NNTP Gateway for Usenet ( Newsgroups ), Mailing Lists

The latest version: V2.3.2 (31 Oct 2004)

What is it?

This hack provides a gateway from vBulletin forums to the USENET. It allows forum members to read newsgroup messages as well as to send posts to the newsgroups. In a nutshell, it turns vBulletin forums into a basic function news reader.

For an added bonus, this package also supports mailing list archive and forum to mailing list gateway. The software retrieves messages from a pop3 account and import them into the forums threaded. It also allows a forums user to send messages to the mailing list by the forum posting interface.

Why?

The gateway will be appreciated by forum members who do not know how to set up a news reader, or people who do not have port 119 open in their network. A forum interface to read and post news are often considered to be better than a news reader.

The gateway adds more contents to your forums and allows the members to interact with wider audience. It is common to see new users signing up to use this feature.

History

This hack is basically a hacked vB2 NNTP gateway written by Gilby to work with vB3. The original hack can be found here:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...7&page=1&pp=15


Features

Some of the features and improvement include:

• Handles both newsgroup posts and mailing lists.
• Handles MIME encoded messages and attachment.
• Handles UUEncoded messages.
• Two Admin Control Panels for all settings.
• Automated installation.
• Correct thread implementation. All imported messages and posts sent to newsgroups will be threaded correctly according to References and Message-ID headers.
• Optional setting to thread by subject for mailing lists that strip references header.
• Supports TABLE_PREFIX.
• Imported messages will be searchable just like normal forum posts.
• Similar threads are built when the messages are imported if the system setting is on.
• Multiple attachments importing.
• Save attachment to database or file according to vB setting.
• Thumbnail created while importing image files.
• Multiple attachment post to newsgroup is also supported.
• Selectable X-No-Archive header honouring system.
• Light on system resources.
• Global Killfile to filter out unwanted messages. Killfiles can have OR and AND effectiveness.
• Strip footer by setting for incoming messages. Strips out repeated message footers.
• Built options to disable signatures and footers for out going messages.

Future development

• AdminCP interfaces. (completed)
• Installation/upgrade script. (completed, coded into AdminCP)
• Traditional "> " lead posting interface.

What do you need and do not need?

You do not need to edit vB php files if you use two bookmarks
You need to edit one vB php file to insert two lines of code if you want direct click links within AdminCP.
No need to run SQL.

Installation

Basically the AdminCP interfaces take care of installation as well as upgrade in the background. Back up your database first. The scripts can modify your database without alerting you!

Please follow the instructions in the readme.txt file for more details.

Support

Please post your support questions to this thread. Please check the FAQ in the third post within this thread first.

================== UPDATES ======================
Jul 31 2004 (release version 2.2.0)

• Provided option of not importing attachments
• Provided option of pause between messages
• Provided option of not sending messages to USENET
• Provided mechanism to skip importing a message if it was crashed on it
• Provided "Default Footer" option
• Provided strip_footer function for mailing lists
  (written originally by KevinM)
• Provided Killfile functions with Header/Body/AND/OR settings
• Provided ability to thread messages by subject for mailing lists
• Provided ability to use a single POP3 account for different mailing lists
  (use prefix)
• Merged KevinM's attachment routine, save thumbnail to hard drive
  as vB3.0.3
• Official support to have the script run by Scheduled Tasks
• Many bug fixes

Please note, when you manually run the script, you must turn on the debug mode. Otherwise nothing will be displayed on the screen.

To run as debug mode: http://forums.yourdomain.com/gateway.php?debug=1

25 Oct 2004

• Provided the option of sending posts using the real email address
• Provided the option of sending posts using a fixed email address for
  each group.
• Posts are now held back if they are in the moderating queue
• Scheduled task log is now working
• Provided the option of sending the debug messages to the vB3 cron log
• Bug fixes

31 Oct 2004

Fixed bugs running the gateway by the vB3 Scheduled Tasks

1 March 2004

Uploaded the new zip file. It contains one or two bug fixes.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by john_rsd

lierduh
Post http://proteluser.com/bbs3/showthread.php?t=2262 has had the "Re:" placed after the mailing list name between the []'s, I cannot even guess how that happened but i suspect it was down to the authors email client.

I guess the Re: has to be the first characters in the string to work?

It means the post was not sent as a follow up.(possibly no reference in the header. The mailing list does not know it is a reply, so made it a new post.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by xb_

lierduh,
I'm also having alot of work merging replies to excisting threads, for some reason alot of the emails aren't glued together in the correct thread. I would apreciate it if it can be improved.

regards

If you can list the examples and the original message's subject. I will find the reason.

Basically the thread by subject works by:

1) The message needs to have Re: in the beginning of the subject before the script even starts to worry about finding a thread.
2) "Re: asdf" will match thread's title with
asdf
Re: asdf

"Re: Re: asdf" will match thread's title with
asdf
Re: asdf
Re: Re: asdf

"Re: Re: Re: asdf" will match

Re: asdf
Re: Re: asdf
Re: Re: asdf
Re: Re: Re: asdf
(not match with asdf)

It will find the oldest thread, and will use the newest post as the parent message id (only used when the forum reader uses non-inline display mode).

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by princeton

It's been a while since I used this ... please verify.
If is_running is set to 1 it WILL CHECK if another instance is running?

Should be left at 0.

[Princeton]

Originally Posted by lierduh

Should be left at 0.

thank you lierduh - I did look into the files and found it.

Default = 0. Set to 0 : Check if another instance of gateway.php is running. Set to 1 : Do not check.

[movielad]

I'm using the NNTP gateway script to provide users access to our internal news server. As such, I'm creating user accounts under vBulletin which matches the LHS of their email address (i.e. anything before the @ sign). When posting to the news server, I'm getting a copy of the message ID as the From: header. I want to be able to post with a legitimate email address.

For example:

xxxxxxx.rrrrr@domain.name

(where xxxxxxxx is the normal LHS email name and rrrrr is the message ID)

whereas I'd like it to just be:

xxxxxxx@domain.name

Is there an easy way of doing this/changing the current gateway.php file to handle this?

Regards,

MArtyn

[allan grossman]

Hey, lierduh -

Is there a reason why the nntp_groups table is ISAM instead of MyISAM? I know if you convert the table to MyISAM the script fails - and since it's usually a tiny table it probably wouldn't benefit much from optimizing, but having to deselect it when optimizing the forum database might be something to look at.

cheers -

allan

[john_rsd]

lierduh

Is there a limitation on the subject line size?

I received some messages (all via the same mailserver) as follows

Original message http://proteluser.com/bbs3/showpost....63&postcount=1

Original subject line [dxp] A rule for allowing two components on top of each other?

Then I seen a reply which was not threaded

Reply http://proteluser.com/bbs3/showpost....17&postcount=1

Subject line Re: [dxp] A rule for allowing two components on top of eachother?

Notice the space is missing between the last 2 words "each other" is now "eachother". Hence the reason for none threading.

But the reply as i see it in my mailbox, from the same email server (the same message), is actually correct and does read Re: [dxp] A rule for allowing two components on top of each other?

So the originating message was actually correct, it was not edited by the user. But i did notice that the subject line was wrapped to a new line between these words in the actual header. Perhaps related to the issues with the strange end of line characters in some posts?

Any information appreciated.

I forward a copy of the message headers for this non threaded reply to the mailbox i set up for you (same mail server again)

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by allan grossman

Hey, lierduh -

Is there a reason why the nntp_groups table is ISAM instead of MyISAM? I know if you convert the table to MyISAM the script fails - and since it's usually a tiny table it probably wouldn't benefit much from optimizing, but having to deselect it when optimizing the forum database might be something to look at.

cheers -

allan

allan, you are using the very original table created by Gilby's original hack. I remember in that SQL, the tables were created as ISAM.

If someone started new with the vB3 hack, the tables will be created using MyISAM table type.

I can't see the reason why MyISAM will cause the script to fail. Both of my nntp tables are MyISAM.

[xb_]

Originally Posted by lierduh

If you can list the examples and the original message's subject. I will find the reason.

I've set you up an account, details are in pm. There are only a few examples at this moment, since most of them i had already merged manually.

[edit] ok by now there are plenty examples [/edit]

[Marv]

Hi lierduh,

if possible, could you tell me what I have to do to make gateway.php pause between connecting to different ng?s ?
I guess it?s the same function like this:

PHP Code:

  if ($nntp_settings['pause_seconds'])
          {
              sleep ($nntp_settings['pause_seconds']);
          } 


Should only be another table-name and selectable value. Some newsservers are blocking the script in case the gateway is way to fast for an old and slow newsserver. (Err-Msg: "Too many connections. Your IP is temporarly blocked.")

TIA,
Marv.