Copyright: DJI Interprises, LLC 1999


NewsBin 2.28 Help

1. Installation

2. Note to AOL Users

3. Screen Layout and Menu Bar Selections

4. Main Screen

5. Status Screen

6. Selecting News Servers

7. Selecting News Groups

8. Using filters

9. Configuration

10. Using the built in Web Server

11. Firewall support

12. Where to get more help

1. Installation

NewsBin comes in either a ZIP file or an EXE file which is a self-extracting ZIP file. The file should be unzipped in the directory from which you want to run NewsBin. When the file is unzipped, you can run NewsBin from the command line, or create a shortcut from your desktop to NewsBin.

When you run NewsBin for the first time, NewsBin will ask you to enter your server name. If your server has a username and password, then enter it in the authentication box.  If you have configured Microsoft Internet Explorer to access News, NewsBin will automatically use that news server to start with.  If you dont have a news server, go to our website at http://www.newsbin.com and click on the Open News Server link.  There you will find a publicly available news server that you can use with NewsBin.

After you have entered your news server and NewsBin has established a connection to it, NewsBin will automatically download a list of newsgroups from the server. A good server will have over 30,000 newsgroups so this may take a while. On the Group screen, you will see the Newsgroup Count increment until all the groups are downloaded.  You can select newsgroups while they are being downloaded but keyword search on newsgroups will not work until the download is complete.

When you have selected the newsgroups you want NewsBin to search, you can click on the Main tab to get started. You can do this even if all the newsgroups have not been downloaded yet.

Make sure you are in the "Main" tab and click on "Start". NewsBin will go to the first newsgroup in your list and start downloading any binary attachment posted in that group. The binary will be stored in the download directory under the directory where you installed NewsBin.

Read the rest of this help file to learn how to get the most out of  NewsBin.  If you have specific questions that are not answered in this help file, check out our frequently asked questions at http://www.newsbin.com/faq.htm.  If you still have questions, send email to tech_support@newsbin.com.

2. Note to AOL Users

AOL does not have an NNTP news server. AOL has chosen to take USENET news and re-package it for use by AOL Client software only. If you use AOL and do not also have an ISP with access to a News Server, there still is hope.

If you are running AOL 3.0 or above, you can run NewsBin if you sign up with a News Service. A good one is SuperNews (www.supernews.com). They charge $10/month for unlimited access. There are also a number of free or public news servers out there.  Go to our website at http://www.newsbin.com for help in finding these free servers.  Once you have a news server, start AOL, plug in the news server information in NewsBin, and you are on your way.

One problem using AOL is the timeout dialog box that pops up every 45 minutes or so. If you are running NewsBin unattended, AOL will log you out after 45 minutes whether data is passing through it or not. To keep this from happening, you need to download another shareware program called "DialMan" available through the NewsBin web site or at http://www.inettools.com.  This program will automatically click on the AOL dialog box if you aren't there to do it.

3. Screen Layout and Menu Bar Selections

Screen Layout:

NewsBin  has a Tab-style GUI which allows you  access to configuration options. There are 9 tabs.  The functions of each tab is detailed later in this document. The tabs are Main, Status, Filters, Settings, Groups, Servers,  Advanced, Webserver, and Firewall. Whenever you change any settings in a tab screen, switching to another tab saves your changes.

Menu Bar Selections:

NewsBin has four selections on its menu bar: File, Register, Setup, and Help.

The File selection has one option. It allows you to exit NewsBin.

The Register selection is where you input your registration key that you receive after ordering NewsBin. It pops up an entry form for you to enter the registration key. Type the name, email address, and registration ID exactly as it appears in the email you receive from us containing your key. It is easiest to just cut and past the key information from the email into the appropriate fields. Once you are a registered user, a dialog box showing the name of the person owning this copy of NewsBin will be displayed.

The Setup selection contains two toggle options. They are:

Auto Startup Mode: If this option is selected, NewsBin will automatically start when the program executes. You can use this option if you use a system agent or a program like DialMan (http://www.inettools.com) to start NewsBin for you at a specific time. If this option is not selected, you have to hit the "Start" button on the Main Tab to get NewsBin going.  When NewsBin starts up with Auto Startup Mode enabled, a dialog box will pop up with a countdown timer to allow you to cancel Auto Startup.  If you let it count down without clicking the Cancel button, NewsBin will connect to the news server and start downloading content.  If you do click the Cancel button, Auto Startup Mode will be disabled and NewsBin will not start to download until you manually click the Start button.

Auto Shutdown Mode: If this option is selected, NewsBin will exit after all the records are read from the last selected News Group. If you have auto start enabled but hit a key while NewsBin is running, it automatically disables auto shutdown mode for this run. You can use this to modify NewsBin configuration without it exiting out from under you.  If you are running unattended mode with DialMan, your Internet connection will be closed automatically when NewsBin completes execution.

The Help selection has two options: About and How To Use. The About option displays information about how to register NewsBin and displays the version number and the name of the person who owns this copy of NewsBin if it is already registered. The How To Use option displays the help file.

4. Main Screen

The NewsBin Main Tab shows current activity and gives you control if you are monitoring NewsBin while it works. Here is a list of the fields and buttons displayed and what they mean or do:

Records To Process: this is a box showing all the articles that NewsBin has queued up to process.  It shows the number of parts of the post (for multi-part posts) and the subject of the article.

News Server: This is the current news server that NewsBin is connected to. You have the option of entering multiple news servers which NewsBin will hit for you in sequence. Whatever newsgroups you select will be searched on each news server. With NewsBin's built in duplicate detection, you will not get duplicate binaries from the different servers.

Skip Server: If you have multiple servers defined and you are currently on one that is running dog slow, hit the Skip Server button to tell NewsBin to disconnect from this server and try the next one. There will be a delay as NewsBin closes down the connections for each thread before it will go on to the next News Server.

Records Counter: This bar gauge located under the Records to Process box counts up the number of posts examined from the current News Group. The default is 400 and you can set it under the Settings tab.

News Group: This box lists the current news group being processed.

Skip Group: If you hit a group that you decide you do not want NewsBin to go through, this button will skip the group much like the Skip Server button. There may be a delayed reaction while the currently processed files complete before going to the next group.

File List: This box shows the filename, group code, and file size of all files that have been downloaded during this run of NewsBin or are being downloaded.

Start/Pause/Run: This button starts NewsBin. After you click on Start the button switches to say "Pause". If you hit the Pause button, all threads will pause processing and the button changes to say "Run". Clicking the Run button will continue processing. This is a good way to do something on the Internet without stopping NewsBin. If you leave the pause button on too long, the news server will probably disconnect the connections and several files might be lost.

Stop:  This button will stop processing additional files but will continue processing the current downloads until they are complete.  This button is used to shut down NewsBin without losing files currently being downloaded.

Close: This will exit NewsBin. If NewsBin is currently running,  it will terminate all files currently being downloaded.

The following is displayed regardless of which tab you are currently on:

Date Rate: This bar gauge shows the effective data rate NewsBin is achieving. It averages the last 10 seconds in a sliding window to give a smoother representation of the data rate. The scale increases each time the bar hits the max on the right side.

Bytes Decoded: This is the total number of bytes of encoded binary images that NewsBin has received and decoded.

Tasks: This spinner allows you to adjust the number of threads NewsBin spawns to download binaries. NewsBin will run up to 6 threads, which means it will download up to 6 binaries simultaneously. This allows you to optimize use of your bandwidth. If you have a 28.8 connection, NewsBin runs best with 2 threads. ISDN and higher can runs with 3 threads well.  T1 and Cable Modems can use all 6 threads but we've seen NewsBin use an entire T1 with only 3 threads.  If the spinner is set to 0, NewsBin will queue up a few files for download but will do nothing.

Download Bars: NewsBin has 6 download status bars, one for each thread. The status bar shows the current status of the thread it represents. The different status messages are:

Idle:	Thread is currently doing nothing.

Connecting:	Thread is establishing a connection to the news server.

Connected:	Thread successfully connected to the news server.

Working	:	Thread is determining the file name, type, and size of the post.

Filename:	The name of the file that the thread is downloading is displayed.

Terminated:	The download was terminated either due to the user clicking the button or NewsBin is shutting down.

Filtered:	The download was filtered based on the information entered in the Filters tab.

Spam:	The download was filtered as spam based on the Max Spammer setting in the Settings tab.

Runt:	The download was posted incorrectly and there really wasnt anything there to download.

While the file is being downloaded, a bar will grow to the right indicating download progress. If you see a filename you know you do not want, you can click on it and NewsBin will dump it and move on to another. This comes in handy if you come across a large zip or movie file and you don't want to stick around to download it.

5. Status Screen

Clicking the Status tab tells you when NewsBin connects to a server, shows the news group name and number of headers downloading, and when the download engine starts and stops.  When NNTP Detail mode is selected (under the Advanced tab) it will show you the NNTP commands and detailed header information.

 6. Selecting News Servers

The Servers tab allows you to Add, Delete, and Edit the names of your news servers (i.e. news.supernews.com). When you click on Add, enter the server name in the "Server Address" box.  The port for news servers is 119 but if you are going through a firewall you may need to specify a different port. If your news server requires a username and password, type it in under the authentication box in the User ID and Password fields. If you enter multiple news servers you can change the processing order of the news servers by highlighting a specific server (single click) and clicking the Up or Down button until it is in the position you want.  You can edit the news server by highlighting a specific server and click on Edit.  Highlighting a news server and clicking the Delete button will delete the server from the list.

7. Selecting Newsgroups

As soon as you have a valid news server specified, NewsBin will connect and download all the newsgroups that the server stores. The Newsgroups it finds on the server will be displayed in the "Unsubscribed Groups" list box. With as many as 30,000 newsgroups to go through, we have added a keyword search feature labeled "Display Groups Which Contain:". It defaults to a wildcard ("*") but as you enter characters, only the groups containing those characters will be displayed. For example, if you enter "sounds" then only newsgroup with the word "sounds" in them will be displayed.  This feature only works after the initial download of all news groups is complete.

Select the newsgroups you want by either double clicking on the group or by highlighting and clicking on "Add".   If you have multiple newsgroups, you can change the search order by selecting the news group you want to move and clicking the "up" or "down" arrow to move it to the desired search position.

If you know a newsgroup you want, you can enter it in the box titled "Manually Add Group". Type it in and hit Submit and it will add it the "Subscribed Groups" list box.

The Newsgroup Count box shows the total number of newsgroups you have to select from.

The Update Groups button will update the groups available from the server. You may want to do this every month or so to catch new groups that may be added.

You cannot add additional groups while NewsBin is processing. Once you hit the "Start" button from the Main tab, changing newsgroups is locked out until you click the Stop button on the Main Tab

8. Using filters

NewsBin can be configured to ignore certain files using filters.  Filters can be updated at any time so if you run into a batch of Spam that you don't like you can just add a filter on the fly. To add filters, click on the Filters tab. There are two check boxes: Enable Filename Filters and Accept Only Matching. The first option enables the filtering option, the second controls the mode of the filter; either filter based on the filter entries or accept by matching filter entries. To apply any changes, move out of the filter tab (i.e. click on the Main tab).

The filter supports full regular expression parsing as well as more basic filters like DOS filename filters. Question marks "?" can be used to wild card individual characters. For example to prevent the download of HTML files you'd add the filter:

"*.htm"

"*.html"

To prevent the download of more detailed filenames you enter more explicit filters. Let's say you want to prevent the download of all file indexes. You could do that by applying the filter:

"*idx*.*"

Normally the filter prevents the download of files that are listed in the list box. You can reverse the mode though by selecting Accept Only Matching. If for example you only want to download ZIP files. You'd select matching and add "*.zip" to the filter list.

9. Configuration

NewsBin is configured in two different tabs, the Settings tab and the Advanced tab.

The Settings tab allows you to modify the following configuration options:

Download Path: This specifies where NewsBin will deposit the binaries it downloads. The default is a subdirectory under the NewsBin install directory called "download".

Max Spammer: This setting tells NewsBin to ignore any articles that were cross posted to more than X newsgroups. A setting of 1 will pull down articles posted to that specific newsgroup only. A setting of 0 will pull down everything regardless of number of cross posts.  The default is 4.

Back Track:  This is the number of posts to examine in a news group from the latest post back. The default is 400. This saves NewsBin from going through tons of old posts and helps get only the latest stuff.

Min File Size: This will disregard binaries that are less than X in size. Size of 0 disables it.

Max File Size: This can eliminate the download of huge files if you don't want them. For example, setting it to 100000 will restrict files larger than 100K from being downloaded. Entering 0 disables it.

Database Age: This is the number of days of information to keep in the cache for the duplicate detection feature. The larger the number, the fewer duplicates that will be downloaded and the larger the cache file gets. If you clean out your binary directory and want to re-download binaries that are getting dup-checked out, delete the files "cache" and "sigfile.dat" from the directory where NewsBin is installed.

TCP Retries: Sets the number of times NewsBin will attempt to re-connect to the same server if you loose your internet connection or if your news server goes down.  Keep the number low if you have multiple servers so NewsBin can cycle through faster.  If you run one server, keep it high.  Default is 500.

TCP Timeout: This is the amount of time, in seconds, that NewsBin will wait before dropping the a TCP connection and trying again.  Setting it to 0 will make NewsBin wait forever.  A setting of 60 tells NewsBin to reconnect any time there is a delay of more than 60 seconds on any connection.  If you are running mulitple tasks, you have multiple connections.  NewsBin handles all these connection independently so they each have their own 60 second timeout.

The Advanced tab has these additional configuration options:

Use Subject Field Filter: Enables use of NewsBin's cache file to filter out posts based on the subject that has already been processed.

Use File Signature Filter: Enables use of the signature file to determine if a file has already been downloaded based on a portion of the actual file, not the filename or the subject.

NNTP Detail Mode: This toggles the level of detail that the program displays to the status dialog box. When Enabled, NNTP detail mode will show the actual commands and responses that are sent to and received from the NNTP server in the Status tab.  This toggle is normally only used for troubleshooting connection or file download problems.

Group Directory Mode: If this option is selected, NewsBin will generate sub-directories under the "Download" directory using the name of the news group where the binary was found. If this option is not selected, all binaries are dumped in the "download" directory under the install directory for NewsBin.

File Descriptions Mode: File Descriptions is a toggle that enables or disables the creation of downloaded file descriptions in a directory beneath the current download directory. These descriptions are used by the built in web server to display information about a file. Each file contains the subject field of the post that created the file.

Recycle Servers:  Normally when NewsBin finishes downloading it just stops processing. Recycle Servers mode tells NewsBin to restart processing from the beginning again. It will rescan the groups from the beginning and download any new binaries that have been posted since the last download passed through the group.

Overwrite Files: Select this to give NewsBin permission to overwrite files that have the same name.  If this is off, NewsBin will not write the file.

 Once any setting has been modified, click on any other tab to apply the changes.

 10. Using the built in Web Server

When NewsBin is running, it has the ability to allow any Internet browser to connect to it. The unregistered version only allows one connection. The registered version allows 64 connections.

On your local machine, you can use your favorite web browser to view the binaries being downloaded by NewsBin. Just connect to your machine at http://127.0.0.1 and you can browse through the directories and the binaries that NewsBin has downloaded. If File Descriptions Mode is enabled on the Advanced tab, the description of the file is displayed along with the filename in the browser.  Otherwise, only filenames are displayed.  Double click on the filename to view the file.. We are working on thumbnail support for a future release.

To configure the Web Server, click on the Webserver tab. Click the check box titled Enable Web Server to allow yourself access from your browser.

To allow others to access your NewsBin downloads over a TCP/IP network or the Internet, click on the Enable Access List checkbox. Then go to the Access List box to the right and enter the IP addresses of the machines you want to allow access. For example, if a buddy of yours is connected to your network (or the Internet) with an IP of 192.168.1.2 and your IP was 192.168.10.1, enter his IP in the list box and have him point his browser to "http://192.168.10.1"

Make sure the Web Server Port is set to 80. If you set it to something else (i.e. 8888), you can access it by pointing your browser to "http://127.0.0.1:8888". Or, as in the previous example, your friends would connect to "http://192.168.10.1:8888". This feature is useful if you don't want someone else on your network, or over the Internet, to access your binaries.

The "Web Threads" box specifies the number of simultaneous connections the web server will handle. Unregistered versions are limited to 1 connection.

11. Firewall support

Under the Firewall tab, you can configure NewsBin to use a Socks4 Firewall. Simply enter your User ID and the IP address or host name of your Socks Server.

12. Where to get more help

If you have specific questions that are not answered in this help file, check out our FAQ (frequently asked questions) at http://www.newsbin.com/faq.htm.  If you still have questions, send email to tech_support@newsbin.com.