Have anyone tested this with a free feed? I only need on usenet group (no binary or xxx) to test it and see if it works, I used nezpig for a while, but can't connect to them anymore.

Nice boards!

Man that ubb like forum view is awsome! You should make a hack about it! I'd sure get it!:) (The little icon next to name in all forums listings..)

I am waiting for the next release on the usenet hack to come out along with vb2 beta4.

Question: When is the next usenet hack beta version coming out with the ability to allow only a few members or group of members to post?

Also I have subscribe to newsfeeds.com which I understand will work with this hack?

Thanks and I can't wait to incorporate this awesome hack into my site.....

DON'T USE NEWSFEEDS :)

I was using them but they seem to have added some lovely little singature to every one of their posts automatically saying "Message posted by Newsfeeds.com" but it is a lot bigger and ugglier than that. I tihnk if you use spamkillers server they have it is ok but that server seems to have low article retention (ironically).

I am going to go for someone else instead as it makes posts from your site look very unprofessional. Any suggestions?

You might want to look at onlynews.com. I recently switched from newsfeeds to them. They have no speed cap which is ideal for this particular script. On my dbforums site I can pull in 50 posts in about 8 seconds. This extra speed is welcome when you have 70 groups mirrored.

Too late....I had already paid for the year since it was much cheaper that way. What I would like to do is setup my.newsfeeds.com with the groups that I am interested for my members thus it should be very fast according to newsfeeds.com docs.

When my certain group of members who can post to the usenet forum send it through it will go to spamkiller.newsfeeds.com stripping out the footer that is appended to every post.

I hope it works like that...:)

Any word when the next version will be out? I've added all the modules as requested (I hope) to install and run the hack.

Fastforward,

I did the SQL and PHP updates, edited vars in newnews.pl but get the following errors:

I installed the 2.1 for beta3

[quote]
Global symbol "$db" requires explicit package name at ./newnews.pl line 46.
Global symbol "$db_host" requires explicit package name at ./newnews.pl line 47.
Global symbol "$db_username" requires explicit package name at ./newnews.pl line 48.

Bareword found where operator expected at ./newnews.pl line 53, near "$smtp_server="localhost"
(Missing operator before localhost?)
String found where operator expected at ./newnews.pl line 65, near "$useragent=""
(Might be a runaway multi-line "" string starting on line 53)
(Missing semicolon on previous line?)
.......

Global symbol "$batch_limit" requires explicit package name at ./newnews.pl line 53.
Global symbol "$expire_days" requires explicit package name at ./newnews.pl line 53.
Global symbol "$italic_quotes" requires explicit package name at ./newnews.pl line 53.
Global symbol "$indent_quotes" requires explicit package name at ./newnews.pl line 53.
Global symbol "$colorize_quotes" requires explicit package name at ./newnews.pl line 53.
Global symbol "$hyperlinked_uri" requires explicit package name at ./newnews.pl line 53.
Global symbol "$allowsmilies" requires explicit package name at ./newnews.pl line 53.
Global symbol "$email_notify" requires explicit package name at ./newnews.pl line 53.
Global symbol "$article_wrap" requires explicit package name at ./newnews.pl line 53.
Global symbol "$max_msg_length" requires explicit package name at ./newnews.pl line 53.
Global symbol "$output_to_console" requires explicit package name at ./newnews.pl line 53.
Global symbol "$useragent" requires explicit package name at ./newnews.pl line 53.
Bareword found where operator expected at ./newnews.pl line 65, near "$useragent="LowCarber"
./newnews.pl has too many errors.

Hmm,

I figuered the above problems. It was due to bad quotes """ (my fault)

Now I can see the articles retrieved, but it fails to add them to musql:

Did you read onlynews agreement?

DO NOT use automated unattended news posting and retrieval programs with our service.
Improper use of these automated unattended posting and retrieval news programs can
result in termination of your account or interruption of service without notice. We will be
disabling accounts of any customers that abuse the system with these (or other)
commercial, automated unattended news posting and retrieval programs. OnlyNEWS
Usenet account services are designed and priced for individual use and NOT for
commercial level archiving of gigabytes of data. For purposes of this section and purposes
of clarity, abuse of the system includes but is not limited to downloading in excess of 5
gigabytes over a 30-day period. Your individual account is for personal, non commercial
use -- NOT for archiving, newsfeeding, news sucking, or testing experimental software. If
you would like a commercial newsfeed, please contact our sales staff at

Rename the column in the user table from 'isusenetpost' to 'isusenet'. It seems I made a mistake in the SQL installation script. The hardest bit about this hack has been getting the docs right!

You'll see the same restrictive guidelines on most of the decent personal news accounts. Although strictly speaking it could be agued this program probably violates some of these guidelines, if you are simply sucking a selection of text based groups, you are using well below the 'abuse' limit. And this isn't experimental software.... it's a 'release' :)

hehe....

come on beta4 i want to intall this!

We now have control panel integration!

Some of the other features include:

• all variables are now set via the control panel and stored in the database. (except the database connect string obviously)
• support for seperate footers per forum in outgoing posts
• purge options per forum or all usenet posts. can also be set to purge only non-real user posts.
• selectable multi-language characterset support for MIME quoted printable strings
• usergroup assignable permission to allow/disallow usenet posting
• documentation tidy up. (I have personally gone through the installation using the docs on a vanilla vB several times to clear up any typos/errors etc.
• a whole bunch of minor bug fixes

Download version for vB 2.0 beta3

Screeshots of control panel
Image 1 Image 2 Image 3 Image 4 Image 5

I must say this is one of those "out of the box" thinking hacks that is extremely practical and extremely original!!

Quick question though, will the new release make installation and configuration a breeze for n00b's like myself (I wake up every morning and refer to a manual just to get my computer turned on) :)

2.2.20 beta 3... I'm getting stuck on sql updates:

ALTER TABLE post ADD INDEX(tsp);

"Error 1069. Too many keys specified. Max 16 keys allowed"

Anything i could alter in my MySQL settings to fix this?

As long as the msgid column has a unique index you can leave the other indexes off. You may want to re-think the necessity of all your other indexes though. 16 indexes on the post table seems a little excessive :)

I would say very excessive.... it must take forever to add new posts to the database. Unless you are using all those keys (I doubt you are), I would delete those that aren't being used.

Found where the problem was..
a bug in web interface i use to insert stuff to db. It creates extra indexes each run in the past ( msgid, msgid_1, mdgid_2 etc..). My fault, should have debugged the script...

Btw.. many thanks for this mod, it's fantastic.

I did toy with the idea of writing an installation script that parses the vB code and replaces it where necessary, but I figured that most people that install this hack would already have other hacks installed that may have already changed parts of the same code. It also relies on Jelsoft not putting up a sneaky release without changing the version number :)

But if there's enough call for it, I'll create an install script.

go for it m8.

I seconded the motion......

:)

This is just a minor update to the newnews.pl script. The sql statements have been revisited and optimized to make better use of indexes. The 'insert ignore' statement has also been replaced with a function that wraps the sql statement into an eval() to trap errors which will prevent the script dying at a key violation. This allows me to make more use of the mysql_insertid function which is obviously far more efficient than re-looking up the key of inserted records manually.

Basically this means the script will place far less load on the server during news pulls. I now run mine every 10 minutes and I never know it's running.

By the way, I will start an install script this weekend. It will only ever be useful on a fresh copy of vB of a specific version obviously. I will try to update the script within a few days of each official vB release.

I suppose I'll have to write it in PHP so that it can be ran from a browser; I'd much rather do it in Perl. Ah well I'd best go and start reading my PHP for Dummies book :(

Fastforward, thanks for a great hack! I installed on a test directory and it's running great, no problems.

I have a question regarding upgrades to future versions of vb, like 2.0 none beta etc. I have no problems updating php, but I'm pretty green in sql stuff, I can just do the basics, backup, retore, etc.

If I install the latest usenet hack on vb2 beta 3, what would be involved in updating the database to future vb release? I don't mind losing the usenet posts, but don't want to lose members posts and information?

You should be OK for the most part. The usenet tables are all prefixed by 'usenet_' and it's unlikely they will ever conflict with a vB table. There are some added columns to the vB tables but again, it's unlikely they will conflict as they only have relevence to usenet stuff.

Where you may run into problems is the indexes. It should be fine when vB 2.0 is finally released, but with each beta I see a different set of indexes on the tables. One major ommission on beta 3 is the unique index on the 'username' column in the user table. This is required if you are importing users from usenet so my script adds it. If beta 4 fixes this ommission, you will end up with redundant indexes.

I can't forsee any scenario that would lead to posts or users being lost or removed so you're safe there.

Don't worry too much as I have this installed on my boards and it will be in my interest to make sure it all works for each new release :)

I'm getting this error when I click on Options in the Usent control panel:

[quote
Warning: Offset 0 is invalid for MySQL result index 6 in /home/tamarian/lowcarber-www/forum/admin/db_mysql.php on line 153
[/quote]

That's a standard PHP/Mysql Error. It usually means a table or column can't be found. What about the 'Groups' and 'Spam Control'; do they work?

Make sure you have the 'usenet_setting' & 'usenet_settinggroup' tables.

Yes, the other buttons work.

I deleted the 2.3 newnews.pl and installed the 2.2 one on top of the 2.3 hack. I added the groups through phpMyAdmin and things work fine as far as pulling the groups from nntp.

I can't figure which table is missing though. Any tips on what to look for? Would you like a dump of the schema?

When I ran the sql script, it issued an error regarding a specific forum user!! but since the pdate proceded and create the tables, I dismissed that error.

The only tables the php web page uses are 'usenet_setting' and 'usenet_settinggroup'. It doesn't actually have anything else to with the collecting of news. It is purely for setting the options.

Try downloading the latest hack and running the usenet.php from that. If that fails, drop your usenet_setting and usenet_settinggroup tables, run the SQL that creates and populates them (only those two). You'll have to re-enter your options obviously.

I've just ran the sql script on a fresh vB and loaded up the options with no problem.

In the meantime I'll try to reproduce the problem at my end.

I have the latest hack 2.3 downloaded this afternoon.

I ran the usenet.php script and it gave the same error, so I followed your second sugestion, dropping the two tables, and adding them (through the sql script trimmed to only adding those two) and it worked, I was able to update the usenet options, It gave me this warning:

But the 2 tables were populated with my entries, and I used the 2.3 newnews.pl which worked fine.

Thanks for your continued help, I have no idea what went wrong, but the drop/load solution worked.

I just got the following db error in replying to a usenet message, I guess it's the ''' in the title:

Looks like I forgot the addslashes() to that. That will have to be a manual edit to the code I'm afraid. I'll have to update the instructions. I don't know why I missed that. It's in my setup but not in the instructions.

There is one occurance in admin/functions.php that you'll need to change.

It's on or around line 869 and reads:
Change it to:
Sorry about that. :o

If you're updating the docs. there's a minor change that may need to be added. In regards to removing the "Registered: " from postbit, I think the Location needs removing as well? It appeared in duplicates after I installed the latest 2.3 usenet hack. Just FYI.

I can't stop saying how great this hack is! :)

Several errors in the documentation have been corrected.

There was on instance where the 'OLD CODE' was, in fact, the 'NEW CODE'.

Another ommission led to the word 'location:' being displayed twice for registered users.

And finally a serious error in admin/functions.php that caused posts to fail if the thread title contained a quote.

Any idea on how long the install script will take? If it will more then a week I will just install it manually.

Thanks for any info.....

Michael

I haven't actually started it yet... sorry. I've been busy doing a new CV ( that's resume for you yanks :D ). Time for a new job change :)

I'd install it by hand if I were you. It's quite straight forward. It's just replacement of code in about 3 or 4 files.

Maybe Jelsoft will let me put ready hacked files in the members area. That would make it easier. Trouble is, if they do it for one they'll have to do it for everybody.

Which one's that? Not sure if I cought that, or it's screwd up, I installed the 2.3 version of the hack.

The NEW CODE part was still OK. So if you managed to find the correct bit to replace you'll be fine. It was actually the same section as the missing addslashes() problem.

I am having the problem where some replies are not being inserted into the threads that they correspond to and they just stay in the usenet_article table. While a few of them do not have the parent post to be inserted into, the majority do have the thread started and post that it's a reply to is in there, but it fails to insert them into it. These messages end up being about 10% of the total posts from the rec.sport.unicycling newsgroup.

I also tried it with some other newgroups on a server that was not a usenet server and had the same problems with those ones too. Here is the test newsgroup that I tried on that server: news://news.webdiscuss.com/webdiscuss.test

It's not just the thread starter that prevents an article being inserted. Each usenet article has references to every post that was posted before it. An article will only be placed in to the forum when the post immediately before it is available. If it didn't work like this you would get posts appearing as replies to a message that doesn't exist. Very confusing! When you first start pulling news this occurs a lot due to the fact that many of the articles will have expired but replies are still there. As time goes on the surplus will expire from the usenet_article table and the number will reduce. Provided your news provider gets all posts, you will get them too. I am confident this part of the script is working as it is the part I spent longest on to ensure all articles were collected and inserted when appropriate. An example is my dbforums site. It has been running long enough for the orphan messages to fall through the system and I now have about 800 articles in the usenet_article table. This is from 70 usenet groups. So that is the number you can expect after about a week of running (provided your expire is set to 5-7 days) in the control panel.

Let me know if this would explain the numbers you are seeing.

And you are you using the latest version right?

The post that the message is a direct reply to is there and inserted into the forum already. If you try that test forum that I mentioned, there are three threads and no missing or expired posts yet it happens in there. The posts not appearing in the forum is happening in the real newsgroups as well even though the entire thread exists on the news server with the post that is is a reply to.