NNTP Gateway (Usenet/Newsgroups)

This hack provides a gateway to any NNTP newsgroup such as those from Usenet and other newsgroup servers. Selected newsgroups are imported from your news server and post on the forum are sent out to the newsgroup. This hack was greatly inspired by fastforward's usenet gateway hack. This one is a complete rewrite of that hack written in PHP and works with vB 2.2.2.

Installation:
Installation is pretty simple. No modifications to the vB php files are needed and it simply consists of dropping in the files to your forums directory, running the SQL modifications, and modifying the newsgroup settings for your desired newsgroups. For the complete installation details, read the readme.txt file.

Here are some of the features:

• Real cool vbcode to text conversion!
• All posts are inserted, even if parent thread cannot be found for replies
• Guests posts also get sent to the newsgroup.
• Importing of attachments from the newsgroup
• Poll info sent to newsgroup
• Attachment link sent to newsgroup
• Supports unlimited newsgroups and servers.
• email notification of new replies, just like regular forum posts
• Can import HTML messages and convert to limited vb code.

For control panel integration, please check out GameCrash's Graphical Interface addition.

What's not in it that was in fastforward's usenet gateway hack:

• No control panel integration at the moment. (Available separately)
• Does not support separate footers
• Does not allow custom email address to be used via the users option
• No spam control or string replacement support.
• No purging or autoexpire.

There is still lots that I'd like to add to it, but this is competely functional for basic newsgroup gateway support. It is most likely not free of bugs. If you have questions, suggestions or annoyances, please post in this thread.

vb3 support
lierduh modified this to provide support for the beta versions of vb3. When the release candidates of vb3 come out, I plan to add support for vb3 and add other features to this hack. If you have suggestions for new features, let me know.

E-mail gateway support
New in this version, you can now gateway with an email list. This will fetch emails from a POP email account and send via php's mail function to the mailing list's email address. To set up the list, in the newsgroup field, enter in the email address to send outgoing posts to. In the server field, enter in the pop3 server, and in the username and password fields enter in, you guessed it, the username and password to your pop account. Note: the email gateway capabilities has not been fully tested, so it might not work with your POP server. Also, it does not work in combo with a news<->forum gateway in the same forum (you can use either kind though in differnet forums within your forums).

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by himerus

Just the fact that for some reason my post aren't being sent back to the newsgroup...

That's the main problem I'm having right now.... (see previous posts)

I doubt your problem is related to the script. You have got status 240. It means the response from the NNTP server says everything is received correctly.

It is not easy to know why your post does not show up on USENET after your server received it. Not to be smart here, but have you posted using a normal usenet client? does your server accepts posting?

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by jcrash

I just want to point out I went to his site and found a usenet ppost, then searched on a word from its title...NO MATCHES

The search portion of this hack is broken, please log it as a bug. :ermm:

Ok, found the problem. The final Gold release changed a function name.

the "getforuminfo" function is now changed to "fetch_foruminfo". Around line 235, find:

$foruminfo=getforuminfo($threadinfo[forumid]);

Change it to:

$foruminfo=fetch_foruminfo($threadinfo[forumid]);

[himerus]

Originally Posted by lierduh

I doubt your problem is related to the script. You have got status 240. It means the response from the NNTP server says everything is received correctly.

It is not easy to know why your post does not show up on USENET after your server received it. Not to be smart here, but have you posted using a normal usenet client? does your server accepts posting?

I have tested it using Outlook Express to post to the newsgroup, and it works like a charm... it was one of the first things I tested after I knew it wasn't working... I did want to rule out that it was the newsgroup account or something like that....

I'm really stuck with this one.... I've already had about a dozen users sign up for the USENET access to the groups I'm using.

[himerus]

Originally Posted by lierduh

Ok, found the problem. The final Gold release changed a function name.

the "getforuminfo" function is now changed to "fetch_foruminfo". Around line 235, find:

$foruminfo=getforuminfo($threadinfo[forumid]);

Change it to:

$foruminfo=fetch_foruminfo($threadinfo[forumid]);

Thanks for that fix... now all the new posts coming in to the USENET forums are being indexed properly.

I'm going to sit down later, and go through this hack one line at a time to see if I can figure out why it isn't posting back to the news server after a message 240 saying it did...

I'd be willing to pay for a fix almost!!!

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by himerus

I'm going to sit down later, and go through this hack one line at a time to see if I can figure out why it isn't posting back to the news server after a message 240 saying it did...

I'd be willing to pay for a fix almost!!!

Why pay anyone before you even try to debug it yourself?

You could try a different news server. I believe there are some free ones which accept post out there.

[himerus]

Originally Posted by lierduh

Why pay anyone before you even try to debug it yourself?

You could try a different news server. I believe there are some free ones which accept post out there.

Well, I'm using www.teranews.com

They have a free 50MB/day account that has something like a 3$ one-time setup fee...

I was able to successfully post to the free account using a newsreader... using the same settings with the vB hack, I am able to download all the posts from the group, and that is working flawlessly. I added the gateway.php to the includes/crons folder, and set it up as an hourly scheduled task in vB. When I run it manually either by calling the page directly, or using the "run now" feature in the scheduled task manager, the posts are repordedly being posted, and after that, there is no way of knowing where it is lost.

I'm not experienced with connecting to third parties with PHP, although, I am decent at PHP code. I will look over the file in the next hour or so, and see if anything sticks out that might be causing the problem... I've looked over the send_post function a few times already, and I didn't see anything there that was wrong... maybe something with the way headers are being read or sent??? That's where I'm lost, because I'm not experienced with the protocols used to connect to the NNTP server & post.

:S

I'll Post the contents of my gateway.php file after I've looked it over and made it a little more readable.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by himerus

Well, I'm using www.teranews.com

I'm not experienced with connecting to third parties with PHP, although, I am decent at PHP code. I will look over the file in the next hour or so, and see if anything sticks out that might be causing the problem... I've looked over the send_post function a few times already, and I didn't see anything there that was wrong... maybe something with the way headers are being read or sent??? That's where I'm lost, because I'm not experienced with the protocols used to connect to the NNTP server & post.

:S

I'll Post the contents of my gateway.php file after I've looked it over and made it a little more readable.

If anything, I think it will be more to do with nntp.php. So you might want to try out a modern version of nntp.php:

http://pear.php.net/package-info.php...release=0.10.1

[himerus]

Originally Posted by lierduh

If anything, I think it will be more to do with nntp.php. So you might want to try out a modern version of nntp.php:

http://pear.php.net/package-info.php...release=0.10.1

I've updated the nntp.php, and some of the files that the new one requires.

After renaming a couple of fuctions that were get_article to getArticle, etc... everything seems to work again... this is the result after posting an article...

4 group(s) gatewayed.
Logging in to free.teranews.com, group alt.internet.access
Posting Message from himerus: 1
Posting Message from himerus: 1
Logging in to free.teranews.com, group alt.comp
Logging in to free.teranews.com, group alt.comp.hardware
Getting message number 240779: Thread found; 'Re: Mini/Cheap File Server??' from Stephen B
Logging in to free.teranews.com, group alt.windows-xp
Getting message number 43502: Thread found; 'Re: virtual memory?' from ZyRiX
Getting message number 43503: New thread; 'DVD 2 CDR?' from chris

What does the 1 status mean? it still doesn't appear to be posting, but it could need some adjustments.

[himerus]

At least this time, it is knowing that it wasn't posted... each time it runs, it's trying to post the same 2 messages again:

Posting Message from himerus: 1
Posting Message from himerus: 1

[himerus]

I've been hacking away, and in the main posting function, it is getting a status 340... I'm not sure what the 1 is after the posters username, just a varialbe that has changed with this new NNTP.php that I'm using....

In the function it has:

PHP Code:

switch ($response) {
            case 240: // RFC977: 'article posted ok'
        return true;
        break;
            case 340: // RFC977: 'send article to be posted. End with <CR-LF>.<CR-LF>'
        // This should not happen here!
        echo "Unknown error during post";
        return PEAR::throwError('Unknown error during post', $response, $this->currentStatusResponse());
        break;
            case 440: // RFC977: 'posting not allowed'
        return PEAR::throwError('Posting not allowed', $response, $this->currentStatusResponse());
        break;
            case 441: // RFC977: 'posting failed'
        return PEAR::throwError('Posting failed', $response, $this->currentStatusResponse());
        break;
        default:
        return PEAR::throwError('Unidentified response code', $response, $this->currentStatusResponse()); 


This is saying that a 340 is an error... does this help at all as to what the problem now might be? I think that it's actually closer to working... I'm just not sure about this new nntp version, because it includes several other long files of classes & functions that I'm not familiar with.