Gopher 5: Troubleshooting Gophermap

As previously discussed, a gophermap is a text file. It does however require specific formatting.

When adding links to a document, you need to ensure the space between the label and filename is a tab and not spaces. I previously discussed HOW TO set up an editor to treat pressing tab as an actual tab character.

If things are not working properly, there are several things you can try in the first instance.

IParticle Interactions	particle_chart.jpg

• You can delete the area what is between the label Particle Interactions and filename particle_chart.jpg and reinsert a tab
• Delete everything after the label, (well use cut) then paste it back in, then insert a tab

This sometimes fixes any issues, it may seem strange in the gophermap that some tabs appear small and others appear longer (as if they are equivalent of 4 spaces) this seems normal.

If you want to make sure of what is there, you can use a hex editor to examine deeper in to a file.

What you are looking for are the following

Within ASCII :

• Tab is 09 decimal, Hex 09
• Space is 32 decimal, Hex 20 (Two Zero)

Find where tabs are inserted, and check the hex is displaying 09, It may look by the text field on the right that some characters appear as periods, this is I think due to the fact that the editor needs to have something to represent what is there. If that makes sense.

gopher gopher://vern.cc/1/~zleap

Tags

#Gopher,#Gophermap,#TroubleShooting,#Tab,#Space,#Hex,#HexEditor

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Logging the weather

I have modified the script that runs every 10 minutes to record the output from the ansiweather utility, This still saves the output to a file but adds the current date to the file name.

now=$(date +"%m_%d_%Y")
echo "Filename : /nas/backup_$weather.csv"
echo $(date "+ %D, %T"), $(ansiweather -l Paignton -a false) >> weather_$now.csv

So the output looks like

 Humidity: 71% - Pressure: 1023 hPa
06/09/25, 14:20:01, Weather in Paignton: 18 °C - UVI: 7.03 - Wind: 1.79 m/s WSW - Humidity: 69% - Pressure: 1024 hPa
06/09/25, 14:30:01, Weather in Paignton: 18 °C - UVI: 7.03 - Wind: 2.24 m/s SW - Humidity: 70% - Pressure: 1023 hPa
06/09/25, 14:40:01, Weather in Paignton: 18 °C - UVI: 7.03 - Wind: 3.13 m/s W - Humidity: 69% - Pressure: 1023 hPa
06/09/25, 14:50:01, Weather in Paignton: 18 °C - UVI: 7.03 - Wind: 1.79 m/s SW - Humidity: 69% - Pressure: 1023 hPa
06/09/25, 15:00:01, Weather in Paignton: 18 °C - UVI: 7.03 - Wind: 1.79 m/s WSW - Humidity: 71% - Pressure: 1023 hPa
06/09/25, 15:10:01, Weather in Paignton: 18 °C - UVI: 7.03 - Wind: 1.34 m/s SSW - Humidity: 71% - Pressure: 1024 hPa

As this runs on a headless pi4, I can login and copy the data files locally before uploading to my gopherspace (Look it up)

gopher://vern.cc/1/~zleap

Tags

#Bash,#BashScripting,#Data,#Logging,#Gopher,#RaspberryPi, #Weather

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Gopher 4: Anatomy of a gopermap

A gophermap is a plain text file, with a specific format to tell gopher how to interpret the various elements.

I will try and explain my own gophermap fille below.

Firstly, we have a banner, this can be gernerated from various websites, for example :-

• Mantools.org

i ______     _____    _    ____     	(NULL)  0	   
i|__  / |   | ____|  / \  |  _ \    	(NULL)  0	     
i  / /| |   |  _|   / _ \ | |_) |   	(NULL)  0	
i / /_| |___| |___ / ___ \|  __/    	(NULL)  0	
i/____|_____|_____/_/   \_\_|       	(NULL)  0	   

After which I have put a brief introduction and links to text files that are also stored along side the gophermap.

My name is Paul. This is my gopherspace on vern.cc. 

INFO

0About me	about.txt
0Contact	contact.txt
0Blog	blog.txt

So two IMPORTANT things here, the 0 at the start of the line tells gopher to link to a text file. See link 1 for an explanation of what to put at the start of a line for linking to different types of resources.

We then have a name of what we are linking to, then a then the filename. You MUST set up your editor so it interprets tabs properly.

Alongside the text files, I have a PDF file and a link to the source LaTeX file (which is plain text), I have also linked to a shell script and a CSV data file.

PROJECTS

Command reference for the Joe Text Editor

9Joe Command Reference(pdf)	jcr.pdf
0LaTeX Source for above	main.tex

Weather logger,  this is a simple bash script, that uses the ascii weather program to obtain weather information, and log this with time and date.   I have it running on a Raspberry Pi, so when plugged in, it logs the data to a CSV (comma separated values) file. 

0Weather logger bash Script	logweather.sh
0Output file (CSV)	weather.csv

Note, you will probably need to set permissions on logweather.sh to +x

While we can't display pictures / graphics in gopher, we can link to such files so they can be downloaded. Note below, I have these files in a directory / folder alongside my gophermap. so, need to include the path to the file.

  /pictures/tux.jpg

GRAPHICS

ITux	/pictures/tux.jpg
ISouth West Map	/southwest1.png

We can also link to other gopher sites and resources

GOPHER LINKS

0Vern.cc	gopher://vern.cc/	70
0Why is Gopher Still Relevant?	/gopher/relevance.txt	gopher.floodgap.com	70

While it is possible to link to a website URL I have decided to link to a markdown file, that has weblinks within. Users will need to copy / paste the url or download and open as a markdown file.

WEB LINKS

I have sorted into categories

0Astronomy & Space	AstroSpace.md
0Discussion Forums	Discussion.md

Links

1 Structure of a gophermap 2 Vern.cc 3 Vern Matrix

Tags

#Gopher,#Gophermap

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Gopher 3

I have set up an account on vern.cc which will give me access to a working gopher server. In the meantime, I am working on a gophermap file and some support files to upload alongside it.

As vern.cc already offer gopher as a service, then the directory public_gopher already exists, so it is a case of copying in to there.

So to upload I can use

scp gophermap user@vern.cc:/home/user/public_gopher

Then to view this using a gopher client

gopher gopher://vern.cc/

Which will bring up a menu of users, and you can select zleap from the bottom of the list.

A few more notes

The gophermap file uses TABS, in your text editor you make sure you are using tabs not spaces, in xed (the editor I am using) there is an option in preferences that says use spaces instead of tabs this needs to be turned off.

It then formats the file correctly

Tags

#Gopher,#Vern,#Internet

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Gopher 2

As I am going to look in to hosted services for gopher. I am removing gophernicus from the Raspberry Pi

sudo apt remove gophernicus
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
  python3-simpletal
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove it.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  gophernicus
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 125 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 77532 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing gophernicus (3.1.1-3+b1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.11.2-2) ...

I may as well run auto remove to clean up further

sudo apt autoremove
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  python3-simpletal
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 195 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 77518 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing python3-simpletal (5.2-3) ...

I am leaving the gopher client installed, as this may be needed later.

So I will be looking at setting up a vern.cc account as they offer gopher as one of their services.

• Vern.cc
  • vern.cc Matrix

Tags

#Gopher,#Remove,

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Gopher

With lots of discussions about big tech, privacy and data protection there has been discussions on the Social Web, about using protocols such as Gopher and related software.

We are also seeing attacks on science from the USA with departments cut, and information on a range of issues; such as DEI, Climate Science, Medical Science being removed, risking this being lost forever.

The Gopher protocol (/ˈɡoʊfər/ ⓘ) is a communication protocol designed for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents in Internet Protocol networks. [1]

There are still some servers out there, some are new, and offer services such as HackerNews, Project Gutenberg and others. Thanks to Anthk @anthk@paquita.masto.host who has made a list of some of these Gopher servers

Does the web allow you to do this at 2.7 KBPS?

• Gutenberg gopher://gopher.icu/7/gutenberg
• Internet Archive gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/ia/
• Huge portal gopher://magical.fish
• News, blog and more gopher://1436.ninja
• Reddit gopher://gopherddit.com
• HN gopher://hngopher.com
• Google Maps (text) gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/dir
• Podcasts: gopher://gopher.icu/1/pod Blogs:
• gopher://sdf.org
• Weather (finger):
• gopher://graph.no:79/0/London

There are still clients software out there, and yeah you can all this with good old plain text.

apt search gopher

Links

1. Wikipedia – Gopher Protocol

DIY Gopher Server

• How to set up gopher on a raspberry pi
• More Gopher Info
• Master Linux service management on System V and systemd

Note the tutorial above on how to set up gopher on a Raspberry Pi, appears to be using system V, (init.d system I think) hence I have included the 3rd link which covers how to manage services on both. The 2nd link should help with setting up the actual gopher files.

I tried to install the software mentioned in the first link above and there seems to be a problem with this in my raspberry pi, so I removed this and have installed gophernicus instead.

22/4/2025

If all else fails then vern.cc members get gopher as one of the services. So I will look at a hosted service.

• Vern.cc
  • vern.cc Matrix

21/4/2025

Had issues with gophernicus as I am not sure where the config file is.

Tags

#Internet,#Communication.#Protocol,#Gopher,#Software,

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