Hi, @paddylandau 
You wrote:
Indeed it is! Actually, I just did an experiment of cloning the repository to my local machine and therefore I can tell now the size of it: the archive is 16 GB in size when including the hidden “.git” directory (and about 12.8 GB in size when excluding that directory):
$ mkdir -pv ~/git/github/Ubuntu-Community-Team
$ cd ~/git/github/Ubuntu-Community-Team
$ git clone https://github.com/Ubuntu-Community-Team/Ubuntu-Forums-Archive.git
Cloning into 'Ubuntu-Forums-Archive'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 1963243, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (51/51), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (4/4), done.
remote: Total 1963243 (delta 49), reused 47 (delta 47), pack-reused 1963192 (from 3)
Receiving objects: 100% (1963243/1963243), 2.88 GiB | 5.31 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (15573/15573), done.
$ du -sh Ubuntu-Forums-Archive/
16G Ubuntu-Forums-Archive/
$ du -sh Ubuntu-Forums-Archive/.git/
3,2G Ubuntu-Forums-Archive/.git/
You’ve asked:
Well, I believe there are at least two ways to do that. The first way - and as I’ve just cloned the repository - is to search my local machine. I guessed that the message threads numeric identifiers (2463162 , 2479483) would be part of the file names… and I was right! So, here I’m using the “locate” tool to find files that contain those filenames. As you can see below, after having cloned the repository, I begin with updating the “locate” database (using the sudo updatedb command) and then I use locate to find those posts:
$ sudo updatedb
$ locate 2463162
/home/ricmarques/git/github/Ubuntu-Community-Team/Ubuntu-Forums-Archive/Security/thread_2463162_Could_we_create_an_immutable_incremental_backup_sy.md
$ locate 2479483
/home/ricmarques/git/github/Ubuntu-Community-Team/Ubuntu-Forums-Archive/General_Help/thread_2479483_Jammy_Why_some_package_do_not_get_updated.md
There would usually be an alternative way to search, using the Web interface of GitHub and specifically the “code search” feature of GitHub. However:
1 - I believe that requires creating a (free or paid) account in GitHub to use that “search code” feature of the web interface of GitHub, while being logged in with your GitHub account.
2 - However, even if you that, you’ll find (as I’ve also did, just now) that the content in “Ubuntu-Community-Team/Ubuntu-Forums-Archive cannot be searched because it is too large”:
https://github.com/search?q=repo%3AUbuntu-Community-Team%2FUbuntu-Forums-Archive%202463162&type=code
I hope this helps, at least a bit 