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.

[Skalek]

I see the recommended cron job is :

lynx -source http://domain/forumdir/gateway.php

Is there any reason we can not just set our cron job to :

php /pathtogateway.php/gateway.php

?


Also has anyone had any success running multiple instances of gateway.php for multiple forum installations on the same server? Any problems?

Last but not least, is their a recommended maximum amount of newsgroups that we should do per forum instance or will gateway.php handle whatever you got?

[AWS]

Originally Posted by Skalek

I see the recommended cron job is :

lynx -source http://domain/forumdir/gateway.php

Is there any reason we can not just set our cron job to :

php /pathtogateway.php/gateway.php

?


Also has anyone had any success running multiple instances of gateway.php for multiple forum installations on the same server? Any problems?

Last but not least, is their a recommended maximum amount of newsgroups that we should do per forum instance or will gateway.php handle whatever you got?

I run 3 instances of gateway.php running on 3 different forums and don't have any problems.

[mcncyo]

Originally Posted by AWS

Just an FYI. This doesn't work with php 5.0.4. I have to use 4.3.11 to run gateway.php and 5.0.4 for the sites.
I upgraded php and noticed that my usenet forums last post was 2 days behind the rest of the forums. I ran it at command prompt and got the error mime.php and nntp.php have to be in ./includes folder. I even set full paths to try and make it work and it didn't. I set up 4.3.11 to run gateway.php only and it started working.

How did you do this? I would also like to run php 5 but can't seem to figure out how to make gateway.php to run 4.3.11

[AWS]

Originally Posted by mcncyo

How did you do this? I would also like to run php 5 but can't seem to figure out how to make gateway.php to run 4.3.11

I run Windows and IIS so I just set IIS to use php5 isapi filter and for scheduled tasks and command line php 4.3.11 cgi is used. For a while I was using .php and .phtml extensions as php5 and .php4 for php4. Have to add a registry entry for php5 to point to php.ini and for php4 set the user path.
I don't know how you'd do it on Linux, but, it can be done.

[xnt]

Originally Posted by mcncyo

How did you do this? I would also like to run php 5 but can't seem to figure out how to make gateway.php to run 4.3.11

For Unix you can set up a cron job and use the 4.3.11 PHP CGI program to run gateway.php.
eg: this will run every 10 mins
1,11,21,31,41,51 * * * * /path-to-php4.3.11/php-4.3.11 -f /path-to-script/gateway.php

BTW, I am trying to setup a new gateway for a forum and I only want futures postings to be forwarded to a mailing list, not old posts. How could I do this? Can I set the Last Max postid # to the last posting # of that forum??? TIA

[Skalek]

Yeah I got that all working, but now I have a problem where the script is not following the its own time constraints. From what I understand it is supposed to run no longer than 30 minutes. Also another instance should not run within 30 minutes of the first starting. This makes sense so that you dont have multiple copies running at the same time.

My problem is that gateway.php seems to be running for 2 hours + so that if I cron it multiple instances will occur. Anyone else run into this problem?

[xnt]

I took a backup of my vb database to my home linux box to test out NNTP gateway to a Yahoo group mailing list. I only enable 1 sub forum and left the default value of 0 on the Last Max postid field. For the first initial run, the gateway sent ALL messages from ALL forums including those msg from an un-related PRIVATE forums to the Yahoo list??? Luckily! this is just a test else I could be in big trouble. I believe this problem only occurs in the initial run.

I just switch NNTP on for the real server with appropriate Last MAx postid set to the last posting #. However, I ran into 2 issues:

• I do not see any messages arriving at Yahoo. When using with debug option, it appears that messages are sent ??? BTW, Importing messages from a POP3 account works.
• when running the gateway.php script via PHP CGI (command line), I encountered an error message: 'Unable to add cookies, header already sent.'

The only different is: my hosting company uses PHP 4.3.10 whereas I have 4.3.11 at home. Perhaps there are some other restrictions?? I use 1and1.com btw.

[Electronic Punk]

Any idea of the modifications that need to be made to get this working with 3.5 beta?

[mcncyo]

I am going to compile php as cgi mode just for this script what do i need to include to make it run?

[krohnathlonman]

<b>Fatal error</b>: Call to undefined function globalize() in <b>/home/usenetma/public_html/gateway.php</b> on line <b>49</b><br />

Vbulletin 3.5 beta 2 error message.....

I'll pay $50 to the first person who creates a VB 3.5 compatible version of this... I'm sure some others would be willing to chip in too