Q. What is Hamster ?

A. A local news, and mail, server to collect news and emails from different servers.

Q. Where can I get it ?

A.  At :   http://www.arcorhome.de/newshamster/tgl/misc/hamster_en.html .

Q. How does it work ?

A. Normally a program like Agent gets news posts, and emails, from an I.S.P.s server(s) as follows -

     I.S.P.      >>    Agent.

With Hamster this changes to -

     I.S.P.s     >>    Hamster     >>    Agent.

Q. Why use it ?

A. So that you can get news posts and/or emails from multiple I.S.P.s. into only one copy of Agent.

Q. How do I set-up Agent ? What if I mess things up ?

Normally one would change the settings, in a current version of Agent, so that everything gets to Agent via Hamster. You may prefer however to keep your existing Agent(s) until you are confident with Hamster. If you do this then you will need an "additional" Agent for Hamster. The easiest approach here would be to just copy (one of) your current copies of Agent. This will save re-configuration and much time. I suggest that you re-name this Agent to something like Hamagent to avoid confusion. Go to (in your copy of Agent) Options - User and System Profile, system tab, put Hamagent in the Title bar text box.

Hamster allows you to "Leave mails on server" so you can still download emails as you do now, in your existing Agent, or emailer. Another option is to instruct Hamster not to get your emails (until you are confident with Hamster).

Unless you want to try out the email side of Hamster first then you will get news posts twice. Once in your "normal" Agent and once in Hamagent.

If you reply to any emails/news posts via the Hamagent then these replies will be in that Agent. Unless you know how to move emails/posts between Agents then this could be a problem if you decide not to stay with Hamster. For this reason, and due to the duplication mentioned above, you may prefer to get Hamster working with just the news part, or just the email part, first. I suggest the former.

Q. How does one install it ?

Extract Hamster to its own directory. This might be something like C:\Program Files\Hamster . If you have too many programs listed on your win '95/8 fly out then you might prefer something like C:\Hamster  .

The program file is called Hamster.exe. You might like to make a shortcut to it now.

Q. What next ?

Enter your ISPs, and news server, settings. For example if your ISP is called great.isp.com then the news server (computer) may be news.great.isp.com . The SMTP server might be called mail.greatisp.com or smtp.mail.greatisp.com. The POP server may be called pop.greatisp.com .

You may also be able to access newsgroups from a newsgroup server that isn't located at your ISP. For example news.other.isp.com .

If this other news server carries usenet newsgroups then it would be called an "open news server". Meaning that anyone in the world can access it for access to international newsgroups. If the newsgroups on this other news server are not part of the international newsgroup system (usenet) then they may be listing only "internal" newsgroups i.e. only newsgroups that are available on that one news server. Not copied world wide to other servers (like usenet is). news.grc.com is an example of such a "private" server. Netscape and others also have their own internal (one server) newsgroups.

Q. How do I enter my news server settings in Hamster ?

Open Hamster and go to Configuration | News: ... | Newserver tab | Add

Enter all your news servers in the format  "<newsservername>,nntp"  e.g.. news.eisa.net.au,nntp .

Your "Newsserver" tab should now look something like this screenshot.

Q. Where do I put my user name and passwords ?

Go to the "Newsserver" tab. Select the newsserver(s) that require you to set a username and/or password (one at a time). Then click on "settings". Where it says username/password click "edit" and enter any username/passwords needed by the I.S.P./servers. Once done you will see that they are set e.g.. pop.yourisp.com,{set},{set} If some servers require no user name and/or password, and eg. one does, then you may end up with something like this screenshot.

Q. What if I want to get news working first and then email later ?

Go to the settings tab and untick auto start for "POP3" and "SMTP" for now. Make sure "Leave Mail on Server" is ticked, just in case.

Go to Configuration - Local server and accounts - Mail tab and un-tick Autostart POP3. You might also like to go to Configuration - Mail settings..  - Settings tab - and make sure "Leave mails on server" is ticked.

Q. How do I enter my email server settings in Hamster ?

Open Hamster and go to Configuration | Mail: ... | Pop3 tab | Add

Enter all your pop servers in the format  "<popservername>,pop3"  e.g.. mail.eisa.net.au .

Your POP3 Mailserver tab should now look something like this screenshot. Notice how I have only set a user name and password for the third server. Normally all POP servers would require both bits of information.

Q. How do I enter my smtp server settings in Hamster ?

Open Hamster and go to Configuration | Mail: ... | SMTP Mailserver tab | Add

Enter all your smtp servers in the format  "<smtpservername>,smtp"  e.g.. news.grc.com,smtp .

Your SMTP Mailserver tab should now look something like this screenshot.

Q. What do I put in the "Configuration - General Settings - Online Menu" tab ?

You do not need to put anything in here if you prefer not to. Your online menu will list all of the NNTP, SMTP and POP servers that you have entered above. The only problem with that is that you will only have a choice of getting "all servers (news and mail)" or each server one by one. See here. You might not like the first option as there is no point trying to access news servers where they don't allow access from the ISP you are currently connected to. The latter situation is fairly slow/tedius.

A better approach is to put the name of each of your I.S.P.s (in turn). So that they can be selected individually from the "Online" menu. You also need to list all the pop3, NNTP and SMTP servers that are accessable from each ISP.

[You don't need however to have your menu sorted by ISP. That is simply the way that I have it. You can have each item in the list called something else. You might for example want a menu item for all of your pop3 servers (called "Email" ?).

I don't recommend the latter process however for newsservers. Most ISPs do not allow one to access their newsserver when connected to another ISP. So trying to connect to them all at once would usually present problems.]

Once all your server's info has been entered they should automatically be listed in the left hand pane that appears as soon as you enter a name for a menu item. It is then just a matter of moving items from the left pane to the right pane with each menu item. Things should look something like this.

When you have finished making your selections your online menu should now have changed to something like this.

Q. How do I get Hamster to get the newsgroups list for each I.S.P. ?

Select "Online | <each newsserver>" or "Online | All Servers" (if you can get to them all from a single dial-up) to get a list of newsgroups carried at each server.

Q. How do I select which newsgroups I want Hamster to get for me ?

"Configuration | News : Server... l News-Pulls tab | Add", and add each news group you'd like Hamster to pull. You enter the name of the group that you want in the top pane. If you do a search for a topic eg. "dreams" then many newsgroups will be listed. Once you see a newsgroup that interests you then click on it in the top pane and wait. All the servers that carry this newsgroup will be listed in the bottom pane. Wait for them all to be listed. The lower pane ceases being grey when finished.

If a group is on more than one server, add it multiple times if you wish. This means that if one/more of your I.S.P.s is down then you will still get the missing posts from one of the other I.S.P.s. Don't worry about duplication. Hamster won't forward the same post twice to Agent.

When finished your "Newsgroups" tab should look something like this.

Q. Seeing multiple copies of every news group is confusing. Can I see the "subscribed list" that will appear in Agent ?

Yes, go to the "Newsgroups tab". While there you can make sure that you have every news group you want listed. If you want to check which I.S.P.s you are able to get each news group from then select one, and then select "settings".

Q. How do I see all the newsgroups I am subscribed to when I have finished my selection ?

Configuration - News Server :.. -  Newsgroups tab.

Q. How do I see where all the newsgroups I am subscribed to are coming from ?

Configuration - News Server :.. -  News-Pulls tab.

Q. What about Agent ?

Create a new instance of Agent, or copy an old one. Remember the re-naming as mentioned above. Also, you can have problems if you end up having two copies of Agent open at the same time with the same named .exe file. I suggest that you call the second one something like hagent.exe . In case you end up with two "active" Agents.

Q. What settings do I change in Agent to get it to access Hamster, instead of my I.S.P. ?

Start Agent and in "Options | User and System Profile | System" tell it that your news server is now "localhost", or 127.0.0.1 , Also tell Agent to use "Online defaults" and clear every tick in "Dialup".

Under Options - User and System Profile put your username and password for Hamster. This should *match your settings in Hamster* at Configuration - Local Server - Local accounts tab. You might need to check the Hamster help file if you aren't sure of what to put in the "Admin" settings. You will probably only need to set a single "admin" account.

Q. How do I get Agent to list the newsgroups I told Hamster to get ?

If you didn't start with a fresh Agent installation then you will see that your "All Groups" list is the same as previously. Now do "Online | Refresh Groups List" . This will enable you to list all the groups you've told Hamster to pull. (This might make your "All groups" list slightly larger). Subscribe to them all (unless you've decided to pull a news feed in Hamster that you have no intention of importing into Agent immediately.

Q. Okay, I have Hamster and Agent configured. What next ?

Close Hamster. Go on line if you aren't already. Select the menu item that corresponds to the ISP that you are connected to. This time Hamster will pull the most recent 100 messages (or fewer) from each group/server combination you set up. (If you have any busy newsgroups then you might want to increase the default settings at the Configuration - News: server.. - Settings tab, first.)

NB Watch the "Log" and "Threads" windows carefully. Hamster seems to make two connections to each server to get news, and it's not immediately obvious when activity really has stopped. If you see it apparently go off-line (blue highlighted), it may still be online in another thread. Check that the status line shows threads as "0". Only drop your connection when Hamster is finished. Disconnect to your I.S.P. if you like.

In Agent, do "Online | Get headers in the manner of your choice" (i.e. New in Subscribed, All, Sample, whatever you wish)

Keep in mind that both Agent, AND Hamster, will now have copies of most of your posts. You might like to set a short retention time in Hamster if you use it regularly, e.g.. daily. There is no point having a post in Hamster that you have already collected into Agent.

Is the above clear enough ? If not then let me know here.