fast,
   since it talks to itself (the packets don't even leave the machine).

   E-mail requests are delivered promptly and processed quickly.  Results
   are mailed with Precedence: bulk; prime-time delivery takes a while.

   This is a very good option for those who cannot do FTP, but have e-mail.
   Common sense and courtesy should be exercised when submitting requests:

     * Do not submit jobs during the host's prime time.
     * Do not submit jobs during your country's prime time (9am to 4pm?).
     * Do not submit jobs for big files (1M or more) except on weekends.

   In the U.S. (for example) jobs should be submitted between 1700-0200 EDT
   (1600-2300 PDT) if possible.  Tiny jobs would be OK at other times.

   Most ftpmailers do FTP transfers in binary mode by default.  This does
   not hurt text files, so you can leave the mode set to binary.  It is
   also intelligent enough to recognize a binary file (such as a zip file)
   and will automatically uuencode it (by default) when mailing it to you.
   This makes things *very* easy!  You just "get" the file, and let the
   mailer decide what to do!

   When you receive uuencoded messages, save them to files with names
   using the part number in the message Subject: (save part 1 as a01,
   part 2 as a02, etc.).  Don't save them in the order that you get them.

   Then use "uudecode" on the first file - "uudecode a01".  Most (if not
   all) versions of uudecode are smart enough to advance the file name
   automatically to get the next file if there is more than 1 part.

   What you'll end up with is the file that was originally uuencoded -
   usually a zip file.  Zip files can be unzipped using pkunzip v2.04g
|   or any other zip-file-aware program, like WinZip or unzip.

|   PKZIP v2.04g and R.E.M UUENCODE/UUDECODE v6.56 are available by FTP
   from this SimTel mirror (or any other SimTel mirror):

     ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/simtelnet/msdos/arcers/pkz204g.exe
|     ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/simtelnet/msdos/decode/uuexe656.zip

   Here are the entries from the "DOOM: FTP and WWW Sites List" article
   for those DOOM Archive sites that have ftpmailer running locally:

|  California: ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames/ (Primary Site) 165.113.121.81
    New York: ftp://ftp.gamers.org/pub/games/idgames/         128.205.37.150
      Sweden: ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/pc/games/idgames/        130.238.253.4

   To submit jobs for the ftpmailer, send a message with ftpmailer commands
   to "ftpmail@_archive_site_name".  Commands for some ftpmailers differ
   from those of the original ftpmailer at decwrl, so get the help for it.

|   Here are some examples of message bodies to send to [email protected]:

   (1) Get help (all lines beyond 'help' line are always ignored):

         help

   (2) Send the files listing the most recent uploads to your buddy:

         reply [email protected]
         open
         cd /pub/games/doom
         get LAST.24hours
         get LAST.7days
         quit

   (3) Get the DOOM WAD specs and the zipped Official DOOM FAQ:

         open
         cd /pub/games/doom/docs/editing
         get dmspec16.txt
         cd /pub/games/doom/docs/faqs
         get dmfaq66.zip
         quit

   (4) Get the DOOM II pix (will be split into many separate messages):

         open
         cd /pub/games/doom
         cd graphics
         get doom2pcx.txt
         get doom2pcx.zip
         quit

   Read the ftpmailer's 'help' for further information.  If you use the
   above examples, remove the leading white space on the lines.

|   By default, files are split into approximately 60,000-byte chunks.
|   Binary files are converted into a format that takes 33% more space,
|   so multiply the size of a binary file by 4/3 to get the mailing size.
|   For example, doom2pcx.zip is 717327 bytes x 4/3 = 956436 bytes.
|   956436 divided by 60,000 is 15.94, so that's about a 16-part email
|   (it's actually a 17-parter because of allowance for email overhead).

   John Van Essen  <[email protected]>  Author of R.G.C.D RFD

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