Bob is a Unix server. Everything is case sensitive. Your filenames and folder names should be all lower case and without any spaces or special symbols. In this Unix Reference Guide, code commands will appear in red and links to external web pages will appear in blue.

Before you use Bob, please read the disclaimer and rules of usage. Logging in to the Bob server signifies that you have read and agreed to the rules and conditions.

Your website address will be "http://bob.ivytech.edu/~username/"

Your email account will be "username@bob.ivytech.edu". To access your Bob email, type either pine, elm, or mutt. Bob also supports POP3, so you may use your own mail client if you like. You can also retrieve external mail by using fetchmail.

Each Bob account comes with 50MB of web server space. Please do not attempt to exceed 50MB or file loss could occur.

You can also chat through the Bob server by typing talk username. To end the chat, press CNTRL+C.

Network drives: Users can "map a network drive" to their bob directory.

Web browsers: lynks, links, or w3m

File Management: mc, the "Midnight commander"

Spell checker: ispell

OpenOffice 1.0:

Text Editors: pico, vi, jed, jove, emacs, and joe

Telnet Using MS-DOS command prompt:

Telnet is a protocol that allows a user to log in remotely from their own PC to other computers on the Internet. Telnet is a command line interface. To connect to the Bob server you will need to Telnet in. Instructions are listed below:

1. At the command prompt type telnet bob.ivytech.edu and hit ENTER.
2. At the "bob login" prompt, type your username and hit ENTER
3. At the "Password" prompt, type your password and hit ENTER
4. If your login is successful you will receive a Warning/Disclaimer notice about the use of the Bob server. Proceeding to use Bob signifies your agreeance to abide by this policy.
5. At the prompt type ls which will list the contents of your folder. You should have a "public_html" folder.
6. Next type cd public_html which will move you into that folder. This is where you should store an "index.html" which will be the home page for your website.

FTP Using MS-DOS command prompt:

FTP stands for "File Transfer Protocol". It is a client/server protocol for exchanging files with a host computer. You can FTP using a free GUI program called WS-FTP or you can FTP directly from the command line on your PC. Instructions for this are listed below:

1. At the command prompt type ftp bob.ivytech.edu and hit ENTER.
2. Enter your Username
3. Enter your pasword
4. If your login is successful you will see a Warning/Disclaimer notice about the use of the Bob server. Proceeding to use Bob signifies your agreeance to abide by this policy.
5. At the prompt type ls which will list the contents of your folder. You should have a "public_html" folder.
6. At the prompt type cd public_html which will put you in the public_html directory. This is where you should store an "index.html" which will be the home page for your website.
7. Now that you have your Bob directory defined, you need to define which directory your index.html will be coming from on your PC. For example, I store my web pages in C:\mydocs so at the FTP command line I will type lcd c:\mydocs which tells Bob to look on the C drive for the mydocs directory.
8. To load a file from your PC to the Bob server, type put index.html (or whatever your filename is) and hit ENTER. Likewise, if you are transferring a file from the Bob server to your PC you would type get index.html. If done correctly, you will see a message that says "226 Transfer Complete".

You can create and edit your files with your own programs such as Notepad, Front page, etc, or you can create and edit them within the bob server. The advantage of creating (and especially editing) within the Bob server is that you don't have to FTP your files from your personal PC to the Bob Server every time you make a change. The instructions below are for a text editor called "Pico". Bob also supports other text editors, such as vi, emacs, and joe.

1. To create a file in Bob, type cd public_html to enter your public_html folder and then type pico at a command prompt.
2. Create your file. For this example we'll just type the word "test".
3. To save the file, hold down Ctrl + ^ + O all at the same time. This is the "Write Out" command.
4. If you are editing an existing file (let's use index.html for example) then type pico index.html and you will be in edit mode for that file. After editing, save the file by holding down Ctrl + ^ + O all at the same time.
5. Near the bottom of the screen you'll see the following prompt: "File Name to write:" so here you enter the filename such as index.html and hit the ENTER key to save the file. If you are editing a file, the filename will already appear in this line so you can just hit ENTER to save it.

To make sure your pages will be readable and executable by anyone, type the following at a Telnet command prompt: chmod go+rx filename.html. Of course you will need to be in the directory where the file is stored before you run this command. If you need help moving around through directories, read the “Common Commands to Know” section below.