Download the CIAO Web Pages

Users doing analysis on laptops, or those with slow internet connections, may find it useful to view the CIAO WWW pages from their own system. Here we provide details of two methods for copying the CIAO web pages to your own machine.

tar file

We provide a tar file of the web site, which is updated weekly. This is useful if you are have a relatively fast internet connection, but since it is updated only once per week it may not provide you with the latest version of the pages.

This version is also automatically processed so that links work (those external to the CIAO site are converted so as to take you to the page on the cxc.harvard.edu server), images display correctly, and the Cascading Style Sheets used to configure the look of the pages are still referenced.

wget

The wget software may be used to download the pages. Although this is slower than downloading the tar file, it will work better over a slower internet connection (since the files are copied over individually) and it provides access to the latest version of the pages. It is also possible to change the options to download just the sections that interest you.

Users in Europe may find connection speeds are much higher when using the Leicester mirror of the CXC web site.

NOTE: The CIAO webpages are constantly being updated online so that they are of the best use to you. If you choose to download them to your local system, be sure to check back often for updates and corrections.

Tar file

Approximately once a week, a gzipped tar file (.tgz) is created of the CIAO web site and made available for download. The gzipped tar file is approximately 60 Mb in size - it uncompresses to about 220 Mb - and does not contain any PDF or PS files.

Download: www_ciao.tgz (use "shift+left mouse button" to download; last changed Sunday, 01-Oct-2006 14:46:40 EDT)

wget

The GNU application wget can be used to download the CIAO web pages (it allows a user to download an entire directory associated with a web address). In practice, it behaves like a smart version of an 'mget' (of the ftp protocol). For more information, visit the GNU wget page.

Version 1.9.1 of the wget utility is packaged with CIAO 3.3.

Download ALL of the CIAO WWW pages (about 520 MB):

unix% set href = http://cxc.harvard.edu
unix% wget -k -p -m -np -nv -x --reject=tgz $href/ciao3.3/
unix% wget -k -p -m -np -nv -x --reject=tgz $href/sherpa3.3/

The --reject option is used to avoid downloading the tar file of the CIAO web pages.

Download the CIAO WWW pages, EXCLUDING .ps, .pdf, and gzipped files (about 220 MB):

unix% set href = http://cxc.harvard.edu
unix% set rej = tgz,pdf,ps,ps.gz,tar.gz
unix% wget -k -p -m -np -nv -x --reject=$rej $href/ciao3.3/
unix% wget -k -p -m -np -nv -x --reject=$rej $href/sherpa3.3/

Here the --reject option is used to exclude all files ending in ps or pdf. These are mainly hardcopy versions of the threads and ahelp files and presentations from the CIAO workshops.

Running wget as shown above will create a new directory called "cxc.harvard.edu" with a subdirectory structure:

unix% ls cxc.harvard.edu/
ciao3.3/
incl/
sherpa3.3/

Simply run netscape - or your favourite browser - with something analogous to the following argument:

unix% netscape cxc.harvard.edu/ciao3.3/index.html &

Some images may not display properly, and the pages may not look like they do when viewed on the main site. Try the tar file version of the web pages if you find you are unable to use the pages you download via wget.