Wow Wes, thanks for doing this!   You too John.  :-)

Now all I have to do is figure out how to use the file!

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 10:43 AM, pickle vanagon <greenvanagon@gmail.com>wrote:

> A while ago, I promised that I would put together a file with some
> easy-to-follow instructions about how to get the vanagon archives into your
> gmail account "in a few days".  First a few words on why this is necessary:
> the web search interface for the archives doesn't use an indexed search,
> which means that searching it can take 5 minutes or so, or, in practice,
> hours or more, since it will often simply time out before returning a
> result.  Searching the archives with google is not a good substitute, since
> google doesn't index most of the archives, so that a google search will
> miss
> many messages.  (I will not cover this fact in these directions.  If you
> missed my previous examples of how the google search doesn't work, "search
> the archives" to find them.  Once you follow the directions below to get
> the
> archives in a browseable and searchable form, it will become obvious just
> how bad google is for the archives, as you'll see that some searches that
> get only a handful of hits with google should actually be getting
> hundreds).  There is one decent alternative to what I describe below when
> it
> comes to searching the archives: the "email" search interface, described
> here: http://gerry.vanagon.com/info/searching.html.  It is still painfully
> slow and has its own share of issues, but it doesn't time out and is
> reliable.
>
> Weeks later, I'm finally ready to deliver something less than what I
> promised.  It is possible to get all of the archives into gmail (I've done
> it with my account) but I don't recommend it.  It is slow and tedious (it
> took me more than a week of constant uploading by an automated script) due
> to gmail's slow imap import process.  It can also make gmail mad at you (I
> got locked out of my account for a day at some point) and is generally not
> a
> good choice for most people.  For that reason, I'm not going to try to give
> "step-by step" directions on how to get the archives into your gmail.
>
> But what I will do is almost as good (or maybe even better).  By importing
> the archives into the opera mail client (which is free), you will have
> access to the entire archives of the vanagon list whether or not you are
> connected to the internet.  Plus, since opera mail has an "indexed search",
> you can search the entire archives in seconds all on your own machine.  The
> best thing would be if the web archive interface was "fixed" to use an
> indexed search, but until that happens, I consider this to be a pretty good
> solution for most people.
>
> I've prepared the archives as an "mbox" file, which John Meeks has been
> kind
> enough to agree to host for listmembers to download on his vanagonauts
> site.  You can also import the mbox file into a different email client of
> your choice, but I can't write instructions for every email client so
> you're
> on your own there.  I chose opera as the "suggested" client because it
> seems
> to be the only readily available client that has an "indexed search" built
> in (and is available for just about any operating system), but another
> solution is to use another client (like thunderbird) in conjunction with
> google desktop or a similar search program.  Like I said before, you are on
> your own if you want to pursue that route.
>
> One final thing: in spite of the fact that these directions can give us the
> ability to have complete access to the archives, I think we should keep in
> mind that most listmembers will not bother to download the file and go
> through with this (which is quite reasonable, since the process requires
> upwards of a gigabyte of free space to complete).  As a result, I would
> suggest that it is still probably not very constructive to answer peoples
> questions with the answer "search the archives", since, for many intents
> and
> purposes, the web archives remain broken and google doesn't work either.
>
>
> Here are my directions to get the archive into opera mail:
>
> 0.  Download the gerry.zip file from
> http://www.vanagonauts.com/files/gerry.zip
> 1.  The file gerry.zip is compressed and needs to be unzipped.  (Some
> versions of Windows may have this functionality built in?)  The size of the
> file gerry.zip is 162M.  If you have a file that is much smaller than that,
> it probably didn't download correctly.  (For anybody that wants to know,
> the
> MD5 sum of the file is 408626910cc14145089907ba7f7c66c1)
> 2.  When unzipped, the file "gerry" (no extension) is 576 megabytes.  It
> contains every message in the vanagon archives (starting on April 2 1994)
> through November 30, 2008.  The unzipped file is an "mbox" file, which can
> be imported or used by most mail programs.  You are on your own when it
> comes to importing this into your mail program of choice.  I will show you
> how to import the file into opera mail, which includes an indexed search so
> that you can search the entire archive in seconds.
> 3. Install opera (get it for free from www.opera.com)
> 4. On the left bar in opera, click on the envelope button to go to opera
> mail.  Under the file menu, choose "Import and Export" > "Import Mail".
> Choose "generic mbox file" and click next.  Hit the "add mbox..." button
> and
> locate the unzipped "gerry" file.  Under "Import into:", you can leave the
> setting as "new account" or you can choose an existing account if you
> already have an account setup that you would like to use.  Click next, and
> opera will start processing the file.  This will take a long time.  When it
> finishes, you will have the archives in an easily searchable and browsable
> location.
> 5.  If you setup opera as your email client for your vanagon subscription
> (follow readily available online instructions), you will always have all of
> the vanagon mail available for search, minus the "gap" between November 30,
> 2008 and whenever you set it up.  Maybe at some point in the future, I will
> make an extra file to cover the "gap".
>
> Happy searching!
> Wes
>

--
Jake
1984 Vanagon GL
1986 Westy Weekender "Dixie"
Crescent Beach, BC
www.crescentbeachguitar.com
http://subyjake.googlepages.com/mydixiedarlin%27