FTP is a way of moving files from one computer to another over the internet. (File Transfer Protocol). FTP is commonly used to maintain web sites on zoo, or to move files to and from accounts on Zoo.
FTP Voyager is the recommended FTP client for Windows, and CIT has purchased a UVM site license for this software. To start FTP Voyager, click on the Start menu --> programs --> FTP Voyager. (The location of the FTP Voyager icon may vary.)
When you first start FTP Voyager, the Site Profiles window opens. A Session Profile contains information about a particular host computer to which you want to connect. FTP Voyager has been set up with a number of Session Profiles, organized into different folders. You may select an existing profile to connect to that site, or you may create your own site profile by clicking the "New Site" button.
If you use both your microcomputer and a host system frequently, you will probably find that you need to transfer files between the two. Computers that have been prepared by The Computer Depot will already have a "University of Vermont" folder with site profiles for the UVM Software Archive and for Zoo.
You may also add site profiles for other hosts to which you frequently connect. To do so, set up a new site profile by clicking "New Site" in the Site Profiles window. Assign a profile name that you will recognize, then enter the host name (zoo.uvm.edu, for example) in the FTP site field. Type your user ID, then click the Save button. (Do NOT save your password.) Once you create a session profile for your account, it will appear in the list of preset profiles that appears every time you start FTP Voyager.
Some host sites allow you to transfer files from their archives without having a personal account on the host system. This process is known as "anonymous FTP." UVM maintains the Software Archive to distribute site licensed and free software to the UVM community. The UVM Software Archive is accessible both via a web browser and via anonymous ftp. FTP Voyager also comes with site profiles for many other publicly accessible ftp sites.
To obtain files from an anonymous FTP site, start FTP Voyager. Choose a site to connect to from the Profile list, and click OK. The system will assume that you want to log in as "anonymous." When prompted for a password, the usual custom is to identify yourself by typing your e-mail address, with a hyphen at the beginning (-mkapoodl@zoo.uvm.edu for example).
You can create new site profiles for additional anonymous FTP sites. When you create the profile, click the "anonymous" check box instead of entering a user ID. You may also change the default email address (ftpvuser@unknown.com) to your own email address by choosing Options from the view menu. Change the anonymous password field to your email address.
Once you have connected to a site, the main FTP Voyager window should be visible. It is designed to look and work very much like Windows Explorer. The top area show the folders and files on the remote host to which you are connected. The middle area shows the folders and files on your desktop computer. The bottom area show the messages and commands exchanged by the remote computer and FTP Voyager.
Once FTP Voyager has connected to a remote host, you may navigate through folder in the same way that you do in Windows Explorer. You may drag files from the remote computer to folders on your desktop computer and vice versa. You may right-click on files to get a menu of possible actions.
When seeking files in an anonymous FTP site, look for a directory called "pub" first - many sites use this directory name to store FTP-able files.
FTP Voyager will make pretty good guesses (based on file name extensions like .txt) about the correct mode to use for files that you transfer. You may also explicitly specify whether the file is binary or ASCII.
To check or change the permission of files on the remote host, right-click on the file and select properties. You may make changes to permissions by checking or clearing the check boxes for various permissions, or by entering a hex value. If, when you select properties, all the permissions information in unavailable (greyed-out), click cancel to close the properties dialog, then right-click on the file and choose refresh, then right-click and choose properties again.
You may drag files from other explorer windows and your desktop onto the FTP Voyager window to upload files, and from the remote files window to Windows explorer to download. In fact, you can turn off the middle window in FTP Voyager altogether. Go to the View menu and choose Local Drives (or use control-L) to turn it on and off.
For help using FTP Voyager, click the Help button.
Last revised: 1999-08-26 by Geoffrey Duke
Questions? Send e-mail to helpline@uvm.edu
or call the HelpLine at 656-2604.
Computing and Information Technology, http://cit.uvm.edu/
Copyright 1999 The
University of Vermont