[HN Gopher] nic.funet.fi: Serving freely distributable files wit...
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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.
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(page generated 2023-08-05 23:00 UTC)