Re: Large binary newreader help please!

From: Ohmster (bigbigkitty_at_invalid.anywhere.com)
Date: 05/03/04 

Date: Sun, 02 May 2004 23:57:47 GMT

Bit Twister <BitTwister@localhost.localdomain> wrote in
news:slrnc9ambd.nqb.BitTwister@wb.home.invalid:

> Saw your other post about going back to windows for the solution.
> Guess when longhorn comes out, you get to spend another 200 dollars. :)

Heh heh, nah, not gonna happen. Having access to these large binary
newsgroups does have it's "advantages". Strictly for "research", of course.
;>)

Actually, I am quite thrilled with Windows XP Professional. Windows 3.1,
Win95, Win98, and Windows ME sucked because of all of the instability of the
OS. With previous versions of Windows, I had to reboot at least once a day,
sometimes more than that. XP runs forever and like *never* (Or hardly ever.)
crashes or becomes unstable, although some programs do crash from time to
time. I never turn off any of my computers, they run 24/7/52. I use auto
monitor off and sleeping hard drives to conserve power and prolong the lives
of the computers. XP and Linux do this quite well. I leave my Linux machine
logged out in run level 3 so that if I am not home and my girl's XP machine
takes a dump, she hops right on the redhat machine and logs in. She then
fires up xwindows in gnome and then runs her asmn program (Al's MSN Messenger
for Linux. This is quite a remarkable program, it is just like the real MSN
Messenger minus the audio/video chat.) She is a chat junkie and has a panic
attack if her machine goes down. Some nice chap in these newsgroups showed me
how to make the monitor blank and power down when it is inactive for 30
minutes in run level 3 and I placed those lines in my rc.local file. I also
put some stuff in there to boot with numlock on, both in xwindows and
console. This makes the monitor sleep when in run level 3:

# Make the monitor power down at console when not in use.
setterm -blank 5 -powersave off -powerdown 30

I also have a 21" monitor for my XP computer, it is nicer than the 17" one
that is on the Linux computer so I tend to actively use the XP computer more
than the linux one, althoug the Linux machine does it's job of being a
server, gateway, firewall all of the time. 21" CRT monitors are pretty cheap
when you know where to shop for them, you can get one for as little as $125,
I will get a larger monitor for the linux computer and maybe a long counter
top to put all three computers on to make it easier to use all of the
computers at once. Get my nice chair with wheels on it and a long runner to
go under the chairs so that I can scoot across to all of the computers. I ssh
into the Linux computer all the time, it is easier than going over to the
Linux machine and I use samba to map all of the important stuff over to the
XP machine. Using Dreamweaver this way is much better than trying to do the
html stuff directly on the Linux machine. There seems to be no really decent
Linux substitute for Dreamweaver. I also use xwin32 to log into the Linux
machine in gnome but using ssh is much faster and easier once you know the
console commands pretty well so I don't do that much anymore.

I will go back to my default bellsouth NNTP server for general newsgroup
reading with slrn. I had to dump slrn for the large binary stuff. I did
manage to pull the large binary group and man, slrn loaded all 2.5M headers
in record time, about a half hour or so. Then the threading and sorting, this
took quite a while, maybe 20 minutes, but the results were pretty
disappointing. I was running it from run level 3 and the headers in the
newsgroup are quite long, had to pan back and forth to read them. The binary
support in slrn is horrible, you get

fileA.rar (1 of 72) part 1/51
fileA.rar (1 of 72) part 2/51
fileA.rar (1 of 72) part 3/51...
fileB.rar (2 of 72) part 1/51
fileB.rar (2 of 72) part 2/51
fileB.rar (2 of 72) part 3/51...

etc., instead of

fileA.rar (1 of 72) 51/51 (all parts grouped in one line)
fileB.rar (2 of 72) 51/51 (all parts grouped in one line)
fileC.rar (3 if 72) 51/51 (all parts grouped in one line)

That was just plain insane. Can you imagine having to manually tag all of
these parts, in sequence, for each file set, and then again for all parts of
the set? And then what happens when the post in done in yenc? Udder madness I
tell you. Not worth the trouble. At least Pan and xnews group complete
binaries for you. slrn is a good text reader though. Pretty neat stuff.

I did find a program that looks quite promising for what I have in mind,
Binary News Reaper 2:

http://www.bnr2.org/

I downloaded the Linux version and installing it was a snap, it comes with a
linux installer. Just set the downloaded 14Mb file to executable and run it
with sh from a term window in xwindows. It will ask for a root passsword
during the install to put it's binary files where they must go. The program
is real sweet looking and just for binary newgroup harvesting. I am loading
the large binary newsgroup now, it is taking a real long time because it is
only downloading the headers as a single connection right at about 400Kbps
average. Not sure why slrn did this part so remarkably fast and other
programs take such a long time with this. This is not a problem because I
have full use of my XP machine for other stuff like playing "Far Cry" right
now. Game is rocking FPS with the most awesome graphics ever. BNR2 will make
8 connections for me when I get the newsgroup loaded and then let the reaping
begin!

I will give you the results of the Binary News Reaper experiment when I get
what I want from the newsgroup. BNR2 is at 90% now on the newsgroup headers,
will see how it goes when it is done downloading the headers, sorting, and
threading.

I am definitly going to use your cool as all hell script for slrn, thank you
so much for all of your terrrific help, Bit Twister. You "Da Man"! 

-- 
~Ohmster

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