brag - Grab multipart binaries from news server
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 n] [-b break] [-m max]
or
brag -L [-s server] [-P port] [-l user] [-p pass]
brag downloads and assembles multipart binaries from an NNTP server.
Attachments encoded with uuencode, Base64 or yenc are supported.
- -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 passwod 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
added
- -k
- Keep original file names when possible, only rename when
necessary to avoid a collission with existing files
- -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
- Process 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 n
- Use n number of parallel connections to the server.
Default: 2. Set to 4 or more if you have a high speed network
connection
- -b break
- Specify "break factor": the number of
milliseconds to wait between retrieving lines from the server. Useful to
share a low-speed connection with other applications
- -m max
- Specify the maximum number of messages to download
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).
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 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.
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.
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.
- 0
- Success
- 1
- Usage errors
- 2
- Network errors
- 3
- File system errors
If not specified on the command line, the environment variable
NNTPSERVER
identifies the server, while
NNTPGROUP the group to read the news from.
brag is written in Tcl; you need
tclsh(1) version 8.0 or later.
For the actual decoding of dowloaded parts
uudeview(1)
(
http://www.fpx.de/fp/Software/UUDeview) is used.
Akos Polster (
[email protected]) and many others - see README for the complete
list of contributors.