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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

[Gilby]

Originally posted by Dontom
Hi, I am trying to install this hack - does this mean Date/Parse.pm is not installed?

Yup, that error means that this perl module is not installed. Look in the installation instructrions of this hack which explains how to install the required modules.

[Dontom]

Sorry, again a dumb perl-question..
I have just installed above mentioned module, now I get the following (I uploaded newnews.pl ascii and chmoded it to 755)

sh: /bin/ps: Permission denied
Killed

Any Idea?
Tom

[Gilby]

Originally posted by Dontom
Any Idea?

Comment out this section:

# check for previous instance
my $pid=$$;
my $old_pid=0;
if (-e $pid_file) {
   open(W,"$pid_file");
   $old_pid=<W>;
   close(W);
}
open(W,">$pid_file");
print W $pid;
close(W);
my $ps_pid=`/bin/ps xaww | grep newnews.pl | grep -v "grep"`;
$pid=substr($ps_pid,0,5);
if($pid+0 == $old_pid+0){
   system("kill -9 $old_pid");
}

Just put in # at the beginning of each of those lines. That code checks to see if the script is already running and if it is, it terminates itself. Apparently the command to check if it's running is not set to give you permissions to run it on your server.

[AWS]

How I installed on win2k.

Lets get the tool you'll need first.

Download nmake.

ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/nmake15.exe

Log on as Admin.

Create a dir on C. Mine is called mods and extract nmake there.

Open a console and follow the directions in the usenet install file to install the modules.
When you run CPAN the first time it will ask you to configure it. The main paths you have to set is the dir to download to which would be the dir you created.
The path to nmake.
Path to your zip utility.
Make sure you set to ask before it installs dependencies.
The rest you don't have to worry about.
3 of the modules will install with no errors 2 will build but won't install, but, we won't let that stop you.
During the install it will find some dependencies. Let it install them but remember the ones that error. One of the 3 errored on my install.
You'll know when they error.
Now you have all the modules you need.
For the ones that errored we''ll just move the files to where they need to be.
I don't remember which ones errored but to move them is pretty easy.
After you have all the modules installed. exit CPAN and command prompt cd to the dir you extracted the newnews.pl file. Once there type

perl newnews.pl

it will error but we want it too so we can see where to move the files to.

When it error you get a can't find dirname/module.pm with the path to all the perl modules. Dirname and .pm name is what we want. Mail was one that errored on mine. What you'll do is open explorer and head into C:\path\to\perl\lib dir. If you don't have the dir name it was looking for create it and then head into the build directory you setup. You will see dirs for each modules you created. Open the mail dir and in it you'll find a folder called blib open it and you'll see another folder called Mail. Open it and copy the .pm file into the mail dir you created in /perl/lib.
If you get an error can't find module.pm just copy the module out of the build dir into /lib.
Run the script again and watch for the next error. Do the same thing you did above for each error.
When you get to the error 'kill not a recognized command or batch file' all the modules are installed and working correctly.

Now the last step.

Go to

http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin

and download and install the gnu tools. You need them for the script to run. Do the net install. Install them all. This is about 16 megs of files. When it starts the install choose to install for all. That way all users can use them.
When they are installed click the cygwin icon on the desktop to get to open the bash shell.

cd /path/to/newnews.pl

then ./newnews.pl

perl will overload and you'll get a stackdump error. No problem. We only wanted to let windows know cygwin is installed. If you happen to get any module errors there don't worry about them.
Exit the shell and open windows console again. Make sure you create the forum to hold the postings before you run the script.

cd path/to/newnews.pl

then perl newnews.pl

Watch the magic happen as it grabs the news.
This will take about any hour. The install time I mean not the time it takes to get the news.
I'm sorry I couldn't be more specific about the exact files I had to move and the dirs I had to create.

Fastforward, thanks for the great hack. I should have never switched to win2k from FreeBSD. At least they let me keep Apache. Wouldn't have to go through all the trouble to get the hack running.

Bob

[Dontom]

Gilby, Thank you - it works!!!

Tom

Originally posted by Gilby


Just put in # at the beginning of each of those lines. That code checks to see if the script is already running and if it is, it terminates itself. Apparently the command to check if it's running is not set to give you permissions to run it on your server.

[NgtCrwlr]

Those of you trying to get the proper modules installed you may find this little program handy. I found this at Gossamer Threads about two years ago, knowing that some day I might need it.

Then along comes fastforward with his modules dependent marvelous Perl wizardry, and I just smiled and said "I think I can handle this, now where did I put that little program?."

Save this code as a .cgi file (modules.cgi or whatever) then upload to your cgi-bin and call it with your browser.

Example:
http://www.mis-forums.com/cgi-bin/modules.cgi

#!/usr/bin/perl

# uncomment the line below if you have installed any modules locally
# change the line to reflect your server settings

# use lib "/path/to/my_modules/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005";

use strict;
use File::Find;
my (@mod, %done, $dir);
find(\&get, grep { -r and -d } @INC);
@mod = grep(!$done{$_}++, @mod);
foreach $dir (sort { length $b <=> length $a } @INC) {
   foreach (@mod) { next if s,^\Q$dir,,; }
}
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
foreach (@mod) { s,^/(.*)\.pm$,$1,; s,/,::,g; print "$_<br>\n"; }
print "Done! ($#mod modules!)\n\n";
sub get { /^.*\.pm$/ && /$ARGV[0]/i && push @mod, $File::Find::name; }

Cheers!
-Larry

[fastforward]

A few people have asked for a copy of my templates to use as an example for the usenet bits. Here's the default and usenet styles from dbforums.com

They were actually created on RC3 so there are some that should really be reverted. I was going to tidy them up but other peoples HTML skills are probably a lot better than mine... besides, Startrek Voyager two hour 'end of series' finale is on tonight so I don't want to be messing about with templates

[chrispadfield]

Originally posted by fastforward


They were actually created on RC3 so there are some that should really be reverted. I was going to tidy them up but other peoples HTML skills are probably a lot better than mine... besides, Startrek Voyager two hour 'end of series' finale is on tonight so I don't want to be messing about with templates

www.talkstartrek.com wants to hear your comments afterwards

[NgtCrwlr]

fastforward... a big high five at-chya, I managed to get the templates working well enough that I can go to bed with a gleaming smile.

http://www.mis-forums.com/vbbs/

Thanks man, I hope some day to be able to repay you in some way, for the work you have put into this project. This is just too good to be true.

That's it I'm down for the count.

Cheers!
-Larry

[NgtCrwlr]

I think I have found a posting date bug....

I finally got around to setting up a test forum to try out posting from vB2 to usenet. The first two posts one a reply and the other a new thread are both showing Date: 12-31-1969 07:00 PM in the usenet template.

Here's what it looks like.
http://www.mis-forums.com/vbbs/showt...?threadid=9445
http://www.mis-forums.com/vbbs/showt...?threadid=9413

From phpmyadmin I see that the nntpdateline field is 0 for both posts, so I'm off to figure out why it is not being updated.

If anyone has already figured this out I'd appreciate a toot.

Cheers!
-Larry