> I think a `pull by demand' approach would be better and safer.

This is what I have used to grab files:

#!/bin/sh
cat>ftpsup<<'EOF'
TMP=upd$$
umask 22
grep '^U ' | sed 's/^U //' |sort > $TMP
sed 's,\(.*\)/.*$,\1,' $TMP |uniq| xargs mkdir -p
xargs < $TMP -s256 echo mget |ncftp sun-lamp:/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-current
rm $TMP
EOF
chmod +x ftpsup
exit 0

I cd to a tmp dir & pipe the CVS update message into ftpsup.
ftpsup picks up all files names, creates relevant
directories and then feeds multiple mget strings to ncftp.
It takes a while but when done I have a tree of files
mentioned in the CVS msg.  I then tar zcf and download it.
Replace sun-lamp:... with a path to your favorite mirror
site (I have a number of such scripts).  You can use the
same idea to generate input for ftpmail.

Bakul