How to search the Fedora List

[Wayne Feick]

Dave,

I mentioned MarkMail previously, but I'll add the following excerpt from
our FAQ. Either may give you what you're looking for.

Wayne.



        http://markmail.org/docs/faq.xqy

        Can I put a MarkMail search box on my site?

        Sure, and that can be convenient if you want to give people the
        opportunity to search messages without visiting the MarkMail
        site first. Just copy and paste this HTML into your site:

        <form action="http://markmail.org/search/list:tomcat"> Search
        MarkMail: <input type="text" name="q" size="50"/> <input
        type="submit" value="Search"/> </form>

        You should replace "tomcat" with the name of your list or
        project. You can adjust the default search constraint too. For
        example, the following searches messages sent by a particular
        person, in this case Sam Ruby:

        <form action="http://markmail.org/search/from:rubys"> Search
        MarkMail: <input type="text" name="q" size="50"/> <input
        type="submit" value="Search"/> </form>

        Replace "rubys" with the name of your desired poster. You can
        even combine terms, even negations, into the default search
        constraint.
        
        
        How do I add MarkMail to my browser's search box?
        
        If you are running a browser that supports OpenSearch browser
        search plugins such as FireFox v2 and above and Internet
        Explorer v7 and above, you can add a MarkMail search plugin to
        your browser by clicking here.

        Or, if you are running FireFox v1.x or Sherlock, you can add a
        MarkMail search plugin to your browser by clicking here.

        Then, to switch your browser's search box to use the MarkMail
        browser search plugin: 

             1. Click on your browser's search box drop down menu
             2. Click on MarkMail

        Note that you can use all of MarkMail search syntax and
        modifiers in the browser search box.



On Tue, 2008-08-19 at 14:33 -1000, Dave Burns wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 12:14 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan
> <pocallaghan at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I just searched for "googlesmithing" with nothing fancy. Popped right up.
> 
> I am not trying to find googlesmithing on the web. I am trying to find
> it (and more generally, any search term) strictly within the archives
> of the fedora users list.
> 
> I don't want the entire web, or even all of linux, because very often
> I am searching for the sort of stuff where the correct answer for
> debian or suse is noise for fedora. Often I know something has been
> discussed here, so I don't want  to waste bandwidth by posting again,
> yet I do want to find the answer, which is no longer among my emails.
> So I want to use google but generate only hits that have appeared on
> this list as posts, just as if the list archive had a reasonable
> search function of its own instead of the bizarre thread/date/author
> organization. If possible, I'd also like to avoid getting multiple
> hits for a single post.
> 
> (As an aside, does anyone ever get any use out of the archive using
> that web interface at redhat? I guess I could drill right down to the
> right post if I remembered who wrote it or what the exact subject was
> or when it was discussed, but I almost never remember any of that. And
> it's way too big for linear search.)
> 
> Usually I attempt to search the archive by adding
> 'site:https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list' to my list of
> google search terms. Because I am getting lazy and would like to
> automate or simplify that, this thread got split off the
> googlesmithing thread.
> 
> When I search for "googlesmithing" by itself, I get several hits
> (fcp.surfsite.org, www.mail-archive.com, linux.derkeiler.com, etc.),
> but none at redhat.com, which I had thought of as the official
> home/archive of the list. Was that my mistake?
> 
> Maybe redhat is slow updating the archive? No, the googlesmithing
> thread is there
> (https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-August/msg02132.html)
> if you navigate by date.
> 
> It must be that google is slow indexing it? Google does give hits at
> redhat's URL if you try some other terms. I just searched for
> 
>      site:https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list     fedora
> 
> and the youngest hit on the first page was from May 2008. Then I added
> a date restriction:
> 
> past 24 hours = no hits
> past week = one hit
> past month = two hits?!!?????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> past 2 months = 14 hits?
> past 3 months = 53 hits?
> 
> WTF! Try another site.... fedora site:http://fcp.surfsite.org....
> 
> past 24 hours = 1 hit
> past week = 1 hit
> past month = 800 hits
> 
> After this little experiment, I do not know whether to ask for
> thorazine or zoloft. I love both google and redhat, but sometimes ya
> gotta wonder.
> 
> Could google be indexing only some of the posts? Randomizing their
> indexing? Excluding 'fedora'? Excluding headers, addresses, etc.?
> Could the age of a page be judged by something other than the age of
> the post it contains, so somehow posts that were created this week
> would somehow show up as hits in google searches only if the search
> accepts month-old stuff?
> 
> Are any of these other sources  (fcp.surfsite.org,
> www.mail-archive.com, linux.derkeiler.com, etc.) more 'official' than
> others? They at least seem like they might be more up-to-date? I guess
> that should be the topic of my next study, but not today!
> 
> Dave
>