[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

So what's the preferred news feed source for use with this hack?

[fastforward]

Originally posted by v0n
I'm still trying to work out solution to posts being loaded with threadid 0 and bodies not showing up under threads ( I know it's boring). By now I tried three perl versions on two machines with same effect.
Yet I know it worked, I had it running till last rc of vbb2.0. Then on some point it just stopped. Even if i do a fresh install of vbb 2.0.1 and install snapshots from my data the usenet posts still get inserted with thread = 0. There must be some method to this madness.
Is there any possiblity that this bug is caused not by perl version or DBI DBD modules but by database structure? Maybe my base vbb is missing something, some index or row? Is there any tool to compare structure with original vbb setup?

It's not the database structure. As you know the problem is that the mysql_insertid() function is not returning a threadid, postid or whatever id it asks for. The problem could be either in Perl, MySQL, or most likely, a combination of both due to a version mismatch.

The reason it seemed to suddenly 'stop' working is that previous versions of the script checked to see if the id was NULL and if it was, it would re-query the table to find it. This was only in place until we determined what the problem was with mysql_insertid. It added a lot of overhead and made the script almost unusable when the function wasn't working.

I have the latest version of MySQL, Perl 5.0053 and the latest version of the modules. This works.

[Shaman]

Mine was failing with:

---

Query failed:
INSERT LOW_PRIORITY INTO post (title,allowsmilie,threadid,dateline,nntpdateline, pagetext,visible,msgid,ord,username,userid,nntpfro m,ipaddress,isusenetpost) VALUES ('wanted',1,,995388228,945544816,'Need somebody to clean apartment.\n\ncgardner@home.com\n','1','<Q7R64.138 66$TT4.520532@news1.rdc2.on.home.com>','0','C. Gardner',0,'&quot;C. Gardner&quot; &lt;cgardner@nospam.home.com&gt;',0,1)

DBD::mysql::db do failed: You have an error in your SQL syntax near '995388228,945544816,'Need somebody to clean apartment.\n\ncgardner@home.com\n','' at line 1 [for statement ``SELECT a.nntpposter, a.forum, a.msgid, a.dtm, a.subject, a.poster, a.email, a.body, a.ord, a.threadid, a.postid FROM usenet_article AS a LEFT OUTER JOIN post AS b on (a.msgid=b.msgid) WHERE a.forum = 26 AND b.msgid is null AND (refs = '' OR refs is NULL OR refs = '(none)') AND LEFT(subject,3) <> 'Re:' ORDER BY dtm'']) at ./newnews.pl line 594, <SOCK1> line 11165.

---

This was with DBI v1.16 and MySQL module v1.21xx

Note that threadid was nonexistant (which is the error in the query).

Now it is working perfectly with:

MySQL v 3.23.36
Perl 5.6.1
DBI v1.18
MySQL module from Msql-Mysqjl-Modules v1.2216

Originally posted by fastforward
I have the latest version of MySQL, Perl 5.0053 and the latest version of the modules. This works.

Separate installation of 5.0053 saved the day. Strangely enough when modules were installed from MCPAN -shell it behaved just like before. Reinstalled again with all modules (especially DBD-mysql-2.0902) compiled "by hand" and posts have threadid again.
I'm still having a bit of a problem with indexing (maybe due to posts indexed before, I will see tomorrow with indexing on fresh posts).

fastforward - let God reward you with Mercedes Benz for this mod.

[fastforward]

Originally posted by v0n
fastforward - let God reward you with Mercedes Benz for this mod.

Yeasss... A 500SL convertible would do nicely thank you


That reminds me of a great signature I saw on usenet:

There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among them is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible.

[george_proost]

Yes, all is working.

Thanks all for your help. Yip, FF you deserve your Merc.
Now only my DNS woes!

[orca]

Originally posted by captnroger
So what's the preferred news feed source for use with this hack?

Well, that depends on you. Make a search on google or so for free newsserver.

usenetserver.com seem good. Haven't had much experience with them, but they seem professional and cheap.

[orca]

I have missing posts in the thread (from Usenet). Is this also related to the version problem?

I think that it is definitely possible. It's one of the errors that clears when you upgrade away from a free server.