Usenet gateway

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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

[fastforward]

Originally posted by Mark Hewitt
PS Does this hack work ok on BETA5? (sorry if thats already covered)

It almost works on beta 5

You may have problems with the usenet.php page that generates the control panel as that changed in RC1. Also the line numbers in the instructions for code changes will ahve changed in many places.

What you can do is download this old version for beta 5 but use the newnews.pl from the latest version.

NOTE: It's imperitive that you DON'T use the old newnews.pl script from the beta 5 package as it has a serious bug in the auto-purge department! (ask Tamarian... he'll tell you!). Everything except newnews.pl should be used from the old package for beta 5.

As for bandwidth, Chris is right. You can use the the size of the database as a rough guide. I haven't actually looked, but my vserver account only allows 20GB/month and I have 2 sites with 75,000 page views pulling about 80 newsgroups between them and I haven't had a problem. You'll be using megabytes rather than gigabytes.

[Gilby]

I am using multiple servers and posts to one of the servers does not make it to the newsgroup. Looking at the output of running the newnews.pl script, all outgoing posts are trying to be posted on the first newsgroup it processes which for posts that are going to a newsgroup that is not on that server, it means it doesn't make it to the newsgroup but says it was sent. Disabling all the newgroups on one server makes it where the posts go to the right server (but tries to send the messages for the disabled newsgroups too). It does the same for inserting replies where all of them are done on the first newsgroup, but they go to the correct forum, so that's not a big deal.

This has happened since I upgraded to the vb2.0b5 version and I just tried it with the newest newnews.pl script and it occurs with this one too.

I have not investigated further... I would assume it's a coding problem or a problem with the database tables (something not upgraded properly). Does this happen for others that are using multiple servers?

Here is the output from newnews that I get:
Connecting to news.tc.umn.edu... Connected
Sending authentication info... Authenticated and logged in
Getting article batch from rec.sport.unicycling
No new messages in rec.sport.unicycling
inserting new threads into forums
finding replies...
checking for orphans...
Processing outgoing messages
Posting message by Gilby to webdiscuss.test... Sent

You can see that it is trying to post to "webdiscuss.test" while processing for "rec.sport.unicycling". The "webdiscuss.test" newsgroup is disabled and also is on another server. This post did not make it to the newsgroup even though it says "Sent".

[fastforward]

Originally posted by Gilby
I am using multiple servers and posts to one of the servers does not make it to the newsgroup. Looking at the output of running the newnews.pl script, all outgoing posts are trying to be posted on the first newsgroup it processes which for posts that are going to a newsgroup that is not on that server, it means it doesn't make it to the newsgroup but says it was sent.

I've had a quick look and can't see anything obvious, so I'll need to spend some time trying to find out what's wrong. I should have something by tonight.

One point to note though. The sent message only means the server accepted the message. The server will not check to see if it's a valid group first. That validation should really be handled by the script. However, as the groups are pre-defined within vB the chance of sending to an invalid group are practically zero... except in this case

[fastforward]

I think its due to misplaced parenthesis in the WHERE clause of the post_outgoing() function. As it is at the moment, it will:

either (get messages with no refs) OR (get aanything with a subject that doesn't start with Re: and is in this group)
Therefore it will match any message that has no refs. regardless of whether it's in the right group.

What it should be doing is:

(get messages with no refs or ones that have a subject that doesn't start with Re AND (also make sure they are in the newsgroup that is currently being processed)

Here's the fix:

Replace line 750 which currently reads:

my $q2 = db_fetch("SELECT poster,newsgroup,subject,refs,body,threadid,postid FROM usenet_outgoing WHERE (refs <> ' ') OR subject NOT LIKE 'Re: %' AND newsgroup = ". $dbh->quote($$newsgroup->{'newsgroup'}));

With this line:
my $q2 = db_fetch("SELECT poster,newsgroup,subject,refs,body,threadid,postid FROM usenet_outgoing WHERE (refs <> ' ' OR subject NOT LIKE 'Re: %') AND newsgroup = ". $dbh->quote($$newsgroup->{'newsgroup'}));

Let me nkow if that fixes it. I can't actually test it at the moment coz I'm busy at work.

[fastforward]

The fix mentioned above is now packaged up and the release number is 2.8.2. There was also another little problem with the logic that handled re-importing of forum generated posts that didn't exist in the forum. Unless you had the option to re-import turned on, you wouldn't have noticed this.

[Gilby]

Originally posted by fastforward
Let me nkow if that fixes it.

Works great now! Thanks.

[Mark Hewitt]

<problem solved post removed>

[Mark Hewitt]

When upgrading the board I need to be able to take backups of the database in case things go wrong.

I tried this on moving to a test database but got this

ERROR 1064 at line 2848: You have an error in your SQL syntax near 'ord(ord), KEY isusenetpost(isusenetpost)
) TYPE=MyISAM' at line 26

This is a serious error because it means I can no longer take backups of my database

Can anyone tell me a fix or point me to the instructions as to how to fully uninstall the hack from the database? I've got the empty_usenet.pl script but want to make sure it will run with the latest version of the hack, since I can't backup my database

[fastforward]

Originally posted by Mark Hewitt
When upgrading the board I need to be able to take backups of the database in case things go wrong.

I tried this on moving to a test database but got this

ERROR 1064 at line 2848: You have an error in your SQL syntax near 'ord(ord), KEY isusenetpost(isusenetpost)
) TYPE=MyISAM' at line 26

This is a serious error because it means I can no longer take backups of my database

Can anyone tell me a fix or point me to the instructions as to how to fully uninstall the hack from the database? I've got the empty_usenet.pl script but want to make sure it will run with the latest version of the hack, since I can't backup my database

What exactly are you trying to do? What code generated that error? I can still take backups of my database.

To uninstall the hack, simply upload all your original vB files and drop the columns and table that were added to the vB tables. You can see what these were in the installation scripts.

[fastforward]

This release affect newnews.pl only. It fixes a few minor errors.[list=1][*]Problem with email notification not using the vB templates correctly.[*]Fixed autopurge option to correctly clean out the searchindex table.[*]Added additional checks to all queries that delete or update data to ensure that only usenet groups are affected.[list]
You can just overwrite your newnews.pl with the attached file. The new file is also in the full package.

The next release will have a lot of changes that eliminate the need for many of the code edits to vB files. I have already got it working without the need to edit newreply and newthread.php which also means move,copy,split etc will work without problems for any thread.

The other major change is the removal of the option to import usenet users. I think this is a waste of time and space and serves no real purpose except the ability to search by username. For the extra code edits and problems that this introduces, I don't think it's worth it. Anybody have a problem with that?

My aim is to limit the code changes to a state that allows vB upgrades to happen with no loss in functionality to either vB or the hack (except maybe some inevitable display issues such as count of usenet posts etc)