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The Step-by-Step Guide to setting up a Gopher Hole and Phlog
at circumlunar.space
Note: this guide assumes that you have Linux installed and
are familiar with a few basic Linux/UNIX concepts and
commands. When the guide instructs you to type a command, do
not include the quotation marks.
The steps:
1. Request your gopherspace. Follow the instructions on the
'Request Asylum' page. Don't request space unless you're
actually going to use it, since disk space is limited.
2. When your request is granted you'll receive an email from
solderpunk and you'll see your username on the main page.
3. You're going to access your account using FTP (File
Transfer Protocol).
a. Open a terminal and type 'sftp -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa
username@circumlunar.space' (remember to replace
'username' - and 'id_rsa', if necessary - with your
details and remember not to type the quotation marks!).
Note: there's a single space between '~/.ssh/id_rsa' and
'username@circumlunar.space'.
You should then see: sftp>
4. Type 'ls' to list the files. You should see two things: a
gopher directory and a plain text file called orientation.
If you type 'get orientation' sftp will download the
orientation file, which you can then open and read on your
computer.
5. Many regular Linux commands work in the sftp shell. There
are also some unique commands. The most important to you
will be the following:
ls list the files in a directory
cd change directory
put send a file from your computer to your
gopher space at circumlunar.space
get download a file from your gopher space at
circumlunar.space to your computer
mkdir make a directory
rm delete a file
rmdir delete a directory
chmod change the permissions on a file
You can find a full list of the available commands by
typing 'man sftp' in a terminal. The list is under the
heading 'INTERACTIVE COMMANDS' near the end of the man
page.
6. The first thing that you're going to do is set up a
directory for your phlog entries.
a. Type 'cd gopher' to move into the gopher directory.
This is the directory that contains the files that visitors
to your gopher hole see.
b. Type 'mkdir phlog' to make a directory for your phlog
entries.
c. Type 'chmod 705 phlog' to make your phlog directory
readable by everyone. This is a necessary step. If you don't
change the permissions on the directory, visitors won't be
able to see it.
7. Now you're going to create a welcome page for your gopher
hole and add your phlog directory to it. The welcome page is
called a 'gophermap'.
a. Since you only have FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
access to your gopher space, you will have to create the
file on your local computer, using a text editor, and then
transfer it to your gopher hole.
b. Create a folder on your computer for your gopher
files. Call it gopher.
c. Using your text editor, create a file like the one
between the dashed lines. Do not include the dashed lines
themselves. The space between the words '1Phlog' and 'phlog'
is a tab. It has to be a tab space or it will not function
correctly.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to So-and-so's Gopher hole!
1Phlog phlog
-------------------------------------------------------------
d. Save the page with the name gophermap in your gopher
folder.
e. The first line will display as plain text. Alter it as
you like. The second line will create a link to your phlog
directory. The second line works as follows: the 1 is the
file type, which in this case is a directory; "Phlog" is the
link that will be displayed to the user when they view the
page; the second "phlog" is the directory that will be
opened when the user 'clicks' the link.
You can find more information on creating gophermaps at the
following places:
gopher://167.88.113.62/0/docs/README.Gophermap
gopher://baud.baby/0/phlog/fs20181102.txt
gopher://sdf.org:70/0/users/dbucklin/posts/how_gopher.txt
Side note: all of the guides that I have seen say to put
an i at the beginning of each empty and plain text line in a
gophermap. I think that the i's are supposed to be
invisible, but the first time I created a gophermap, I
included them and they displayed in the browser. So I took
them out. As long as a line contains no tabs (or reserved
characters like parentheses), it will be displayed as plain
text.
f. Upload the gophermap file to your gopherspace by
returning to sftp in the terminal. You should still be in
the gopher directory. You can check by typing 'pwd'.
Navigate to the gopher directory if necessary.
g. To upload the gophermap, type "put -p
/home/user/gopher/gophermap gophermap" where user is your
username on your local Linux machine. Note that there's a
single space between -p and /home...
h. Start your gopher browser (I'm going to assume that
you'll leave your sftp terminal open and start the browser
in a separate terminal if you're using Lynx or another
terminal-based browser) and navigate to your gopherspace.
You should see your new gophermap displayed. If you don't
see it, the problem is probably with the permissions. In
that case, return to the sftp terminal window and type
'chmod 704 gophermap' which should resolve the problem.
8. Create your first phlog entry.
a. This is really easy. Write a phlog entry in a text
file.
b. Save the text file in the gopher folder on your local
machine. I'm going to assume that you've named your file
'foo'.
Side note: once you get phlogging, you'll probably want
to use some kind of systematic naming convention so that
your blog entries sort properly. Alternatively, you could
create a gophermap in your phlog folder that lists your
phlog entries in order, but if you do so, you'll have to
update the gophermap manually every time you upload a new
phlog entry. See the note on gophermaps below for more
information.
c. I'm going to assume that the sftp terminal is still
open and that you are still in the gopher directory (If
you've logged out of sftp, log back in using the command
from step 3. Type 'cd gopher' to navigate into the gopher
directory.)
d. To upload your entry type 'put -p
/home/user/gopher/foo phlog/foo'.
Again, that's a single space between -p and /home...
e. If you cannot see your entry from the browser, you may
have to change the permissions. In the sftp terminal,
navigate to the phlog directory (type 'cd phlog' if you've
still got the sftp terminal open ... otherwise if you've
just logged in again and you're in the root directory, the
command would be 'cd gopher/phlog') and type 'chmod 704 foo'
to fix the permissions.
That's it! You're phlogging!
A note on user etiquette:
Throughout the guide, I worked under the assumption that you
remained logged into circumlunar.space via sftp. I did that
for the sake of simplicity. Now that you know what you're
doing, log out whenever you're not actively transferring files
or creating directories.
A note on gophermaps:
As you've probably guessed, a gophermap is simply an index
page. If there is no gophermap in a directory, your browser
will automatically display the list of files in that
directory. If there is a gophermap in the directory, the
browser will display it instead. As a result, you can choose
whether to have directories display their contents as a file
list or use a gophermap to display the directory's contents
in a customized manner. The gophermap gives you control over
what the user sees as they navigate, which means that you
can use it to conceal some of the contents of a directory
(depending on the links you put into the gophermap), to list
the files in an alternative order or hierarchy, and even to
include hyperlinks, gopherlinks to other gopherholes, etc.