ubh - The Usenet Binary Harvester README ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1.0 Introduction ubh - the Usenet Binary Harvester - is a GPL'ed Perl console application which automatically discovers, downloads, and decodes single-part and multi-part Usenet binaries. Automatically assembles multi-part binaries. Provides searching via Perl regular expression syntax. Also provides a pre-selection capability whereby the user can interactively choose which binaries to download. Uses a standard .newsrc file to control which groups and articles to process. Runs anywhere Perl runs. Tested under Unix-based Perl and Active Perl on Win32 platforms. Requires Net::NNTP and News::Newsrc (which itself requires Set::IntSpan). Send comments, questions, suggestions, and bug reports to gerard@users.sourceforge.net. 2.0 Requirements ubh runs anywhere Perl runs. You will need the following modules on your system: Net::NNTP (part of the libnet distribution) News::Newsrc Set::IntSpan (not used directly, required by News::Newsrc) 3.0 Getting Started Here is a set of steps to get ubh up and running: 1. Un-zip/un-tar the distribution. 2. Decide which newsgroups you wish to process. In the top-level ubh directory, create a text file called ".newsrc" (just "newsrc" on Windows systems). List the groups you wish to process, one per line, followed by a colon. For example - alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.1990s: alt.binaries.pictures.autos: 3. Create a text file called ".ubhrc" (just "ubhrc" on Windows systems). Specify the name of your news server. If your server requires an account name and a password, you must specify these. Make sure the NEWSRCNAME matches the file name you used in the previous step. NNTPSERVER = news NEWSRCNAME = .newsrc DATADIR = data MULTI_EXT = (?i)asf|avi|gif|jpg|mov|mpg|rm SINGLE_EXT = (?i)asf|avi|gif|jpg|mov|mpg|rm # ACCOUNT = fred # PASSWORD = flint+stone 4. Make the top-level ubh directory be your current working directory. Invoke the ubh program Windows: perl ubh.pl Unix: ./ubh