Search the FAQ:

Where are FAQs archived?

Many FAQs are also archived. One important repository of FAQs and other articles is the news.answers archive maintained by the moderators of the news.answers newsgroup. All FAQs that have been approved for posting to the news.answers newsgroup are archived at ftp://rtfm.mit.edu (and all of the mirror sites) in the following directories:
By subject line -
/pub/usenet/news.group.name
/pub/usenet-by-group/news.group.name

By subject category -
/pub/usenet/news.answers
/pub/usenet-by-group/news.answers
and for the other *.answers newsgroups
/pub/usenet/*.answers (eg. comp.answers, sci.answers, rec.answers)
/pub/usenet-by-group/*.answers

By newsgroup hierarchy -
/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/news/group/name
To find a FAQ by the newsgroup it belongs to, look in the directory /pub/usenet (which is the same as /pub/usenet-by-group). There you will find that each newsgroup has its own subdirectory (if applicable). As an example, if you are looking for one of my FAQs on microcontrollers, look in /pub/usenet-by-group/comp.answers/microcontroller-faq. There you will find three entries: 8051, 68hc11, and primer.

You can also search for FAQs by working your way through the newsgroup hierarchy. Look in the directory /pub/usenet-by-hierarchy and you will find a subdirectory for each newsgroup category (news, comp, rec, alt, ...). Then just keep working your way down the hierarchy by entering the appropriate subdirectory to find the FAQs that you are looking for. For example, to find my FAQs on microcontrollers, look in /pub/usenet-by-hierarchy. Go into the comp subdirectory, and then go into the answers subdirectory. All of the FAQs posted to comp.answers will be listed under this directory.

Instead of searching through the archive, many of the periodical postings on USENET are listed in the news.lists newsgroup under the heading:

"List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part * *"
These lists are archived at /pub/usenet/news.lists with the archive names:
"List_of_Periodic_Informational_Postings,_Part_*_*"

If you do not have access to anonymous ftp, you can also send e-mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu to get FAQs by e-mail.

Initially, try a message with no Subject: and just the following lines in the body:

help
end
One useful command is the index command. This returns a list of the contents of a particular directory. Some examples of how to use this command are:
index
index usenet-by-group
index usenet-by-group/news.announce.newusers
index usenet-by-group/news.answers
Be warned that news.answers has a LOT of information in it. The directory listing that will be sent to you by Email will be LARGE.

Another main FAQ archive is ftp://ftp.faqs.org/faqs/ which contains the same FAQs as the rtfm site.


This is a demo of Data Converter's Searchable FAQ Database.
Programming provided by Digital Routes.
The text used in this demo was adapted from Russ Hersch's FAQs about FAQs.