[HN Gopher] nic.funet.fi: Serving freely distributable files wit... ___________________________________________________________________ nic.funet.fi: Serving freely distributable files with FTP since 1990 Author : Someone Score : 179 points Date : 2023-08-05 19:36 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.funet.fi) (TXT) w3m dump (www.funet.fi) | BrandoElFollito wrote: | Oh, nic.fune.fi, the first place O learned about in 1992 when I | touched Internet for the first time at CERN. | | As a physicist, I discovered the world of Unix and slowly started | my journey to sysadmin - and 30 years later I am still in IT that | I love so much. | zgluck wrote: | As someone just getting access to the net in '94/'95 and also | learning programming via Turbo Pascal around that time, | ftp://x2ftp.oulu.fi was a lot more important! Now sadly gone. | | (https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.msdos.programmer/c/Kcoc7...) | bluedino wrote: | Loved x2! | | Any particular reason there seemed like a bunch of ftp sites | hosted in Finland? | zgluck wrote: | I think... both for Finland and Sweden: We wanted to stand | out internationally. And there were lots of smart people in | the right places. And there was money to spend on that | exciting new stuff, after the first few early press rounds. | | But since this on top of HN I hope someone who actually knows | will show up soon. :) | petercooper wrote: | One of my favorites as well! I had a poke around and it seems | there's a downloadable archive of it, though at "only" 500MB | I'm not sure how complete it is: | https://archive.org/details/X2ftpArchive | thedougd wrote: | Can I use the '...' directory to upload files? | cynod wrote: | Haha.. that brings back memories! The "..." " ." and ".. " | directories were legendary :) | bitwize wrote: | It was funet.fi, sunsite.unc.edu, and prep.ai.mit.edu where I | first rounded out my Linux software collection. | | I remember searching for stuff using Archie for deeper dives. I | remember Archie blinking between = and O while it searched | various ftp sites. | | Early internet was the freaking bomb. So much to explore, so many | secrets to discover. | ThePowerOfFuet wrote: | >It runs on a Linux server with dual 20 core processors, 786GB of | memory and 80+TB of NetApp NFS storage. It has a 2 x 25Gbit/s | connection to the Funet backbone. | | Imagine an IT expert waking up from a coma they had been in since | 1991 and seeing this. | __del__ wrote: | "i think you'll find you mean megabytes of ram and gigabytes of | storage" ...cause that's how 90s IT people started most of | their sentences | dobin wrote: | The only thing i wanted to know is on what a machine it runs. | | > It runs on a Linux server with dual 20 core processors, 786GB | of memory and 80+TB of NetApp NFS storage. | | And they deliver. | chx wrote: | I faintly remember when around the turn of the century the | Irish equivalent, HEANET put in an Intel Itanic server for a | similar purpose (or was it two?). I hope someone will correct | me if I remember wrong but it had an absurd amount of memory, | like 32GB. | | ALthough it seems I remember wrong | https://hyse.org/pdf/scaling-apache-handout.pdf | | > a Dell 2650, with 2 2.4 Ghz Xeon processors, 12Gb of memory | | but still, there _was_ Merced there, it 's just been so long | ... | juhanima wrote: | 32 years ago I had just finished my "erikoistyo" (a pregrad | exercise) in CS at the Helsinki Uni about combining object- | oriented programming with relational databases and uploaded it to | nic.funet.fi for all to see and enjoy - I was that proud of it. | Even promised to send a 1.4MB diskette for those who couldn't | download it for whatever reason. | | Cannot help feeling good of seeing it's still there. | https://www.funet.fi/pub/sci/computer/oop/ | | Only curiosity value is left probably, but back then it felt like | magic to be able to publish something like this on my own. Half a | dozen people even asked for the diskette, which I sent to them. | scrame wrote: | Huh. That's pretty cool. So did you write the first ORM? | [deleted] | juhanima wrote: | Wouldn't claim so - perhaps the ideas were floating in the | air. What I know for sure is that my work wasn't used for | much. | | What's more alarming is that it seems those 32 years old | files at ftp.funet.fi are mostly unreadable by now. Back then | I thought PostScript would last but alas! that is not the | case. Ghostcript can show just about the cover page and | that's all. | | Libreoffice does a little bit better with the DOC-file but | it's still not quite right. | | So if there is anything to learn it's about persistent | document formats. I wish I had known about LaTeX back then. | WJW wrote: | > Object-oriented programming techniques are slowly becoming | more and more widely accepted | | That is so wild to read in a time when OOP has more or less | conquered the programming industry. :) | zgluck wrote: | https://ftp.sunet.se/ (and ftp://ftp.sunet.se) started in 1990 is | also still running! | | History: | https://ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet.se/html/histor... | | _The SUNET Archive began its life in 1990 as an ftp archive | created by Lars Gunnar Olsson of the IT-Department at the Swedish | University of Agricultural Sciences, or SLU, in Ultuna, a few | kilometers outside of Uppsala._ | | _The archive became a SUNET facility in 1993 and was assigned | the name ftp.sunet.se. In the SUNET newsletter SUNETTEN from 1993 | it is noted that the archive already contains 4 GB of data and | there is room for another 4 GB._ | | _By 1994 the SUNET Archive was ranked among the largest and most | visited archives in the world. Its total storage capacity was | then 28 GB._ | inglor_cz wrote: | I remember sunet.se from my first forays onto the Internet | (1996). | lamontcg wrote: | now that's a name i've not heard in a long time... a long time... | muyuu wrote: | oh man such sweet memories from the mid 90s | | a wonderful, historical resource | wkat4242 wrote: | I thought it was ftp.funet.fi . Pretty sure what's what I used | back in the day | aidenn0 wrote: | FTP is such a horribly dated protocol; it's actually older than | TCP! | | The NAT issues are well known, but resolved in a standard way. | However, the intersection of {Features defined in RFCs} and | {Features implemented in FTP Servers} is much smaller than the | sizes of either set. Many useful things are implemented outside | of the spec, and most of the spec is not implemented in servers. | Delk wrote: | The "FTP" archive is also served over HTTPS nowadays, and has | been for a long time. The hostname may still be ftp.funet.fi | but there's an HTTP(S) server listening. | | I'm actually a bit surprised that they do also seem to still | run an actual FTP server there as well. | II2II wrote: | If you like working with old machines, you quickly learn to | appreciate the availability of FTP servers. Encrypted | connections are quite CPU intensive, particularly when | negotiating the connection. | yencabulator wrote: | You don't need FTP to avoid TLS: curl | http://ftp.funet.fi/README | voytec wrote: | I consider FTP as most funky of oldschool protocols due to 2 | TCP ports used (ftp-data 20/tcp, ftp 21/tcp). | smokel wrote: | The list of TCP and UDP port numbers [1] is a treasure trove | of historical artefacts. It's amazingly hard to find | information on e.g. "compressnet", which is wasting port 2 | and port 3 for eternity. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_TCP_and_UDP_port_nu | mbe... | voytec wrote: | Available also at /etc/services or | %SystemDrive%\%SystemRoot%\System32\drivers\etc\services | | id Software's Doom having port 666 (unofficially) assigned | is a nice touch. | teddyh wrote: | Actually official list: | <https://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port- | numbers/...> | bayindirh wrote: | Another similar trivia is present in PCI-IDs. Intel got | 8086 for themselves. | | Some other notable examples: | Broadcom/LSI: 1000 Motorola: c0de | Chrysalis-ITS: cafe Blackmagic bdbd | Indigita Corporation dead Middle Digital Inc. | deaf Elcus e1c5 Eagle Tech ea01 | Essence Tech e55e Echo ecc0 Daiblo Tech | db10 Canny Edge caed CACE Tech cace | | There are many more examples, but it's enough, I think. | | If you want to dive, source: https://pci-ids.ucw.cz/ | [deleted] | wkat4242 wrote: | Yeah and the server connecting to the client for a transfer | is kinda weird too. Of course there's passive mode these | days. | jgtrosh wrote: | A nice post about the weirdness of FTP: | https://computer.rip/2020-05-20-file-transfer- | pseudoprotocol... | voytec wrote: | Even funkier! | | > FTP was historically allocated ports 20, 21, and 22. | knorker wrote: | Does server to server transfer using FXP, though. | | What other protocol does that? | bananapub wrote: | ssh to one side and run rsync | jedisct1 wrote: | SSH can actually do that. | adamzochowski wrote: | FTP does FXP without either server knowing credentials of | the other. | | How does what you say "SSH" accomplish server to server | transfer without exposing credentials of one server to | another? | 8organicbits wrote: | One poor answer is SSH agent forwarding [1]. At best some | SSH agents will prompt at each use, but that's | questionable security. | | Using something like magic wormhole[2] could work. SSH to | both sides and run the required commands. | | [1] https://matrix.org/blog/2019/05/08/post-mortem-and- | remediati... | | [2] https://magic- | wormhole.readthedocs.io/en/latest/welcome.html | jedisct1 wrote: | scp bob@host1:/tmp/x john@host2:/tmp/ | | Also SSH can be configured to use different keys for each | server. | yuubi wrote: | now do that without dragging all the data through your | workstation. | aidenn0 wrote: | Recent versions of OpenSsh don't drag the data through | your workstation unless you pass "-3" (for triangle | routing). | 8organicbits wrote: | Don't you still need credentials for server A to set up | an SSH connection to server B? The question was to avoid | that. | | ~scp is also deprecated on multiple platforms.~ | https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/openssh-scp-deprecation- | rhel-... | aidenn0 wrote: | The scp _protocol_ is deprecated, the scp _command_ is | alive and well. | [deleted] | smokel wrote: | I had to look this up, but FTP uses TCP/IP, so it being older | than TCP would be a bit odd. | | It turns out that FTP has gone through some stages of | specifications, dating back to 1971. TCP originated in 1974, | according to Wikipedia that is. | | The current version of TCP (RFC 793, 1981) predates the current | version of FTP (RFC 959, 1985), and normality is restored. | dn3500 wrote: | There were several application protocols in use at the time | of the TCP cutover (1981?), including ftp and telnet. We | didn't just throw them away, we ported them over from TCP's | predecessor NCP. The one we did throw away was email, which | was not a separate protocol, but was implemented as part of | ftp. We got rid of that and replaced it with smtp. But the | new ftp/tcp servers still supported email for several years | as a transition. | [deleted] | yencabulator wrote: | FTP predates TCP/IP, TCP wasn't the first stream transport. | See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Transfer_Protocol | | > Until 1980, FTP ran on NCP, the predecessor of TCP/IP. | mistrial9 wrote: | casting vague aspersions | | early network engineers were often rude and insulting. It was | common to be berated about "vi or emacs" or other dense topic. | Communication between engineers was often verbal commands or | mild insults like this one. | aidenn0 wrote: | > early network engineers were often rude and insulting. It | was common to be berated about "vi or emacs" or other dense | topic. Communication between engineers was often verbal | commands or mild insults like this one. | | Indeed; try suggesting any circuit-switched solution with | Vint Cerf in the room and see what happens! | mmaunder wrote: | anon.funet.fi was an anonymous remailer popular with the | phreak/hack scene that was shut down around 1996 after Mitnick | was arrested and the attitude towards prosecuting hacking became | far more militant. | ptman wrote: | anon.penet.fi? | pedrow wrote: | I fondly remember using sites like this to download stuff (ok, | apogee games mostly!) in the 1990s. I could FTP to the university | VAX which would exceed my 'soft quota' of disk space every time, | then I'd have to get the files onto a floppy and delete them | before my account locked up. | | Does anyone know if the SunSites are still mirrored anywhere? | There used to be a dir called 'programming' full of weird and | whacky languages which I'd love to see again. For example there | was one called ALLOY by Thanasis Mitsolides. His PhD is still | available on the internet but the code in usable format is not, | as far as I can see. | joisig wrote: | funet.fi and sunet.se - quite a bit of nostalgia and gratitude | attached to those domains for me, first used them in '91 | johnklos wrote: | It is so wonderful that we have repositories / archives like | FUNET. So much history can be found in one place, along with | everything we need to (re)experience what things were like back | in the day. | | As someone who runs an Aminet mirror (us3.aminet.net, which | happens to be hosted on a real Amiga), I'm always grateful and | appreciative we have resources like these that aren't based on | popularity or on the OS du jour. | | Thanks, FUNET! | bbarnett wrote: | Is there need for more aminet mirrors? How many TB are they | these days? | | I guess I'm worried there are enough of them. I'd hold an | offline archival copy of it helps, at least until I die. | | I wish someone would create larger WORM media, like those DVDs | made of rock. | notpeter wrote: | Yeah "stone" 100GB M-DISC bluray discs are ~$10/ea. 100GB for | 100yrs* ($0.10/GB). https://amzn.to/3KpYAfl | | *maybe | bbarnett wrote: | Those are nice, but we need 10TB now. | Delk wrote: | Some of the appreciation should go to the academic roots, | culture and tradition of the early internet. The internet | originated at DARPA but many of the earliest participants and | adopters were academic institutions. | | FUNET is the Finnish University and Research Network. They | provide backbone connectivity and networking facilities to | universities in Finland and have done so for decades. They've | also run the public FTP archive (actually HTTPS by now) since | 1990. | | It seems to me that at the time, providing a server that | distributed freely distributable and open source software was | part of an academic culture of sharing and of providing a | public good. (The free software movement also has its roots in | the academia. Of course "open source" as a term didn't exist | back then, but some of the culture did, without the commercial | connotations of open source necessarily.) | | In today's rather commercialized world, I appreciate it that a | public institution still runs such an archive in a similar | spirit with no direct commercial interest. (FUNET is run by a | state-owned enterprise.) | juhanima wrote: | Totally agree and thank you for being so perceptive! It was | swell to hear someone say aloud "academic culture of sharing | and providing for public good". I think that's what humankind | would be wise to aim and seek for: equality of all and caring | for the welfare of the weakest. | | University education does not need to be expensive. On the | contrary, it can be free. | jedisct1 wrote: | So many memories! | | Also nice to see that it's running pure-ftpd. | DoneWithAllThat wrote: | Still to this day my default address I use when pinging just to | see if a device can talk to the internet. If my packets can make | it to Finland they can go anywhere. | petrikapu wrote: | wasn't linux initially distributed here? | ciroduran wrote: | on the page: "Linux was first released to the world from here | 17.9.1991" | QuantumG wrote: | Ahh the perfect date. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-08-05 23:00 UTC)