READ AT YOUR OWN RISK
2011 October 1/10:32 PM
This document dates from the early web period, and is kept for archival
purposes only. It is no longer updated, and contains much that is
apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate.
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CEREBUS USES THE FOLLOWING SOFTWARE:
FTPd, by Peter N. Lewis (ftp, web, and gopher)
FingerToyz, by Wayne Walrath (finger)
MacHTTPD, by Chuck Shotton (web)
FireShare, by Jerry Stratton (e-mail services)
MailShare, by Glenn Anderson
Cerebus is deeply impressed with Peter N. Lewis.
FTP
While FTPing to Cerebus, you can do some things that aren't quite
normal. (You can do abnormal things without FTPing to Cerebus, but
Cerebus doesn't want to know about them.)
SPECIFYING FILENAMES:
Unlike Unix, Cerebus is not case sensitive. Cerebus does not
care about upper and lower case. Gold, gold, and GOLD
are all the same to Cerebus.
Cerebus recognizes asterisks and question marks as wildcards.
Therefore, you can use * and ? in GETs and in CDs. Cerebus would
like to point out that your computer is probably not so smart, and
will brainlessly use those asterisks and questions as part of the
filename. That is not Cerebus' problem.
Asterisks and questions marks work normally for mget.
Cerebus recognizes that some people do not like binary files.
If you add '.hqx' to the end of a legitimate filename, Cerebus
will binhex the file for you before transferring it.
get what*here : Get the file 'What We Got Here'.
It will probably be called
'what*here' on your side.
get "What We Got Here.hqx" : Binhex the file 'What We Got Here'
before transferring it.
cd Proh* : Move into the 'Prohibition' directory.
ls Prohibition/Drug?Info* : List the files in the directory
'Prohibition/Drug Information'.
SEARCHING CEREBUS
You can get an index of all filenames that have a certain word in
their name. Use
quote site i word or phrase : To find all filenames with 'word
or phrase' in them. For example,
quote site i cartoon guide : To find filenames with 'cartoon
guide' in the filename.
MACINTOSH USERS
If you are transferring directly to a Macintosh and your FTP client
understands Macbinary, you might want to transfer using Macbinary.
Macbinary maintains icons and other Finder information. Use
quote macb e : To enable Macbinary, and
quote macb d : To disable Macbinary.
Likewise, if for some reason you prefer to see filenames with .hqx
on the end of them, you can use
quote site h e : To enable .hqx, and
quote site h d : To disable .hqx.
This is mostly cosmetic. If you ask for the filename without
specifing '.hqx', the file will not be binhexed. If you ask for
it with '.hqx', it will be binhexed. You can use the following
suffixes to force various transfers:
get filename.data : Get the data fork, as ascii or binary.
get filename.rsrc : Get the resource fork, binary only.
get filename.info : Get the info fork, binary only.
get filename.bin : Force a Macbinary transfer.
get filename.hqx : Force a binhex transfer.
If you are one of those perverts who is familiar with the
Macintosh file system, you can enable use of ':' instead of '/'
as a separator in filepaths, with the command
quote site m e : To enable Mac-like paths, and
quote site m d : To disable Mac-like paths.
DOS USERS
If you want to see standard DOS-like filenames, use the command
quote site s : To switch to short, DOS, names, and
quote site l : To switch to long, normal names.
Short names are ugly, but Cerebus does not care. Cerebus does not
believe in the existence of DOS anyway.
I heard that. Which one of you said *Cerebus* is short and ugly?
SUBMISSIONS
If you have something to give Cerebus (Cerebus prefers Gold), you
can put it in the "/Incoming" directory. Remember to set the
file type to 'binary' if you are sending binary files, and to
keep the file type to 'ascii' if it is a text file. Do this by
typing 'binary' or 'ascii' before making the transfer. The command
for putting files on Cerebus is "put".
You cannot see what you upload. Don't worry, unless you actually
got an error message, it probably made it okay.
binary
put gold.doc
ascii
put gold.txt
Remember that even though Cerebus does not care about upper or
lower case, your computer might.
NAGEE submissions must go into the NAGEE Submissions directory.
Tony Moller keeps an eye out there for new submissions. Which,
incidentally, have been pretty rare lately.
GOPHER
SITE INDEX
In the top level of Cerebus the Gopher there is an option called
'Site Index <?>'. This allows you to look for gopher items based
on words or phrases in their name. It is similar, if not identical
to, the 'Index' option found in the FTP side of Cerebus.
WEB
WEB and FTP
If you want to look at some of the scripts and html documents used
by Cerebus, you might find it easier to 'ftp' to cerebus. Besides
/pub, you can also get to /html.
URLS
You might be able to use the following URLs to get here via the Web:
http://nspace.cts.com/
http://nspace.cts.com/html/cerebus.html
http://nspace.cts.com/html/comics.html
http://nspace.cts.com/html/acadcomp.html
gopher://nspace.cts.com:70/1/1ftp:pub:
gopher://nspace.cts.com/11ftp%3apub%3a
FINGER
You can grab files by 'finger'ing Cerebus. For example, *this* file is
in "ftp:Instructions/Cerebus". So you can
finger "ftp:instructions/cerebus"@nspace.cts.com
You can get an index of filenames by sending a finger to "search" at Cerebus. For
example, to find all the files with 'superman' in the name, use
finger search:[s--er--n] at [nspace.cts.com]
(Actually, the above two parts ain't supported yet. But the below part is.
You can finger the following addresses:
[h--p] at [nspace.cts.com]
[i--o] at [nspace.cts.com]
[making comics] at [nspace.cts.com]
[dead dates] at [nspace.cts.com]
E-MAIL
You can send electronic mail to Cerebus; he might even deign a reply.
You can send messages to:
[h--p] at [nspace.cts.com]: Short intro to Cerebus.
[i--o] at [nspace.cts.com]: This file.
[s--s--s] at [nspace.cts.com]: A submission for Cerebus.
[c--me--s] at [nspace.cts.com]: Comments or kibitzing about Cerebus.
[dead dates] at [nspace.cts.com]: The latest "Rumoured & Confirmed" list.
[making comics] at [nspace.cts.com]: The latest "Making Comics on the Net".
[s--lv--r] at [nspace.cts.com]: Silver Cianide and the NAGEE.
[f t p] at [nspace.cts.com]: FTP Via E-mail.
[w--b] at [nspace.cts.com]: HTML Documents Via E-mail
HELP
You can get the simple, small help file by e-mailing a message
to "[h--p] at [nspace.cts.com]". You can get this help file (like, why
would you want it? You're reading it. And Cerebus did not say
"like") by sending a message to "[i--o] at [nspace.cts.com]". You can
leave the subject and message blank. Cerebus will ignore it even
if you don't. Cerebus will especially ignore it if it goes on and
on about your latest romantic break-up.
SUBMISSIONS
If you have a text submission for Cerebus, e-mail it to
"[s--s--s] at [nspace.cts.com]". Put the directory where
it belongs in your subject line.
That don't guarantee that it *will* appear there. Or that I'll
even get to *putting* it there by the end of this century...
COMMENTS
If you have some comments about Cerebus, you can e-mail them to
"[c--me--s] at [nspace.cts.com]". Cerebus will, of course, ignore them.
Cerebus is a lot smarter than *you* are. You're running a Pentium.
FTP and WEB
If you don't have access to ftp, you can still get text files from
Cerebus. Send your message to "[f t p] at [nspace.cts.com]". Your message
can include the following commands:
ls : get a list of all items in the current folder.
ls folder : get a list of all items in the specified folder.
cd folder : change the current folder. Use ".." to move up one.
get file : get a file. It will be e-mailed to you. Get only
works for text files, and it will not break up large
files. If you ask for a 900k file, you will get it
in one chunk.
Send to [w--b] at [nspace.cts.com] for html documents.