I've been using bashpodder for several weeks now with Slackware Linux
version 10.1.  It does exactly what I want, and I really like it
because it's a straightforward script file that even I can fool around
with.  Thank you very much for making it available.

The other day, I ran into an annoyance when the lugradio site in the UK
had a server problem.  The wget program would make a successful
connection, but then the remote site would simply come to a halt.  As a
result, I found bashpodder still stuck on

http://www.lugradio.org/episodes.rss

after more than three hours had elapsed.  None of the other entries in
bp.conf could be retrieved while wget kept on retrying the UK site.

To work around the problem, I tweaked your script file in a couple of
ways: (1) I changed the timeouts on wget so that it wouldn't spend hours
trying to retrieve files from an unresponsive site, and (2) I changed the
script further so that there would be no need to wait for each line in
bp.conf to be processed.  Each URL in bp.conf is handled by a separate
process, so that there is no need to wait for something which is listed
earlier in bp.conf.  That allows me to retrieve all available podcasts
without getting blocked by an unresponsive site.  Because you already run
the logs through the sort utility, the order in which the spawned
processes complete makes no difference.  Everything works out as it always
has.

I've also added the ability to put comments into bp.conf, as well as
adding an alert message which is sent to the logging daemon when
bashpodder finally finishes.  On my computer, the alert shows up in the
console window.

That's the beauty of a well-written utility like yours; it inspires
others to add a few more lines here and there.

Just in case any of the stuff I've added may be of interest, I've
attached my own, asynchronous version of bashpodder to this email.
I've attached it as a zip file so that my email program can't muck
about with the formatting.

Again, thanks for making bashpodder available.  I use it 24/7.

Regards,
Rick Slater