🚀 go-pugleaf

Dave Fitch (davidf@syd.csa.com.au) wrote:
: Hi everyone, 2 questions (Linux 1.2.13, XFree86 3.1.2):

: How can I have my computer
: automatically call up my ISP once a day (or however often) and download
: mail to /var/spool/mail and news (only in groups i've subscribed to)
: to /var/spool/news (or wherever it goes)??

uucp is the answer.  It is really the best answer by a long way.

: I've read in one of the
: howtos that it can be done with a uucp connection, but I would prefer
: to use my current SLIP connection.

You can do this (but it's long, complicated, nasty, prone to errors,
and I can't help you with it):

-	Create a cron job that establishes your SLIP/PPP connection
	at some pre-specified time.

-	run 'popclient' (there is a man page for that) just after
	the connection is running.

-	run 'suck' to retrieve the news from the nntp server at
	about the same time you start popclient.  You have to
	fetch the source code to suck from the net and compile
	it, and then bash it in to shape.

-	After suck completes (figure that out how you will, perhaps
	run suck in a script that writes a file in /tmp when it is
	done), kill the dip/pppd process and shut down the connection.

Overall, it's much slower and more time consuming because you
will probably be spending time on line doing nothing, and suck
does not bring down compressed news, while uucp does.

: 2) What (and where) are other X based mail and newsreaders?? (apart
: from XFmail)

TkMail is an OK mail reader.  I use it.

There is a program called tknews, and another called nn-tk, and another
called xrn, but I haven't had much success with either of them.

Del
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Del                            | del@babel.matra.com.au
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