I've kind of got it working. Does anyone know how to customise the footer that goes on messages in the newsgroup when people from my forum reply?

Well it stopped working for me after the upgrade from 3.5.4 to 3.6.2.

I now get the following error:

:/usr/bin/php -q /gateway.php

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 92160 bytes) in /includes/class_bbcode.php on line 1045
Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 0 bytes)

So any suggestions on how to fix this? Memory limit in php.ini is 48M

Thanks!

damn, damn, damn!

Sorry that it is not working in 3.6+. Though it does look like a PHP memory problem!

Please let someone pick it up. I would pay gladly for it!

Now it works but it keeps adding the same message over and over again. :(

It's working fine for me in 3.6.2 now

How/what did you fix?

I didn't change or fix anything - once I followed the instructions, it worked.

The only problem I'm having is getting the gateway.php script to run on schedule -- but I think that's a separate issue.

Also for me the internal VBulletin Schedule system not work but if i use an external Scheduler (for example the scheduler of plesk) it seem to work.

What instructions?

Okay, when people say that it's not working for them, can they please explain exactly what is and is not working.

I've had it installed for about 10 months and, in tests at that time, everything was working just fine with regard to both grabbing usenet groups AND posting. No, after upgrading to 3.6.4, a quick check reveals that posts made from within my forum are NOT actually getting posted to Usenet although they ARE appearing in my forum.

Is this a known problem with more recent versions of VB? For all I know, this might actually have started before I upgraded, I just don't know.

Anyone experiencing this particular problem?

Before I re-invent the wheel... does anybody have a little cleanup script to remove duplicate posts?

In the vB ACP there is the Remove Duplicate option to remove duplicate threads but it doesn't handle duplicate posts.

Anybody? :)

Donnacha:

I just upgraded to vb 3.6.4 and exported messages in debug mode. It showed the messages being exported to my newsgroup server. I also logged onto the newsgroup server with my newsgroup reader and confirmed that my messages were there and that nothing looked strange in the headers, etc. Hopefully, it was just a temporary glitch for you?

Regards. -- Rik

Never mind. I ended up just creating a new "Remove Duplicate Posts" function in the ACP and that is doing the job fine. Taking forever to loop 1MM+ posts but it is working.

Thanks for the feedback Rik, much appreciated.

Donnacha

Has anyone figured out a way to use regex or some other means to filter out certain spam? I'm getting a large amount of viruses and other crap coming through my feeds which is guming up the database. It takes a long time to delete these threads (1 - 5 min EACH)

Please help.

Ladies and Gents,

I am offering $50 for the person who can resolve an issue with this mod, and update for 3.6

Please see this thread - https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...73#post1145373

Did you try the killfile settings? (ACP => NNTP Gateway Options => NNTP Gateway Settings => Global Killfile) I have a few entries in my and it seems to be working as expected.

Check your newgroup properties to see if the last message ID is getting correctly updated; if that that'll at least help narrow down where the problem is occuring. How many messages are you trying to download? There is a chance that if you're trying to bring in a new group that the cron job runs once, times out (which doesn't update the last message ID), run again, and tries to bring in all of the messages again.

I'm guessing that about 95% of the messages that we import with the same title get properly merged into the prior thread of the same title. So perhaps 5% get orphaned and I have to merge them manually.

Is anyone getting a 100% proper merging of threads of the same thread title over time?

Thanks. -- Rik

PS:
I'm asking because if others are getting a 100% success rate, it may be a problem with our server (Although I've played around with setting delays between messages which doesn't, however, seem to affect things) and so it may be upgrade time.

For the most part. The only problem I have yet is where if a new thread arrives with a subject of something like "RE: Whatever..." and "Whatever..." doesn't already exist then it seems like it keeps creating new "RE: Whatever..." threads with each import (as opposed to keeping them all together). I haven't looked at the code lately in an attempt to fix it.

I'm running vB3.6.4 and Mailman 2.1.9 and using this script to provide gateways between vB and email.

vB->email: Took a while to figure out all the Mailman idiosyncrasies but this part of the script is running perfectly. I'm certain my users will love it.

email->vB: Struggling with this. I can send an email to MailMan's pop account and it will a) get properly reflected to all users, and b) show up in the MailMan archive. Or I can "reply" to an email from the gateway and it will also a) get properly reflected to all users, and b) show up in the MailMan archive.

What isn't working is vB reading the POP3 account and posting the "email" or "reply" into the message board thread. I'm not certain what might be going on except that MailMan is immediately reading the POP3 account, then clearing it and vB has nothing to import? What else could be going on?

Any ideas out there?

(Noob here - How do I click INSTALL to indicate I'm running this script?)

Thanks for the feedback.

Regarding the "Re: " problem, I have that too. But I've been running a query against our forums after each mail exchange to remove the "Re: " in current vb thread titles before the next NNTP mail exchange. It seems to help somewhat in this respect, but not 100%.

If I get to understand PHP coding better, I'd like to alter the mod to remove the "Re: " part from all incoming titles as vb doesn't need them (and it looks better without them).

Thanks. -- Rik

Have other people found this easy to install and get working with vb 3.6.4?

I think that I'm gonna try it now. Is it just the same file that I have to use as the 3.5 that is downloable from the top post?

Thanks.

It is easy to install. However, there are many mods that have been applied to this mod since the last release. You will likely want to go through the notes in this thread and apply most of the mods created by dkendall and a few others as well. It may well be that people here are operating many different versions of this mod.

As for vb 3.6.4, this mod basically works well for me but I only exchange Usenet newsgroups and do not utilize features for binary files or maillists. Others would have to give you feedback there.

Regards. -- Rik

ps: Its definitely worth the effort to get it going. We went from a few thousand messages to 450,000 online in one month.

If I use vbulletin cron then the scheduled tasks stop but using the plesk interface to setup the job fails with errors from line 1-6 about files not existing. I can manually run the gateway.php file from the browser and there is an import.

Any thoughts on the matter?

Update: The error messages:

full/path/of//gateway.php: line 1:
?php: No such file or directory
full/path/of//gateway.php: line 2: :
command not found
full/path/of//gateway.php: line 3: P:
command not found
full/path/of//gateway.php: line 4:
Release: command not found
full/path/of//gateway.php: line 5:
*/: No such file or directory
full/path/of//gateway.php: line 6:
/********************************************: No such file or directory
full/path/of//gateway.php: line 7:
syntax error near unexpected token `Usenet/Newsgroup'
full/path/of//gateway.php: line 7: `
NNTP (Usenet/Newsgroup) Gateway 1.9'

Update In Case Others See This:

The first line comes from <?php ...
The other lines are from comments in the gateway.php script. But the script does not seem to run so there must be something that I set wrong in the plesk interface.

That sure doesn't look like a proper path ...

Shouldn't it be more like ./gateway.php assuming you dropped the scripts in your /forum/ subdirectory?

The cronjob is definitely running every 15 minutes but with the errors and so the php file does not execute. I updated my message with the ideas that the comments in the gateway.php file are causing the error. I just removed those comments from the file and will see what the next run through says. This is what was entered into the plesk interace. Do I also need to tell it about php?

0,15,30,45 * * * * /full/path/gateway.php

Thanks for the help.

Update: OK. After removing the comments from the script ... these are the 'new' errors

full/path/of//gateway.php: line 1:
?php: No such file or directory
full/path/of//gateway.php: line 2: :
command not found
full/path/of//gateway.php: line 3:
syntax error near unexpected token `E_ALL'
full/path/of//gateway.php: line 3:
`error_reporting(E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE);'

So - the php being interpretted. Hmm. Google search time

Nope, there's no way a normal UNIX setup is going to place files at /full/path - Just ain't gonna happen.

Please provide the full path to your forums and the full path to your gateway.php script. If you can telnet, simply type 'pwd' from the forum subdirectory.

I'm guessing it's something like /home/{youruserid}/public_html/forum ...

Thank you. I figured out the correct line now. The php interpreter does need to be stated prior.

0,15,30,45 * * * * /full/path/to/php /full/path/gateway.php

The space between is important. Another way would be for the user to add the information into the gateway.php script. Something like

#!/usr/local/bin/php

as the first line.

Now, I am a happy camper :glasses:

Thank you for all of your help.

Oh - additional instructions in case someone else trips over this post...

If you need to find the path of your php interpreter then use the php info in the admincp.

Hi

What do i need to have this up and running, Does it have to be used for posting, can it just be used for downloading the binaries?

I am a little baffled with regards to setup requiering email addresses as so on...

In the server setup side of it, what do i put in here "Newsgroup/Mailing list E-mail" please?

Can i use NTL's free server for this news.ntlworld.com?

I'm running 3.6.4,

What file do I add the two (construct_nav_option) lines from the installation instructions to? I've looked in a few files and don't see:

Edit ./admincp/index.php file

construct_nav_option($vbphrase['vbulletin_options'], 'options.php?null=0', '<br />');

-Thank you,
Growler

ok I have my news server that I'm paying for: news.tigerusenet.com
I have a username and password for it.

I setup the forum and the nntp settings
I've uploaded the files but when I run the debug, I get the msg:

Now i thought that this might be because my hosting company is blocking the ports.
I spoke to them and they wanted the ip and port so that they can open it up.

Now I'm guessing that the IP is what news.tigerusenet.com translates to (66.250.146.196). Is this correct?

Then I told them port 119, and they said that they cannot open this up on shared hosting plans...

Can anyone help me get this up and running?

All I'm after is to be able to fill my forum up a little more with posts. So I don't even need forum members to be able to post to usenet.

It's so frustrating.

Please help

Wait... your hosting will or won't open up port 119 for you? If they won't open up port 119 then you'll need to see if your NNTP provider offers feeds on other ports like port 80 (and then you'll need to change the port # hard-coded in the PHP file but one step at a time).

Thanks for your reply.

My host won't open up port 119.

I checked tigerusenet.com (the company I'm using to subscribe to the news server) and it says:

Port(s): 119, 80, 3128, 23, 7000, 8000, 9000

Now it doesn't say if I need to change options or anything there. These numbers are just in the corner so I guess that I can connect on any.

Do you know which is the best port to use there? port 80?

Do I just need to go through each of the php files and change 119 to, say 80?

Thanks for your help...

I just changed the details in the php files from 119 to 80. ran the gateway.php script and got the same error message.


This is really strange.
I feel like this is an amazing hack and I'm so close just can't get it to work and am lost about the reason?!

Is it the files? Is it the news server (tigerusenet)? is it my hosting company? Is it me?

I have no idea...

If all you want to do is fill ya forum with posts, perhaps using the free Microsoft account, no user or pass required, theres a good few groups as well, This is what i have done for now :)

I think the problem is my hosting company blocking port 119.

So even the microsoft news forums wouldn't work at this time. Unless I can get the hack to work on a different port.

Has anyone else had this same problem with their host? Any work around changing the ports in this script. I've kinda tried changin every occurance of 119 with 80 in the php files, but it still doesnt work?

Any advice

It's a double edged sword you're fighting here... on one side you have your hosting company who won't open up port 119 which is the standard NNTP port while on the other hand you have to find a NNTP provider who supports different ports like 80.

Not every NNTP provider supports port 80 so you need to find out from them what other ports, if any, they offer connections on and then you need to take that list to your hosting company to see which ports they have open. You may or may not find any common ports. You just can't blindly change the PHP file to different port numbers because (a) your hosting company may be blocking it but even if they aren't then (b) your NNTP provider may not offer that port as an option.

Take a step back with this...

- Go to your NNTP provider and tell them that your hosting company is blocking port 119 and then ask if they (the NNTP provider) offer connections on port 80 since that port is open for just about every hosting company.

- If your NNTP provider offer connections on port 80 then try to get the software up & running with a test newgroup first.

- If your NNTP provider does not offer connections on port 80 then try to find a free open access NNTP provider that offers connections on port 80. Most likely the newsgroup you want won't be available but at leat you can get the software up & running as a proof of concept and go from. After you have it up & running then you can shop around for a different NNTP provider.

What i meant was try the msnews.microsoft.com server not your hosting server, add that one as a new server and then add microsoft.public.pocketpc as a group and see if that works..

My newshosting account didnt work for me either so i tried the default server and forun a decent group in that server and hey presto it works...

I am referring to the server that you changed to yours when you 1st set it up, itshould be a microsoft one im sure, but anyway, use them details i have given you and it will work, let me know please, if ya dont quite understand what i mean let me know also and i will try to explain better :)

I have exactly the same problem! My host will not allow NNTP ports to be open and block all ports!

As I can get them with a newsreader (outlook or others), could there be away of downloading them all every so often then exporting them somehow into mysql??!!

OR,
Maybe I could run a copy of Vb locally on my pc using WAMP, then copying the relevant database onto the live website??? Need to do this a lot though!

What do you reckon?

Thanks,:)
Dave

Thanks KW802, I appreciate your help and comments... I'm well on my way with this now and think that when I have more time I can get it to work how I want.

Thanks Bashy. I have found another way to get this working at the moment. I'm just not sure that what you suggest would work either though. Basically I'm guessing that this is the problem in easy terms (someone let me know if I'm wrong)... The script is being run from a php file on my website, it requests access to ports on a newsserver (that could be a free one or a pay for account), so long as it gets a connection (and authenticates - if its a pay for newsserver with login) then the messages are posted in the forum.

With my original problem being my web hosting not allowing connection to be opened for outgoing requests on port 119, this would affect the free and pay for newsservers connecting to usenet groups.

Dave, I was trying to figure out a way to do exactly that - download the messages locally, then upload them to my forums. I'm not all that bothered with forum members interacting with usenet - I just want to fill my board with more posts. But I couldn't find a way to do this.

I did solve the problem of getting the connection working on a different port, and have managed to import messages. Only problem is with some of the titles, and also the links on the forumhome to the last message in each forum isn't working.

Anyways, 1 problem at a time. Here's how I got my web hosting company to open ports and connect to my newsserver. (as KW802 suggested):

I'm registered with http://www.tigerusenet.com/ (I think it's $7.50 a month - for 15GB / month)
This newsserver allows access on ports: 119, 80, 3128, 23, 7000, 8000, 9000

I had to then keep pushing my hosting company to open port 7000 (because they wouldn't open port 119 on a shared hosting plan) eventually they did it. It took 24 hours for them to process this change. They needed to know the ip address of the where the open port was connecting to so I did an ip lookup for news.tigerusenet.com

I then went through each of the installation files and replaced all instances of "119" with "7000" (only about 3 files needed changing, but i went through them all to make sure - use the easy edit>find>replace funtions of your text editor)

then after running the script (after putting in the settings) and it sucked the messages to my forum.

I still have some issues with it. (Like I haven't been able to repeat the task of sucking in the messages, but I haven't spent time trying to figure this out yet, plus I guess this has something to do with schedul tasks - just getting error messages) I will read through the posts here again.

But I'm optimistic because I sucked them in.

Give it ago, I'm not too sure how good tigerusenet is, but there is no contract, so if they end up being bad, I will cancel and change.

I know that if I was to allow 2 way posting to usenet, then I would probably have problems with this newsserver (maybe most are the same) - because each post to usenet would be from my account. And each instance of my account spamming usenet over tigernet is gonna get me a fine... so I disabled my forum members post from going on usenet (someone earlier in the thread suggested this).

Give it a go by seeing which ports you can use your newsserver on (eg. 7000?) then go to your webhost and ask to open port 7000 for ip (of your newsserver), then change all instances of 119 with 7000 in the install files (port 119 is the default).

Let me know how you go, good luck!