How to Get Files from Mailbase

Many lists will have files available to list members, such as reports, documents, results of surveys, or other files of long term value. You can get copies of these from the web, or via email.

You can also retrieve copies of old Mailbase messages via email. This is very useful if you belong to a list where old messages are not displayed on the web.

Files via Web | Files via Email | Message Archives via Email

Retrieving Files via the Web

  1. Find your list on the Mailbase Webpages

  2. Click on the link which says Other Files

  3. A list of files will displayed - click on the one you want.

  4. If the file is a plain text file then it will be displayed by the web browser. If it is not a text file, then the web browser should ask you "Do you want to save this file?"

Retrieving Files via Email

If the list is not publicly available on the web, then members will have to retrieve files this way.

1. What Files are available?

Send this command, putting the name of your list instead of listname

index listname

Mailbase will send you a list and details of all the files that belong to this list. You'll get a description of each file, plus the source (author) and size of the file.

2. Asking Mailbase to send you a file

  1. Once you know what the files are available, you can ask Mailbase to send them to you.

  2. Send this command:
    send listname filename

  3. Remember to type in the name of your list and the name of the file you want in place of listname and filename

    For example, this command will send you a file called e-access-inet.txt which belongs to the list lis-iis

    send lis-iis e-access-inet.txt

3. Splitting up long Files

Some email programs cannot cope with very long messages, so large files are automatically broken down into several messages, each 1000 lines long. Users sometimes think that part of a file is missing, when in fact there are other messages to follow.

You may decide that you don't want the file split into chunks of this length, so you can use the line limit command to set your own size limit.

line limit 2000
send lis-iis e-access-inet.txt

This tells the Mailbase program to split the file into sections which are 2000 lines long.

You can choose any line limit up to 5000.

Getting Message Archives using Email

Normally messages sent to Mailbase lists will be saved in hypermail archives on the web, but some lists are not available on the web.

All the messages sent to the list are also collected together in monthly archive files and you can retrieve these files. The name of the file depends in the month. For example, 1996-11 contains messages sent to the list in November 1996

You can retrieve a particular archive file by using the following command

send listname filename

For example, the following command will send you a file containing all the messages sent to the list lis-iis in January 1997.

send lis-iis 1997-01

Warnings:

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Mailbase Team, April 1997