From: wirzeniu@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Lars Wirzenius)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Novice Questions
Date: 1 Sep 92 06:34:00 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

robertson@physc1.byu.edu writes:
>  Where is the FAQ?  I have dabled in this group for about 2 weeks
>  and I haven't seen it in anyones signature yet.  Thanks.

I'm posting this instead of emailing since many people seem to have
problems finding the FAQ.

The comp.lang.c FAQ is posted at the beginning of every month (I saw it
this morning).  An abbreviated version is posted also at the middle of
the month.

In any case, two weeks is a pretty short time to read a group, it is
often difficult to get a good picture of the group in that time.  (I
even remember somebody saying that you shouldn't post to a newgroup
until you've read it for six months, regardless of how long you've been
on the net otherwise.)

Also, if the FAQ has expired in your newsspool, you might still find it
in the group news.answers, where most FAQs are crossposted (some sites
have longer expiry times for news.answers, so that the FAQs should
always be online).

If you can't find the FAQ in news.answers either, and you can't wait for
the next time it is posted, you can get a copy from pit-manager.mit.edu,
either via anonymous ftp, or the mailserver.  To get started with the
mailserver, send mail to "mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu" and include
the word "help" in the subject.  I have included a description of how to
use the mailserver after my signature.  I posted it a few days ago to
comp.os.linux, and it uses the comp.os.linux FAQ as an example, but you
should be able to get some insights from it anyway.

--
Lars.Wirzenius@helsinki.fi



[ Linux-related material deleted ]

You can get the Linux FAQ by sending e-mail to
mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu, with the word help in the subject. 
This is the mail that I sent (without extraneous or irrelevant headers):

> From: wirzeniu@kruuna (Lars Wirzenius)
> To: mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu
> Subject: help

The server then sent me a document that describes how to use the server.
I won't include the whole thing here, but the relevant parts are:

> From: Mr Background <daemon@pit-manager.MIT.EDU>
> To: Lars Wirzenius <wirzeniu@cc.helsinki.fi>
> Subject: Reply from mserv re: help (part 1 of 1)
>[...]
> index		Get the top-level index of files available from the
> 		archive server.
> 
> send <filename>	Get a particular file.  For example, to get the "Mel"
> 		file in the "humor" archive, you would use "send
> 		humor/Mel".  To get an index for one of the archives,
> 		you would use "send <archive>/index", e.g. "send
> 		humor/index".

Ok, so I wanted to get an index of the whole archive.  I sent this:

> From: wirzeniu@kruuna (Lars Wirzenius)
> To: mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu
> 
> index
> quit

...and got another longish document, the relevant parts of which are:

> From: Mr Background <daemon@pit-manager.MIT.EDU>
> To: Lars Wirzenius <wirzeniu@cc.helsinki.fi>
> Subject: Reply from mserv re: index (part 1 of 1)
> 
> The following archives are available at this site:
>[...]
> usenet		Regular informational postings from various newsgroups
> 		on the Usenet.
>[...]

That certainly sounds interesting.  To get an index listing of that
archive, I sent this:

> From: wirzeniu@kruuna (Lars Wirzenius)
> To: mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu
> Subject: send usenet/index

(Note that you can have commands both in the subject and in the body of
the message.  The first help file describes things in more detail.)

The relevant parts of the listing that came back are:

> From: Mr Background <daemon@pit-manager.MIT.EDU>
> To: Lars Wirzenius <wirzeniu@cc.helsinki.fi>
> Subject: Reply from mserv re: send usenet/index (part 1 of 1)
> 
> The following is a list of the files in the usenet archive.
> (A "d" as the first character of a line indicates a subarchive.)
> 
>[...]
> drwxrwxr-x  2 root          512 Jul  8 03:17 comp.os.linux
>[...]

Getting closer.  To get an index of the archive for comp.os.linux, I
sent this:

> From: wirzeniu@kruuna (Lars Wirzenius)
> To: mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu
> Subject: send usenet/comp.os.linux/index

And as promptly as ever, I received this as a reply:

> From: Mr Background <daemon@pit-manager.MIT.EDU>
> To: Lars Wirzenius <wirzeniu@cc.helsinki.fi>
> Subject: Reply from mserv re: send usenet/comp.os.linux/index (part 1 of 1)
> 
> -----cut here-----
> The following is a list of the files in the usenet/comp.os.linux archive.
> (A "d" as the first character of a line indicates a subarchive.)
> 
> total 287
> -rw-rw-r--  2 root        45291 Jun 13 02:50 L_F_A_Q_1_2_[m_p]
> -rw-rw-r--  2 root        51328 Jun 13 02:50 L_F_A_Q_2_2_[m_p]
> -rw-rw-r--  2 root        45291 Jun 13 02:50 Linux_Frequently_Asked_Questions_1_2_[monthly_posted]
> -rw-rw-r--  2 root        51328 Jun 13 02:50 Linux_Frequently_Asked_Questions_2_2_[monthly_posted]
> -rw-rw-r--  1 root        96568 Jul  8 03:17 faq_06.1
> -----cut here-----

The above is the whole listing (except for some deleted mail headers). 
From the above listing, the file faq_06.1 seems to be the most newest
one, so I sent this:

> From: wirzeniu@klaava (Lars Wirzenius)
> To: mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu
> Subject: send usenet/comp.os.linux/faq_06.1

And to my utter surprise, I got the Linux FAQ.  Wow.

faq_06.1 is so long that it was (automatically) broken into two pieces,
so I got two mails:

> From: Mr Background <daemon@pit-manager.MIT.EDU>
> To: wirzeniu@cc.helsinki.fi (Lars Wirzenius)
> Subject: Reply from mserv re: send usenet/comp.os.linux/faq_06.1 (part 1 of 2)
> 
>[ part 1 of the FAQ deleted ]

> From: Mr Background <daemon@pit-manager.MIT.EDU>
> To: wirzeniu@cc.helsinki.fi (Lars Wirzenius)
> Subject: Reply from mserv re: send usenet/comp.os.linux/faq_06.1 (part 2 of 2)
>
>[ part 2 of the FAQ deleted ]

I encourage anybody who is going to use that archive to any greater
degree to go through all the steps, since most of what I have deleted is
actually quite useful information.  I just didn't want to include it all
in this posting (the mailbox was almost 600 lines without the FAQ
itself).
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.std.c