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1992-12-20
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SLURP - An advanced passive NNTP client
=======================================
Version 1.03
Written by Stephen Hebditch
(C) 1992 TQM Communications
------
Slurp is an advanced passive NNTP client for UNIX. It will connect to a
remote NNTP server and retrieve articles in a specified set of Usenet
newsgroups that have arrived after a particular date (typically the
last time it was invoked) for processing by your local news system.
The Feature List.
- No restriction on the number of newsgroups that can be retrieved in a
session. The client does a series of NEWNEWS requests if necessary to
build up a list of articles which need to be retrieved from the
server.
- Compatible with C News and INN.
- Greatly enhanced efficiency over nntpxfer. Large batches of articles
are piped to rnews rather than individual articles, massively
reducing the fork/exec overhead.
- Easy configuration.
slurp.sys defines which groups you wish to get from which server in a
similar way to the normal C News sys file, e.g.
news.demon.co.uk:demon.*,!demon.msdos.announce,uk.*,\
!uk.net.maps/world,uk
slurp.tim contains the time to be used for the NEWNEWS request at
each server.
The newsgroups list, start time and distributions can be overridden
on the command line. There are also command line settings to enable
debugging output, prevent writing the time for the next NEWNEWS to
slurp.tim and use the local time for the next NEWNEWS rather than the
remote time.
- No lost articles due to unsynchronised clocks. By default, the time
for the next NEWNEWS is set by a call to the tcp time service on the
remote machine. This fixes a problem in nntpxfer where articles could
be missed if the clock on the server is behind that on the client.
- Faster article throughput. If configured to do so, slurp stacks up
the next article request before the current article is received,
decreasing the total article transfer time by around 30%. This is
most of use for people retrieving news over a dialup slip/ppp
connection.
- Logging to syslog of the number of new, missing and duplicate
articles at the end of a session plus, if required, the transfer
speed of the article fetching stage.
- Independent of the NNTP 1.5.11 code.
Slurp was written in ANSI C under Dell's SVR4/386.
CONTENTS
--------
In this archive you should have the following files:-
Makefile The Makefile (yes, really!)
README What you're reading now
articles.c Routines for reading articles and batching them up
conf.h Compilation configuration file
fakesyslog.c Fake version of syslog for those without
fakesyslog.h Definitions needed for the above
history.c Routines to open and interrogate the news history file
misc.c Miscellaneous routines
newnews.c Routines to retrieve new message ids from the server
nntp.h Definitions of nntp response codes
slurp.1 Slurp manual page
slurp.c Main program
slurp.h Definitions used by everything
slurp.sys Configuration file for groups to take from a server
slurp.tim Configuration file for newnews time at each server
sockets.c Server interface routines
space.c Determines space available on news disk
time.c Retrieves current time at remote server
COMPILATION AND INSTALLATION
----------------------------
1. Edit conf.h to reflect your reflect your local configuration. This
file contains full details about each item that you may need to change.
2. Edit Makefile. If you have not installed dbz.h in /usr/include then
you will need to add -Ipathname to CFLAGS so that the compiler does a
search of the directory where it can be found. LIBS will need to
contain entries to pick up the dbz library and possibly the sockets
library depending on your system. If you don't have syslog then you
will need to uncomment the FAKESRC and FAKEOBJ lines.
3. Type 'make' and hopefully you will get the slurp executable.
4. Copy slurp to wherever it is that you store your news binaries.
5. Copy slurp.sys and slurp.tim to whichever location you selected for
them in conf.h.
6. Copy the manual page to wherever you keep your manual pages.
QUICK START
-----------
The slurp manual page contains full details on how to operate slurp. As
a quick start all you need to do is:-
1. Edit slurp.sys to set the hostname of the server you wish to connect
to for retrieving articles and the groups you wish to receive.
2. Edit slurp.tim with the hostname of the server and a time a couple
of days previously, say.
3. Run 'slurp -s <hostname>' and sit back while the articles flood into
your local news system.
CONDITIONS OF USE
-----------------
The Slurp package and individual code as detailed is Copyright (C) 1992
TQM Communications, BCM Box 225, London, WC1N 3XX. All rights reserved.
This package may be freely distributed provided the following
conditions are met. The files detailed in the contents section of this
file must all be included. No charge, other than basic online charges
or media costs, may be levied. You are permitted to make alterations to
the code for your own personal use, but please feed back any bug fixes
or enhancements to us so they may be included in any future releases.
DISCLAIMER
----------
TQM Communications makes no warranty of any kind in respect to this
documentation and the software described. The user assumes any risk as
to the quality and performance of this product. In no event will TQM
Communications be liable for direct, indirect, incidental or
consequential damages arising from any defect in the performance and
use of this product.
All trademarks acknowledged.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
----------------
The original inspiration for slurp came from nntpxfer, written by Brian
Kantor. The article batching code is inspired by batch.c in the NNTP
1.5.11 package, written by Stan Barber and 'based on work by Henry
Spencer and Geoff Collyer'. The fakesyslog code is taken from the NNTP
1.5.11 package where it is credited to John Robert LoVerso and Paul
McKenny. The space code to determine whether there is enough space on
the news disk for a new batch is taken from the NNTP 1.5.11 package
where it is credited to Stan Barber, Tad Guy, Chris Jepeway and Tom
Lane. Regular expression expansion courtesy of Nick Lai. Network
knowledge thanks to W. Richard Stevens, author of the most readable
UNIX books around. Bug fixing and porting thanks to Tim Rylance and
Pete Bentley.
CONTACT INFORMATION
-------------------
All comments, bug reports, bug fixes, etc. should be sent to
steveh@orbital.demon.co.uk.
HISTORY
-------
V1.00 - 2 December 1992
Initial release.
V1.01 - 6 December 1992
Fixed some problems with null-dereferencing of nn_distributions.
New slurp.tim not written if maximum number of messages that can
be transferred is hit.
When debugging switched on, print line being sent to server before
it is sent rather than after.
Added documentation on return codes.
V1.02 - 7 December 1992
Corrected openlog calls so correct 4.2/4.3 version of syslog is
used.
V1.03 - 19 December 1992
Added extra compilation configuration option for machines that
don't have strerror().
If a temporary file was opened for reading a long article into
which wouldn't fit in memory, then it was flushed at the end of
read_article. Unfortunately, the test wasn't done correctly so if a
long article was once read in, it would keep flushing the now
invalid file descriptor on future calls. Fixed by removing this
altogether as the subsequent rewind would do the job anyway.
Open syslog *before* we start doing things that might want to write
to it... Connected, articles retrieved and speed messages logged
as LOG_INFO instead of the previously wrong LOG_NOTICE.
When mallocing space for the article id tree, only malloc enough
room for the article id and left/right node pointers, not the whole
structure, saving oodles of memory.
Corrected the test for the maximum size of a NEWNEWS request line.
Various minor tidy-ups.
Added manual page and made various improvements to the
documentation.
---- END OF DOCUMENTATION