The Complete Idiots Guide to Newsgroups

[technord]

Here's a guide I created for a friend at work. Figured I could post it here for you guys. Enjoy!

THE COMPLETE IDIOTS GUIDE TO NEWSGROUPS

NNTP stands for Network News Transport Protocol.

Retention means how long a file or post remains on the server.

Software you will require

Newsbin Standard or Pro (to view and download)

WinRAR (to extract the data from compressed files)

QuickPar (to repair any damaged or missing files)

The Guide

There are many NNTP servers located across the global which act as a storage area for users to upload and download information from. When a user uploads information to a particular server, this gets replicated across the global to all the NNTP servers so everyone can download and view the same information.

The information is held within groups to make finding it easier. These groups are a bit like chatrooms, so for example if you wanted to see information on say Doctor Who, you would look in all the Doctor Who groups.

To download data you need to be looking in the binary groups. A good example of a Doctor Who group would be:

alt.binaries.multimedia.doctorwho

Some servers offer better retention,speed and group access than others, this is mainly based on bandwidth and storage space available to the server. Your ISP may offer you free NNTP server access but this will have very limited retention, only a few hundred groups and perhaps throttled bandwidth. It is best in this case to signup for a premium NNTP service, however you have to pay for this

1. Sign up and Register with a News NNTP Provider

Firstly you will need to signup and register with a good NNTP provider. I would recommend newshosting.com

Go to the following website where you can get an unlimited account for $14.95 a month

http://www.newshosting.com

Once you have completed your subscription you will have been asigned with a username and password. The plan you are on gives you an unlimited account with 8 simultanous connections and 24 days of retention.

2. Setting up the software

Install the Newsbin software onto your computer. You will have a desktop shortcut appear on your desktop....Yep that little red robot one

Fire the little guy up where he'll guide you through the setup screen. As good as he is, click the cancel button cause we can do it better!

When your in the main newsbin program, click on 'Preferences' and scroll down to 'Server Options'

Server Name - Newshosting

Server Address - unlimited.newshosting.com

Tick Required Login box and enter your username and password for your Newshosting account

Change the Max Server Connections to 8 and Apply > OK

back in the Newsbin main screen, look towards the bottom left where you'll see a number 2. Click the up arrow twice to increase this to 8

File > Save As to save your config settings so you don't have to do this all over again...and again....and again....

3. Finding out what's on the newsgroups (part 1)

Ok, so you're all paid up and ready to go, but what to download! You could just go searching through the groups until you found something you fancied.....but what! all 33,000 of them.........and u know that each group has thousands of posts right..........this could take you YEARS. Wouldnt it be nice if you could search all the groups at once for something you wanted and have it's location pointed out directly to you in a nice easy file you could just run to automatically download.

We'll, there is. It's called newzbin.com

again you'll need to dig deep into them pockets of yours because you'll need to signup for a premium account. Don't worry though, because it's only a couple of quid a month (YES IT'S A BRITISH OWNED SITE). Go to the website at http://www.newzbin.com to get your account details and search away till your hearts content

Here's an example to show you how it's done

My girlfriend wants the latest dance album to listen to in the car. Let's for arguments say it's called Dance Party 2007

Sign into Newzbin.com with your premium account and type in Dance Party 2007 in the search window at the top. Newzbin will then search and return a list of results to you. If what you're looking for is found, click on the link to be presented with a list of files you will need to download.

I have been presented with the following

Dance Party 2007 - CD1 - front.jpg

Dance Party 2007 - CD1 - back.jpg

Dance Party 2007 - CD1 - track01.mp3

Dance Party 2007 - CD1 - track02.mp3

Dance Party 2007 - CD1 - track03.mp3

...and so on

You'll notice all the files have a tick next to them. This is to show they are selected as files you want. If for any reason you don't want track01.mp3 then simply remove the tick. When you are happy with the files you want click the 'Get Message IDs' button at the top. Your web browser will download a file to you. This is your newsgroup location file

4. Finding out what's on the newsgroups (part 2)

My girlfriend has now decided, that she would rather have the music video rather than the album, typical bloody women!

again, signing into Newzbin.com I will do the same search as above hoping to find a result which could be the video rather than the music album. I'm looking across at the groups to see one which could fit the bill.

BINGO!

I have found a group called alt.binaries.music.video which has Dance Party 2007 in it. Going into the link I am presented with some very different files indeed

Dance Party 2007 - DVD - front.jpg

Dance Party 2007 - DVD - back.jpg

Dance Party 2007 - DVD - dp2007dvd.par2

Dance Party 2007 - DVD - dp2007dvd.nfo

Dance Party 2007 - DVD - dp2007dvd.r00

Dance Party 2007 - DVD - dp2007dvd.r01

Dance Party 2007 - DVD - dp2007dvd.r03

Dance Party 2007 - DVD - dp2007dvd.rar

Dance Party 2007 - DVD - dp2007dvd.p00

Dance Party 2007 - DVD - dp2007dvd.p01

Dance Party 2007 - DVD - dp2007dvd.p02

Looking through the files I notice that file r02 is missing. Great, so now what do I do.....we'll you see that par2 file and the p01,p02 they are magic files. These babys can repair damaged or missing files. If you ever see a missing file without the magic ones, wait a few days and try again. If they still don't appear then forget it and move on with your life.

5. Downloading

Fire up Mr Robot again to get back into Newsbin, this time armed with your location file.

Click on File > Load Download List and select your location file you got from Step 3.

The files you selected from Newzbin.com will have been imported ready for download. Click on the first file, hold down the shift key and press your cursor keys to select all the files you want. Have they turned blue? No! Do it again then.........have they turned blue now....ah you were pressing the up arrow by mistake hehehe, nevermind have they gone blue now? Great! Right click in the blue area and select 'Download to Folder' find a place on your hard disk you want to save the files to and click on ok.

That's it matey! You've just downloaded your first file from the newsgroups. Give yourself a pat on the back!

Now what to do. We'll, depends on what you have downloaded. If you have downloaded r00, r01 and rars and have a full set without any missing ones simply double click on the RAR file to extract it with WinRAR.

If you are unlucky in that you have any missing files or WinRAR starts moaning about CRC errors (which means some are damaged) you need to go down to step 6.

6. Fixing any problems

Have u been sent here from step 5 oh dear....you have some missing files. Nevermind we can fix them!

Install QuickPar and follow all the onscreen instructions. Now close it. Yep, that's right! Go into it and then come out of it again.

Find your par2 file you downloaded from Newsbin and double click it. Quickpar will open up and start scanning and after a short period of time, ask you to repair. Click the repair button which will make them all jump up singing and dancing. Go back to step 5 to finish off.

NOTES:

If after extracting the files with WinRAR, you are left with files you don't understand (eg. BIN/CUE/ISO files) use either Alcohol 120% or DVD Decrypter to burn.

Edited March 6, 2006 by bangbang023

[blueshirt]

Why DVD Decrypter?

[madd_matt]

Why Newzbins.com? Surely you can just use your usenet reader to search for you? Or just find it yourself? Why pay money?

[rubicant78]

Does no one use Forte Agent or slrn anymore, or is NewsBin actually better? Maybe I am just a wee bit too old school. Cool guide though. It will probably help a lot of people new to usenet out.

[Pupik]

Why referral link?

[Mekun]

I use agent to read posts and to reply. For binaries i use newsbin.

Agent sucks to dl binaries.

[virgo89]

Nice guide.

Currently im using grabit and sometimes when i finish a download its a bunch of notepad files in my "My Downloads" directory. I heard that this problem usually accurs in grabit. Is that true? and what is it notepad files.

[glazzz]

giganews is $24.95/mo for unlimited access, at $10 more than the other, its worth it for the better service/retention rates.

[jugaaru]

Why do I have to pay for that, isn't there any free alternatives?

[CDog]

Good guide - though I use Newsleecher to manage my usenet downloads :) recently moved from shemes.com usenet access to newshosting.com access - which is brilliant (and cheaper) aaaaaaand yes, newzbin is a great listings site :)

Why do I have to pay for that, isn't there any free alternatives?

There aren't many free usenet servers that are worth connecting too... and they tend not to have very good retention. Trust me, it's not a lot of money for the speeds at which you can download almost anything you want. And if you only want to do a small amount of downloading, go to shemes.com and buy a very small access package.

[ahhell]

Newsleecher and Newshosting....only way to go

Free news hosting services suck.

Now if only I can get Newsleecher to work with Linux...that would be sweet.

[one321]

I use Newsleecher (which is awesome!) and I get free giganews newsgroup access through my cable ISP. I usually get around 305 kb/s.

[W1cked-J]

giganews is $24.95/mo for unlimited access, at $10 more than the other, its worth it for the better service/retention rates.

The other great thing with giganews is 51 day retention on binarys and 750 days on text. I don't know of any other that holds things that long.

As for a newsgroup client, I use PowerGrab but unfortunatly the developer pulled it down from his site. It is a great tool and at one point Giganews recomended to use it.

[ahhell]

I user Newsleecher (which is awesome!) and I get free giganews newsgroup access through my cable ISP. I usually get around 305 kb/s.

Through Newshosting I usually max my 7Mbit connection....average around 850KB/s...it's sweet.

My ISP's news service is throttled and retention time is only about 2 days...lame.

[+John Teacake MVC]

Isnt this highly illegal?

[one321]

Isnt this highly illegal?

Just like torrents, mIRC, and everything else, there are legal downloads and there are illegal downloads.

[Dark Reaper]

Good guide. I wish my ISP didn't take away the Newsgroups. I don't like to pay extra.

[Unholy Moley!]

It is an OK guide, but it needs to be revised. There are grammar and spelling errors in there not to mention the annoying 'u' instead of "you".

[sgtLENIN]

I find Newsleecher to be the best usenet download utility :)

[W1cked-J]

Well I see Giganews changed their retention lenght again :D

# Up to 70 days of binary retention along with 945+ days of text retention

# A 99%+ completion rate

# 10 concurrent connections

[Chanser]

PAR2 files are such a newsgroups lifesaver! :D

[kabix]

Nice guide.

Currently im using grabit and sometimes when i finish a download its a bunch of notepad files in my "My Downloads" directory. I heard that this problem usually accurs in grabit. Is that true? and what is it notepad files.

change to something different. i had a same problem. get something like newsleecher and it will download with no problem. in my opinion, its a bug in the program.

[virgo89]

thanks

[deranger]

Hmm .. question: if my isp has a news groups server, and i was to use it to download stuff that im not

supposed to download (music mainly) would that get me in trouble? or since im downloading this using my isp's

server , they really cant do anything since they are the one's providing me with the illegal content in the first place?

I mean, the RIAA had closed down web sites that held direct links to illegal stuff on the edonkey network, not that they hosted the stuff themselves , they only provided links to it, so isnt my isp's usenet server doing the same thing? or am i completely wrong? :unsure:

[Dean W]

Surely this is the same as post links to leaked builds, since you are bascially describing how to obtain the files?