Download iso's from newsgroups

[mark]

This howto is licensed under the terms of the GNU FDL (Free Documentation License). It has been written in the hope that it will be useful to the community but it comes with no warranty; use it at your own risk.

The main reason why people don't get into GNU/Linux and especially Debian is; the think they can't do the same as on there MS-W*****s environment.
I always tell them; "just when it goes a little different doesn't mean it is not possible!"
One of those things a lot of people think is impossible on linux, is downloading files from newsgroups and extract them with rar and, when it's needed repair the files with par (par2).
That is why I wrote this howto.

I'm going to describe the process step by step, from the installation (The debian way) of the needed applications to the burning of the CD or DVD.
I assume you have a working installation of GNU/Linux (Debian) and you are able to burn CD's or DVD's. When not, fix this first.

Step 1
When we want to read or download posts from a news server, we need a newsreader. There are loads of newsreaders availible, use google to find a list of newsreaders. My favorite is Pan, so I'm going to install Pan in this example.
First we have to get root privilages and than we install Pan. Type :

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$   su
password
# apt-get install pan

Start the newsreader (Pan) and specify you account information as usual
Now that we have the newsreader installed we can start with the downloading.
Put al your wanted files in the que list and get it down!

Step2
Now that you are downloading the files you want you can prepare your PC for the second stage in the process: Un-rar-ing the part*.rar files.
For this we need to install unrar. Do this by getting back in the terminal window with root privilages and type :

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#   apt-get install unrar

You might aswell install the parchive (for the par(2)) program right away.
do this by typing:

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apt-get install  par2cmdline

Step3
So a few hours have past and your downloads are ready.
go to the directory (in your terminal with root privilages) where the rar files are by typing:

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#   cd /path/where/your/rar/files/are

Lets get the iso back:

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unrar e NameOfTheFile.part01.rar

Note: When the filename contains spaces, you have to type "\" (without the quotes) before every space.

When everting goes well your iso image wil be build.

Step4
Unfortunately the files can be damaged or incomplete. But don't worry here's where the wonderfull tool parchive comes in.

When you need to repair the files you can do this by typing:

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par2repair *par2

Note: This only works when you have downloaded the par2 files!
Now you can try unrar again:

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unrar e NameOfTheFile.part01.rar

At this point you should have an image that you can burn with your favorite burn application.

Have Fun!!

Mark

[jas]

pan is inefficient and is more prone to leading people to believe that usenet tools under linux are crufty and cumbersome, especially if they are used to something like newsbin. You may want to check out 'nget'.

with a simple command, ie: 'nget -g alt.binaries.freesoftware.linux -r debian' you can automatically download and recover via par/2 if necessary all posts and binaries from a.b.fs.l with the word 'debian' in the subject or filename. this process takes about 10 seconds for a slow typist as opposed to several minutes to read through and select all the same relevant headers in pan, not to mention that you still might have to manually recover them with par2.

that said, nget is one tool that has no equivalent that I know of under windows. other tools like ubh, aub, and brag are also incredibly useful.

do you know of any usenet reader/binary harvester that allows for multiple concurrent connections? my usenet provider allows downloads at 2mb/sec but individual connections are limited to 500k (4 connections). This is not an issue if say, I want to download 4 different things from 4 different groups, but it's quite annoying if i'm trying to get a dvd image and I don't want to script 4 seperate sessions to each download every fourth file.

[deception]

Very promising binary newsreader.

Still in heavy development. But looks promising. Forum is in Dutch though.

http://forum.ftd.nu/showthread.php?t=121144

[MarkvD]

I'm now using klibido (KDE).
It supports nzb files.
It makes it all even easier than it already was.

Mark

[pucca]

l need sarge download link have your one

[babwe]

sorry I simply cannot figure out pan, can I download a NZB file from a site, and get pan to find it, can someone pls assist, I used klibido in ubuntu bfore but will not run on debian ver 2.6.8-3-686
thx in advance

[woosting]

The new pan (in etch) supports NZB downloading.
However this is not yet supported by stable...

Does anyone have a suggestion for NZB-supporting Sarge-packedges?

[plugwash]

can't you download the source for etch's pan and build it on sarge?

[Triangle]

ISO-burner is a really good burning tool. It is small but extremely easy to use. It never failed me so you might give it a glance
http://www.ntfs.com/iso-burning.htm

[forkart]

I use magiciso to burn iso file to cd. It does a good job.
http://www.magiciso.com/tutorials/miso-burniso.htm