[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

[fastforward]

Originally posted by VirtueTech
Hey thanks but line 877 of what script?

newnews.pl

[VirtueTech]

Cool Thanks.

[fsfl2k]

FastForward .....

I have not tried this hack yet but the demo site looks great. I have 2.2.1 or I would have already downloaded it.

I read that there was a re-write to PHP going on with the hack.
Any closer to an estimate on when the PHP version may be available

thanks,
Anthony

[fastforward]

Originally posted by fsfl2k
FastForward .....

I have not tried this hack yet but the demo site looks great. I have 2.2.1 or I would have already downloaded it.

I read that there was a re-write to PHP going on with the hack.
Any closer to an estimate on when the PHP version may be available

Complete:
The collection of the news and loading into vB (including single part attachments)
The required vB code and template changes.

Not Complete:
The news sending.
Some other options such as custom signatures custom email and some maintenance functionality.

I have been really tied up at work over the past week so I haven't touched it for a while. I'll get the sending part done and release it in the beta forum for a while. It wasn't simply a port of the Perl version, it was a total rewrite.

[fsfl2k]

Great!
Thanks for the update.
I look forward to testing it out when available.

Anthony

[WildWayz]

Hi ya

When I run newnews.pl I get this

Connecting to news.clara.net:119... Connected
Sending authentication info... Authenticated and logged in

Pulling uk.media.dvd...
-> fetching articles 371122 to 371622...
NNTPERROR: 430 No Such Article
NNTPERROR: 430 No Such Article
NNTPERROR: 430 No Such Article
<-- SNIP -->
NNTPERROR: 430 No Such Article
NNTPERROR: 430 No Such Article
NNTPERROR: 430 No Such Article
-> inserting new threads from uk.media.dvd
-> inserted 0 threads
-> finding replies...

Clean disconnection from news.clara.net:119

Expiring usenet articles older than 120 days...
-> uk.media.dvd... OK
Expire completed.

It isn't importing in the posts from uk.media.dvd (a very active newsgroup).

Any ideas what is up?

My forums are at http://www.dvd-critic.net/forums/index.php

James

[fastforward]

The problem is exactly what it says. 'No such article'.

Assuming you haven't changed the article numbers, you'll probably find that your news server provider has reindexed their news spool and renumbered all the articles.

[WildWayz]

How do I find out the article number?

I mean, in groups I have it setup like this

Newsgroup : uk.media.dvd
Destination Forum : uk.media.dvd
Footer :
Enabled : YES
Last Message Number : 0
Servername : default
Username : default
Password : default

I then telnet in and run ./newnews.pl and it updates
Last Message Number : 370200
But no posts are imported.

--James

[fastforward]

Originally posted by WildWayz
How do I find out the article number?

I mean, in groups I have it setup like this

Newsgroup : uk.media.dvd
Destination Forum : uk.media.dvd
Footer :
Enabled : YES
Last Message Number : 0
Servername : default
Username : default
Password : default

I then telnet in and run ./newnews.pl and it updates
Last Message Number : 370200
But no posts are imported.

--James

use a normal news client to check the last number of the message of the last message in the forum. Alternatively you could just set them to 0 and wait for it to catch up. Depends on the size of your batch setting and the number of articles on your news server as to which method is best. Article numbering and this unavoidable problem is explained in the hack instructions.

[WildWayz]

Hi ya

Thanks - got it (I think - it is fetching OK).

I done as you said and looked at the last post to the newsgroup and it's ID was

403318

so I knocked it back to 403000 and it is now downloading them

--James