Usenet gateway

THIS THREAD IS CLOSED!
Posts in here will NOT be answered

This hack has undergone many major changes since this thread was started. Consequently, most of the posts have become dated and of little use. To coincide with the latest major release (20010712), a new one has been started.

See this thread for the latest version and discussion

Originally posted by fastforward
You couldn't use it as is, but it wouldn't be too hard to modify.

Before you came out with this hack, I was planning on writing my own email <-> forum thing anyways... but no point in reinventing the wheel if yours does most of what I need. I haven't look at your script to see if it's what I need yet.

Anyways, for the mail to be processed by the script, it's pretty easy to do on *nix systems with sendmail. Just make an alias in the aliases file that calls the program like:

forumlist: "|/path/to/script.pl"

Then the email to forumlist@whatever.com will be passed to the script as STDIN.
Then the path is /path/to/script.pl, but in a lot of systems a security measure is taken so that not just any program can be executed from an alias, so a link in the /etc/smrsh directory to the script needs to be made.

I cannot wait for the V2 version m8, already setup, ready for it togo!

fastforward, did u just reply??

I have been a bit busy at work this past couple of weeks and didn't manage to get all the promised features into this release. But not to worry as vB 2.0 is still only beta.

This release is for vB 2.0 beta3.

One major addition to this release is the ability to have usenet users added as forum users with a special usergroup and title to allow searching by username and display of post numbers. This option is still experimental and is not turned on by default. I do have the option on at dBforums.com and have had no major problems. You are welcome to try it yourself by setting the option in the script.

One omission from this release is control panel integration. I have been too busy to look at this and it will probably remain at the bottom of the 'to-do' list until all other functionality is in.

See the fist post in this thread for other additions and information.

The instructions for this release were rushed out so may contain errors. (although I did give them a test run and they seemed ok)

Download usenet_gateway.tar.gz

Regards

Originally posted by etones
fastforward, did u just reply??

Yeah... I got confused while submiting a new post and editing the first post in the thread. I had two browser windows open and got V confused and posted the edit as a new post so I deleted it and restarted.

fastforward,

This is a massive hack! Thanks for the contribution. This should be great on my forum.

Just noticed the $usenet_usergroup_id=x from the script is not used, and a hardcoded group id of 8 is used in php code replacements. Similar variables are used like that, I think, like usenet user title. Just FYI, I'm still installing it with anticipation.

That's the only one. The problem is there is no way for the perl script to pass the variable to the php. I suppose I should really have set it up in config.php.

Another thing to add to my list.

I have a couple of newbie questions.. please be kind

> 3. Run the usenet.sql script.

How do I do that?
is it
mysql -uusername -ppasswd mydbname < usenet.sql

One thing that worries me is "... and adds some indexes and columns to existing tables."

Is it possible that there will be problems when I next time/in the future upgrade my vB when this hack has inserted new colums etc to existing tables.. for example if there will be new colums that go "on top" of these usenet-columns (yes, I know nothing about mysql/databases and I may be worrying fo nothing : )

Are there any other possible problems when upgrading to a new vB version besides need to modify all php-files again?

If i install this hack and want to remove it later what should I do?

or

If I install this hack but need to reinstall it after I have downloaded some newsgroups. What should I do to remove the existing news-messages so that I can start download them again?

Thanks!

This hack is NOT for the faint hearted!

You will definately have problems upgrading to a newer version of vB. The table changes are the least of your worries. Any vB code changes to the newreply or newthread files after this hack has been installed will make it impossible to post due to primary key violations. The changes are minor and it's easy to re-apply to any new release but I wouldn't advise you to implement this hack unless you are confident with mysql and php.

I doubt Jelsoft will offer much sympathy if you ask for support after installing a hack

As far as emptying out the usenet posts to restart... I have a little script I knocked up for that. I'll post it when I get home this evening.