encoder
This converts the file into an encoded form. To decode it, you'll first have to transfer the file message into a file in your home directory. One further complication comes when you request a particularly long file. Many Net sites can only handle so much mail at a time. To make sure you get the entire file, tell the mail server to break it up into smaller pieces, with another line in your e-mail request like this:
size 100000
This gives the mail server the maximum size, in bytes, of each file segment. This particular size is good for UUCP sites. Internet and Bitnet sites can generally go up to 300000. When you get all of these files in mail, transfer them to your home directory. Exit mail and call up each file in your host system's text processor and delete each one's entire header and footer (or "signature" at the end). When done with this, at your host system's command line, type
cat file1 file2 > bigfile
where file1 is the first file, file2 the second file, and so on. The > tells your host system to combine them into a new megafile called bigfile (or whatever you want to call it). After you save the file to your home directory (see section 9.2 above), you can then run uudecode, tar, etc. One word of caution, though: if the file you want is long enough that it has to be broken into pieces, think of how much time it's going to take you to download the whole thing — especially if you're using a 2400-baud modem! There are a number of other mail servers. To get a list, send an e-mail message to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu:
send usenet/comp.sources.wanted/How_to_find_sources_(READ_THIS_BEFORE_POSTING)
You'll have to spell it exactly as listed above. Some mail servers use different software, which will require slightly different commands than the ones listed here. In general, if you send a message to a mail server that says only
help
you should get back a file detailing all of its commands. But what if the file you want is not on one of these mail servers? That's where ftpmail comes in. Run by Digital Equipment Corp. in California, this service can connect to almost any ftp site in the world, get the file you want and then mail it to you. Using it is fairly simple — you send an e-mail message to ftpmail that includes a series of commands telling the system where to find the file you want and how to format it to mail to you. Compose an e-mail message to