[R] R Site Search is back up

[Jonathan Baron]

The search site at
http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/
is back up.  This allows you to search mailing list archives,
R functions from most packages, and documents.

You can also use the R function RSiteSearch() in R itself, which
opens the results in your browser.

I'm sorry the site was down for so long.  I plan to work out a
system that will allow faster restoration if this happens again
(mutual complete backups with a colleague).  Backups are useless
if you don't have a machine to put them on, and it took 5 days to
get one, then one day to restore.

Some details that you don't need to read:

The site was reconstructed from scratch.  This means that links
from one message in the archives to another message in the
archives will not work anymore.  They never worked very well,
since the message numbers have been changed a few times over the
years.  (Threads work.  Just links don't work.)

In my rush to get this back up, I left out a few packages that
would not install.  I plan to install at least the help files
from these in due course.  I'm also not sure about Bioconductor
packages that are not already on CRAN.  I left out all of these.
Let me know if you want them.  Same with Jim Lindsey's packages.

I also left out all the mail from r-sig-geo, which I had been
including, although it seems hardly worth the effort since volume
is so low now on that list.  If you want it back, let me know.

What happened is still not clear.  There were several things
wrong with the computer, still not fully diagnosed.  The symptoms 
are consistent with overheating, but the fan was working fine,
and so has the air conditioning in the building (which has been
working very hard, global warming having finally hit
Philadelphia).  Recovery from the disk was possible but very
expensive.

What I learned from this is that backup systems do no good unless 
you have a computer to use.  And also I could have backed up in a 
way that made it easier for myself to reconstruct, but that was
not the major source of the delay.

Jon
-- 
Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania
Home page: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron