[RELEASE] Usenet Gateway for vB 2.01

Description:

This hack provides a gateway to selected usenet groups. The entire usenet group is mirrored locally. Posts submitted locally to mirrored newsgroups will also be sent out to usenet. A single perl script is executed via cron that collects news and posts any outgoing articles. Incoming messages are parsed against customizable spam filters and threaded correctly before being placed in your forums. By default, no personal information is sent to usenet other than the posters username and whatever you have globally configured as a footer and organization. The option does exist for a user to include a custom email to use for usenet posts. After initial installation (which involves creating some new tables, adding a few columns to existing vB tables, and entering the database connection information to the news script) configuration is completed via the vB control panel.

• See it in action at dBforums.com (usenet forums are at the bottom)
• Download latest version for vB 2.2.4

Current version is 20020323 for vB2.xx

Current feature list:

• correct threading of outgoing posts on usenet
• full control panel integration
• email notification to usenet replies
• emoticon translation into vb icons
• vb code removal or conversion prior to posting to usenet
• hyperlinked urls in messages
• color coded, italicized & indented quotes
• vB style quote to usenet style quote conversions for outgoing posts
• logging of outgoing posts
• support for multiple news servers
• support for seperate footers per forum in outgoing posts
• multi-language (selectable) handling of quoted MIME printable headers (for all those funny foreign characters)
• handling of mailing archive groups
• flexible spam control and replacement variable options for incoming and outgoing messages
• configurable auto-expire option
• option for users to show email address in their outgoing usenet posts (may be different than normal one in profile
• option to enable/disable user signatures on outgoing posts.
• fully compatible with vB moderation functions

Still to be done:

• canceling of messages after they have been sent to usenet via control message in accordance with RFC1036.
• binary attachment support
• email to PM gateway

Screeshots:
Main Options
More Options
Configuration of Newsgroups
Add New Newsgroups
Spam Control
What an imported usenet article looks like in vB

The latest version of this hack will always be in this first post of the thread.

Before asking questions in this thread, please read all the posts in this thread. If your question goes unanswered, it will probably be because the question has already been answered countless times in this thread.

This hack was created for use on my forums and will only be supported as time permits.


Links to required Perl Modules

• News::NNTPClient
• Net::SMTP
• MIME::WordDecoder
• Text::AutoFormat
• Mail::Address
• URI::Find
• DBI
• DBD::MySQL
• Date::Parse
• HTML::Entities

i dont think the webspace provider where im working does either, the board im editing is at F2s, i cant find any details on news servers although i could be wrong they may have one, or are there any i can login to usingthis script? i dont want to add teh hack till i know it can login! cheers for any help

[dwh]

As much as I love this hack I'm a bit worried to go live with it, I've really only been testing. What happened is that I had an old version in my test server. Spent 2-3 weeks away from this hack, upgraded to vb 2.03 and came here to install the upgrade. My version was already not mentioned in the upgrade path so I had to kind of figure it out myself. I did a new install but had to manually delete a bunch of fields and now it's not quite working...on telnet I can run newnews.pl once it says "killed" and the second time it seems to work, though I haven't seen new messages posted.

There's no log file generated from cron so I think cron just gets the killed message each time. Maybe there was an issue w/ the way I upgraded but I worry that once it's production and my users get used to it, will I have to follow this thread every day to make sure I will be able to upgrade in the future? Will new releases of vb be as big a pain as this one was.

NOW PLEASE, don't get me wrong!!! This is not meant as criticism of the hack. This is the best hack EVER created for vB in my opinion. It's too good! and the support of it is too good. It gets updated so often and that's my worry, will I be out of the loop if I don't follow this thread forever?

[JCDR]

Hi Guys,

I got all the perl mod's installed but after running the newnews.pl file the following error appeared.

Can't locate MIME/Base64.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /usr/libdata/perl/5.00503/ma
ch /usr/libdata/perl/5.00503 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/i386-freebsd /
usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005 .) at /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/M
IME/Words.pm line 85.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/MIME/W
ords.pm line 85.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/MIME/W
ordDecoder.pm line 77.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at ./newnews.pl line 44.

Any ideas?

[fastforward]

Originally posted by JCDR
Hi Guys,

I got all the perl mod's installed but after running the newnews.pl file the following error appeared.

Can't locate MIME/Base64.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /usr/libdata/perl/5.00503/ma
ch /usr/libdata/perl/5.00503 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/i386-freebsd /
usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005 .) at /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/M
IME/Words.pm line 85.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/MIME/W
ords.pm line 85.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/MIME/W
ordDecoder.pm line 77.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at ./newnews.pl line 44.


Any ideas?

This indicates the MIME::WordDecoder can not be found. It comes bundled in the MIME-tools package. It may be that you have an older version of MIME::Tools that did not include the Decoder function. The latest is at http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=MIME-tools

[fastforward]

Originally posted by dwh
I did a new install but had to manually delete a bunch of fields and now it's not quite working...on telnet I can run newnews.pl once it says "killed" and the second time it seems to work, though I haven't seen new messages posted.

Check the line that reads

my $ps_pid=`/bin/ps xaww | grep newnews.pl | grep -v "grep"`;

It's near the top of the script. Make sure the script name matches what you have there. Also make sure there is no newnews.pid (or whatever you have the variable set to) is lying around in the directory.

Maybe there was an issue w/ the way I upgraded but I worry that once it's production and my users get used to it, will I have to follow this thread every day to make sure I will be able to upgrade in the future? Will new releases of vb be as big a pain as this one was.

Probably. There is no way of knowing what changes Jelsoft will make in the code and/or table structure.

Having said that, it's unlikely that any major new functionality will be added to this hack for some time. And when it does, it will be infrequently. So any changes should only be nenews.pl, which is a drop in replacement. The only other changes should be new code changes which have to made with each vB version anyway. Table structure modifications will be few and far between and only when made when necessary.

If you miss a large number of hack updates, they are all archived in the download directory. I'll change the my server permissions to allow a directory listing of the files sometime over the weekend.

Actually, there's a new version coming out tomorrow or over the weekend that fixes outgoing mail notification and 'top posting' among other things. Don't worry though, it's only a newnews.pl drop-in replacement.

[JCDR]

Hi FF

The WordDecoder.pm is there, isn't Base64.pm the file that is missing? Can't locate MIME/Base64.pm it is there but in the Decoder dir.

[dwh]

ok cool, you are the best...I'll check out what you said..

[fastforward]

Originally posted by JCDR
Hi FF

The WordDecoder.pm is there, isn't Base64.pm the file that is missing? Can't locate MIME/Base64.pm it is there but in the Decoder dir.

Just try re-installing the latest MIME-tools package and se what happens. Alternatively, you cound just copy the Base64.pm into the MIME directory.

Originally posted by fastforward

Just try re-installing the latest MIME-tools package and se what happens. Alternatively, you cound just copy the Base64.pm into the MIME directory.

Try following all the instructions, which includes the MIME-tools package, and then it will work. Simple.

[bitbender]

Folks, Does this hack work on VB platforms using W2K as an OS base ??

I installed this hack in my VB, after installing the latest Perl, and all went well, but I cannot seem to get newnews.pl to execute in my telnet session...It indicates that:

*================================================= ==============
Welcome to Microsoft Telnet Server.
*================================================= ==============
C:\>d:

D:\>cd webex

D:\webex>newnews.pl
Can't locate News/NNTPClient.pm in @INC (@INC contains: G:/Perl/lib G:/Perl/site
/lib .) at D:\webex\newnews.pl line 42.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at D:\webex\newnews.pl line 42.

D:\webex>

ok, so I did SOMEthing wrong....I went and got the lastest MSI version for Perl, and installed it b4 starting the hack...Any suggestions???


Btw, this hack looks like the 'gold', once I get it working on my board, I've visited some of the samples listed in this thread!!

Any help would be appreciated!! (and if this seems a silly request, it's late here!)