Ubuntu Manpage: NGLister - Tool to download newsgroup information from news servers

NAME

       NGLister - Tool to download newsgroup information from news servers

SYNOPSIS

       nglister [ -u username ] [ -p password ] [ -P port ] hostname filename

       nglister -h | --help

DESCRIPTION

       NGLister  is  a  tool  to  download  information  about groups and other information available on an NNTP
       (Usenet news) server.  It is designed to be fast and simple; just specify the server and the  information
       you want, and NGLister will send it to standard output.

       You can write the information to a file by appending:

       > filename

       to the end of your command-line.

INSTALLATION

       To  install  NGLister,  you will need a current version of Python <URL:http://www.python.org/>.  NGLister
       requires only one other piece of software: Optik.  You can find it at
        <URL:http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/optik/Optik-1.3.tar.gz>.

       To install, run this command as root: python setup.py install

OPTIONS

-u username
Specifies the user name to use for logging into the server. Use this only if your server requires
authentication.

-p password
Specifies the password to use for logging into the server. Use this only if your server requires
a password.

-P port
Specifies the numeric port to use when connecting. Most servers listen on port 119, the default
NNTP port, so that value is used by the default. This option will only be needed rarely.

hostname
Specifies the name of the NNTP server.

filename
Specifies the name of the data to retrieve from the remote NNTP server. Most people will use
active or newsgroups here. The set of files supported varies from one server to the next. Please
note that this parameter does not denote an output filename or even a real filename; just the type
of information you want from the server. Here is a list of commonly-supported information types.
Additional items are specified in RFC2980 <URL:http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2980.txt> with the LIST
command.

• active lists all newsgroups and describes their numbering.

• newsgroups lists the newsgroup descriptions. Note that most servers do not carry descriptions
for all groups, and the groups that lack a description will not be listed here at all.

• active.times describes how recently each newsgroup has seen activity.

• motd shows the server's "Message Of The Day" -- that is, current news about the server.

-h

--help Displays brief usage help.

CONFORMING TO

       • Network News Transport Protocol as specified in RFC 977

       • Common NNTP Extensions as specified in RFC 2980

       • Standard Python 2.2.1 as implemented on POSIX-compliant systems.

COPYRIGHT

       NGLister and this manual, are Copyright (C) 2003 John Goerzen.

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify  it  under  the  terms  of  the  GNU
       General  Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
       (at your option) any later version.

       This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY  WARRANTY;  without  even
       the  implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public
       License for more details.

       You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not,  write
       to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307 USA

AUTHOR

       NGLister   its   libraries,   documentation,  and  all  included  files,  was  written  by  John  Goerzen
       <jgoerzen@complete.org> and copyright is held as stated in the COPYRIGHT section.

       NGLister may be downloaded from the Subversion  repository  <URL:http://svn.complete.org/>  or  from  the
       Debian package page <URL:http://packages.debian.org/unstable/news/nglister.html>.