From: Erik Troan <ewt@SunSite.unc.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce
Subject: Linux WAIS databases on sunsite
Date: 24 May 1993 13:05:24 GMT
Approved: linux-announce@tc.cornell.edu (Lars Wirzenius)
Message-ID: <1tqh6kINNm06@hydra.Helsinki.FI>

In my never ending quest to prove that even old time linux hackers can
be confused by incorrect documentation, I made a critical error in the
announcement of availability of WAIS databases related to linux. I
mentioned that loging on to sunsite w/ the account name "wais" would let
you conduct sarches. This is incorrect! Use the account name "linux", not
"wais".

Again: The open wais-searches-for-linux account is "linux".
Again: The open wais-searches-for-linux account is "linux".

Sorry for the confusion everybody. I've included a corrected copy
of the announcement below.

Erik

----------------

In an effort to stem the never-ending tide of questions such as
"Will this run on a 486?", and "Exactly where are the kernel patches
to make Linux run my dishwasher every night?", and of course,
"Will sunsite ever be organized?", I've created four WAIS databases.

They index:

	1) The faq
	2) The mail-faq
	3) The net-faq
	4) The LSM (Linux Software Map)

For those of you who don't know what WAIS is, look at the bottom of this
announcement. It kinda-sorta explains it.

The best way to access them is to get the .src descriptions of the 
databases. They are available at 

	sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/docs/wais-sources

Feed those to your local wais server and you're all set. If you don't
know how to do this, telnet to sunsite.unc.edu and login as "linux". It'll
ask you for your terminal type and then let you do your very own searches!
Let me know if I can make these databases more helpful, or if you think
that the information in them is so woefully out of date that while I'm
doing a wonderful job of confusing newbies, it would be better if I
just ate my foot. Seriously, all comments to ewt@sunsite.unc.edu.

Erik Troan
ewt@sunsite.unc.edu

Pop Quiz: How will this help answer the question "Will sunsite ever
be better organized?".

Answer: It won't. But I promised to give an answer, so here it is:
<tah, tah, tah> No. Never. Not until a very warm place that god sends
people who are mean to their mothers freezes over.

Unless I feel like it of course.

------------------------------------------------------

What is WAIS?

This is a *quick* overview. WAIS is a Wide Area Information Service 
(helpful, huh?). It's a way of making databases available for searching
across the network. The WAIS we use (from the freeWAIS suite) does full
text indexing. In other words, every word of a document is indexed.
You simply give it a list of keywords, and an "or" search is performed.
There are ways of specifying more complicated searches, but I don't know
them, so don't ask.
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Could I bend yer ear fer a tick?"   ewtroan@eos.ncsu.edu = Erik Troan
                                     ewtroan@vnet.ibm.com
    - Strictly Ballroom              ewt@sunsite.unc.edu
