"Surfing" Publicly Accessible Newsservers

From: Alan Connor (zzzzzz_at_xxx.yyy)
Date: 05/28/04 

Date: Fri, 28 May 2004 04:07:26 GMT

news.newusers.questions (moderated) apparently isn't going to post
this, so I'll do it here :-)

I stumbled across this the other day, and thought others might like
to take a look at it:

http://tinyurl.com/34js7

It's a list of over 700 free newsservers that you can read from.
(if they are not encrypted or in a language you don't speak :-).

You can also post to an amazing percentage of them, but shouldn't,
usually. Be respectful....Most of these are NOT Usenet servers.

What do you do with this information? Enter:

telnet server_name_or_IP 119

You'll get something like this in response:

200 secnews.netscape.com Netscape-Collabra/3.52 03615 NNRP ready (posting ok).

next, check and see what newsgroups it has, enter:

list

The list could be very long, but usually isn't for these kind of servers.
To save the output to a file in Linux/Unix, do:

telnet server_name_or_IP 119 | tee -a filename

That way you'll see it on the screen and be able to examine what you
missed in a long list up with a pager like less.

If you want to see how many articles there are in a specific group,
and there numbers, enter:

That way you'll see it on the screen and be able to examine what you
missed in a long list up with a pager like less. DOS must have a
similar command.

If you want to see how many articles there are in a specific group,
and there numbers, enter:

group group_name

Here, I've entered the group name of a newsgroup called
"uned.estudios.master.infoedu" on a spanish language newsserver:

group uned.estudios.master.infoedu
211 3 302 304 uned.estudios.master.infoedu

The 211 is a server response code, and the group has three articles,
numbered 302, 303, and 304.

Now I enter:

article 303

And the whole article is downloaded and displayed on the screen.
(and sent to the capture file, if used)

Now, to gracefully log off the server, you just enter:

quit

If you have any problems, hit Ctrl-] (hold down Ctrl and hit ])
and this will bring up the telnet prompt. Then enter:

quit

The "help" command can also be useful.

For those who want to learn more, google rfc977.

This is how your newsreader works.

AC 

-- 
It's all Geek to me.

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