Introduction to the bug system request server
                                       
   There is a mailserver which can send the bug reports and indices as
   plain text on request.
   
   To use it you send a mail message to request@bugs.debian.org. The
   Subject of the message is ignored, except for generating the Subject
   of the reply.
   
   The body you send should be a series of commands, one per line. You'll
   receive a reply which looks like a transcript of your message being
   interpreted, with a response to each command. No notifications are
   sent to anyone for most commands; however, the messages are logged and
   made available in the WWW pages.
   
   Any text on a line starting with a hash sign # is ignored; the server
   will stop processing when it finds a line starting with quit, stop,
   thank or two hyphens (to avoid parsing a signature). It will also stop
   if it encounters too many unrecognised or badly-formatted commands. If
   no commands are successfully handled it will send the help text for
   the server.
   
                              Commands available
                                       
   send bugnumber
          
   send-detail bugnumber
          Requests the transcript for the bug report in question.
          send-detail sends all of the `boring' messages in the
          transcript, such as the various auto-acks (you should usually
          use send as well, as the interesting messages are not sent by
          send-detail).
          
   index [full]
          
   index-summary by-package
          
   index-summary by-number
          Request the full index (with full details, and including done
          and forwarded reports), or the summary sorted by package or by
          number, respectively.
          
   index-maint
          Requests the index page giving the list of maintainers with
          bugs (open and recently-closed) in the tracking sytem.
          
   index maint maintainer
          Requests the index pages of bugs in the system for all
          maintainers containing the string maintainer. The search term
          is a case insensitive substring. The bug index for each
          matching maintainer will be sent in a separate message.
          
   send-unmatched [this|0]
          
   send-unmatched last|-1
          
   send-unmatched old|-2
          Requests logs of messages not matched to a particular bug
          report, for this week, last week and the week before. (Each
          week ends on a Wednesday.)
          
   getinfo filename
          Request a file containing information about package(s) and or
          maintainer(s) - the files available are:
          
        maintainers
               The unified list of packages' maintainers, as used by the
               tracking system. This is derived from information in the
               Packages files, override files and pseudo-packages files.
        override.stable
        override.development
        override.contrib
        override.non-free
        override.experimental
        override.codeword
               Information about the priorities and sections of packages
               and overriding values for the maintainers. This
               information is used by the process which generates the
               Packages files in the FTP archive. Information is
               available for each of the main distribution trees
               available; the current stable and development trees are
               available by their codewords as well as by their release
               status.
        pseudo-packages.description
        pseudo-packages.maintainers
               List of descriptions and maintainers respectively for
               pseudo-packages.
               
   refcards
          Requests that the mailservers' reference card be sent in plain
          ASCII.
          
   help
          Requests that this help document be sent by email in plain
          ASCII.
          
   quit
          
   stop
          
   thank...
          
   --...
          Stops processing at this point of the message. After this you
          may include any text you like, and it will be ignored. You can
          use this to include longer comments than are suitable for #,
          for example for the benefit of human readers of your message
          (reading it via the tracking system logs or due to a CC or
          BCC).
          
   #...
          One-line comment. The # must be at the start of the line.
          
   debug level
          Sets the debugging level to level, which should be a
          nonnegative integer. 0 is no debugging; 1 is usually
          sufficient. The debugging output appears in the transcript. It
          is not likely to be useful to general users of the bug system.
          
   There is a reference card for the mailservers, available via the WWW,
   in bug-mailserver-refcard.txt or by email using the refcard command
   (see above).
   
   If you wish to manipulate bug reports you should use the
   control@bugs.debian.org address, which understands a superset of the
   commands listed above. This is described in another document,
   available on the WWW, in the file bug-maint-mailcontrol.txt, or by
   sending help to control@bugs.
   
   In case you are reading this as a plain text file or via email: an
   HTML version is available via the bug system main contents page
   http://www.debian.org/Bugs/.
   
   Suggestions for future additions are welcome. Please mail
   owner@bugs.debian.org, debian-user@lists.debian.org or
   debian-devel@lists.debian.org.
   
     _________________________________________________________________
                                      
    Ian Jackson / owner@bugs.debian.org. 20th July 1996.