Thinking outside the box

I just had an interesting call that posed an interesting question, and I
though I would share it with you.

The question: How do I allow my server to be searched using keywords or
file names from the Internet?

Sounds real easy at first glance - huh?

The particulars:

It must be a web page based interface.
It must be supported by any browser that can do forms.
It must search across multiple DEFINED directories (obviously, they don't
want visitors to the root) by key word or file name.

The catch:

Free, and easy for a novice to maintain.

Yikes ! A sharp downhill off-camber turn in the rain!

Any ideas or suggestions pop to mind?

I know that I can write these folks a script for . . . well, a few more
bucks than they have . . . but I "feel" a simple solution is out there for
free that I'm just not aware of.

It doesn't need to be fancy at all - just cheap and stable. These folks are
a NFP that's doing good work, I'd like be able to help and say it came from
us (the basics list).

On a parting note, I'll tell you what little I know about the server they
want to search:

It's a pretty substantial Pentium box running the newest Red Hat with
Apache and PHP (3 I'm pretty sure) and an older cgiemail . . . that is
about all I know except . . . 

I'm reasonably confident that I can own to the root any time I would like
>;-)

TIA,
Fuzzy.
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Captain F.M. O'Lary
webmaster(at)canopy.net
If we aren't supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?
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