If the archive for your mailing list is world-readable, then the easiest way to do this is to just use an existing search engine (such as google) to do the work for you. Here is an example of how you can do this using IU's search engine.

If you have a mailman list named foobar, then the top level url to access the list is:

http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/foobar

You can edit this page from the admin interface for the list at:

http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/admin/foobar

by just selecting 'Edit the HTML for the public list pages' and then 'General list information page'. You will have to manually edit this html code to insert the following code to add a search box:

     <form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/search">

     <input type="text"   name="q" size="30" maxlength="255" value="">
     <input type="submit" value="Google Search">
     <input type="hidden"  name="sitesearch" value="mailman.cs.indiana.edu/pipermail/LISTNAME">

     </form>

where you just need to replace LISTNAME with the name of your list.

When you are done editing the html, just click on the Submit Changes button to submit your changes.

Once you have done this, you should be able to go to the list information page at:

http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/LISTNAME

and have the search option. Please note, however, that there is sure to be some lag between when a message is posted and when it shows up on the external search engine. This lag could easily be several days or more.

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