brag

Section: User Commands (1)
Index

NAME

brag - Grab multipart binaries from news server

SYNOPSIS

brag [-s server] [-P port] [-g group] [-l user] [-p pass] [-q] [-u] [-o dir] [-n num] [-c] [-C] [-X] [-a pattern [-a pattern] ...] [-r pattern [-r pattern] ...] [-A file] [-R file] [-t num] [-m max]

brag -L [-s server] [-P port] [-l user] [-p pass]

DESCRIPTION

brag downloads and assembles multipart binaries from an NNTP server. Attachments encoded with uuencode, base64 and yenc are supported.

OPTIONS

-L: Just print a list of groups available at the server
-s server: Set news server to server
-P port: Set TCP port to port
-g group: Set newsgroup to group
-l user: Set user name to user. Setting this option turns NNTP authentication on. The password can be specified using the -p command line option, or using a password file (see later)
-p pass: Set password to pass.
-q: Be silent: do not display progress information
-u: Save subjects together with the assembled binaries. Subject files have the same name as the binary, with .sub extension appended
-o dir: Set output directory to dir
-n num: Start with message number num
-c: Combine parts, even if they are from different newsgroups. Also, an article will be downloaded only once, even if it was crossposted to more than one newsgroups.
-C: Combine parts, even if they are from different news servers.
-X: Download single-part messages, too
-a pattern: Add pattern to the list of accept patterns. See next section on accept/reject patterns.
-r pattern: Add pattern to the list of reject patterns
-A file: Read accept patterns from this file
-R file: Read reject patterns from this file
-t num: Set the number of parallel connections to num. Default: 2. Set it to 4 or higher if you have a fast network connection
-m max: Specify the maximum number of messages to download

ACCEPT AND REJECT PATTERNS

The subjects of the messages to be downloaded are matched against the list of accept and/or reject patterns if specified on the command line or in the accept/reject files (see later). Only articles matching at least one of the accept patterns will be accepted. Similarly, articles matching one of the reject patterns will be rejected.

Match operations are performed as in csh(1). For example, to accept all files with extension mp5, specify

-a '*.mp5*'

on the command line. Note the quotes (we do not want the shell to process the pattern) and the second "*" (we are matching against subject lines, not file names).

FILES

DOWNLOADED FILES

Grabbed files are collected in ~/.brag/<server>/<group>/finished (if not specified otherwise using the -o command line option). If combining parts from multiple servers ("-C" option), the results are collected in ~/.brag/all-servers/<group>/finished.

WORK FILES

Work files are kept in ~/.brag/<server>/<group>/unfinished or in ~/.brag/all-servers/<group>/unfinished if the "-C" option is used. It is recommended to regularly purge these directories by removing old files and subdirectories. What "old" means depends on the newsgroup's traffic; one week can be a good approximation.

PASSWORD FILES

Passwords can be specified on the command line, or for extra security, in password files. Each server can have its own password file, named ~/.brag/<server>/passwd. The format of these files is:

user1:password1

user2:password2

...

Passwords are not encoded. Take care of the file ownership and permissions.

ACCEPT AND REJECT FILES

If a file called accept is present in ~/.brag/<server>/<group>, its lines are added to the list of accept patterns. Empty ones and comments starting with "#" are ignored. Similarly, the contents of the file named reject will be added to the list of reject patterns.

EXIT CODES

0: Success
1: Usage errors
2: Network errors
3: File system errors

ENVIRONMENT

If not specified on the command line, the environment variable NNTPSERVER identifies the server, while NNTPGROUP the group to read the news from.

DEPENDENCIES

brag is written in Tcl; you need tclsh(1) version 8.0 or later. For the actual decoding of downloaded parts uudeview(1) is used ( http://www.fpx.de/fp/Software/UUDeview).

AUTHOR

Akos Polster (akos@pipacs.com) and many others - see README for the complete list of contributors.

Index

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

OPTIONS

ACCEPT AND REJECT PATTERNS

FILES

DOWNLOADED FILES
WORK FILES
PASSWORD FILES
ACCEPT AND REJECT FILES

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