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).

[limey]

So you are saying if we dont use table prefix we are ok? If so I'm going forward.

Need some help lierduh
Ok do you first use the SQL that comes with the nntp_Gateway hack on page 1?

Then run the query on page 44?

And upload all the same NNTP files except swap your gateway for the old gateway.

Let me know if this is the procedure. Thanks alot.

[lierduh]

Follow all the instruction in the README me inside the official version.

You need to add an extra field (ref) to the post table. Run this sql:

ALTER TABLE post ADD ref TEXT NOT NULL;

Then replace the gateway.php with the one on page 44.

I think that is all you need to do, it's been a while since I did it.

[limey]

When I run gateway.php

Invalid SQL: SELECT field1 AS signature,usertitle,customtitle FROM user LEFT JOIN userfield ON user.userid=userfield.userid WHERE user.userid=184 LIMIT 1
mysql error: Unknown column 'field1' in 'field list'

mysql error number: 1054

Ok I deleted the hack completely out of the db and reapplied it from scratch and I get the same error as above. I'm gonna need some guidance on this one. thanks.

[lierduh]

Invalid SQL: SELECT field1 AS signature,usertitle,customtitle FROM user LEFT JOIN userfield ON user.userid=userfield.userid WHERE user.userid=184 LIMIT 1
mysql error: Unknown column 'field1' in 'field list'

Above error basically says there is not a field called "field1" in the table "userfield" or "user". I just checked my db. field1 does exist in userfield table, it stores signatures for the user.

Please check your db, make sure "userfield" table exists and has a "field1" column.

[allan grossman]

Originally Posted by lierduh

Above error basically says there is not a field called "field1" in the table "userfield" or "user". I just checked my db. field1 does exist in userfield table, it stores signatures for the user.

Please check your db, make sure "userfield" table exists and has a "field1" column.

Strange.

I migrated my production vB installation to vB3 and the hack quit working - and it was working fine on a vb3 test board

Running the script through a browser window works perfectly - running it as a cron job with lynx has started giving me 'Unable to add cookies, headers already sent' errors.

command line is

lynx -source http://forum.com/vb3/gateway.php > /var/log/cron.usenet

-dump does the same thing. -accept_all_cookies doesn't help either.

The thing runs fine in lynx but not as a cron job - and it used to run perfectly.

Any ideas?

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by allan grossman

Strange.

Running the script through a browser window works perfectly - running it as a cron job with lynx has started giving me 'Unable to add cookies, headers already sent' errors.

command line is

lynx -source http://forum.com/vb3/gateway.php > /var/log/cron.usenet

Any ideas?

This error means the script tries to set cookie, but the header has already been sent.

You might like to try:

lynx -source "http://forum.com/vb3/gateway.php?log=cron"

in your cron file.

[limey]

Ok got this working now...I had to add that field1 back to userfield. For some reason I know I never dropped that table, but it was gone nonetheless.

big thanks to lierduh and Alan for their help. I'll try out that lynx url for the cronjob.

[limey]

Well it works but I still get this error when gateway.php is done running:

Making HTTP connection to www.domain.com
Sending HTTP request.
HTTP request sent; waiting for response.
Alert!: Unexpected network read error; connection aborted.

Can't Access `http://www.domain.com/forums/gateway.php?log=cron'
Alert!: Unable to access document.

[lierduh]

If your PC's browser works but not lynx on your server. Perhaps the server need to use a proxy server/gateway. Also if the server is behind a firewall using NAT. A local access to the web site might not be possible. ie. You need to access the web page from outside. In both cases, if you have a proxy server outside. You can confure lynx to use the proxy server.

You can do a simple test:

#export http_proxy=http://proxy.server.com:8080

before running lynx.

Can you write to /etc/lynx.cfg or /etc/lynx-site.cfg ?

[limey]

Yes I can write to lynx.cfg. I think the problem may be a server timeout thing though, because I kept running gateway.php until the newsposts were updated, then I ran it again and went through without the error.

Interesting?

[allan grossman]

Originally Posted by lierduh

This error means the script tries to set cookie, but the header has already been sent.

You might like to try:

lynx -source "http://forum.com/vb3/gateway.php?log=cron"

in your cron file.

Thanks, lierduh - we'll see if it works.

Even more bizarre, the script works fine if I run it manually in *any* browser - including lynx. It also works as a vBulletin cron job.

[allan grossman]

Replying to my own post...

Nope - that didn't work. I'm still getting the 'headers already sent' thingie. The weird thing is it used to work fine - but I'm experiencing some vB3 weirdness. Inline attachments and thumbnails quit working about the same time. I've been working with vB on this. For now, running the thing as a vB3 cron job appears to be working but wouldn't be my first choice

[limey]

I'm getting double posts..Its one of the reasons I scratched it and started over in the first place--not doing that again though.

[Bro_Joey_Gowdy]

Has this been adapted to work with the vb# prefix codes yet ?

Originally Posted by Bro_Joey_Gowdy

Im getting several errors mainly concerning the vBprefix code:: Could someone please make this an official release within the vB3 Mod. forums ?
Database error in vBulletin 3.0.0 Release Candidate 3:
Invalid SQL: SELECT varname,value FROM nntp_settings
mysql error: Table 'a51834.nntp_settings' doesn't exist
mysql error number: 1146
Date: Thursday 22nd of January 2004 06:32:40 PM
Script: http://www.joeygowdy.com/forum/gateway.php
Referer:
Username: Bro_Joey_Gowdy
IP Address:

[allan grossman]

Joey, that's not vBprefix, that error's telling you the 'nntp_settings' table isn't present in your database - and it's kinda critical.

I'm at the office and my server's at home, but I believe the gateway requires three tables added to your forum database - and at least one of them doesn't exist.

Hope this helps -