> Is there an easier way to make back-ups of list archives than by individually
> ordering from the get index command?
                                    ^^^^

I apparently missed this earlier. If you send an  INDEX LISTNAME
command, you will get back a list of your entire weekly or monthly
archives (notebooks)  which looks like this:

* Archive files for the LISTNAME list at DOMAIN.COM
* (weekly logs)
*
* filename      filetype        GET PUT size (bytes) date       time
* --------      --------        --- --- ------------ ---------- --------
  LISTNAME      LOG9610         LOG OWN    1,103,487 1998-11-13 09:29:58
  LISTNAME      LOG9611         LOG OWN       61,652 1998-11-13 09:33:30
  LISTNAME      LOG9611A        LOG OWN      173,557 1998-11-13 09:38:02
  LISTNAME      LOG9611B        LOG OWN      282,658 1998-11-13 09:39:30
  LISTNAME      LOG9611C        LOG OWN      251,856 1998-11-13 09:41:52
  LISTNAME      LOG9611D        LOG OWN      355,032 1998-11-13 10:06:36

You then send  GET LISTNAME LOGxxxxxx  to get your monthly
or weekly log. This gets a whole week/month instead of the "by-posting"
from an index listing.