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.TH AUBDOM 1 "ADE_APP_TOKEN_RELEASE_DATE_MAN"
.SH NAME
aubdom \- NNTP-server-independent 'aub'
.br
.ne 5
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B aubdom
[
.B \-V
|
.B \-\-version
] [
.B \-v
|
.B \-\-verbose
|
.B \-d
.I level
|
.B \-\-debug=\fIlevel
] [
.B \-h
|
.B \-\-help
] [
.B \-p
|
.B \-\-list\-paths
] [
.B \-f
|
.B \-\-expire\-cache
|
.B \-F 
|
.B \-\-no\-expire\-cache
]
.br
.ne 5
.SH DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents version ADE_APP_TOKEN_RELEASE_ID of 
.B aubdom\fR.
.PP 
.B Aubdom
is a wrapper for the popular Usenet binaries assembler,
.B aub\fR(1). 
It has a few neat extra features, which are described below.
.PP
Publically accessible NNTP servers are generally
short lived. However, there are catalogues of them on the
web, maintained by various good souls.
.PP
.B Aubdom
downloads one of these catalogues and contacts all the servers.
To guard against the unreliability of access to the web catalogue, the 
catalogue is cached locally and only refreshed if it is old and the
new version is of a 'decent' size. 
.PP
Manual filtering of NNTP server catalogues is a very time-consuming
process. 
Since
.B aubdom
contacts all servers on the list (at least the first time you
run it), manual filtering is not required. But this still takes
a long time. To speed things up, after
.B aubdom
has contacted a server which said that all the queried
newsgroups were invalid, the name of the server is cached and not
contacted again.
.br
.ne 5
.SH CONFIGURATION
.B Aubdom 
needs to know which newsgroups to scan for binaries, and where
to save the binaries it assembles.
This information must be provided in the file 
.B ~/.aubdom/config\fR.
This file may contains blank lines, hash-led comments and the
following entries:
.TP 25
.B groups \fInewsgroups\fR
where 
.I newsgroups 
is a space-separated list of newsgroups
.TP
.B dir \fIdirectory\fR
where
.I directory
specifies where to save the assembled binaries.
.br
.ne 5
.SH OPTIONS
.TP 25
.B \-d \fIlevel\fR, \fB\-\-debug=\fIlevel\fR
Determines how verbose
.B aubdom
will be. The message types displayed for the different values of 
.I level
are as follows:
.RS 25
.TP 5
.B 0
internal errors only
.TP
.B 1
internal errors and normal errors 
.TP
.B 2
internal errors, normal errors and warnings
.TP 
.B 3
internal errors, normal errors, warnings and informational messages
.TP 
.B >3
all the above plus application-specific debug messages.
.RE
.TP
.B \-f\fR, \fB\-\-expire\-cache
Force the immediate update of the server cache. This normally 
happens only every 24 hours.
.TP
.B \-F\fR, \fB\-\-no\-expire\-cache
Prevent update of the server cache even if it has expired. This 
can help speed up 
.B aubdom
when the web catalogues are offline.
.TP
.B \-h\fR, \fB\-\-help
Displays a brief usage message.
.TP
.B \-p\fR, \fB\-\-list\-paths
List the compiled-in paths of various files and directories that
.B aubdom
uses.
.TP 
.B \-v\fR, \fB\-\-verbose
Equivalent to
.B \-d 3\fR.
.TP
.B \-V\fR, \fB\-\-version
Print the program's version number and exit.
.br
.ne 5
.SH EXIT STATUS
On success
.B aubdom
returns zero. On failure it returns non-zero and displays a diagnostic
message.
.br
.ne 5
.SH FILES
.TP 25
.B ~/.aubdom/config
User-specified newsgroup list
.TP
.B /var/tmp/aubdom.\fIpid\fB.*
Various temporary files used by
.B aubdom
.br
.ne 5
.SH ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
.TP 25 
.B PATH
.B Aubdom
uses  
.B PATH
to locate
.B aub\fR(1)
and
.B lynx\fR(1).
.TP
.B TMPDIR
Location for any temporary files created. The default is
.B /var/tmp\fR.
.br
.ne 5
.SH EXAMPLES
The following command sequence will get 
.B aubdom 
running for the first time:
.IP
.nf
.fam C
.B mkdir ~/.aubdom
.B cat > ~/.aubdom/config <<EOF
.B groups: alt.binaries.pictures.steam-trains alt.warez
.B dir: ~/downloads
.B EOF
.B mkdir ~/downloads
.B aubdom &
.fam T
.fi
.br
.ne 5
.SH CAVEATS
.B Aubdom
currently supports only one NNTP web catalogue. This is 'Newzbot.' It ought
to support more. If you know of others, then please submit
their URLs, together with Unix command lines to reduce
.B lynx\fR(1)
dumps down to one-per-line server lists.
.PP
Be warned, 
.B aubdom
takes a very very long time to run the first time; possibly days!
.br
.ne 5
.SH SEE ALSO
aub(1), lynx(1)
.br
.ne 5
.SH AUTHOR
ADE_APP_TOKEN_AUTHOR_NAME <ADE_APP_TOKEN_AUTHOR_EMAIL>
.br
.ne 5
.SH COPYRIGHT & DISTRIBUTION POLICY
Copyright (C) 1997-ADE_APP_TOKEN_RELEASE_YEAR ADE_APP_TOKEN_AUTHOR_NAME
.PP
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
.PP
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
.PP
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.