PREFACE
=======
Original Author - Tim Smith (address unknown)
Maintainers - 
March 1995 - Sven Goldt (address unknown)
July 1995  - Robert A. Yetman (bobyetman@sucknews.org)

Current Maintainer - bobyetman@sucknews.org

LOCATION
========
visit http://www.sucknews.org/index.html
to download the latest version or view the README file.

FTP Sites:
Site1	     = sunsite.unc.edu
Path1        = /pub/Linux/system/news/transport
File1        = suck-4.3.2.tar.gz

INTRODUCTION
============
The primary use for suck is to feed a local NNTP server, without the
remote NNTP feeding you articles.  It is designed for a small, partial
news feed.  It is NOT designed to feed 10,000 groups and 3 Gigs of articles
a day.

This package contains software for copying news from an NNTP server to your
local machine, and copying replies back up to an NNTP server.  It works
with most standard NNTP servers, including INN, CNEWS, DNEWS, and typhoon.

The suck/rpost combination allows you to run your own  site, controlling
where you get your news, and where you post outgoing articles.  Suck/rpost
use only standard NNTP commands that are used by your favorite news reader
(tin, xvnews, strn) such as POST and ARTICLE.  If you can use tin or xvnews
against a NNTP site, than you can use Suck/Rpost.  

suck			Pull a small newsfeed from an NNTP server

lpost			Gives one article fetched by suck to the local server.

rpost			Posts article(s) to a remote NNTP server

testhost        	Check to see what commands your host recognizes or
			get the active or new list.

lmove 			put articles in news/group/number format.

MAJOR CHANGES FROM 4.3.1 -> 4.3.2

* - Wherever a hostname is specified on the command line, the form Host:Port
may be used to specify a port number.  If this form is used, the -N port
option will be ignored.  

* - various bug/buffer overflow conditions fixed, thanks to the Debian folks.

suck - Handle SIGINT in addition to SIGTERM

configure - added -with-perl-exe to allow specification of the path to the
	perl exe, for use on systems with multiple perl installs.

testhost  - added -Q option to allow specification of userid/passwd for
	authentication via environment variables.

LICENSING INFO
==============
Suck is Public Domain, feel free to make any changes you want, just don't
blame me when they break.

MAILING LIST!
=============
There are two mailing lists for suck:

suck-news@lists.sucknews.org & suck-announce@lists.sucknews.org

To subscribe, send a blank e-mail to:
suck-news-subscribe@lists.sucknews.org
suck-announce-subscribe@lists.sucknews.org 

NOTES:
======
Suck will not work with obsolete NNTP servers that can't handle the xhdr
command.

This code assumes an ANSI-compliant compiler, it will NOT work with old
compilers which don't accept function prototypes.

The Makefile assumes you are using GNU make, other makes may or may not work.

If your remote INN server slows drastically after 100 messages are downloaded,
and they are using INN 1.5.1 or newer, chances are they compiled INN with 
"LIKE_PULLERS" set to DONT, which causes INN to put a small sleep before each message.  
Talk to the SA for the system and see if they'll compile with "DO".  Chances
are they didn't even know this option existed.

An interesting program for processing the killfile log and forcing suck to
download some of the articles in it can be found at:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jvanerp/suckmore.html

Is suck Y2K compliant?  As far as I can make it yes.   The only program that uses
dates is testhost, and the date is sent to the remote NNTP host for the NEWGRP
command.  I don't do any date calculations.   Once servers take an 8 digit 
date (right now its YYMMDD), I'll update testhost.

HOW-TO-USE
==========
0.  Run ./configure --help to see the options, especially the ones listed
        last (--with-inn-lib && with-inn-include)
1.  run ./configure
    If it can't find your Inn libraries/includes, make sure you use the 
	--with-inn-lib=path & --with-inn-include=path options
2. Check over the Makefile, make sure it found everything, if not fix it.
    If your flatfile history file is not at /usr/news/db/history, 
	you'll need to use the -HF option, to tell suck where it is.
    If you're using Inn 2.3 or newer, make sure the Makefile knows
	where your libinn.a and includes are, otherwise, the dedupe
	function won't work.  See step #4.  Typically, these are in
	the source tree.  If you don't have the source, get it,
	see below.
3.  If you're using SSL edit the Makefile step #nr7.
4.  Make it.  (make , make install)
    If you are having problems compiling suck, look at the Makefile,
	there are comments in there for the various common problems
	I see.   
5.  READ THE MAN PAGES.
6.  Create a sucknewsrc - which groups to download (see suck man pg).
	If you have INND/CNEWS/DNEWS/PNEWS already running, then
	just use 'suck remotehost -A -hl localhost', and the sucknewsrc
	will be built for you.  BUT, before you do this, create a active.ignore
	file, listing all the groups on the local host that you don't want
	downloaded from the remote host (see man page for sample).
7.  Take a look at the sample directory.  There are two shell scripts
	 in there that show the whole scheme from how to download news
	(with suck), and how to upload news (with rpost).  Use get.news.inn
	if you have INN running, as it knows how to gracefully get the
	outgoing article listing.  get.news.generic is for everyone else.
	WARNING: These scripts need editing before you can use them.  You
	must change the various variables at the top of the scripts to
	ensure they point to the right files/directories.
	If you're using Inn 2.3.X with CNFS, you'll need to use
	the 'put.news.sm*' scripts, to deal with the tokens that
	Inn puts in the outgoing file instead of the article number.


WHERE TO GET STUFF
==================
inn: anonymous ftp from ftp.isc.org /isc/inn
perl: http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/latest.tar.gz 
      anonymous ftp from prep.ai.mit.edu /gnu
Perl/Tk: http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/Tk/Tk8XX.XXX.tar.gz
SSL: http://www.openssl.org/

FUTURE PLANS.
========================

