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).

[floleb7]

i have this : fr.rec.son-image.dvd-video.titres how i can use this newsgroup with the hack ? (no login or pass required )

[Gilby]

Originally posted by floleb7
i have this : fr.rec.son-image.dvd-video.titres how i can use this newsgroup with the hack ? (no login or pass required )

Go in the database and set the newsgroup to fr.rec.son-image.dvd-video.titres and then fill in the server with the host name of the server you have access to. You can then leave the username and password blank since it's not required for you.

[annams]

First of all, thanks a bunch for this great hack.

I have tried fastforward's version before but I couldn't continue to use it because of CPU restrictions for PERL scripts with my ISP.

I have installed this script successfully and imported webdiscuss news postings with no problems. But, while posting new threads and replies I get the following problem:

===
group(s) gatewayed.
Logging in to webdiscuss.com, group webdiscuss.test
Posting Message from Srinivas Annam: 441 Can't parse "Date" header
Posting Message from Srinivas Annam: 441 Can't parse "Date" header
===

I get can't parse error twice when a new thread is posted and once when a reply is being posted.

- Srinivas

[Gilby]

Originally posted by annams
I get can't parse error twice when a new thread is posted and once when a reply is being posted.

Since you were using the test server, webdiscuss.test, I know it has nothing to do with the server accepting it. I checked out your site where your forums are and it returned "X-Powered-By: PHP/4.0.3pl1" and the date format I use requires PHP 4.0.4 or greater to work.

So, either you can try to convince your webhost to upgrade, or you can make the following changes:

Whereever you find:

date("r",

Replace it with:

date("D, j M Y H:i:s O",

I'll have that change in the next release.

[lifesourcerec]

Originally posted by Gilby


If you are on a unix or linux server and have shell access, you can make a crontab by putting this line:

5,15,25,35,45,55 * * * * /usr/bin/lynx -source "http://www.yourserver.com/vbdir/gateway.php?log=cron"

in a text file, let's say it's name is crontab.txt, and then type in at the command line:
crontab crontab.txt

That'll set you up with a cron job that'll execute every 10 minutes. You can change the 5,15, etc part to be whatever you want. That corresponds to the minutes of the hours.

Ok. And one more thing. How do I get the posts to show up in a forum? I used different forumid numbers and nothing showed up. But it did list everything in stats (total posts, top poster, etc.). How do you determine the forum if you have sub-forums?

[Gilby]

Originally posted by lifesourcerec
Ok. And one more thing. How do I get the posts to show up in a forum? I used different forumid numbers and nothing showed up. But it did list everything in stats (total posts, top poster, etc.). How do you determine the forum if you have sub-forums?

Just go into the forum you want to use for the newsgroup and in the URL, it'll have something like "forumid=3" and this corresponds to forum 3, so put 3 in the forumid column in the database.

[ART]

thanx Gilby for the work!
all went smooth

[The Realist]

On running the gateway file the following eror is showing, any clues to solving this:

1 group(s) gatewayed.
Could not connect to NNTP-serverLogging in to news.demon.net, group alt.binaries.satellite-tv,alt.dss
Not connectedNot connected

[annams]

Originally posted by Gilby


Whereever you find:

date("r",

Replace it with:

date("D, j M Y H:i:s O",

I'll have that change in the next release.

Thanks for the help. That fixed it.

I have one more minor issue:

I have posted few test messages to the test newsgroup at webdiscuss. My message got transmitted properly, but I see the following lines below my actual message:

===
--
Srinivas Annam - Moderator

'$2' ($1)
===

What is the $2 and $1? Is it somehow trying to put my signature on to the usenet? If so, how do I disable it?

Also, transmitting Moderator to the USENET newsgroup is not a good idea in my opinion.

I appreciate very much for this hack!

- Srinivas

[annams]

I have done a bit more testing. Looks like it is not the signatures which is the problem (since quotes is also giving the same issue). It appears like another issue with older PHP.

Could you please take a look at this thread and offer me a fix please:

http://www.unicyclist.com/forums/sho...threadid=16654

PS: Thank you for putting up with my old version of php. I don't have much choice in the PHP version, my ISP (pair.com) does not easily upgrade it. (they go through rigorous evaluation/testing process before upgrading).