NNTP Gateway for Usenet ( Newsgroups ), Mailing Lists

The latest version: V3.5.0Alpha 1 (21 Jul 2005)

What is it?

This hack provides a gateway from vBulletin forums to the USENET. It allows forum members to read newsgroup messages as well as to send posts to the newsgroups. In a nutshell, it turns vBulletin forums into a basic function news reader.

For an added bonus, this package also supports mailing list archive and forum to mailing list gateway. The software retrieves messages from a pop3 account and import them into the forums threaded. It also allows a forums user to send messages to the mailing list by the forum posting interface.

Why?

The gateway will be appreciated by forum members who do not know how to set up a news reader, or people who do not have port 119 open in their network. A forum interface to read and post news are often considered to be better than a news reader.

The gateway adds more contents to your forums and allows the members to interact with wider audience. It is common to see new users signing up to use this feature.

History

This hack was originally coded by Gilby for vB2. I modified the hack to work with vB3 and have been maintaining and improving the hack. I have now done the modification for this to work with vB3.5.

The very original hack by Gilby can be found here:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...7&page=1&pp=15

The vB3 version can be found here:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=65152

Features

Some of the features and improvement include:

• Handles both newsgroup posts and mailing lists.
• Handles MIME encoded messages and attachment.
• Handles UUEncoded messages.
• Two Admin Control Panels for all settings.
• Automated installation.
• Correct thread implementation. All imported messages and posts sent to newsgroups will be threaded correctly according to References and Message-ID headers.
• Optional setting to thread by subject for mailing lists that strip references header.
• Imported messages will be searchable just like normal forum posts.
• Similar threads are built when the messages are imported if the system setting is on.
• Multiple attachments importing.
• Save attachment to database or file according to vB setting.
• Thumbnail created while importing image files.
• Multiple attachment post to newsgroup is also supported.
• Selectable X-No-Archive header honouring system.
• Light on system resources.
• Global Killfile to filter out unwanted messages. Killfiles can have OR and AND effectiveness.
• Strip footer by setting for incoming messages. Strips out repeated message footers.
• Built options to disable signatures and footers for out going messages.

Future development

• Traditional "> " lead posting interface.

What do you need and do not need?

You do not need to edit vB php files.
No need to manually run SQL.

Installation

Basically the AdminCP interfaces take care of installation as well as upgrade in the background. Back up your database first. The scripts can modify your database without alerting you!

Please follow the instructions in the readme.txt file for more details.

It is not a must to click "INSTALL" for this hack if you use it, I do try better answering the questions from people who do.

Support

Please post your support questions to this thread. Please check the FAQ in the second post within this thread first. It may be surprising, but it is possible your question is answered in the adminCP NNTP settings.

Please always provide more details about your problem. Examples and debug messages will certainly help. Well, if you don't even try to have some effort to compose your question, the answer you get may also not include much effort.

================== UPDATES ======================
Jul 21 2005 (release version 3.5.0 Alpha 1)

AdminCP xml file is written by Kadence.

• Ported to work with vB3.5.
• Existing bug fixes.
• Debug message can be sent by email or logged in vB Tast Scheduler.
• Known problem: image attachment thumb nail creation still needs work.
• Needs to be done: Documentation.

Quick installation instruction:
1) Upload files to their correct directory
2) Enter AdminCP, click on NNTP Settings once to install/upgrade. Change settings to your like.
3) Click on NNTP Groups once to install/upgrade.
3a) For new install. Run once
http://www.yourdomain.com/setlastmsg.php

Delete this file afterwards.
If you are upgrading from an older version. There is no need to upload this file. Actually this file should not be there except brand new install.

4)
Manually run in debug mode: http://forums.yourdomain.com/gateway.php?debug=1

[jgrtap]

Originally Posted by Rik Brown

I hate to say it but the vb scheduler has worked flawlessly for us over the past several months that we have had this mod installed.

Rik, to double check, would you mind telling me exactly what the settings are that you have in nntp_groups, nntp_settings (substituting for any private info) and the scheduled task manager? I'd appreciate it.

[KW802]

Originally Posted by jgrtap

I'm totally baffled. The gateway works, no problem. But the scheduler is a disaster. It starts, it stops, no error messages, no nothing. I can't figure it out for the life of me.

By any chance, are you trying to bring in all of the articles in a particular group or groups? The script will time itself out after 30 minutes so if you're trying to bring in thousands of articles and the script is still running for greater than 30 minutes the next time the scheduled task runs then it'll kill the prior task and try over again.

[jgrtap]

Originally Posted by KW802

By any chance, are you trying to bring in all of the articles in a particular group or groups? The script will time itself out after 30 minutes so if you're trying to bring in thousands of articles and the script is still running for greater than 30 minutes the next time the scheduled task runs then it'll kill the prior task and try over again.

No, this is a very small email gateway for a private forum on one side and a small Yahoo group on the other. We might be talking about 200 messages in a busy week.

[familyhistory]

I have found a news supplier, who will accept port 80. I have changed the code in gateway.php
But I get the following errors:

Database error in vBulletin 3.6.3:

Invalid SQL:

SELECT post.*, thread.*,
post.dateline AS postdateline, post.msgid AS postmsgid,
thread.title AS threadtitle, post.visible AS postvisible,
thread.visible AS threadvisible
FROM vbpost as post LEFT JOIN vbthread as thread
ON (thread.threadid = post.threadid
AND post.userid = thread.postuserid
AND post.postid = thread.firstpostid)
WHERE post.isusenetpost = 0
AND post.postid > 966
AND thread.forumid = 67;

MySQL Error : Lost connection to MySQL server during query
Error Number : 2013
Date : Sunday, January 21st 2007 @ 02:08:15 PM
Script : http://www.forum.xx.com/gateway.php?debug=1
Referrer :
IP Address : 82.xxxxxx

Any help on this please,
Dave

[Rik Brown]

Originally Posted by jgrtap

Rik, to double check, would you mind telling me exactly what the settings are that you have in nntp_groups, nntp_settings (substituting for any private info) and the scheduled task manager? I'd appreciate it.

I don't have a screen capture utility installed (a company no-no). But here is a sample setting for a newsgroup:

Newsgroup/Mailing list E-mail  		[alt.pandas              ]
Forum 	                                [-- Pandas Forum         ] <- vBulletin Forum
Prefix 					[                        ]
Last Message 	                        [                        ]
Server 	                                [news.yournewsserver.com ]
User name (only if required) 	        [your_user_name_here     ]
Password (only if required) 	        [your_password_here      ]
Enter 'use_real_email' if you want the  [                        ] <- I leave blank
posts to use the real email addresses.
Enter 'My Name <myemail@a_domain.com>' if you want all the posts use this name and email.
Please leave this empty if unsure!!! 	
Enabled 	                        Yes No                     <- Your choice

Except to change URLs to reflect our own site, we have used the defaults in the gateway settings except perhaps the following (set to 1 or zero):

Override useragent and organization checks to import absolutely everything from USENET. 1 = Full Import from oldest existing message, 0 = Ignore and start at next message.
Full import from USENET full_import_from_usenet 0

Use the email address to associate postings with the corresponding vBulletin user.
Associate by Email associate_by_email 1

Skip the message if the message has the X-No-Archive header set to yes. Google Group honours this Non-standard header. Set to 1 to honour. 0 to ignore.
Honour No-Archive honor_no-archive 0 [Edit]

When it is set to 1, no signatures will be sent with posts. When it is set to 0, users' signature selection at post is honoured.
Send no signature nosignature 1 [Edit]

Set to 1 : no profile/view thread footer will be sent. Set to 0 : attach user profile and view forum thread footer with each message posted.
Send no footer nofooter 1

Default = 0. Set to 1 : Time stamp for imported messages use the original post time. Set to 0 : Time stamp uses the time when the messages is imported
Use Post Time use_post_time 1

The vb scheduler looks like:

Varname  			gateway_varname
Title [Translations] 		NNTP Gateway
Description [Translations] 	Usenet newsgroups gateway mailer.
Log Phrase [Translations] 	NNTP Gateway
Day of the Week (Note: this     *
overrides the 'day of the 
month' option) 	
	
Day of the Month 		*
	
Hour 				*
	
Minute 				30 - - - - -
	
Active 				yes
Yes No
	
Log Entries 			no		
Yes No
	
Filename			./gateway.php 	
	
Product 			vBulletin	

I hope the above helps. We are only importing newsgroups so we haven't tried binaries or mailinglists.

Regards. -- Rik

ps: Sorry, the gateway options order above may be different as we may have sorted them.

[jgrtap]

We copied our install onto a dedicated server so we could see the Apache error logs and the immediately obvious error was having gateway.php installed in includes/cron causing it to fail trying to require files from includes/cron/includes/cron thus causing cron.php to fail.

Originally Posted by Rik Brown

Filename			./gateway.php

We've corrected the task to use ./gateway.php -- and now the forum doesn't respond. (sigh)

[Rik Brown]

Originally Posted by jgrtap

We copied our install onto a dedicated server so we could see the Apache error logs and the immediately obvious error was having gateway.php installed in includes/cron causing it to fail trying to require files from includes/cron/includes/cron thus causing cron.php to fail.

We've corrected the task to use ./gateway.php -- and now the forum doesn't respond. (sigh)

Forget cron for the time being. You need to have the gateway.php file installed in your vb forums root directory and functions_nntp.php, mime.php, and pop.php in the "includes" subdirectory beneath your forums root directory (and all other files in their correct directories per the install instructions).

Then run gateway.php in debug mode such as vb.com/forums/gateway.php?debug=1. You should see some sort of output that should help indicate if you have any further problems. But it just looks like you need to get the directory structure correct first. Then the vb scheduler should also work since ./gateway.php is referring to executing the gateway.php file in your root vb forum directory.

-- Rik

[gbechtel]

Originally Posted by poliveira

I am receiving this error:

Database error in vBulletin 3.5.4:

Invalid SQL:
UPDATE nntp_settings
SET value = WHERE varname = 'last_postid';

MySQL Error : You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'WHERE varname = 'last_postid'' at line 2
Error Number : 1064
Date : Saturday, April 8th 2006 @ 10:18:32 PM
Script : http://.../forums/gateway.php
Referrer :
IP Address : ...
Username : ...
Classname : vB_Database

I am getting the same type of error message. I am not seeing the tables in my vb database

Mine...

Database error in vBulletin 3.5.4:

Invalid SQL:

SELECT post.*, thread.*,
post.dateline AS postdateline, post.msgid AS postmsgid,
thread.title AS threadtitle, post.visible AS postvisible,
thread.visible AS threadvisible
FROM vb3_post as post LEFT JOIN vb3_thread as thread
ON (thread.threadid = post.threadid
AND post.userid = thread.postuserid
AND post.postid = thread.firstpostid)
WHERE post.isusenetpost = 0
AND post.postid >
AND thread.forumid = 93;

MySQL Error : You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'AND thread.forumid = 93' at line 11 Error Number : 1064
Date : Tuesday, January 23rd 2007 @ 04:50:20 PM
Script : http://www.domain.com/forums/gateway.php?debug=1
Referrer :
IP Address : *.*.*.*
Username : *********
Classname : vb_database

[jgrtap]

Originally Posted by Rik Brown

Then run gateway.php in debug mode such as vb.com/forums/gateway.php?debug=1. You should see some sort of output that should help indicate if you have any further problems.

We get the missing-value SQL error.

SET value =   WHERE varname = 'last_postid'

This message appears to be a consequence of having NO postings in the section.

[leeherron]

Jul 2005? What ever happened to this mod? Has anyone successfully installed it on 3.6.4?