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 n] [-b break] [-m max]
or
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 or 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 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
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 dowloaded parts uudeview(1)
(http://www.fpx.de/fp/Software/UUDeview) is used.
AUTHOR
Akos Polster (akos@pipacs.com) and many others - see README for the
complete list of contributors.
brag(1)