The terminal interface provided on the command line allows the user to operate on information displayed. Many commands will provide a numbered list in its output; the command line interface remembers which numbers were assigned during the last listing of the output type in question, whether that be the list of connections, the list of searches, or the last displayed list of results. Rerunning the command that generated the list will change the numbers which the user must use in following commands to the newly generated numbers.

It is therefore important that when users attempt to close a connection, list Ns No , clear Ns No , or stop a search, get a from a result list, or stop or kill transfers in progress that they do so with the information from their most recent listing of those commands. This presents a known problem when using multiple windows in the web display, which operates on a similar principle. Be aware that if you are using multiple windows to view and operate on data that you may accidentally operate on information generated in the wrong list. Future versions may make these identifiers global and unique references to ensure that users do not experience this.

Online help is available for all commands and options in the mutella client. You can get a list of all commands by typing help or ? . Alternately, you can get a list of variables which can be set by typing "set", which will provide a grouped list of variables and their current settings to the user. The commands to access the help system are

help [context]

When invoked without arguments, this command will display a summary of all commands available witha short one-line description of each command. When invoked with a specific command it displays a more detailed description of that command. Tab completion can be used to assist in completing command names. When invoked with a specific variable it displays a detailed description of that variable.

Network commands are used to retrieve information about the status of the user's network connections to the Gnutella network, and retrieve information and statistics about the operation of Gnutella and the user's visible horizon.

info [options ...]

Displays a broad range of information regarding current status of the client and its activities. If executed without arguments, it will list information from all sections, as if the user had supplied all options to the command. Using options will display only the requested information. Multiple options may be provided. These options are

network

Displays information about the current network horizon (reachable hosts, number of hosts sharing information, and vague estimates of the number of files and size of the visible part of the Gnutella network to which the client is currently able to reach.

connections

Displays all current connections to the Gnutella network. Note that these are the actual Gnutella connections used to query and receive queries from peers, and not the connections used for transferring files (which appear under the transfers option results). It displays, for each connection, the host and port to which the servent is connected, the horizon estimates for that particular host connection, and the time that connection has been operational for. Each connection is numbered; individual connections can be manually closed using the close command, and new connections to specific hosts manually opened using the open command to connect to specific Gnutella hosts by their IP address or DNS name.

transfers

Displays all current transfers in progress. Actually displays results as if the user had selected both uploads and downloads as options to the command.

uploads

Displays each upload, or file sent to another Gnutella user. Each upload lists the host and port which the file is being sent to, and various transfer statistics about the file transfer in progress. The number of simultaneous uploads allowed and the maximum bandwidth can be set and displayed from the set command. Each transfer is numbered, and can be stopped using the stop command.

downloads

Displays all currently active downloads. For each download, information concerning the remote host selected for downloading and transfer statistics are provided. mutella attempts to establish simultaneous connections to multiple peers providing the same file, and tries to determine the fastest possible transfer partner by downloading a small portion of that file data from each replying host. Even if the download process starts successfully, mutella associates with with a special kind of search, listed as AUTOGET in the search list. These searches are automatically generated, and are used to find alternative locations for that file. Once transfer begins, however, new connection efforts will only be performed once the current download socket is disconnected. To avoid slow transfers, it can be useful to set minimum transfer rates; configuration of parameters are discussed later. As with the uploads option, each transfer is numbered, and can be stopped using the stop command. However, in addition, the user may choose to kill a download transfer - this results in the removal of the partial file, the removal of the .Ar AUTOGET search associated with that file, and the stopping of the download.

hosts

Displays the current content of the hosts cache, the top of the iceberg of our 'known universe'. Hosts in this list may be used to create additional/future Gnutella-net connections. When the client is in operational state, the host cache contains at least a few dozen entries; normally not more than 100.

open host [port]

Opens Gnutella-net connection to the specified host. When the port argument is omitted, the default Gnutella network protocol port of 6346 is assumed.

close ID Oo

... Closes one or more connections corresponding to the last displayed list of connection IDs. The connection matching the given connection IDs will be taken from the last output of the info command.

These commands are used to manage the searches in progress on the network. Users may define new searches using find , list subsets or specific types of the current searches and get a listing of all current searches, remove searches with delete , or flush out current results with the clear command.

Note that searches are continuous operations - search requests are performed periodically to refresh the list of search results. Over time our visible horizon changes, and with it, new providers of the requested files may become available. Clearing the search results will update search results to be more accurate to the current visible horizon, but it is safe to leave searches running for long periods of time. Hundreds of searches may be run simultaneously, each with hundreds or a thousand possible results - judicious use of pattern matching in the list function can help manage long search lists.

The commands to create and manage searches are

Xo find

keyword ... Oo options Oc Adds new query to the current list of searches. All the keywords are matched as a boolean AND, ignoring upper/lower case. In addition, the following search options may be used

-word

Users may exclude specific words from searches using a '-' before the word (e.g., "find hook .avi -hookers" will only locate files containing "hook" and ".avi", but will exclude any file containing the word "hookers". (and we are absolutely certain you've never seen that word legitimately used in a man page)

size: Ns bytes

Specify the exact size of the file to locate, in bytes.

min: Ns bytes

Specify the minimum size of the file to locate, in bytes.

max: Ns bytes

Specify the maximum size of the file to locate, in bytes.

If no parameters are provided to this command, it provides the same results as the list command.

list Oo

pattern No / ID Displays the current list of searches. Optionally, this command takes a pattern as a parameter. Each search result listed is numbered; that number, the search ID, may then be fed into other commands to perform operations on those searches, such as delete to delete searches from the list, clear to clear results, or results to list the results of one or more searches. When a pattern is provided, only searches matching the specified pattern will be listed. This feature is most useful when the search list grows above 5-10 entries. In addition, the following options can be used

-empty

Filter out all searches which have no results ('hits').

-auto

Filter out automatically generated search results created by downloads. Searches which will be filtered out are marked as AUTOGET in the results list. These searches are automatically created by downloads and partial files.

ls

Provides the same results as if the user had typed in

list -empty

as an interactive command.

delete ID Oo

... Oc Delete one or more queries from the current list of searches. Numeric IDs should be taken from the last output of the list command. IDs can be given in fairly relaxed way. For example, 2 Ns , Ns 5 Ns , 1 Ns , Ns 8-10 will delete searches listed under numbers 1, 2, 5, 8, 9, and 10. Another example might be which would delete all the searches listed by the last list command.

clear ID Oo

... Oc Clear the results of one or more queries from the current list of searches. Numeric IDs should be taken from the last output of the list command. As with the delete command, search IDs to delete may be given in a similarly relaxed way.

Once a search has located results, those results may be listed. (The search entry, as reported by the list command, reports a nonzero in its results.

The results for one or more specific searches can be requested by using the results command,. One or more search IDs taken from the output of the list command may be provided as optional parameters. Alternatively, a text string may be provided as a filter to limit the output only to those searches which match the supplied filter contents.

Once the user has viewed the results, he may use the result ID provided in that list to perform a get Ns No , and attempt to download that file.

results Oo

pattern ... This command displays the results of currently active searches. Without arguments, this command will display all results collected by the search subsystem. The output of the command can be made more specific using two different mechanisms: either by providing one or more search IDs taken from the list command, or by providing a pattern to match against the search strings of individual searches. A list of results will be provided, separating the results of each query and listing the number of results in each query group. Files may be grouped according to name and size, the number of hosts providing that file listed below with host details. A number represents the part of the Gnutella file transfer query (which is built like http://HOST:PORT/get/REF/FILE_NAME).

get ID Oo

... Oc Initiates download of one or more files defined by specific result IDs taken from the last results command. IDs can be given in fairly relaxed way. For example will start download of the search results listed under numbers 10, 15, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25. The progress of downloads can be examined with the info command. Once download is started, mutella will try to get the requested file from any hosts providing that file for an unlimited amount of time. The download will complete only when the transfer is successful or stopped with the stop No or kill transfer commands. Upon download start, Mutella generates the search for alternative locations for the file. The results, received by that search entry are always automatically used to update host lists for the download. If the automatically generated search is deleted while the download is still active, it will be re-created again after a period of time. Upon download start or disconnection of a transferring file connection from the remote peer, the servent tries to connect to all the hosts in the download list until a successful connection is established. If a host is not responding during the last 20 attempts, it is removed from the peer list. If for any reason the peer list becomes empty, an AUTOGET search is added (if the search associated with that transfer exists already, it will be changed to AUTOGET status) and download failure is reported. If that file appears again on the Gnutella horizon, the servent will automatically attempt to continue transfer. AUTOGET searches are also created for all partial files found in the download directory on the client start to allow for automatic resume of partial downloads between mutella sessions.

Transfer commands need to be provided with the ID of the transfer to stop; these IDs can be shown from the info command.

stop ID Oo

... Oc Stops the file transfers corresponding to one or more transfer IDs. Note that this command does not remove partial files from the download directory.

kill ID Oo

... Oc Stops transfers corresponding to the given transfer IDs and deletes appropriate partial files in case of download.

Application preferences are set using the set command, which allows you to list, set, and view the settings of all servent preferences. Each variable has online help through the help system to assist in configuration.

set Oo

variable Oc Oo value Oc This command is used to access the application's many options and preferences. Using the command without any parameters provides an organised list of all options available and their current values. When the command is called with a single variable name, but without a value, it will display the current settings of that variable. To set a variable's contents, supply the value as the second parameter to the command. To clear a variable of its value, a variable can be set to (an empty string). Note that to disable the effects of some variables, the value is 0; for others, 0 has a meaning, and -1 will disable the feature. More information about how a variable behaves can be found in the online help system by supplying the variable name as the option to the help command. All mutella options are stored in '~/.mutella/mutellarc' file.

color Oo

field Oo ANSI-code Oc This command can be used to set the ANSI escape codes used to produce colors for the terminal UI. The syntax for this command is similar to `set'. The color scheme is stored in the location pointed by the ColorScheme variable (the default is '~/.mutella/termclr').

Commands in this section include the ability to list all currently shared files, rescan for new files in the library, and performing scripting actions. Also, the system command, which allows users to execute arbitrary shell commands, and the exit command, which allows users to terminate execution of the client.

scan

Forces a rescan of the list of files present in the library directory and makes those files available as query responses. A rescan will automatically take place at the successful completion of any download.

library

This command provides a list of all currently shared files. This command is most useful when testing the effects of filters which can be set in mutella's preferences to determine what files can be shared. It also reports search popularity of the files and the number of upload requests for each file.

load filename

Loads and executes a script file containing commands in the servent's command interpreter.

system command Oo

arguments ... Oc Executes the shell command provided.

! command Oo

arguments ... Oc Shorthand; same as "system".

version

This command displays the current program version.

exit

Exits the servent.

All commands support Unix pipes. The output of any command can be redirected to the shell using standard Unix pipeline syntax, e.g. res 1-3 No | grep something to grep the output of that command for specific result patterns.

Marco Herrn

Original author of this manual page.

Greg Parker

Contribution of a one-shot replacement for poll for systems only supporting select