iweft@ipax.com.au
Mail2News-1.html 644 24010 3110 2241 6421026705 12007 0 ustar gregh cns
The copyright of this document is retained by the author. Permission is granted to distribute the document by electronic means and on CDs provided that it is kept entirely in its original format. Permission is also granted to print a copy of this document for personal use.
The republishing of this document in part or in whole without the permission of the copyright holder by any means other than as noted above is prohibited.
This document is directly supported by InterWeft IT Consultants (Melbourne, Australia).
The latest version of this document is available at the InterWeft WWW site at InterWeft IT Consultants.
Mail2News-2.html 644 24010 3110 3736 6421026705 12022 0 ustar gregh cns
Most Internet sites are always seeking ways to improve the usage of the limited bandwidth awailable across their link to the Internet.
Should more than one user subscribe to the same mailing list, there is going to be traffic duplication. If there are a number of such duplications - or the traffic on the lists is high, the consumption of bandwidth increases.
By subscribing the site to a list (if this is allowed by the list owner) and 'gating' the email traffic to the local news server, it is possible to make mailing lists accessible to all site users, or, using the security features of 'innd', to limit the access to certain users.
Such a site subscription (particularly if there are a number of high traffic lists) can make worthwhile savings in bandwidth usage.
Reading list traffic in news reader also offers users the advantages of threading (which is not available in many mail user agents) and keeps their mail 'inbox' free for possibly more urgent, personal email.
This mini-HOWTO describes setting up the 'mail2news.pl' script to accomplish this.
The author has been unable to find mail2news.pl on CPAN (the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network) - but it may just have been overlooked. It is however on sunsite.unc.edu - somewhere - and also on ftp.redhat.com.
As this Perl script is not lengthy, it is appended to this howto.
Mail2News-3.html 644 24010 3110 4322 6421026705 12013 0 ustar gregh cns
It is probably easiest to understand how this system works by tracking a message from the mailing list to the newsgroup and then a message posted to the local newsgroup (gated to the mailing list) and see how they are handled.
Mail from the mailing list is sent to all subscribed mail addresses. A special mail alias is subscribed to the mailing list in question and so all traffic to and from the list is sent by the list server to this address.
When mail from the mailing list arrives at the local machine, the mail
alias pipes the incoming message to mail2news.pl. The mail alias
also specifies the destination (local) newsgroup.
The mail2news.pl script processes the message, applying news
headers and then uses rnews or inews to post the message to
the newsgroup.
The local newsgroup is set up as a moderated group, as this allows us to take advantage of the email capabilities of innd. Any messages posted to a moderated group are not immediately submitted to the group. Instead, messages are emailed to the moderator of the group.
By declaring the moderator of the local newsgroup to be mailing list
address, all locally posted messages to the newsgroup are automatically
mailed out to the mailing list by innd and only appear once they
have been received back through mail2news.pl which adds the
necessary 'approved' line to the messages and are thus acceptable to
innd for posting to the newsgroup.
Mail2News-4.html 644 24010 3110 3147 6421026705 12020 0 ustar gregh cns
Put the mail2news.pl script in a suitable location. I favour
/usr/local/scripts, but the location is up to you.
You will need to edit script as follows:-
#!/usr/bin/perl # point at the correct location of perl
( $version ) = $] =~ /(\d+\.\d+).*\nPatch level/;
die "$program: requires at least version 3 of perl\n"
if $version < 3;
# $inews = "/usr/bin/inews"; # $iopts = "-h -o \"mail2news gateway\""; $inews = "/usr/bin/rnews"; $iopts = ""; $postinghost = "your.news.server"; # points at your news server
Mail2News-5.html 644 24010 3110 2604 6421026705 12016 0 ustar gregh cns
Edit /etc/aliases to create entries for the mailing list(s) you wish to
pipe into news. Each entry should be of the form:-
<subscribed email address to list>: \
"| /usr/local/scripts/mail2news.pl <local news group name>"
<code>
<p>
So for example if the email address to which email from the list is to
be sent (the subscribed mail address) is <tt/site_list/ and the local
newsgroup to which mail is to be posted is <tt/local.site.group/, the
alias would be
<code>
# The site subscription address for blah-blah@some.mailing.list
site_list: "| /usr/local/scripts/mail2news.pl local.site.group"
Make an entry for each mailing list that is to be gated to oyur local news server and and then run newaliases.
Mail2News-6.html 644 24010 3110 4111 6421026705 12012 0 ustar gregh cns
Using ctlinnd, create the newsgroups on your news server. Remember, these
are to be local news groups, so start them with a distinctive name
so you can filter them out from your news distributions (in your
newsfeeds file).
You also need to tell innd that the group is moderated (by using
ctlinnd). Remember, innd is very sensitive to file ownership
and permissions, so you need to interct at this level with innd as
the news user. Indicating a moderated group is done by specifying
m to the newgroup command.
ctlinnd newgroup <newgroup name> m <newsadmin>
The m tells innd that the group is moderated.
Edit your newsfeeds file to make sure that these local groups are not distributed (unless you specificaly wish this to occur).
For example, if your mailing list is called local.site.group, then
you would probably want to add !local* to the second field of your
up (and possibly your down) stream news sites in your newsfeeds file.
Now, in order to ensure that user messages are sent to the list
automatically by innd, edit /etc/news/moderators to include a
line declaring the mailing list email address as the moderator.
some.site.list:list@mail.list.site
Mail2News-7.html 644 24010 3110 3272 6421026705 12022 0 ustar gregh cns
You now need to subscribe the mail alias to the mailing list. Check with the mailing list information as to how to subscribe. Some mailing lists allow you to subscribe an email address that is different from the address from which the subscription comes (they check back to the address to be subscribed for confirmation before actually subscribing that address).
Other mailing lists do not permit this. So you may need to 'forge' a subscription request. There are many ways of doing this. One of the easiest is to use Netscape mail set up (temporarily) with the address to which the mailing list is to send the mail.
After subscribing, you should see a 'welcome' message of some kind from the list server in the news group - in which case all is well and you can now test the other direction by posting a news message to your new list.
The message should *NOT* appear in the newsgroup at once. It should get sent out by mail and then received back and posted to the news group.
If this works, you have succeed in getting the list gated to news.
Mail2News-8.html 644 24010 3110 1466 6421026705 12026 0 ustar gregh cns
If things don't work, you need to track through the path the messages are taking to see exactly where things are breaking down. Useful tools here are the mail and news logs.
Robert Hart
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
October 1996
Mail2News-9.html 644 24010 3110 5677 6421026705 12037 0 ustar gregh cns
#!/usr/bin/perl
($program = $0) =~ s%.*/%%;
#( $version ) = $] =~ /(\d+\.\d+).*\nPatch level/;
#die "$program: requires at least version 3 of perl\n"
# if $version < 3;
# $inews = "/usr/bin/inews";
# $iopts = "-h -o \"mail2news gateway\"";
$inews = "/usr/bin/rnews";
$iopts = "";
$postinghost = "your.news.server";
if ($#ARGV < 0) {
# $newsgroup = "test";
# we'll expect the newsgroup line in the body
} elsif ($#ARGV == 0) {
$newsgroup = $ARGV[0];
} else {
die "usage: $program [newsgroup]\n";
}
# in case inews dumps core or something crazy
$SIG{'PIPE'} = "plumber";
sub plumber { die "$program: \"$inews\" died prematurely!\n"; }
open (INEWS, "| $inews $iopts") ||
die "$program: can't run $inews\n";
# header munging loop
while (<STDIN>) {
last if /^$/;
# transform real from: line back to icky style
s/^From:\s+(.*) <(.*)>/From: $2 ($1)/;
s/Message-Id/Message-ID/;
# transform from_ line to path header; also works locally
s/^From\s+(\S+)@(\S+).*/Path: $2!$1/
|| s/^From\s+(\S+)[^@]*$/Path: $1\n/;
print INEWS
# if /^(Date|From|Subject|Path|Newsgroups|Organization|Message-ID):/i;
if /^(Date|From|Subject|Path|Newsgroups|Message-ID):/i;
$saw_subject |= ( $+ eq 'Subject' );
$saw_msgid |= ( $+ eq 'Message-ID' );
# $saw_newsgroup |= ( $+ eq 'Newsgroups' );
}
warn "$program: didn't expect newsgroup in both headers and ARGV\n"
if $newsgroup && $saw_newsgroup;
die "$program: didn't get newsgroup from either headers or ARGV\n"
unless $newsgroup || $saw_newsgroup;
$approved = $newsgroup;
$approved =~ s/\./'-'/eg;
($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year)=localtime(time);
$madeupid = "\<$year$mon$mday.$hour$min$sec.$$\@kepler.hedland.edu.au\>";
printf INEWS "Newsgroups: %s\n", $newsgroup if $newsgroup;
printf INEWS "Approved: %s\@kepler.hedland.edu.au\n", $approved;
print INEWS "Subject: Untitled\n" unless $saw_subject;
printf INEWS "Message-ID: %s\n", $madeupid unless $saw_msgid;
printf INEWS "NNTP-Posting-Host: %s\n", $postinghost;
print INEWS "Organisation: (mail2news gateway)\n";
print INEWS "\n";
print INEWS while <STDIN>; # gobble rest of message
close INEWS;
exit $?;
next.gif 644 24010 3110 475 6421025172 10613 0 ustar gregh cns GIF89a p p!# Imported from XPM image: next.xpm ! , @63333 B! 0 A0 0 0 0 `0 `0 A @ `0 `00000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000 000000 000000000 0000000000000000000`
; prev.gif 644 24010 3110 475 6421025172 10611 0 ustar gregh cns GIF89a p p!# Imported from XPM image: prev.xpm ! , @63333# B 0 A0 0 0 0 `0 `0 A `0 `00000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000 000 0000000000000 000000000000000000`
; toc.gif 644 24010 3110 474 6421025172 10421 0 ustar gregh cns GIF89a p !" Imported from XPM image: toc.xpm ! , @6313c B0 0 A0 0 0 0 `0 @`0 ` `0 @`0 `0 @`0000000000 0000000000 00000000 000000 0000 000000000 00000000000 00000000000 000`
;