Download Trouble?

Some browsers are not very good at handling file downloads.

Often simply clicking on the link makes the browser load the file as if it were a web page.

Most browsers allow you to 'right click' on the link and select an option to save the file to disk, e.g. 'Save link as ...'. So you should use that if it is available.

Even then, browsers or the operating system may insist on calling the file particular names, so you may have to rename the file, commonly a filename like

fred.tar.Z

ends up being,
fred_tar.Z

If you are having trouble downloading the file, it is often useful to use a program like GetRight to do the download for you.

However, usually the best way to download is to use command line FTP, which is available on all platforms. In particular, use this if you have downloaded a file and you think it has been corrupted.

Here is how you do it...

Command line FTP

  1. Work out the URL of the file to retrieve:
    Put your mouse pointer over the link to the file which you want on the download page, and your browser should show you somewhere what the link points to (often in the information bar at the bottom of your screen, e.g. To download the Windows executable for DMail, version 27u,
    ftp://ftp.netwinsite.com/pub/dmail/dm27u.exe

    You can probably work out the URL manually too...
    For NetWin products the start of the address to retrieve the file is always,

    ftp://ftp.netwinsite.com/pub
    (or historically,
    ftp://ftp.netwinsite.com/pub/netwinsite
    which is the same location, so you can use either)
    and then add on the product name, e.g.
    DMail
    (NB: DMailWeb is the directory for both, CWMail and DMailWeb)
    and then you add on to that the file name, e.g.
    dm27u.exe

    NB: You can always point your web browser at the URL,

    ftp://ftp.netwinsite.com/pub/
    and it will let you browse the directories and files of our FTP site in order to find the file you want.
  2. Go to a command prompt...:
    On Windows, open up an MS-DOS command prompt (typically found in the Start,Programs Menu).
    On UNIX based platforms, go to a command prompt in a terminal window.
  3. Change to the directory in which you wish to save the file:
    e.g.
    cd c:\download
  4. Run the command line ftp client and login to our ftp server, ftp.netwinsite.com:
    simply enter,
    ftp ftp.netwinsite.com
    You will then be asked for a username and password. Enter the word,
    anonymous
    for the username, and then you will be prompted to enter your email address as a password, which you should do.
  5. Change to the directory where the file you want exists:
    From the URL of the file that you want you can see the directory that the file is in. This is the rest of the URL after the name of the site, i.e. everything after, ftp://ftp.netwinsite.com/, except for the name of the file itself, so enter,
    cd pub/dmail
    (cd pub/netwinsite/dmail goes to the same place on our server)
  6. Set the transfer type to 'binary mode':
    because you are transferring a program rather than a text file. So, enter
    bin

    Also, to make the server give you a progress indicator, enter,

    hash
  7. Request the file be fetched:
    You do this by entering,
    get <filename>
    e.g.,
    get dm27u.exe
  8. When it finishes:
    You should be able to see two lines - one before the file started transferring showing the size of the file, and one once it has finished, showing the amount of data transferred. The two should match, which indicates that the complete file has been received.

    You then close the session with the command,

    quit


    9.