Rael's Binary Grabber v1.2

WHAT IS IT?

The purpose of this program is to automate the downloading of binary
attachments from UseNet Newsgroups.  Given a group name, this program
will connect to a news server, read all messages in that group and 
extract any binary attachments included in any of those messages
(including multipart attachments).  This program does not require any
keyboard interaction and could be fairly easily scheduled to run from
crond.

WARRANTY

These is no warranty, expressed or implied, for the suitability of
this program for any particular purpose.  By using this program you
take full responsibility for any repercussions of your use of it,
including but not limited to loss of income, property, women, friends,
and life.

HOW TO COMPILE

To compile this program, you need to be on a system that uses the GNU
C++ Compiler (or that has some other ANSI C++ compliant compiler linked
to run as the 'gcc' executable).  You also need to have either curses or
ncurses installed.

Makefiles are included for Linux and Solaris systems.  The attached
configure script does nothing more than try to figure out if you're 
running one of these two OS'es and create a link from one of them to
Makefile if you are.  The Linux makefile assumes you have ncurses
installed, the Solaris that you have curses itself.

If some of this isn't true (i.e. if you're running some other variant
of UNIX or if your curses is called something different), you're on
your own to compile.

Otherwise:
		configure
		make 

"make install" will try to move the program binary (bgrab) to 
/usr/local/bin and make it root/root/755.

HOW TO RUN

You'd probably want to create a special directory and then run this
program from within that directory.  The program creates the following
files:

	groupname	A file named the same name as the group
			it's reading.  This is used to store the
			database of message ID's of the messages
			that have already been read, so that they
			aren't read again.

	*.uue		These files store Unix-to-Unix encoded 
			message *parts*.  That is to say, you will
			only see these files if the group you're
			reading contained only parts of a large
			multi-part post.  The reader saves the parts
			that are there, but since the remaining parts
			are never found, it never gets around to
			completing that particular attachment and
			removing the "part" files.  These should 
			be manually removed every few days.

Additionally, of course, the reader will output any attachments it
does manage to decode into the current directory.

The program does not do any actual decoding itself, by the way, but
in fact forks off uudecode and mmencode processes.  If you do not
have those utilities installed, you will not be able to decode
Unix-to-Unix encoded files or MIME encoded files, respectively.

By default, Binary Grabber tries to access "news" as its news
server.  If you do not have your DNS configured so that this
actually resolves to your news server, you must set the environment
variable NNTPSERVER to your valid news server's name.

Otherwise, type "bgrab" without any command line arguments to see
the correct syntax for running the program.

HOW TO CONTACT ME

Generally speaking, I do not have time to provide active support
for this program.  I am a college student taking a full load of
courses and I wrote this program mainly as an experiment.  For this
reason I do not specify an E-mail address anywhere in the distribution
or on the web page.  

Some of you have found my E-mail address on your own, using E-mail
search engines or whatnot.  I don't have a problem with this, and
I'll generally reply to you within a few hours if you do E-mail me.
But the truth is that I'll very rarely be able to solve whatever
problem it is you need to complain about within any reasonable
amount of time.  I apologize for this, but can't help it.

