Installing a gopher server

[Allan]

Hi,

If I have access to a FTP account on a web server, how can I most easily use the gopher protocol to access files?

Do I have to install some server software, or can I do it simply with a little scripting, or just text files?

Thanks,
Allan.

[pomeg...@gmail.com]

I should clarify:

I know how the gopher protocol works generally, and I have written my own gophermap (hosted on SDF).

I assume I can't just move the gophermap file onto my web server and access it with 'gopher://' in front of it.

So yeah, what do I do? It seems a simple enough protocol that there'd be a simple solution.

Allan.

[Mateusz Viste]

You can't, sorry.

To publish any gopher content, you need a gopher server. So in your
situation, you would need to install a gopher service on the web server,
that would then serve gopher content over TCP/70 (implying you need to
have admin rights there to install such a service).

Mateusz

[pomeg...@gmail.com]

Got it, thanks.

I'm sure I can manage choosing and installing a service myself - thanks for the help.

Allan.

[Mateusz Viste]

The gopher servers that are still maintained today are (AFAIK) these:

Bucktooth (Perl, by Cameron Kaiser)
PyGopherd (Python, by John Goerzen)
Gophernicus (ANSI C, by Kim Holviala)
Motsognir (FreeBASIC, by me)

I might have missed some (sorry if I did).
Whichever you will choose, I'm confident you will get some help here if
you run into troubles.

good luck,
Mateusz

[sim...@machines.co]

I think you could do it with scripting if the gopher server in use
supports some sort of CGI method. Several of the currently maintained
servers do. I think on SDF the Bucktooth server has scripting disabled
for security reasons.

There used to be gopher-to-ftp gateways but I don't know of any active
ones; would be a worthy project!

If you may be able to create simple HTTP-style links in your gophermap
file(s). These generally off-load the means of following the non-gopher
links to 3rd-party apps which are generally called from the client side.
Using a client that understands gopher:http:ftp:usenet such as the Lynx
browser can make the experience appear relatively seemless. Check
the man pages and/or the various tutorials for proper gophermap syntax
when creating HTTP-style entries.

HTH,
Simple Machines