(1) ABOUT sync:

The sync program is fairly simple. It uses Rodger Anderson's great NNTP
module for doing the opening and closing of the remote's news server and
grabs the active file. It will then make sure any groups on your end match
the groups on the other end. You can specify patterns to match so that it
only syncs the groups that you want it to sync. I want to set it up so that it
keeps the newsgroups file in sync. Ideally someone out there would mail me a
list of servers that are authoritative for various hierarchies and I could set
it up to sync all the proper hierarchies off those sites. Hopefully this script
can grow into something that helps keep the newsgroups under some kinda 
bizarre control.

(2) INSTALLING NNTPClient:

To install it you need to put the NNTP module somewhere if you don't have it.
Create a News directory in /usr/local/lib/perl5 (Or where ever your perl5
libraries are). Then copy the NNTPClient.pm into that directory.

(3) INSTALLING sync:

You will need to modify three variables in the sync module. The first one is
the $active_file. This is your local active file. The next variable is the
pattern of newsgroups to sync up. This can be any valid perl regular
expression. Their isn't any kind of checking on this so be careful. The next
thing to set is the $ctlinnd variable. This just needs to be the location of
your ctlinnd command.

(4) USING sync:

Now you can do something like "sync news.zippo.com >change-list" and see
just what the other sites on the Internet have their newsgroups set to. If
you want to automate this you can setup a cron job for news that does
sync news.zippo.com | sh and that should do it.

If you have any questions feel free to email me at matt@garply.com.
