[snapshot/master] A word on how to use this thing
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@@ -62,13 +62,58 @@ Electrical and Computer Engineering</a> for providing hardware and hosting and
hardware.
</p>
+<h2>Usage</h2>
+<p>
+In order to browse snapshots of the archives kept in snapshot.debian.org simply
+follow the links on the top left. They will lead you to a list of months for
+which data was imported, and the list entries in turn will point you all
+timestamps of a given month's snapshots.
+</p>
+
+<p>For example
+<a href="/archive/debian/"><code>/archive/debian/</code></a>
+shows that we have imports for the main Debian archive,
+<a href="http://ftp.debian.org/debian/";><code>http://ftp.debian.org/debian/</code></a>,
+starting in 2005 up to today.
+Picking October of 2009,
+<a href="/archive/debian/?year=2009;month=10"><code>/archive/debian/?year=2009;month=10</code></a>,
+provides us with a list of many different states of the debian archive, roughtly spaced 6 hours apart
+(the update frequency of ftp.debian.org at that time).
+Following any of these links, say
+<a href="/archive/debian/20091004T111800Z/"><code>/archive/debian/20091004T111800Z/</code></a>,
+shows how <code>ftp.debian.org/debian</code> looked on the 4th of October 2009 at around 11:18 UTC.
+</p>
+
+<p style="margin-top:2em;">
+In case you want to add a specific date's archive to your apt sources.list simply
+compose an entry like these:
+</p>
+<pre>
+deb <a href="/archive/debian/20091004T111800Z/">http://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20091004T111800Z/</a> lenny main
+deb-src <a href="/archive/debian/20091004T111800Z/">http://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20091004T111800Z/</a> lenny main
+deb <a href="/archive/debian-security/20091004T121501Z/">http://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian-security/20091004T121501Z/</a> lenny/updates main
+deb-src <a href="/archive/debian-security/20091004T121501Z/">http://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian-security/20091004T121501Z/</a> lenny/updates main
+</pre>
+<p>
+To learn which snapshots exist, i.e. which date strings are valid, simply
+browse the list as mentioned above. Valid date formats are
+<code>yyyymmddThhmmssZ</code> or simply <code>yyyymmdd</code>. If there
+is no import at the exact time you specified you will get latest
+availably timestamp which is before the time you specified.
+</p>
+
+<p style="margin-top:2em;">
+If you want anything related to a speficic package simply enter the
+<em>source package name</em> in the form, or find it in the package index.
+</p>
+
<h1>News</h1>
<h2>2010-04-12</h2>
<p>
Publicly <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2010/20100412";>announce the snapshot.debian.org service</a>. Yay.
</p>
-<hr size="1">
+<hr style="height:1px;" />
<p>For older entries see <a href="oldnews">the older news page</a>.</p>
</div>
--
1.5.6.5
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