[net.general] How to obtain back news items

ka (12/22/82)

I have implemented a system to allow people to  obtain  old  news
articles.  For example, let's say you didn't save the fleece pro-
gram when it was posted, and  now  you  want  it.   Articles  are
fetched  from  the USENET Archive by article id.  Since you don't
know  the  article  id  of  the  article  you  want,  type  "lsar
net.sources".  Anywhere from an hour to a day later (depending on
how many systems are between you and spanky), you will receive  a
piece of mail listing the article ids and titles of all the arti-
cles in net.sources.  Grepping through this for the  word  fleece
should print
        harpo.1218     fleece.c
        harpo.1219     fleece.1
Type "getar harpo.1218" and "getar harpo.1219", and  these  arti-
cles will be mailed to you.

All netnews articles dating back to Dec. 1 are  available.   Some
articles posted before this are available.  One of these, "usenet
etiquette" (article id eagle.618), should be read by EVERYBODY.

The programs lsar and getar, along with a manual page  describing
them,  have  been posted to net.sources under the title "Programs
for accessing archived news articles."

It should be stressed that this system is temporary.   I  project
that  I will run out of disk space in about four months, at which
point certain newsgroups will be removed from the archive.
                                        Kenneth Almquist