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 babulgogoi

while trying to run: http://www.asiasrc.org/posts/gateway.php?debug=1

got this eror

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: globalize() in /home/asiasrc/public_html/posts/gateway.php on line 73

?? any idea??

Don't tell me you are running vB3.5 already. This hack is for vB3.0x.

[babulgogoi]

Oh sorry, i hv not noticed the version..

Well, I think I hv to install 3.0.5 and then install your plugin.

will that work??

PS. r u working on the plugin ofr vb 3.5.0??

[babulgogoi]

I got this error: while accessing gateway.pgp script as per instruction.

Database error in vBulletin 3.0.5:

Invalid SQL: UPDATE vb3_nntp_settings
SET value = WHERE varname = 'last_postid'

mysql error: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'WHERE varname = 'last_postid'' at line 2

mysql error number: 1064

Date: Monday 10th of October 2005 10:10:58 AM
Script: http://www.asiasrc.org/upload/gateway.php?debug=1
Referer:
Username: Unregistered
IP Address: 210.211.161.85

------

any help??

[KevinM]

I keep having issues with a few usenet users where the posts don't appear to decode correctly, although when I check with a newsreader it works fine.

It starts a new thread and puts 'No Subject' as the subject (which is the default behaviour if the gateway script cannot detect a subject), and puts the complete headers and text into the post (see below)

Any ideas? (I have replaced the email addresses with xxxx)

User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (Windows/20041206)
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
Newsgroups: uk.d-i-y
Subject: Re: B&Q Cable clearance
References: Pg2jENAy5oSDFwEC@y.z 4db7bc0929xxxx@xxxxxxx.co.uk
In-Reply-To: 4db7bc0929xxxx@xxxxxxx.co.uk
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Complaints-To: abuse@clara.net (please include full headers)
X-Trace: 44333900e1e4932e33529800133b032ee332e00482a22388d7 327111434ac292
NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 20:35:46 +0100
Message-ID: 1128972946.55394.0@doris.uk.clara.net
Lines: 13
Xref: number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com uk.d-i-y:572578

wrote:
My nearest B&Q warehouse is clearing out reels of old colour
mains cables & tails:
16mm x 25m Earth 8.57
The tails may be cheaper, but not many DIYers would 'stock' these, and a
pro .......

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by KevinM

I keep having issues with a few usenet users where the posts don't appear to decode correctly, although when I check with a newsreader it works fine.

It starts a new thread and puts 'No Subject' as the subject (which is the default behaviour if the gateway script cannot detect a subject), and puts the complete headers and text into the post (see below)

Any ideas? (I have replaced the email addresses with xxxx)

I noticed the post does not contain "From:" header. It is weird as the news server should not have accepted the post as the From: header is a must.

[oldengine]

Everything appears to be working fine, but I did have this error when running nntp_settings.php

Database error in vBulletin 3.0.7: Invalid SQL: ALTER TABLE post ADD ref TEXT NOT NULL mysql error: Duplicate column name 'ref' mysql error number: 1060

I ran it again and all appeared to be fine. I have loaded 665 threads and 3,314 posts from one news group.

This error displayed with the same results on my test forum (different domain, same server) as well as my main forum.

[David_R]

i have a strange issue.
one my forum i am fetching news articles for 5 groups.
i tried adding a 6th group and created a forum properly..

but messages are not getting imported into this newly created forum. can someone tell me why ?
i tried to run gateway.php in debug mode but i am unable to view the output

i tried to login to my news provider through telnet, this works absolutely fine.

need help. i cannot fix problem since last 5 days now

[myMigration]

lierduh

Can you or anyone else tell me if its possible to propogate to two newsgroups from one vb forum?

I think it will pull in from two newsgroups but i dont think it will post to the relevant newgroups from internal posts on vb.

I did not want to create an additional forum so i might if its feasable only pull posts in from the two newgroups and not post out.

Can this be done?

Create Hack BTW, i have been tweaking it for months to fit into my site and it is working like a charm.

[lierduh]

Cross posting is not supported.
Cross posting is generally regarded as bad practice by USENET community by the way.

Originally Posted by myMigration

lierduh

Can you or anyone else tell me if its possible to propogate to two newsgroups from one vb forum?

I think it will pull in from two newsgroups but i dont think it will post to the relevant newgroups from internal posts on vb.

I did not want to create an additional forum so i might if its feasable only pull posts in from the two newgroups and not post out.

Can this be done?

Create Hack BTW, i have been tweaking it for months to fit into my site and it is working like a charm.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by David_R

i have a strange issue.
one my forum i am fetching news articles for 5 groups.
i tried adding a 6th group and created a forum properly..

but messages are not getting imported into this newly created forum. can someone tell me why ?
i tried to run gateway.php in debug mode but i am unable to view the output

i tried to login to my news provider through telnet, this works absolutely fine.

need help. i cannot fix problem since last 5 days now

Should not have this limitation.
What about disable one of two previous groups?