On Tue, 7 Aug 2001, David Walker wrote:

> I have a bit of concern about this. I couldn't appreciate the
> significance of the symlinks. I was originally confronted with empty
> folders named man.tgz, etc. - nothing to download and no instructions
> or links. I found a site via a search engine with files to download
> and downloaded them. Apparently I should link to them but I'm not sure
> how to do this.

What FTP client software are you using?  It must have a bug.  Any normal
FTP program I've used will download those sym-linked files like normal
files.  It must just be that your FTP client software is being stupid and
treating them like directories because they don't look exactly like
regular files (even though they behave exactly the same as regular files).
Regardless, if you can't download them directly, you can just download the
files that they point to (sym-links are kind of like Windows Shortcuts -
they are files that point to other files).  Just go to the
NetBSD-1.5.1/shared/ALL directory, thats where they really live (because
they're aren't i386 specific).

I wouldn't suggest trusting files from any place other than ftp.netbsd.org
or one of its official mirrors (unless you verify the md5 checksum before
use).  Besides, there should be no reason to go anywhere other than an
official netbsd FTP site.

Rick