Merging Information Technology and
collaborataive Teaching, Learning and Research Over the Internet: the Tools

Appendix A: Archiving the Webboards

Paula Edmiston       Georgia Tech Research Institute       paula.edmiston@gtri.gatech.edu

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Brief List of Steps to Archive

1. cd 99spring
2. mkdir mar-may
3. cd mar-may
4. cp ../../wwwboard.* .
5. mkdir messages
6. cd messages
7. cp ../../../messages/* .
8. Then strip the board!

A Descriptive Guide to Archiving the Boards

Make sure you're in the group1 directory.

At the UNIX prompt enter the pwd command and see the group1 is the last entry in the path.

cd 99spring

move into the 99spring directory, which already exists.

mkdir mar-may

this makes the archive directory

cd mar-may

step into that directory

cp ../../wwwboard.* .

this copies the 2 files, wwwboard.html and wwwboard.cgi

The ../../ means "reach up two dir levels" so the command literally says: CoPy from two levels up (../../) the files that begin "wwwboard" and I don't care how the filenames end ".*" and place the copies right here (the last "." dot in the command)

mkdir messages

still in the mar-may dir, I say create a dir named 'messages'

cd messages

step into the messages directory

cp ../../../messages/* .

copy from the group1 dir, the contents of the messages dir and place the copies "here" (the single dot at the end). So you see I had to reach up THREE levels up now that I'm down in messages dir.

I'm in group1/99spring/mar-may/messages

The message files are in group1/messages

So counting up the dir path, one level up takes me to mar-may
another level takes me up to 99spring
and the third level takes me up to group1

remember, 2 dots refer to the "above" dir and one dot refers to the "current" dir

Copy command syntax always says

copy from "somewhere" the file foo and put the copy "somewhere" (often "here", signified with a dot. What a lot of sound and fury!)

Then strip the board!

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