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://home.t-online.de/home/juergen.haible/english.htm

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 you re-name this Agent to avoid confusion.

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.

If you reply to any emails/news posts via the Hamster Agent 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/Hamster Agent.

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

Open Hamster and go to "File | Configuration | Newsserver 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.

This should result in a list, one after the other, of newsgroups and their newsservers. "Abbrechen" means "Cancel".

Your "News-Pulls" tab should now look like this.

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

Go to "Passwords" tab.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}

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.

Q. What do I put in the "Online Menu" tab ?

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 the pop3, NNTP and SMTP server for each ISP.

This is what your "Online-Menu" tab might look like.. here.

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.

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 ?

"File | Configuration | News-pulls tab | Add", and add each news group you'd like Hamster to pull. 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 get the same post twice.

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. 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".

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 and restart Hamster, then make sure that only NNTP is running (under the Local menu). Go back on line. This time Hamster will pull the most recent 100 messages (or fewer) from each group/server combination you set up.

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.

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.