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>.