Have you tried the we-based archive search recently? Since the server was
upgraded a few months back, searching via the web is much improved. No more
timeouts!!

For searching via e-mail it does sound like your web e-mail is inserting
line breaks, which ListServ hates. You already found one solution - breaking
your commands up into several lines so that your e-mail request looks like:

GETPOST 123 456 789 012 345 678
GETPOST 234 345 456 567 678 789
GETPOST 987 876 765 654 543 432

Another way to try it is to send the commands in a "job" field. This tells
ListServ to ignore any line breaks in the middle of the request. The syntax
would be:

// JOB
GETPOST 123 456 789 012 345 678 234 345 456 567 678 789 987
876 765 654 543 432
// EOJ

Even though the above request spans more than one line, it should work.
Happy searching!

TomC
tcarrington@relitech.com
http://www.relitech.com/tomc
http://volksweb.relitech.com
85 Vanagon Crew Cab
82 Westy diesel=>gas conversion
81 Checker A-11 (Taxi)
65 Notchback

> -----Original Message-----
> From: TinkerMan [SMTP:tinkerman007@YAHOO.COM]
> Sent: Wednesday, December 26, 2001 6:48 AM
> To:   vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
> Subject:      # archive search problems and tips
>
> Hi Volks,
>
> I've been enjoying the archives quite a bit using the
> email search option (the web search was unbearably
> slow or crashed completely).
> Still, I have a few nagging problems that I haven't
> solved yet, even after reading the server help file
> (info refcard) thoroughly:
>
> 1. It seems that the server doesn't like LONG LINES.
> Every time the line reaches a certain length (about 60
> chars) the line is wrapped and the command rejected or
> not fully executed due to the words being passed to
> the next line. This happens usually for long commands,
> e.g. "search in subject" or getpost commands.
> Funnily, if I copy and paste the GETPOST command list
> part from search results with many results, and even
> though the original spanned several lines, the server
> processes just the first line and ignores the rest.
> Of course some of my problems might be related to my
> email program (actually a web mail service) wrapping
> long lines,
>
(snip)