Re: ARCHI server for Linux ? (and FTP-Search Project)
On Mon, Apr 11, 2005 at 12:25:59PM +0200, Michelle Konzack wrote:
>
> For 8 years (!!!) I was using <http://ftpsearch.lycos.com/> which was
> the power of a FTP Search engine. Because it is silent gone for many
> years, I like to create a new FTP-Search engine...
Yeah (*nostalgic sigh*), there was a time when it was a matter of
seconds to locate the spot on this planet that had the file you were
looking for. You just had to know the name of it -- roughly, as
regexes were supported (in contrast to a general google search...).
I loved it. Kind of a "find / -regex pattern | ls -l", only
world-wide, and much faster...
In particular, in addition to Archie, there was Fast FTP Search, which
was a real pleasure to use. IIRC, it had originally been developed
and run by a company in Norway (now http://fastsearch.com/).
Sadly though, after this service had been taken over by Lycos, it
started to - slowly but surely - fall apart...
Not that whining would bring it back to life... but, just out of plain
curiosity, has anyone got details / stories as to why support had been
dropped. Or, more generally, why Google still doesn't provide any such
specialised FTP search facility? They should have the prerequisites...
Any patent (or other) issues? Or has anonymous FTP fallen into
oblivion altogether in the meantime, so there isn't anyone who would
care about it any longer?
Actually, via google I just found http://www.filesearching.com/advanced/
which looks remotely like the original Fast FTP Search -- but I have
no idea how up-to-date their database is... It does seem to work, in
principle, but somehow, it doesn't quite look like _the_ FTP counterpart
to Google ;)
Does anyone happen to know of any viable, well-maintained alternatives?
Almut
(apologies for the off-topicness)
P.S. Michelle, are you planning to set up some kind of replacement for
ftpsearch.lycos.com? I mean, that'd be great. Definitely! :) But,
it sounds like a rather big project to me... At least, personally, I'd
feel a bit overwhelmed by the level of expertise and time required...
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