The uninitialized value messages are because the script is running using STRICT and with the -W switch. It's from all the regular expression testing in the article parsing bit. It basically means its trying to test an empty variable. It can be ignored and if you take of the -w switch it will disappear.

The numbers you show seem ok. The 2321 are the numbers the server reports it has. This is usually slightly high by maybe 25 to 100 messages. The usenet_ref table is the many to many link between articles and replies. Because you are doing the initial history pull you will find a lot of messages left in the usenet_article table because it contains replies to threads that have since expired from the server. Once history is collected you can set the $expire variable to a sensible value and it will gradually reduce as time goes on.

As for the posting problem, it works for me in alt.test. I'll keep looking looking and let you know if I find any problems. What message are you seeing before it hangs? Do you see the "Posting message by $poster to $newsgroup..." message?