Alex is a filesystem that lets users access files in FTP sites around the world just like they access local files. The source for Alex is in the src directory. You can try Alex out by doing the following as root: mkdir /alex mount -o timeo=30,retrans=300,rsize=1000,soft,intr alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu:/ /alex If you can not become root, you can FTP to alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu and do a "cd /alex" (or "cd alex"). However, this is not nearly as nice a demo. If you like Alex and want to use it regularly, please get a local server running so that my server does not become totally overloaded. readmes is a wais database server (also called ftpable-readmes). It has indexed a large number of readme files out in Alex. There are more than 25,000 readme files (I got most of the names from some nice guy on the Archie project but some using Alex). Below is the information you need for your wais client: Host: alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu Port: 210 Database: readmes If you do not have wais take a look at alt.wais on netnews or FTP to wais.think.com. -- Vince Cate keywords: Alex, readmes, filesystem, FTP, database, wais, Alexandria, transparent FTP access master for this file: /alex/edu/cmu/cs/sp/alex/README (alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu:README for non Alex users)