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I have gnus working for multiple email addresses with searching via 

(nnir-search-engine imap)

I have newsgroup reading setup and working fine too, however, I have never been able to get searching in newsgroups working even though I have 

(setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.gmane.org"
                       (nnir-search-engine gmane)))

With the latter, with my cursor on a gname newsgroup, I expect to be able to do G G enter a search and have it return a list of hits as it does with imap search. Instead, I get the message

Contacting host: search.gmane.org:80 open-network-stream: search.gmane.org/80 nodename nor servname provided, or not known

in my mini and Messages buffers.

Any idea what is going on and how to rectify this?

One thought I had was perhaps that I needed to utilize gnu-agent and an agent category to allow me to download messages via J s (all of which I did set up, but haven't fully understood where it is saving, etc.).

Everything else works great in gnus, I just want to search newsgroups too in gnus.

p.s. I have downloaded Unison, which is quite nice and free now, and it can do what I need, but I still hope to do it in gnus.

Drew
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Joe
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    gmane search has gone bust for the last two years (?) or so, ever since Lars decided that he was not going to continue with gmane. Although the people who took over brought the nntp service back, search is still missing. – NickD Jan 11 '18 at 02:08
  • @Nick, thanks, well that explains it. Sorry to hear that search isn't available. I guess there must be other means of searching since I can do it in Unison. I see in Unison they use binsearch.info and yabsearch.nl. – Joe Jan 11 '18 at 04:21
  • @Nick, if you make that an answer I'll accept it. Subsequently, I'll ask a question about using gnus to download select newsgroup articles and then search them locally using gnu-agent, agent-categories, and possibly namazu? – Joe Jan 11 '18 at 16:59
  • I posted an answer with some additional details, which presumably, you have already found out. – NickD Jan 11 '18 at 19:46

1 Answers1

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The gmane search engine does not work because gmane has undergone some changes: gmane search has gone bust for the last two years (?) or so, ever since Lars decided that he was not going to continue with gmane. Although the people who took over brought the nntp service back, search is still missing.

There are other search engines however: the gnus manual lists swish++, swish-e, namazu, notmuch and hyrex (obsolete). I have no idea how well each works: I do know that they require configuration (imap search and gmane search (before it broke), worked right out of the box).

The doc has very few details on the rest, but it does describe how to set up namazu: it requires that you create and maintain index files, presumably indexing a set of local files. The doc's emphasis is on indexing local email, but presumably it would work similarly for downloaded local news articles.

NickD
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