Offline computing: Usenet and netnews

If there's one thing that's easy to interact with while offline, it's
Usenet (and more generally netnews).  Obviously, since the underlying
protocol and the type of applications that correspond to it were born
in times when Internet access was a rare commodity.

The discussion forums accessible via NNTP are places that I
particularly like.  There is the giant Usenet of course, but I am also
thinking of new or older communities where very enriching discussions
take place.

Accessing usenet generally requires an account with a provider.  There
are paid ones (mainly to have access to the bin.* hierarchy) but also
free ones (which generaly give only access to the textual parts of
Usenet) like eternal-september.org or aioe.org.  But there is also a
large number of "private" servers, often created to meet specific
interests (please see the end of this post for a non-exhaustive list).

And to visit them I personally use slrn(1) which comes with its
companion slrnpull(1).

***

A quick howto.

slrn(1) is a TUI newsreader.  It comes with slrnpull(1), a tool that
pull newsfeed for offline reading.  The basic workflow is to launch
slrnpull(1) to retrieve/send messages from/to wanted newsgroup, then
run slrn(1) to read/respond to them.  For the example, I'll use the
tildeverse.org news server that can be accessed freely without an
account.

First we need to create the local directory where messages will be
stored:

 $ mkdir -p ~/news/tildeverse

Then we'll need to say to slrnpull(1) which newsgroup we want, how many
articles to retrieve, how much days after an article is retrieved
before it will be eligible for deletion, and if we want just the
headers of messages.  All take place in a slrnpull.conf file inside our
working directory:

---8<--- ~/news/tildeverse/slrnpull.conf

default       400     90      0

local.general
local.test
tilde.meta
tilde.services.uucp
tilde.art.ascii
tilde.art.music
tilde.text
tilde.food+drink
tilde.javascript
tilde.meetups
tilde.nsfw
tilde.php
tilde.python
tilde.poetry
tilde.projects
tilde.services
tilde.cosmic
tilde.club
tilde.team
tilde.radiofreqs
tilde.gopher
tilde.pink
tilde.black
 
--->8---

We first declare a "default" with default values for each newsgroup. 
Here I want slrnpull(1) to retrieve 400 messages, and keep them for 90
days before deletion.  The last "0" means that I want the whole
message, not just the headers.  After the "default", we put what
newsgroup we want, one per line.  I want all the newsgroups that
news.tildeverse.org provide so I put them all.

Once done, we just need to launch slrnpull(1):

  $ slrnpull -d ~/news/tildeverse/ -h news.tildeverse.org

Which will return something like this:

---8<--- slrnpull(1) output (extract)

08/12/2022 23:11:55 Reading /home/f6k/news/tildeverse/slrnpull.conf
08/12/2022 23:11:55 ***Unable to open /var/log/news/slrnpull.log for logging.
08/12/2022 23:11:55 slrnpull started.
08/12/2022 23:11:55 Reading /home/f6k/news/tildeverse/slrnpull.conf
08/12/2022 23:11:55 Connecting to host news.tildeverse.org ...
08/12/2022 23:11:57 Connected to host.  Posting ok.
08/12/2022 23:11:57 Fetching articles for local.general.
08/12/2022 23:11:57 local.general: no new articles available.
08/12/2022 23:11:57 Fetching articles for local.test.
08/12/2022 23:11:58 local.test: Retrieving articles 399-399.
08/12/2022 23:11:58 local.test: 1 articles available.
08/12/2022 23:11:58 local.test: 1/1 (0 killed), Time: 00:00:01, BPS: 1284
08/12/2022 23:11:58 Fetching articles for tilde.meta.
08/12/2022 23:11:59 tilde.meta: no new articles available.
(...)

--->8---

Note that there's a flag to remove expired messages (according to
values in slrnpull.conf file): "--expire".  Please see the slrnpull(1)
manpage for more details.

Now that we have all messages stored on our computer, we need to read
them with slrn(1).  We start with the configuration in ~/.slrnrc:

---8<--- ~/.slrnrc (extract)

set username "f6k"
set realname "f6k"
set hostname "huld.re"

#ifdef tv
 set spool_inn_root             "/home/f6k/news/tildeverse"
 set spool_root                 "/home/f6k/news/tildeverse/news"
 set spool_nov_root             "/home/f6k/news/tildeverse/news"
 set read_active                1
 set use_slrnpull               1
 server "/home/f6k/news/tildeverse/news" ".jnewsrc.tv"
#endif

set server_object               "spool"
% the previous line is optional.

--->8---

Note the "tv" for ifdef.  You can put anything you want instead of
"tv", but I found it easier to remember that way (TildeVerse), and
easier to type since we'll use this id to call from slrn(1).

By the way, an important thing: the last variable is optional but
usefull for me.  Because I download all netnews content for offline
reading I use it so the command line argument "--spool" is not
necessary.  If you want to connect directly to some news server, don't
use it but append "--spool" to slrn(1) command (see below).

Parenthetically, and obviously, slrn(1) leaves room for a number of
configuration within that file, but since that's not the subject of
this post, I'm leaving that aside.  That said, everything is well
documented in the man page.

We're almost ready.  We just need to create the .jnewsrc.tv file:

 $ slrn -f ~/.jnewsrc.tv --create

And then to launch slrn(1) on our local cache of news.tildeverse.org:

 $ slrn -Dtv

slrn(1) is then used quite normally.  The first time you'll launch
slrn(1) you'll need to subscribe to the newsgroups retrieved by
slrnpull(1).  And the follow ups we make to newsgroups are saved to be
sent by slrnpull(1) the next time it is started.

Finally, you should know that you can have as many "ifdef" as you want
in ~/.slrnrc for as many servers you want, as long as they have a
unique id ("tv" in my example above).  Plus, in the case you connect to
various servers I recommend using a script to retrieve all the content
with slrnpull(1)--either way, it makes life easier.

***

A non-exhaustive list of private servers (please visit the domain names
on HTTP for details on each one).  I particularly like grc for its
grc.scifi newsgroup and tildeverse for general/tech discussions.

- news.breadpunk.club
- news.niel.me
- paganini.bofh.team
- dodin.fr.nf
- news.dizum.net
- news.mozilla.org
- news.servidellagleba.it
- news.killfile.org
- news.endofthelinebbs.com
- retrobsd.ddns.net
- rdnetbbs.com
- news.neodome.net
- news.mixmin.net
- news.cyber23.de
- fltk.org
- news.digitalmars.com
- news.novabbs.org
- nntp.idecnet.com
- news.grc.com
- news.tilde.club
- news.tilde.team
- news.tildeverse.org
- news.bbs.nz

***

And for the curious, here are the newsgroups I follow on Usenet:

alt.folklore.computers
alt.os.linux.slackware
alt.os.free-dos
alt.pub.coffeehouse.amethyst
comp.infosystems.gopher
comp.infosystems.gemini
comp.sys.raspberry-pi
comp.misc
fr.comp.os.linux.configuration
fr.comp.text.tex
fr.rec.arts.sf
gnu.emacs.help
rec.arts.movies.current-films
rec.arts.movies.international
rec.arts.sf.tv
rec.food.cooking
rec.games.backgammon
rec.games.chess.misc
rec.games.roguelike.nethack
rec.games.computer.doom.playing
sci.electronics.repair
sci.misc
sci.space.science