[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

[spideyrdr]

I'm fairly new to linux, and quite new to vB. Trying to get the hack installed, and I think I'm 99% there. The problem I have is when I run the perl script, if there are new posts on the forum I get the following errors:
NNTPERROR: 500 "POST" not implemented; try "help"
followed by
NNTPERROR: 500 "GROUP" not implemented; try "help".

If there aren't any new posts on the forum, I just get the
NNTPERROR: 500 "GROUP" not implemented; try "help"

With the console output on, everything LOOKS ok, ie. it says it is connecting ok, authenticating, etc. I'm guessing this is something stupid on my part, but a search of this forum as well as the 'net hasn't gotten me anywhere in nearly 3 hours.

Could someone kindly lend some advice? I would greatly appreciate it! I am hoping to have the vBulletin server rolled out by 1/1/02, and this appears to be the last major hurdle before moving it to my staging server. Thanks!

[Scrooge]

I'm having trouble. I am installing the current version of the hack, 20010820 with VB2.2.1. I am up to the point to make changes in Options under my control panel, but when I click options I get the following error:

Warning: Offset 0 is invalid for MySQL result index 6 in /home/reefaqua/public_html/forums/admin/db_mysql.php on line 187

In case it matters, line 187 of my db_mysql.php is:
return mysql_data_seek($this->query_id, $pos);
}

Any ideas where I might have screwed up? Clicking the other links on the cp works, spam control and groups, but options doesn't work. Thanks for any help.

[Scrooge]

I found my own solution. After reading all of this thread I had a bright idea and searched the forums for "warning" and "offset". That's where I found there was a previous thread on an older version of this hack. My question was there and was answered, and the fix helped me. Just in case someone else has this and doesn't think to check the old thread it is here

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...ning#post81936

[VirtueTech]

I am new to usenet but I want to give my users this experience.

What news server should I use to subscribe too?

Any help would be great. Right now I am a little lost on this. Its all setup and ready to go...just no news server.

[Scrooge]

I really, really love this hack! I also love the support you guys have already offered. This was a difficult install for me, but I have been able to keep the questions to a minimum because I have found most of them answered already. Thanks

Hopefully you haven't become bored with this thread already though because I could use a hand. My problem is that anytime I reply to a thread using "New Reply" it never makes it to usenet. Using the "quote" button does work though. Is there a way to fix this? I would think that I need to edit the newreply template in my new Usenet style, but I have no idea what to do with it.

[VirtueTech]

Originally posted by VirtueTech
I am new to usenet but I want to give my users this experience.

What news server should I use or subscribe too?

Any help would be great. Right now I am a little lost on this. Its all setup and ready to go...just no news server.

bump please

[spideyrdr]

I am running a Mandrake 8.1 box that houses my Apache, php, mySQL, and inn news server. The idea was the news server would simply mirror the forum rather than connect to an external news host. I ran into a problem where I would get the following errors running the script: NNTPERROR: 500 "POST" not implemented; try "help" followed by NNTPERROR: 500 "GROUP" not implemented; try "help". It would seem the resolution is to alter the script slightly so that it would tell the inn daemon that it wanted to connect in a reader mode rather than just a dumb connection. To correct this, I added a little code in two places on version 20010820 of the hack:
$c->mode_reader;
I put it just before line 103 and
$con->mode_reader;
I put that just before line 338.
Things are working much better now, although I think I still have a few bugs to iron out between my many servers... what a headache! I don't know if anyone else is running a setup like this, but I figured I would post it here to save someone some time. Thanks for the hack, fastforward...

[exodus]

This hack is super-sweet!

I think I will be installing it in the near future!

Thanks for your hard work in making this hack!

woohoo.

[Scrooge]

My problem is that anytime I reply to a thread using "New Reply" it never makes it to usenet. Using the "quote" button does work though. Is there a way to fix this?

Shameless bump and begging for help. I have notice that when I use "Post Reply" and then run the script, it says that the post was sent to Usenet, but it never appears. Is there a reason Usenet is not accepting it? I have thought of two possible reasons. One, I'm not sure I entered Useragent correctly, the name I entered was forums@reefaquariumguide.com. Two, when I hover over "Post Reply" I notice that it is posting to a thread id that my site uses, not the actual message number that giganews is using. Is one of these the cause?

Virtuetech: You can do a search on google to find a free newsgroup. I use giganews which is a great server, but it is a pay server.

[VirtueTech]

Originally posted by Scrooge
Shameless bump and begging for help. I have notice that when I use "Post Reply" and then run the script, it says that the post was sent to Usenet, but it never appears. Is there a reason Usenet is not accepting it? I have thought of two possible reasons. One, I'm not sure I entered Useragent correctly, the name I entered was forums@reefaquariumguide.com. Two, when I hover over "Post Reply" I notice that it is posting to a thread id that my site uses, not the actual message number that giganews is using. Is one of these the cause?

Virtuetech: You can do a search on google to find a free newsgroup. I use giganews which is a great server, but it is a pay server.

I ended up using usenetserver.com suggested by webhost. Thanks though.

Anyways I'm having the same problems writing to usenet as you are. It just doesn't show up at all on usenet. I think its my SMTP server on my server.

Is there any way to use sendmail?