20040812: netcdf library / ftp access

>From: Karsten Seidel <address@hidden>
>Organization: UCAR/Unidata
>Keywords: 200408120808.i7C88PaW017757 netCDF FTP

Hi Karsten,

>I have been trying to download the netCDF library via FTP (from 
>ftp://ftp.unidata.ucar.edu/pub/netcdf/netcdf.tar.Z), but I cannot get a 
>connection to the ftp server.

Can you tell us the exact nature of the failure you are seeing?  We
have seen frequent instances in the past of users trying to download
to a directory that they don't have write permission in, so the
FTP fails.  You comment seems to indicate that this is not the case
for you ("connection fails"), but I just want to make sure.

To test the accessibility of our FTPserver I just logged onto a machine
at the Universidad de Costa Rica in San Jose, Costa Rica and was
successful in FTPing the netCDF distribution:

ftp ftp.unidata.ucar.edu
  <user> anonymous
  <pass> email address
  cd pub/netcdf
  binary
  get netcdf-3.5.1.tar.Z
  quit

Here is a portion of the transaction log messages:

 ...
ftp> cd pub/netcdf
250-Please read the file README
250-  it was last modified on Fri Jul 27 06:39:46 2001 - 1112 days ago
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> get netcdf-3.5.1.tar.Z
local: netcdf-3.5.1.tar.Z remote: netcdf-3.5.1.tar.Z
227 Entering Passive Mode (128,117,140,62,48,130)
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for netcdf-3.5.1.tar.Z (1333257 bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
1333257 bytes received in 5 seconds (2.6e+02 Kbytes/s)
ftp> quit
221-You have transferred 1333257 bytes in 1 files.
221-Total traffic for this session was 1335025 bytes in 1 transfers.
221-Thank you for using the FTP service on laraine.unidata.ucar.edu.
221 Goodbye.

Our FTP server enforces the requirement that the machine asking for
a connection has both forward and reverse name lookup, so it may be
possible that there is no or incomplete DNS service for your machine.
If this is the case, you would be successful if you did the FTP from
a machine that does have forward and reverse name lookup.

>Http contents is accessible. Is there 
>another way I can obtain the library?

I would try the transfer from a different machine first.  If that fails,
I will mail you the netCDF distribution as a MIME attachment.

>Regards,
>Karsten Seidel.
>-- 
>Karsten Seidel
>Max-Planck-Institute for biophysical Chemistry
>  Department of NMR-based Structural Biology (NMR II)
>  Am Fassberg 11
>  D-37077 Goettingen
>Phone/Fax: ++49-551-201-2213/2202
>Email: address@hidden
>http://www.mpibpc.gwdg.de/abteilungen/030/baldus/

Cheers,

Tom Yoksas
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>From address@hidden  Thu Aug 12 10:33:55 2004

Hi Tom,

I succeeded downloading netcdf upon using a machine in a different 
network. :-)

This is what happened from our subnet: Using the Weblink 
ftp://ftp.unidata.ucar.edu/pub/netcdf/netcdf.tar.Z with Mozilla, there's 
just no download starting. Using ftp under Unix, this is what I get:

%> ftp ftp.unidata.ucar.edu
Trying 128.117.140.62
Connected to ftp.unidata.ucar.edu.
421 Service not available, remote server has closed connection

Thanks for the help!

Karsten Seidel.