I installed it exactly how their instructions said and the instructions said that if there were any errors I would see them "loudly"

people can post in the forum , add threads etc.. just nothing from usenet is shown in the folder

I forgot to mention the link you posted goes to a blank page so I couldn't see anything.

If you can run newnews.pl from telnet without error and it shows a clean disconnect message from your news server then I'm guessing that you have your forum settings wrong.

Try posting a link that works and we can work from there.

The cgi-bin server of the place I use is down ..

and also

since it's a free web host .. that allows php and mysql ... I do not have telnet access

I followed their directions exactly as they listed.. and I didn't see any huge errors or anything.. I actually did not see an error at all ..

Did you run newnews.pl? This is done from telnet... although, the latest version may be able to be ran from the webbrowser. Can you show us the output of what you get when you run the newnews.pl script?

Since it's a free webhost ..

The only web host that I know of that is free and supports mysql/php

It doesn't allow telnet connection :-(

so I can't telnet to the script but the instructions didn't say anything about the pl

it said to place it above the wwwroot .. so I placed it right above www in my ftp

That script is meant to be run as a cronjob and is the script that fetches the postings from the newsgroup. So without running that script, no posts will go to or from the newsgroup.

Since you don't have telnet access, you'll need to put the newnews.pl script in a place where it is visible from the web. Also you will need to add this line near the top of the script:

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n<pre>";

Then run it from your web browser. You'll have to figure out a way to run it periodically too since you don't have access to a cronjob. Maybe there is a service on the internet that will access a certain page every 15 minutes or so and therefore execute the script.

The newnews.pl was never intended to be executed from the browser. As per section 2 of the instructions:
And then towards the bottom under the heading 'Running':
But that aside... most ISP news accounts authenticate you using an IP address (the IP address of your home PC). Unless the web host has a news server you can use, you will probably need to get a seperate feed.

As for running the newnews.pl from the browser; I believe it has been done successfully, but I have not tested newer versions using this method and make no guarantees that there won't be problems.

NOTE to everyone waiting for the next release:
I've been so so so so busy :) I haven't made much progress with the binary attachments so the up-coming version will only have the x-noarchive addition plus a few bug fixes. I was able to reproduce the quote color problems. It was a syntax problem that sonehow crept in between versions. Probably a slip on the keyboard :)

Wow thank you I didn't even know that

And good point ..

I know where there is a server that allows Telnet and CGI .. etc..

but it doesn't run php or mysql ..

do you think I can use that for anything?

If you can make a cronjob from that account via telnet, then you can run the following command with your crontab file:
wget http://domain.to/your/newnews.pl --output-file=/dev/null

yes, just run the script on that site and set the database to the one on your other host. That is what is so good about databases, you don't need to run the programs at the same place.

I wonder how many people are actually interested in binary posts.

I wouldn't want you to be wasting your time on a feature nobody is interested in?

Well.. with the binaries function Usenet "hack" (no longer should be called that - it's the Whole Development already, *me bows to fastfoward* ) would be an ultimate and scalable news board. With a proper server(s) and maintenance you could create anything from a small hobbyst website to commercial usenet portals.

However, before it gets to that stage, I for example still have problems with newnews.pl - posts never inserted into threads or never retrieved from news servers, posts disapearing when manualy inserted from admin menu to correct threads (they just never appear there) etc..

we should get an own forum for this hack... 36pages... phew...

I lost the discussion on the newsfeeds - can anybody here recommend a cheap service?

Agreed. It's a pain having to discuss it all in one thread :(

I've been quiet about what I've found on the news feed provider situation because I haven't been able to really test posting yet. I didn't want to get everyone excited and then find out there were a bag full of problems down the road.

Anyway what the heck... you're all big boys and can decide for your selves right? Here's what I came up with... several pages back I started to get paranoid about breaking news server TOS agreements and that led to too many hours sifting through all the crap out there. BUT, I did find what I think may just be the golden needle of the haystack.

I sent Newscene.com several e-mails and received very promising and prompt responses. I signed up for three months at $36.99 and everything seems to be going just great. Aside from the fact that I have not tested posting other than alt.test.test.

The great deal about these guys is they are fully away of what we are doing pull/post accounts and said they have no problem with this. Here's a couple snips:


> I noticed the following in your TOS
> 12. 'Sucking' feeds are prohibited unless authorized. 'Sucking feeds
> will require an additional charge. 'Sucking feeds' will not be provided
> to individual users. Newscene reserves the right to terminate an account
> used for an unauthorized 'sucking feed'.

The "sucking feed" prohibition is mostly a leftover from the days when we offered flat-rate service. It does still apply in some situations--not yours, though, so you can set up with any type of account we offer (see our Pricing page for details). If you expect to pull down only 10 Megabytes per day, then the Standard account (which allows 5 Gigabytes per month) should be more than adequate. Please let us know if you have any other questions or concerns.

> I need to know that Newscene will be understanding in spam issues and
> treat us as a provider and not as an individual, and be willing to work
> with us to solve these problems. Rest assured, we plan to attack spam
> with a vengeance, and we will be willing to do whatever we can to avoid
> problems.

Yes, we're willing to work with you, but because of the way pull/post-style software works, this will be a bit tricky. All of the messages posted at your site will come through tagged with your username when they are posted to our servers. We automatically filter spam at the user level, and if our spam filter is tripped for your account, all of the articles posted from your account will be filtered until we figure out what's going on.
This means there is a possibility that legitimate posts (which are sent in the wake of a wave of spam) may be dropped. If you can live with the shadow of that possibility, then I think everything will be fine.



I also sent http://www.newszilla.com/ the same e-mail questions and they are another candidate at a much higher price though
So there ya have it, I've been pulling from Newscene.com (30min cron job) for over a week without problem. I mentioned to the support guy that they may have a number of other vBulletin Gateway users signing up in the near future. They had no problem with that.

Pretty hard to beat at $12.99/mo and knowing that you are being up front with the company and won't be breaking any TOS agreements. http://www.newscene.com/ Add the quick response I got on the inital e-mails and it was a no brainer.

Cheers!

Sheez, I guess I got a little carried away there... and forgot to address the FREE feeds. I had very good luck with pubnews.netcom.net.uk (slow but allows posting) and dp-news.maxwell.syr.edu (fast no posting).

http://pubnews.netcom.net.uk
You don't need auth/pw if you don't post, if you want to post you have to register... it's free though.

Cheers!

i have two users complaining, that they didn' get a reply on there newsgroup posts.

here is the posting on our forum:

http://www.aktienboard.com/vb/showth...&threadid=5334

and here is a short overview about this newsgroup on newsgate:

http://www.newsgate.ch/de/de.talk.ta...hen/index.html

check out the post from flinx 2000 (Re: Greenpeace erzieht hirnmanipulierte , Flinx2000). he didn't get an answer on our forum, but there exists answers in the newsgroup. :(

why doesn't the script fetch alle replies?? maybe it is my fault, and i have false options set in the cp....


Please, who can help me fix it? Thank you very much..

Dioxin

Check in
Control Panel --> Usenet --> Groups --> Review/Insert Orphans, you might find some posts sitting there and waiting for manual injection. In my case majority of replies to cross-posted threads get "confused" and end up there...

there are a lot of posts to insert.

i think this isn't the best solution. how can i avoid this or why are there so many threads awaiting manual post insertion?

has nobody an idea to fix my problem?

there are a lot of posts, that aren't fetched by the script and wait for manual insertion.... what's the error?

please help

Posts that don't get inserted are not inserted because the references in the headers of the email do not match any of the message ids of existing posts in the forum. If your newsgroup is also a mailing list, as the one i use it on is, then this will occur more often (due to there being so many crappy mail readers that don't use the same headers). I also use this script on a private news server and those newsgroups usually never have a problem (unless the post before it was a binary post and therefore not inserted into the forum). Do these uninserted posts only occur on posts that are in reply to forum posts? If this is the case, this could be because you have changed your useragent setting in the control panel (but that shouldn't affect too many), or that your newserver that you are using is changing the headers and removing that useragent. If the nesgroup has a lot of binary posts, all posts in responce to that binary posts (and the rest of the thread branching from the binary post) will not be inserted into the forum.

This problem really needs to be fixed. But without risking the logical flow of a thread, I'm not sure how. Any suggestions?

Three possibilities are:

1. Have the binary posts be inserted as attachments with the post.
2. Have a table that will keep track of the msgid of the thrown away binary posts and its corresponding thread that it was to go in (the subject too as some threads start with a binary post).
3. Have the first so many characters of a binary post be inserted and cut it off with a message saying that it was a binary post.

Ultimately, the first option is the best one... but that's also the hardest/longest one to implement. That can be combined with implementing html multipart posts as well.

The 2nd and 3rd options are easier to implement and can also be used as options for those that don't want to fill their database with binary files, so implementing that now would get the 'problem' fixed.

I have posting from the board disabled and get a lot of posts waiting for manual insertion. If I had to find a pattern I woud say majority of these posts were cross-posts to groups not present on my board (as in reply to message nr 11111 in rec.group.whatever, which I have and 22222 in alt.group.whatever which I don't). But (there's always but) many many times first and a number of cross-posted follow ups appear in vB and then next one just gets stopped. Some posts are kept on hold simply because first message in the thread wasn't fetched, although message is available on the server and if I reset the counter it will fetch it when forced.

Another bug would be mixup of posts from time to time - I had plenty of moments when full threads and replies to another group were inserted into different thread in different board. This is minor though.

Strangely enough everything worked perfect untill last versions for 2.0 betas (ones with all changes in the code)...
For the last five days I've been purgiung all posts from one of the groups and changing servers, suspecting there might be something weird about INN we have in the office, but pulling from private account and from public server also had the issues described above...

vBulletin 2.0.1 + Usenet hack 20010528

I've had that happen... and i thought it might have been my database not being set correctly (probably sql not being executed from upgrade instructions). Some posts and the downline thread would show up in threads that only had the one post and was a forum post in another forum. Occasionally I would get the same post being inserted many times into the same thread (the correct thread). While the last problem may have been a one time thing, I fixed the other bug by making the database have a default value that was not null (in my case I used 'unicyclist') for the msgid field of the post. Since then, I haven't had any problems (that I've seen).

Any ideas why I'd be getting the following error messages in the output?

DBD::mysql::db do failed: Duplicate entry 'reasonable' for key 2 at newnews.pl line 628.
DBD::mysql::db do failed: Duplicate entry 'interest' for key 2 at newnews.pl line 628.
DBD::mysql::db do failed: Duplicate entry 'rates' for key 2 at newnews.pl line 628.
DBD::mysql::db do failed: Duplicate entry 'amend' for key 2 at newnews.pl line 628.

Regards,
Shri

Hi

This look a great script on your Forum Fastforward.

I have couple of questions.

How do I execute the file newnews.pl via cron? would it be posible to set up a script so that when a member logs on, it runs the newnews.pl file?(I have also emailed my host this question).

vB code changes, (8) admin/functions.php.
You say to ADD the new code just before the closing brace of the indexpost() on or around line 1022,
My line 1022 is maked in red.
Where do I add your code? Is it at the green marked Add here????


if ($newwords) {
$newwords=trim($newwords);
$insertwords="(NULL,'".str_replace(" ","'),(NULL,'",addslashes($newwords))."')";
$DB_site->query("INSERT IGNORE INTO word (wordid,title) VALUES $insertwords");
$selectwords="title IN('".str_replace(" ","','",addslashes($newwords))."')";
$DB_site->query("INSERT IGNORE INTO searchindex (wordid,postid) SELECT DISTINCT wordid,$postid FROM word WHERE $selectwords");
}

if ($newtitlewords) {
$newtitlewords=trim($newtitlewords);
$insertwords="(NULL,'".str_replace(" ","'),(NULL,'",addslashes($newtitlewords))."') ";
$DB_site->query("INSERT IGNORE INTO word (wordid,title) VALUES $insertwords");
$selectwords="title IN('".str_replace(" ","','",addslashes($newtitlewords))."')";
$DB_site->query("REPLACE INTO searchindex (wordid,postid,intitle) SELECT DISTINCT wordid,$postid,1 FROM word WHERE $selectwords");
Add here????
}
}

// ###################### Start makeforumjump #######################


Thank You for any help that you give.
Mark Thornton

Loaded this morning everything looks good but I have 1 probelm for sure maybe 2. The first is when I run newnews.pl I get this error.

Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@realwebhost.net and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.


Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Apache/1.3.19 Server at www.realwebhost.net Port 80

Second I went to control panel made a forum called test and it shows up. Then I went to groups for usernet, I added a new group and the only thing I changed was I pointed it the new forum test. After I save I go to test forum on main page but the only thing that is there is test forum It does not show default newsgroup underneath. Can someone tell me what I doing wrong please. I know it is probably simple.

Thanks Joey
HTTP://forums.realwebhost.net test forum at the bottom

Looks like you have problems with your word table. This problem has been reported before by people not using the usenet hack. The SQL that runs makes it impossible to try to insert a a duplicate key so this implies the table is somehow corrupt.

Your best bet would be to re-index. If you have a large board and that's not an option, then either;

1) Simply delete those words from the word table.
2) turn off the index option for the news for a single pull.

Possibly. But you'll have to write some sort of hack for vB that calls newnews.pl when someone logs on.
Your code shows the addition being made before the closing brace of the if statement. It needs to be just before the closing brace of the indexpost() function. see below.

if ($newtitlewords) {
$newtitlewords=trim($newtitlewords);
$insertwords="(NULL,'".str_replace(" ","'),(NULL,'",addslashes($newtitlewords))."') ";
$DB_site->query("INSERT IGNORE INTO word (wordid,title) VALUES $insertwords");
$selectwords="title IN('".str_replace(" ","','",addslashes($newtitlewords))."')";
$DB_site->query("REPLACE INTO searchindex (wordid,postid,intitle) SELECT DISTINCT wordid,$postid,1 FROM word WHERE $selectwords");
}
Add here????
}

You're trying to run newnews.pl as a cgi. It should be executed priodically from the command line or with the help of cron.

It may be possible to run it as a cgi, but first, get it working from the command line.

Thanks for your quick reply, this is how I am trying to run it

http://forums.realwebhost.net/newnews.pl

Is this wrong?

Joey

Sort of...

Although several people successfully ran it this way, the script was not written with this intention.

Before you try this, you should run it from the command line / telnet which will allow you to easily see any errors.

If you don't have telnet access, then you need to make sure you have full logging turned on for your webserver and study those logs after running it the way you have been trying. The most common errors you will see will be missing modules. Do a search in this thread for posts by NgtCrwlr. He posted a little script that will list the modules you have installed.

ok thanks, Here is the path to my modules. I believe all are loaded.

http://realwebhost.net/cgi-sys/perldiver.cgi

Joey

It looks like you have two versions of Perl conflicting. The executables are 5.005 but the modules are 5.6 :confused: Is this what you expected to see?

This is what my host has loaded. Can this still work?

I hope so.

Joey

this is how I have newnews.pl setup, I left password out.
Do I need to change any of this?


#!/usr/bin/perl
# Usenet Gateway hack for vBulletin 2.0
#
# $Id: newnews.pl,v 20010528 2001-05-28 00:29:14-05 paul Exp $
#
# This script creates a gateway to selected usenet newsgroups and maintains
# an historical mirror of articles in your vBulletin forums.
#
# This script is free. You are welcome to do whatever you want with it as
# long as you don't try and sell it or claim it as your own.
# The copyright is retained by the author.
#
# Author:
# fastforward (Paul)
# contact me via the vBulletin forums at http://vbulletin.com
#
#

# uncomment the following line if you installed perl modules to a
# non-standard directory
# use lib "/usr/home/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005";

my $db_name="realweb_forums"; # realweb_forums
my $db_host="localhost"; # localhost
my $db_username="realweb_admin"; # realweb_admin
my $db_password=""; #
my $pid_file="newnews.pid";

can someone help please I am getting this error when I run the script.

[/home/realweb/www]# ./newnews.pl
Global symbol "$db" requires explicit package name at ./newnews.pl line 611.
Global symbol "$db" requires explicit package name at ./newnews.pl line 612.
Execution of ./newnews.pl aborted due to compilation errors

Joey

ok I got it to go through Now I get this when it is done, but nothing shows up on my board.

[/home/realweb/www]# ./newnews.pl
Purging usenet articles...
Purging usenet threads older than 30 days from MSNEWS... OK
Purge completed.

Assuming you have set up the forum to usenet group mappings correctly, the most common reason for posts not showing is that the posts you downloaded are older than 30 days. This means they are being purged as soon as you import them. Try turning the 'AutoPurge' option off in the control panel.