Medusa is software that allows you to quickly search your system for
particular types of files, using an index.

CAVEATS
-------

Medusa is still in its early stages.  It is not yet feature complete,
and there are known bugs, some of which can take up lots of
unnecessary resources on your machine.

Please do not use this code on an afs system or over nfs volumes; the
file permissions are not compatible with medusa.  Running
medusa on these systems is completely insecure.


HOW TO BUILD MEDUSA
--------------------

To make and install medusa, do the following from within
the medusa source directory:

./configure 
make 
make install 
(do the last step as root if you are installing to a
place where you do not have write permission)


RUNNING MEDUSA ON YOUR SYSTEM
-----------------------------

Since medusa does fast searches from an index, the first step in
running medusa is to index your machine.  Indexing your machine will
likely take 20-40 minutes, and will require many of your machines'
resources during this time.  When medusa 1.0 is released, the indexing
process will happen late at night to minimize disruption of your other
tasks.  You should have at least 64, and preferably at least 96 megs
of RAM to run the indexer.  Removable media will also be indexed by
medusa, so remove CDs, zip drives, and floppies before indexing.

Medusa's indexes will be created in proportion to the amount of data
on your hard drive.  In general the size of the indexes will be
between 0.25-5% of the size of all of the data on your computer, so be
sure you have enough free space to make the indexes before running
medusa.

After the indexer is finished, it will print a message to stdout,
telling you that this is the case.


To start the indexing process, as root run

medusa-indexd

Let it keep running, and wait for it to
finish indexing.  

When the indexer is completed you should start the medusa search
service.

As root, run

medusa-searchd

After both the indexer is completed and the search service
has begun, you can perform searches.

This can be done by using the "search" feature in nautilus,
or by using the command line testing tool, called "msearch"

For documentation about the command line tool, see the file
docs/how_to_use_msearch.  It is possible that this file is slightly
out of date.

REPORTING BUGS
--------------

Medusa bugs can be reported using the eazel bug report tool, which is
located at bugzilla.eazel.com.  Report bugs for the "medusa"
component.

Bug reports that occur during the use of nautilus should be reported
using the nautilus bug report tool if possible, but can also be
reported using bugzilla.

You can send email regarding medusa to medusa-list@lists.eazel.com, or
to rebecka@eazel.com.










