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.TH "NGLISTER" "1" "12 February 2003" "John Goerzen" "NGLister Manual"

.SH NAME
NGLister \- Tool to download newsgroup information from news servers
.SH SYNOPSIS

\fBnglister\fR [ \fB-u \fIusername\fB\fR ] [ \fB-p \fIpassword\fB\fR ] [ \fB-P \fIport\fB\fR ] \fB\fIhostname\fB\fR \fB\fIfilename\fB\fR


\fBnglister\fR \fB-h\fR | \fB--help\fR

.SH "DESCRIPTION"
.PP
\fBNGLister\fR 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 \fBNGLister\fR will send it to standard output.
.PP
You can write the information to a file by appending:
.PP
\fB> \fIfilename\fB\fR
.PP
to the end of your command-line.
.SH "INSTALLATION"
.PP
To install \fBNGLister\fR, you will need a current version of
Python <URL:http://www.python.org/>.
\fBNGLister\fR requires only one other piece of software:
Optik.  You can find it at
 <URL:http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/optik/Optik-1.3.tar.gz>.
.PP
To install, run this command as root: \fBpython setup.py install\fR
.SH "OPTIONS"
.TP
\fB-u \fIusername\fB\fR
Specifies the user name to use for logging into
the server.  Use this only if your server requires authentication.
.TP
\fB-p \fIpassword\fB\fR
Specifies the password to use for logging into
the server.  Use this only if your server requires a password.
.TP
\fB-P \fIport\fB\fR
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.
.TP
\fB\fIhostname\fB\fR
Specifies the name of the NNTP server.
.TP
\fB\fIfilename\fB\fR
Specifies the name of the data to retrieve
from the remote NNTP server.  Most people will use
\fIactive\fR or
\fInewsgroups\fR here.  The set of files
supported varies from one server to the next.  Please
note that this parameter does \fBnot\fR
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.
.RS
.TP 0.2i
\(bu
\fIactive\fR lists
all newsgroups and describes their numbering.
.TP 0.2i
\(bu
\fInewsgroups\fR 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.
.TP 0.2i
\(bu
\fIactive.times\fR describes
how recently each newsgroup has seen activity.
.TP 0.2i
\(bu
\fImotd\fR shows the server's
"Message Of The Day" -- that is, current news about the
server.
.RE
.TP
\fB-h\fR
.TP
\fB--help\fR
Displays brief usage help.
.SH "CONFORMING TO"
.TP 0.2i
\(bu
Network News Transport Protocol as specified in RFC 977
.TP 0.2i
\(bu
Common NNTP Extensions as specified in RFC 2980
.TP 0.2i
\(bu
Standard Python 2.2.1 as implemented on POSIX-compliant systems.
.SH "COPYRIGHT"
.PP
\fBNGLister\fR and this manual, are Copyright (C) 2003 John Goerzen.
.PP
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.
.PP
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.
.PP
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
.SH "AUTHOR"
.PP
\fBNGLister\fR 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.
.PP
\fBNGLister\fR 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>.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.PP
\fBslrn\fR(1),
\fBpython\fR(1)