Moving Files To and From Your Web Space
Knowing how to transfer files to your home directory will literally change
your academic life at Stanford. You will never have to worry about
disks, and you can access your data from any computer in the world
that is hooked up to the internet. If you get nothing else out of this
assignment, knowing how to FTP (which is computer slang for "I'm going to
copy some files from computer A onto computer B") will be well worth the
effort you've invested.
To "put" is computer-speak for copying (not transferring) documents from
some computer to your account on the server. To "get" is computer-speak
for copying (not transferring) documents from your account on the
server to some other computer, usually the desktop of the one you're
working on at the time. Keep in mind that if you "put" a file that has
the same name as a file that's already in your account, then the earlier
file will be over-written. Most of the FTP programs do not ask you if you
are sure that you want to replace the current file with the new file; they
just do it.
Keep the "put" and "get" metaphors in mind as you read the options below for
copying documents to the proper place. There are four choices described, and which one
you decide to use will depend on what type of computer you're working on
as well as which one feels most comfortable to you.
Mac Options
- If you are using a Mac in a cluster, go to the upper right corner
of the screen, where there is a small icon of Hoover Tower. Select
that icon and log in, if you haven't done so already. (This is the
same dialog box that shows up when you check your email.) Next, click
on the icon again and select "Mount Home Folder" Now you can transfer
files from the desktop to your SUNet account the same way you transfer
files to a disk.
- If you're using a Mac, you can fire up Fetch. You should specify
the host as "transfer.stanford.edu" and type in your username. You
will be asked for your leland password, and then you will be given
a listing of the files and folders on your leland account. One of
those folders will be your WWW one. Double click on it to
open. You can click on "put file" to add a file or "get file" to
copy a file out of your WWW folder. Fetch will also accomodate
dragging and dropping files. This is particularly useful when you
are moving folders around because you don't have to do things file by
file.
PC Options
- If you're using a PC, you should use WS-FTP. Again you will need
to specify "transfer.stanford.edu" as the host and your username. You
will be prompted for your leland password, and then you will be shown
two windows: one for the computer and one for your account. There
will be arrows going back and forth. The left-hand window for the computer will
usually not start on the desktop; to switch to the desktop you
will have to click the up-arrow a few times and then double click on
WINDOWS and then double click on DESKTOP. On the SME computers the
process is somewhat more complicated: you have to double click on
WINNT, then Profiles, then smelab, then desktop. Finding the desktop
can be somewhat of a pain.
To move into or between folders (directories) in your account (on the right hand side of the screen), double-click on the one you want.
When you want to copy
file from one place to the other, you highlight the file and click the
appropriate arrow.
- The last option is to use MS-DOS. You can usually get to an
MS-DOS prompt from the start bar of a PC. You can't get an
MS-DOS prompt from a Mac. The prompt will usually
start as "C:\WINDOWS>"; you should type "cd desktop" to change to the
desktop. Then type "ftp transfer.stanford.edu". You will be prompted
for your username and password. At this point you can type "cd WWW" to
change to your WWW directory or you can directly type "put
filename" and move the file to your WWW directory
later, when you logon to your SUNet account. (The unix command to move a file from your top directory to
your WWW directory is "mv filename WWW".) If for some
reason the file you transferred gets garbled as sometimes happens,
you may want to start the procedure over. This time, type
"binary" at the ftp prompt (which will appear after you type "ftp
transfer.stanford.edu").
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