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).

[GameCrash]

Originally posted by Gilby
Sanjiyan and GameCrash, try the following newsgroup settings:
newsgroup: webdiscuss.test
server: webdiscuss.com
forum: a blank test forum id

You can either set the enabled to 0 for your other newsgroups, or remove those from your database.

Let me know the results of that.

The same error, you can try it yourself at http://www.sharp-forum.de/forum/gateway.php

I think it's the same problem as Sanjiyan's but mine stops loading after 90 sek because of server restrictions... I will try it via SSH there the restrictions are not soo hard...

[Sanjiyan]

when I enable one of the rec.arts.anime groups, alongside with that test one you posted, its at that point where it falls over...

any ideas ?

[Sanjiyan]

Originally posted by GameCrash


The same error, you can try it yourself at http://www.sharp-forum.de/forum/gateway.php

I think it's the same problem as Sanjiyan's but mine stops loading after 90 sek because of server restrictions... I will try it via SSH there the restrictions are not soo hard...

yes thats the same problem I appear to be getting GameCrash.

it connects to that webdiscuss.com when thats the only group thats enabled, yet dont pull any details from the server.

yet my problem returns when I try to pull my news from either news-text.blueyonder.co.uk or news.blueyonder.co.uk, cant try anyothers unless you know of a decent free usenet server that offers the rec.arts.anime groups?

edit: btw I know my local isps newserver is running cos i just conencted to it via outlook express :supwink:

[GameCrash]

Now getting something I didn't change the default server, only the server at the groups table. The webdiscuss.com thing works fine now

Now I will have to work on news.microsoft.com...

[Sanjiyan]

does it download any news from the tthe webdev test ?

also if you get the news.microsoft.com to work, want to post the server address and a newgroup so I can tets it also please ?

[Gilby]

Originally posted by GameCrash
Now getting something I didn't change the default server, only the server at the groups table. The webdiscuss.com thing works fine now

You may want to go into the newsgroup server and look at the source of the last message on the server and get the Xref number out of it. Then set that as the lastmsg. This will prevent it from trying to download all the posts.

[Sanjiyan]

Originally posted by Gilby


You may want to go into the newsgroup server and look at the source of the last message on the server and get the Xref number out of it. Then set that as the lastmsg. This will prevent it from trying to download all the posts.

mine only connects to the webdes of what ever server it does not download any news should it?

[Sanjiyan]

Gilby: could you do me a favour and look at:
http://www.wocs.net/gateway.php and tell me if I should be getting those error messages?
because what you see there is all I get, and it does not download any news from the server it connects to.

[Gilby]

Originally posted by Sanjiyan
it connects to that webdiscuss.com when thats the only group thats enabled, yet dont pull any details from the server.

Just try the webdiscuss one until we get it working. That is the test group I used when developing the script and has worked for me.

[Sanjiyan]

yes it connects to the server, but its not pulling any data from the news server should it be? if so then its not, plus I am getting errors, please see post 53. thanks

[Gilby]

Originally posted by Sanjiyan
yes it connects to the server, but its not pulling any data from the news server should it be? if so then its not, plus I am getting errors, please see post 53. thanks

The warnings that are showing aren't a problem. Try this nntp.php, it'll output more about what it's doing.

[Sanjiyan]

it now says:

<br>
<b>Warning</b>: Undefined index: HTTP_POST_VARS in <b>/usr/home/wocsnet/public_html/global.php</b> on line <b>85</b><br>
<br>
<b>Warning</b>: Undefined index: action in <b>/usr/home/wocsnet/public_html/global.php</b> on line <b>85</b><br>
<br>
<b>Warning</b>: Undefined index: action in <b>/usr/home/wocsnet/public_html/global.php</b> on line <b>88</b><br>
<br>
<b>Warning</b>: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by (output started at /usr/home/wocsnet/public_html/global.php:85) in <b>/usr/home/wocsnet/public_html/admin/functions.php</b> on line <b>1530</b><br>
<br>
<b>Warning</b>: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by (output started at /usr/home/wocsnet/public_html/global.php:85) in <b>/usr/home/wocsnet/public_html/gateway.php</b> on line <b>424</b><br>
1 group(s) gatewayed.
381 PASS required
502 Authentication error
Logging in to webdiscuss.com, group webdiscuss.test:

[Gilby]

Originally posted by Sanjiyan
381 PASS required
502 Authentication error
Logging in to webdiscuss.com, group webdiscuss.test:

Make suer you set the username and password to NULL (in phpMyAdmin, just leave it blank).

[Sanjiyan]

it is:

Edit Delete webdiscuss.test 66 0 webdiscuss.com NULL NULL 1

[Gilby]

Originally posted by Sanjiyan
it is:

Edit Delete webdiscuss.test 66 0 webdiscuss.com NULL NULL 1

OK, there was a bug. Since you have the default password and username set, it used those. Please go to the first post inthe thread and get the fixed script and let me know if that works. If that still doesn't work, then upload the nntp.php I posted above that will output the responses and we'll see where we're at.