Patrick,

The easiest way to search the archives is via e-mail.  It is a two step
process, first requesting all postings containing a particular word or
words, and second requesting archived posts by post number as returned by
the search.

Okay, to do a search send an e-mail to listserv@gerry.vanagon.com.  Note
this is a different address than what is used for the vanagon list.  There
is no need for a subject and in the body type the following:

search vanagon "search string"

Replace "search string" with the words or words you are looking for.  One
thing to note is the search engine is primitive and will only return
postings which contain all the words you ask for.  You might be able to use
a logical connector like "and" or "or" but I haven't tried anything like
that yet.  Say you wanted to find something on vented rotors.  Well this
might be under vented rotors or vented brakes.  I would send an e-mail with
two lines in the body as follows:

search vanagon vented rotors
search vanagon vented brakes

You could just search on vented and if that turns up too many hits then try
limiting the search by adding the words rotors and/or brakes.

Sometimes you will get a lot of hits based on your search criteria. When I
say a lot I mean more than 100.  In this case the listserver will return
only the first 100.  If you want to get the rest then you will need to use
the "since" option of the search command.  This option is simply appended
on the end of your request.  Let's say hit number 100 was dated 98/10/17 (I
think this is the date formate used by the list server for October 17,
1998) you would send another search request as follows:

search vanagon vented rotors since 98/10/17

Or if you only wanted to search all the posts made in the last year you can
submit:

search vanagon vented rotors since today-365

All this information is available from the listserver.  Just send an e-mail
to the listserver with the following in the body:

info refcard

and you will probably find out more than you really want to know.

Regards,

Tom Moritz

>From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM]On Behalf
>Of patrick paul clerkin
>Sent: Friday, August 24, 2001 2:04 PM
>To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
>Subject: searching archive
>
>
>Can someone let me know if they have had any luck searching the vanagon
>archives?  I have never been able to get it to work.
>
>Thanks,
>Patrick

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