• FTN / Usenet to a new BBS

    From Joacim Melin@21:2/130 to All on Friday, May 08, 2020 13:53:21
    I'm in the process of moving all my FTN based stuff (including my Usenet feed from Avon et. al) to a FreeBSD based BBS system called Sklaffkom (it's Swedish). It can handle Usenet feeds but not any FTN stuff since it was never written for it. I can get Binkd running in FreeBSD without any problems but I'm dumbfounded on how to get the .MSG files into a "Usenet" format that the import/export utility in Sklaffkom can handle.

    Anyone got any ideas?


    --- NiKom v2.5.0
    * Origin: Delta City (deltacity.se, Vallentuna, Sweden) (21:2/130.0)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Joacim Melin on Saturday, May 09, 2020 05:38:13
    On 08 May 2020 at 01:53p, Joacim Melin pondered and said...

    I'm in the process of moving all my FTN based stuff (including my Usenet feed from Avon et. al) to a FreeBSD based BBS system called Sklaffkom (it's Swedish). It can handle Usenet feeds but not any FTN stuff since
    it was never written for it. I can get Binkd running in FreeBSD without any problems but I'm dumbfounded on how to get the .MSG files into a "Usenet" format that the import/export utility in Sklaffkom can handle.

    Anyone got any ideas?

    This is ugly, at best. To be clear here, you want to
    translate between Fidonet-style binary message formats,
    and RFC1036 format? Something like `fidogate` can do
    that, but it's really old and pretty unmaintained.

    I've got to work on my code to do this; I just haven't
    had time.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/04/20 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Joacim Melin@21:2/130 to tenser on Saturday, May 09, 2020 19:26:34
    On 08 May 2020 at 01:53p, Joacim Melin pondered and said...

    I'm in the process of moving all my FTN based stuff (including my Usenet
    feed from Avon et. al) to a FreeBSD based BBS system called Sklaffkom
    (it's Swedish). It can handle Usenet feeds but not any FTN stuff since
    it was never written for it. I can get Binkd running in FreeBSD without
    any problems but I'm dumbfounded on how to get the .MSG files into a
    "Usenet" format that the import/export utility in Sklaffkom can handle.

    Anyone got any ideas?

    This is ugly, at best. To be clear here, you want to
    translate between Fidonet-style binary message formats,
    and RFC1036 format? Something like `fidogate` can do
    that, but it's really old and pretty unmaintained.

    I've got to work on my code to do this; I just haven't
    had time.

    I didn't know about the RFC1036 format but yeah - that's the general idea. if it can't be done then that's not the end of the world but it would be pretty neat to get it to work.

    --- NiKom v2.5.0
    * Origin: Delta City (deltacity.se, Vallentuna, Sweden) (21:2/130.0)
  • From Blue White@21:4/134 to Joacim Melin on Friday, May 08, 2020 15:40:49
    I'm in the process of moving all my FTN based stuff (including my
    Usenet feed from Avon et. al) to a FreeBSD based BBS system called Sklaffkom (it's Swedish). It can handle Usenet feeds but not any
    FTN stuff since it was never written for it. I can get Binkd
    running in FreeBSD without any problems but I'm dumbfounded on how
    to get the .MSG files into a "Usenet" format that the import/export utility in Sklaffkom can handle.

    Anyone got any ideas?

    If it was never written to handle FTN there is probably not an easy way
    to force it to do so. Easiest way might be to set up a BBS program like syncronet to handle importing/exporting to/from ftn, and then set up
    this bbs as your public facing bbs with syncronet in the background
    serving as your NNTP server for the new system.

    Sorry that does not sound easy to maintain 2 BBSes but, aside from
    joining FTN networks that offer and allow NNTP feeds directly (I only
    know of one), I cannot think of an easy way to do that.

    #

    --- MagickaBBS v0.13alpha (Linux/armv7l)
    * Origin: Possum Lodge South * possumso.fsxnet.nz:7636/SSH:2122 (21:4/134)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Joacim Melin on Sunday, May 10, 2020 06:11:21
    On 09 May 2020 at 07:26p, Joacim Melin pondered and said...

    I didn't know about the RFC1036 format but yeah - that's the general
    idea. if it can't be done then that's not the end of the world but it would be pretty neat to get it to work.

    Oh it can definitely be done. It's just a matter of
    massaging the data formats. The biggest problem is
    mapping BBS users to RFC822-style email addresses for
    RFC1036 headers. For that, you probably want to divine
    the origin and then do a nodelist lookup of some kind,
    or else make something up. BBS user names fit into
    fix-width fields in message headers, and can contain
    spaces, so you've got to invent some syntax for papering
    that over.

    The only other really serious issue is that RFC1036-style
    Message-ID: headers must be globally unique, and there's
    no guarantee that FTN-style MSG files even have a message
    ID at all. There's some FTSC standard for this, though,
    that seems ok.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/04/20 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Blue White on Sunday, May 10, 2020 06:12:11
    On 08 May 2020 at 03:40p, Blue White pondered and said...

    Sorry that does not sound easy to maintain 2 BBSes but, aside from
    joining FTN networks that offer and allow NNTP feeds directly (I only
    know of one), I cannot think of an easy way to do that.

    What's the one that does?

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/04/20 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Al@21:4/106 to tenser on Saturday, May 09, 2020 14:29:18
    Hello tenser,

    On 08 May 2020 at 03:40p, Blue White pondered and said...

    Sorry that does not sound easy to maintain 2 BBSes but, aside
    from joining FTN networks that offer and allow NNTP feeds
    directly (I only know of one), I cannot think of an easy way to
    do that.

    What's the one that does?

    I haven't done it myself but I believe synchronet supports nntp feeds as well as users but I'm not sure how that is done.

    Ttyl :-),
    Al

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  • From Blue White@21:4/134 to tenser on Saturday, May 09, 2020 18:42:26
    tenser wrote to Blue White <=-

    Sorry that does not sound easy to maintain 2 BBSes but, aside from
    joining FTN networks that offer and allow NNTP feeds directly (I only
    know of one), I cannot think of an easy way to do that.

    What's the one that does?

    Micronet used to and I am assuming still does.



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  • From Vk3jed@21:1/109 to Al on Sunday, May 10, 2020 17:38:00
    On 05-09-20 14:29, Al wrote to tenser <=-

    I haven't done it myself but I believe synchronet supports nntp feeds
    as well as users but I'm not sure how that is done.

    Yes, newslink.js is what you need. :)


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  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Al on Tuesday, May 12, 2020 03:00:46
    On 09 May 2020 at 02:29p, Al pondered and said...

    What's the one that does?

    I haven't done it myself but I believe synchronet supports nntp feeds as well as users but I'm not sure how that is done.

    Ah, that's too bad. I mean, potentially cool, but a bit
    of a bummer that there's not a lot of experience here.

    Fat-dragon.org uses an NNTP server as the main messaging
    repository. I wrote ginko to act as a binkp mailer, but
    honestly have been so busy that I haven't had time to
    flesh out the gating to/from the NNTP server; so I get a
    bunch of maildir files that pile up. It's not hard code
    to write, I don't think, just tedious and I haven't had
    time.

    In many ways, it'd be much simpler just to accept an NNTP
    feed from somewhere.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/04/20 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Vk3jed on Tuesday, May 12, 2020 03:01:45
    On 10 May 2020 at 05:38p, Vk3jed pondered and said...

    Yes, newslink.js is what you need. :)

    Ah, cool! It would be neat if fsxNet and perhaps SciNet
    had that set up.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/04/20 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Al@21:4/106.1 to tenser on Monday, May 11, 2020 11:55:08
    I haven't done it myself but I believe synchronet supports nntp feeds as
    well as users but I'm not sure how that is done.

    Ah, that's too bad. I mean, potentially cool, but a bit
    of a bummer that there's not a lot of experience here.

    There is experience here if you can find it. I might suggest Nelgin if we can pull him out of the woodwork or get a hold of him. This seems right up he alley and he could likely answer question without needing to look them up.

    Fat-dragon.org uses an NNTP server as the main messaging
    repository. I wrote ginko to act as a binkp mailer, but
    honestly have been so busy that I haven't had time to
    flesh out the gating to/from the NNTP server; so I get a
    bunch of maildir files that pile up. It's not hard code
    to write, I don't think, just tedious and I haven't had
    time.

    In many ways, it'd be much simpler just to accept an NNTP
    feed from somewhere.

    That's probably doable. If Nelgin or other Synchronet folks don't jump in here we might need to direct our questions directly to them.

    Nelgin?

    Echicken?

    Is an nntp feed doable with newslink.js?

    --- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-4
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  • From echicken@21:1/164 to Al on Monday, May 11, 2020 15:27:26
    Re: Re: FTN / Usenet to a new BBS
    By: Al to tenser on Mon May 11 2020 11:55:08

    That's probably doable. If Nelgin or other Synchronet folks don't jump in here
    we might need to direct our questions directly to them.

    Is an nntp feed doable with newslink.js?

    It's doable. I haven't followed this thread, so:

    newslink.js is for outbound synchronization of Synchronet message bases with NNTP servers. I believe it has some config info at the top of the file and maybe in the wiki.

    nntpservice.js is Synchronet's NNTP server, an NNTP interface to all of your message bases (depending on user's access level, etc.) NNTP clients/peers can connect to it.

    If you want the user connecting to nntpservice.js to be able to post using "from" names other than the user's own alias, then you must set the Q flag on that user account. (Not sure if this is what tenser was looking for.)

    ---
    echicken
    electronic chicken bbs - bbs.electronicchicken.com
    * Origin: electronic chicken bbs - bbs.electronicchicken.com (21:1/164)
  • From Joacim Melin@21:2/130 to tenser on Monday, May 11, 2020 22:33:33
    On 10 May 2020 at 05:38p, Vk3jed pondered and said...

    Yes, newslink.js is what you need. :)

    Ah, cool! It would be neat if fsxNet and perhaps SciNet
    had that set up.

    My current plan is to setup a nntp server on CentOS 7, poll news from some source and then feed that to my BBS running on FreeBSD 8.4 (it will not work on any later version for reasons I do not understand) and getting the software needed to poll news from a outside source is a pain in the ass to compile on FreeBSD 8.4.

    More servers are more fun anyway.


    --- NiKom v2.5.0
    * Origin: Delta City (deltacity.se, Vallentuna, Sweden) (21:2/130.0)
  • From Avon@21:1/101 to tenser on Tuesday, May 12, 2020 19:31:30
    On 12 May 2020 at 03:00a, tenser pondered and said...

    In many ways, it'd be much simpler just to accept an NNTP
    feed from somewhere.

    So if I were to gate fsxNet FTN to dedicated newsgroups at news.bbs.nz then figure out a way to give your NNTP server authenticated NNTP access to read/write to those groups. Would that blend? :)

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/04/20 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From alterego@21:2/116 to tenser on Tuesday, May 12, 2020 20:51:31
    Re: Re: FTN / Usenet to a new BBS
    By: tenser to Al on Tue May 12 2020 03:00 am

    In many ways, it'd be much simpler just to accept an NNTP
    feed from somewhere.

    I have JamNNTP running on Hub 3 if that helps?
    ...δεσπ

    ... I want to write a mystery novel...or do I?
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  • From Vk3jed@21:1/109 to tenser on Tuesday, May 12, 2020 21:35:00
    On 05-12-20 03:01, tenser wrote to Vk3jed <=-

    On 10 May 2020 at 05:38p, Vk3jed pondered and said...

    Yes, newslink.js is what you need. :)

    Ah, cool! It would be neat if fsxNet and perhaps SciNet
    had that set up.

    Hmm, what are you wanting to do? what's that got to do with the networks? (they're FTN)...


    ... Remember the immortal words of Socrates: "I drank what?"
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  • From Joacim Melin@21:2/130 to alterego on Tuesday, May 12, 2020 17:06:45
    Re: Re: FTN / Usenet to a new BBS
    By: tenser to Al on Tue May 12 2020 03:00 am

    In many ways, it'd be much simpler just to accept an NNTP
    feed from somewhere.

    I have JamNNTP running on Hub 3 if that helps?
    ...????

    Can I connect with a News fetch software thingie running in Linux or FreeBSD?


    --- NiKom v2.5.0
    * Origin: Delta City (deltacity.se, Vallentuna, Sweden) (21:2/130.0)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to echicken on Wednesday, May 13, 2020 08:04:05
    On 11 May 2020 at 03:27p, echicken pondered and said...

    Is an nntp feed doable with newslink.js?

    It's doable. I haven't followed this thread, so:

    newslink.js is for outbound synchronization of Synchronet message bases with NNTP servers. I believe it has some config info at the top of the file and maybe in the wiki.

    That's it. My "BBS" runs INN as the "message server".
    There's no other BBS package installed. I wrote my
    own binkp mailer, but need to do the gate to/from FTN
    messages thing next. I haven't had time; getting a net
    feed via NNTP would obviate that work.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/04/20 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Joacim Melin on Wednesday, May 13, 2020 08:06:59
    On 11 May 2020 at 10:33p, Joacim Melin pondered and said...

    Ah, cool! It would be neat if fsxNet and perhaps SciNet
    had that set up.

    My current plan is to setup a nntp server on CentOS 7, poll news from
    some source and then feed that to my BBS running on FreeBSD 8.4 (it will not work on
    any later version for reasons I do not understand) and getting the software needed to poll news from a outside source is a pain in the ass
    to compile on FreeBSD 8.4.

    What software are you using, is the source code available, and
    what precisely do you mean when you write, "it will not work"
    on recent versions of FreeBSD? 8.4 is long dead, but perhaps
    I can get it to run if the source is lying around somewhere
    (preferably github). Does it compile and fail to run, crash
    mysteriously and randomly, or fail to compile?

    More servers are more fun anyway.

    *guffaw* Fun for whom? :-D

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/04/20 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Avon on Wednesday, May 13, 2020 08:08:45
    On 12 May 2020 at 07:31p, Avon pondered and said...

    So if I were to gate fsxNet FTN to dedicated newsgroups at news.bbs.nz then figure out a way to give your NNTP server authenticated NNTP access to read/write to those groups. Would that blend? :)

    Potentially? news.bbs.bz is running INN, right? I don't
    see any reason that gating setup wouldn't work.

    Authentication might be a little weird; my server would
    peer with yours, but wouldn't exactly authenticate as a
    "user".

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/04/20 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to alterego on Wednesday, May 13, 2020 08:10:06
    On 12 May 2020 at 08:51p, alterego pondered and said...

    In many ways, it'd be much simpler just to accept an NNTP
    feed from somewhere.

    I have JamNNTP running on Hub 3 if that helps?

    Oooh, that might help for reading. The subset of
    the protocol for transferring between servers is
    slightly different than that used by JamNNTP (I don't
    think it supports `IHAVE`, for instance, though I
    confess I haven't looked closely lately...).

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/04/20 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Vk3jed on Wednesday, May 13, 2020 08:11:04
    On 12 May 2020 at 09:35p, Vk3jed pondered and said...

    Hmm, what are you wanting to do? what's that got to do with the
    networks? (they're FTN)...

    What I'm wanting to do is not use FTN to transfer FTN-network
    content in and out of my system. But maybe I should just stop
    being lazy and finish up my own software....

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/04/20 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Vk3jed@21:1/109 to Avon on Wednesday, May 13, 2020 09:02:00
    On 05-12-20 19:31, Avon wrote to tenser <=-

    On 12 May 2020 at 03:00a, tenser pondered and said...

    In many ways, it'd be much simpler just to accept an NNTP
    feed from somewhere.

    So if I were to gate fsxNet FTN to dedicated newsgroups at news.bbs.nz then figure out a way to give your NNTP server authenticated NNTP
    access to read/write to those groups. Would that blend? :)

    Hmm, copld be something to experiment with at VKRadio, where I have Synchronet on tap. Looks like setting up a NNTP downlink is a bit like setting up a QWK downlink - create account, give account Q restriction.


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  • From Vk3jed@21:1/109 to tenser on Wednesday, May 13, 2020 09:18:00
    On 05-13-20 08:11, tenser wrote to Vk3jed <=-

    On 12 May 2020 at 09:35p, Vk3jed pondered and said...

    Hmm, what are you wanting to do? what's that got to do with the
    networks? (they're FTN)...

    What I'm wanting to do is not use FTN to transfer FTN-network
    content in and out of my system. But maybe I should just stop
    being lazy and finish up my own software....

    Haha yeah. :) I assume you're posting from a different system to the one in question. ;)


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  • From Vk3jed@21:1/109 to tenser on Wednesday, May 13, 2020 10:16:00
    On 05-13-20 08:04, tenser wrote to echicken <=-

    That's it. My "BBS" runs INN as the "message server".
    There's no other BBS package installed. I wrote my
    own binkp mailer, but need to do the gate to/from FTN
    messages thing next. I haven't had time; getting a net
    feed via NNTP would obviate that work.

    Might be worth playing with Synchronet as a NNTP gateway.


    ... First Law of Socio-Genetics: Celibacy is not hereditary.
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  • From alterego@21:2/116 to Joacim Melin on Wednesday, May 13, 2020 12:01:53
    Re: Re: FTN / Usenet to a new BBS
    By: Joacim Melin to alterego on Tue May 12 2020 05:06 pm

    Can I connect with a News fetch software thingie running in Linux or FreeBSD?

    yeah, sure.

    netmail me with a username/password you would like to use.
    ...δεσπ

    ... When I was a little kid, we had a quicksand box. I was an only child eventually.
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  • From Joacim Melin@21:2/130 to tenser on Wednesday, May 13, 2020 11:00:19
    On 11 May 2020 at 10:33p, Joacim Melin pondered and said...

    Ah, cool! It would be neat if fsxNet and perhaps SciNet
    had that set up.

    My current plan is to setup a nntp server on CentOS 7, poll news from
    some source and then feed that to my BBS running on FreeBSD 8.4 (it will
    not work on
    any later version for reasons I do not understand) and getting the
    software needed to poll news from a outside source is a pain in the ass
    to compile on FreeBSD 8.4.

    What software are you using, is the source code available, and
    what precisely do you mean when you write, "it will not work"
    on recent versions of FreeBSD? 8.4 is long dead, but perhaps
    I can get it to run if the source is lying around somewhere
    (preferably github). Does it compile and fail to run, crash
    mysteriously and randomly, or fail to compile?

    It fails to compile. The source code is here:

    http://www.sklaffkom.se/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/s132.tar.gz

    Feel free to have a look. It would be awesome to get it running under FreeBSD 12 or CentOS 7 or something more modern.

    Thanks!


    --- NiKom v2.5.0
    * Origin: Delta City (deltacity.se, Vallentuna, Sweden) (21:2/130.0)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Vk3jed on Thursday, May 14, 2020 05:06:43
    On 13 May 2020 at 09:18a, Vk3jed pondered and said...

    On 05-13-20 08:11, tenser wrote to Vk3jed <=-

    Hmm, what are you wanting to do? what's that got to do with the networks? (they're FTN)...

    What I'm wanting to do is not use FTN to transfer FTN-network
    content in and out of my system. But maybe I should just stop
    being lazy and finish up my own software....

    Haha yeah. :) I assume you're posting from a different system to the
    one in question. ;)

    That is correct. Most of my messaging has been from Agency.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/04/20 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Vk3jed on Thursday, May 14, 2020 05:08:43
    On 13 May 2020 at 10:16a, Vk3jed pondered and said...

    On 05-13-20 08:04, tenser wrote to echicken <=-

    That's it. My "BBS" runs INN as the "message server".
    There's no other BBS package installed. I wrote my
    own binkp mailer, but need to do the gate to/from FTN
    messages thing next. I haven't had time; getting a net
    feed via NNTP would obviate that work.

    Might be worth playing with Synchronet as a NNTP gateway.

    That's a pretty heavy-weight approach, but is a
    possibility. I've already got code that will
    transfer data via binkp, and I can read and parse
    FTN messages; I just need to stream those to the
    NNTP server and add some glue code, then write
    a little more to accept streamed NNTP messages
    from INN, translate those to FTN format and send
    them to the hub and again some glue code.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/04/20 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Joacim Melin on Thursday, May 14, 2020 10:40:44
    On 13 May 2020 at 11:00a, Joacim Melin pondered and said...

    What software are you using, is the source code available, and
    what precisely do you mean when you write, "it will not work"
    on recent versions of FreeBSD? 8.4 is long dead, but perhaps
    I can get it to run if the source is lying around somewhere (preferably github). Does it compile and fail to run, crash mysteriously and randomly, or fail to compile?

    It fails to compile. The source code is here:

    http://www.sklaffkom.se/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/s132.tar.gz

    Feel free to have a look. It would be awesome to get it running under FreeBSD 12 or CentOS 7 or something more modern.

    Sure. I got it to compile without errors/warnings
    on FreeBSD 12.1 and OpenBSD 6.6. I haven't tested
    it, though.

    fetch http://fat-dragon.org/pub/sklaff-1.32.tar.gz

    There's as git repo in there that should show
    exactly what I changed.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/04/20 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Vk3jed@21:1/109 to tenser on Thursday, May 14, 2020 11:53:00
    On 05-14-20 05:06, tenser wrote to Vk3jed <=-

    Haha yeah. :) I assume you're posting from a different system to the
    one in question. ;)

    That is correct. Most of my messaging has been from Agency.

    OK, everything makes sense now. I've configured VKRadio with newsgroup names and enabled it for NNTP, will have to have a play at some stage. :)


    ... Some men are discovered; others are found out.
    === MultiMail/Win v0.51
    --- SBBSecho 3.10-Linux
    * Origin: Freeway BBS Bendigo,Australia freeway.apana.org.au (21:1/109)
  • From Vk3jed@21:1/109 to tenser on Thursday, May 14, 2020 11:55:00
    On 05-14-20 05:08, tenser wrote to Vk3jed <=-

    That's a pretty heavy-weight approach, but is a
    possibility. I've already got code that will

    True. :)

    transfer data via binkp, and I can read and parse
    FTN messages; I just need to stream those to the
    NNTP server and add some glue code, then write
    a little more to accept streamed NNTP messages
    from INN, translate those to FTN format and send
    them to the hub and again some glue code.

    Sounds like you're well on the way, but almost reinventing the wheel with your own NNTP - FTN gateway effectively! :)


    ... A sharp tongue and a dull mind are usually found in the same head!
    === MultiMail/Win v0.51
    --- SBBSecho 3.10-Linux
    * Origin: Freeway BBS Bendigo,Australia freeway.apana.org.au (21:1/109)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Vk3jed on Thursday, May 14, 2020 14:23:33
    On 14 May 2020 at 11:55a, Vk3jed pondered and said...

    On 05-14-20 05:08, tenser wrote to Vk3jed <=-

    That's a pretty heavy-weight approach, but is a
    possibility. I've already got code that will

    True. :)

    transfer data via binkp, and I can read and parse
    FTN messages; I just need to stream those to the
    NNTP server and add some glue code, then write
    a little more to accept streamed NNTP messages
    from INN, translate those to FTN format and send
    them to the hub and again some glue code.

    Sounds like you're well on the way, but almost reinventing the wheel
    with your own NNTP - FTN gateway effectively! :)

    Indeed, that's true. Part of the reason for that
    is that most of the existing code that does this is
    either a) wired into some other BBS package, or b)
    has atrophied over time from neglect and lack of
    maintenance. E.g., `fidogate`.

    Also, `binkd` is not code I trust. I ran into far
    too many bugs far too quickly with it. Just looking
    at `hpt` and other similar things similarly.

    Further, nothing seems to be particularly resilient
    to handling crashes well: just opening a file and
    writing into it isn't really sufficient, because the
    OS may buffer the data, etc. `ginko` is very careful
    with the ordering of filesystem operations and
    ensuring that the OS has actually written data to
    the storage media before acknowledging receipt; a
    crash at any point will leave the data store in a
    way that's recoverable with no data loss after the
    system comes back up.

    Finally, I wanted to address issues around latency
    that I saw as being problematic. This is part of
    understanding the larger design space: there's a
    tension between having one program that's fast (because
    all the steps to handling message delivery, for example
    are centralized in one place) but also modular for
    security and separation of concerns issues that then
    implies slowness: splitting things up into multiple
    binaries implies coordination between the two. Binkd
    may be able to invoke HPT directly, which can then
    invoke fidogate, but what about on the return path?
    Everything I've seen so far seems to be based on
    polling at some fixed interval, possibly combined
    with semaphore files, all of which is suboptimal.

    But since I know I'm running on systems that provide
    primitives for intra-machine IPC based on things like
    Unix domain sockets, I can "ping" services directly;
    basically, I have multiple daemons that coordinate
    with each other via doorbells. This is easy in a
    language like Go, where I can spin up a dedicated
    thread that spins on a Unix domain socket; another
    process can connect to that socket and immediately
    disconnect, effectively creating a doorbell that says,
    "there's work for you; scan your input queue." So
    you synchronize on the filesystem, but the polling
    and semaphore files are replaced by sockets and
    blocking events in dedicated threads. Since those
    threads spend most of their lives blocked on an IPC
    even from the OS, it's less resource-intensive (no
    spinning) and lower-latency (no waiting for the
    polling interval; the thread becomes unblocked as
    soon as someone rings the doorbell).

    So yeah, it's reinventing an FTN<->NNTP gateway, but
    with some added niceties.

    Finally, since this is all green-field code in a
    language that encourages and facilitates testing,
    we can up our game in the testing department.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/04/20 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Avon@21:1/101 to tenser on Thursday, May 14, 2020 19:47:46
    On 13 May 2020 at 08:08a, tenser pondered and said...

    Potentially? news.bbs.bz is running INN, right? I don't
    see any reason that gating setup wouldn't work.

    Yep INN

    Authentication might be a little weird; my server would
    peer with yours, but wouldn't exactly authenticate as a
    "user".

    Yep that's correct. I would configure the feed to send you fsxnet.* groups
    that I would need to create in INN

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/04/20 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Avon on Thursday, May 14, 2020 21:53:02
    On 14 May 2020 at 07:47p, Avon pondered and said...

    On 13 May 2020 at 08:08a, tenser pondered and said...

    Potentially? news.bbs.bz is running INN, right? I don't
    see any reason that gating setup wouldn't work.

    Yep INN

    Authentication might be a little weird; my server would
    peer with yours, but wouldn't exactly authenticate as a
    "user".

    Yep that's correct. I would configure the feed to send you fsxnet.*
    groups that I would need to create in INN

    Yeah, that could definitely work. I still want to
    finish my own stuff, but it would certainly get things
    off the ground.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/04/20 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Vk3jed@21:1/109 to tenser on Thursday, May 14, 2020 21:15:00
    On 05-14-20 14:23, tenser wrote to Vk3jed <=-

    Indeed, that's true. Part of the reason for that
    is that most of the existing code that does this is
    either a) wired into some other BBS package, or b)
    has atrophied over time from neglect and lack of
    maintenance. E.g., `fidogate`.

    Yeah, sounds like you have a pretty good approach, and I can understand where you're coming from. Will be interesting to see how it all looks. Could end up being useful for a lot of things. :)


    ... I had a troubled childhood; I was breast fed from falsies.
    === MultiMail/Win v0.51
    --- SBBSecho 3.10-Linux
    * Origin: Freeway BBS Bendigo,Australia freeway.apana.org.au (21:1/109)
  • From Vk3jed@21:1/109 to tenser on Thursday, May 14, 2020 22:01:00
    On 05-14-20 21:53, tenser wrote to Avon <=-

    Yep that's correct. I would configure the feed to send you fsxnet.*
    groups that I would need to create in INN

    Yeah, that could definitely work. I still want to
    finish my own stuff, but it would certainly get things
    off the ground.

    I've updated my config for VKRadio, all of those echos now have vkradio.* newsgroup names and should be available by NNTP. Anyone wanting to try a NNTP feed will need to have a QWKnet account on Freeway, and authenticate over NNTP.


    ... Mental Floss prevents Moral Decay.
    === MultiMail/Win v0.51
    --- SBBSecho 3.10-Linux
    * Origin: Freeway BBS Bendigo,Australia freeway.apana.org.au (21:1/109)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Joacim Melin on Friday, May 15, 2020 08:59:19
    On 14 May 2020 at 10:40a, tenser pondered and said...

    Sure. I got it to compile without errors/warnings
    on FreeBSD 12.1 and OpenBSD 6.6. I haven't tested
    it, though.

    fetch http://fat-dragon.org/pub/sklaff-1.32.tar.gz

    There's as git repo in there that should show
    exactly what I changed.

    And compiling this with a more recent gcc (instead
    of just clang) with maximum warnings turned on
    reveals even more problems in the source; some quite
    severe. I'll take a stab at fixing some of those,
    but I wouldn't trust this software too much.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/04/20 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Joacim Melin@21:2/130 to tenser on Sunday, May 17, 2020 14:32:30
    On 14 May 2020 at 10:40a, tenser pondered and said...

    Sure. I got it to compile without errors/warnings
    on FreeBSD 12.1 and OpenBSD 6.6. I haven't tested
    it, though.

    fetch http://fat-dragon.org/pub/sklaff-1.32.tar.gz

    There's as git repo in there that should show
    exactly what I changed.

    And compiling this with a more recent gcc (instead
    of just clang) with maximum warnings turned on
    reveals even more problems in the source; some quite
    severe. I'll take a stab at fixing some of those,
    but I wouldn't trust this software too much.

    Alright - solid work so far! Thanks!

    This software was written in the early 90's by a bunch of swedish hackers over a couple of weekends. I think it ran on some sort of BSD back in the day (probably NetBSD) on a 90Mhz Pentium computer, first with five modems and later also with internet and telnet access. I was a user of that BBS (S÷derKOM it was called, still around but with a different software and vibe compared to the old days) and I've always wanted to get it up and running on a modern Unix* platform with newsgroups and stuff.

    There have been efforts of getting it to run on Linux over the years but they never really panned out properly. Someone managed to get it sort-of working and ran a BBS with Sklaffkom on Linux but there was always some issue with it.

    If you can manage to fix whatever issues there are I will be a very very grateful man.

    Joacim


    --- NiKom v2.5.0
    * Origin: Delta City (deltacity.se, Vallentuna, Sweden) (21:2/130.0)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Joacim Melin on Monday, May 18, 2020 11:20:25
    On 17 May 2020 at 02:32p, Joacim Melin pondered and said...

    On 14 May 2020 at 10:40a, tenser pondered and said...

    Sure. I got it to compile without errors/warnings
    on FreeBSD 12.1 and OpenBSD 6.6. I haven't tested
    it, though.

    fetch http://fat-dragon.org/pub/sklaff-1.32.tar.gz

    There's as git repo in there that should show
    exactly what I changed.

    And compiling this with a more recent gcc (instead
    of just clang) with maximum warnings turned on
    reveals even more problems in the source; some quite
    severe. I'll take a stab at fixing some of those,
    but I wouldn't trust this software too much.

    Alright - solid work so far! Thanks!

    No problem. I poked at it some more and got it to
    compile without warnings or errors on OpenBSD, FreeBSD
    and Linux, all with whatever compiler runs as `cc`
    and with GCC up to 9. As before, I haven't tested
    it, but it should build and I presume run.
    This software was written in the early 90's by a bunch of swedish
    hackers over a couple of weekends. I think it ran on some sort of BSD
    back in the day (probably NetBSD) on a 90Mhz Pentium computer, first
    with five modems and later also with internet and telnet access. I was a user of that BBS (S÷derKOM it was called, still around but with a different software and vibe compared to the old days) and I've always wanted to get it up and running on a modern Unix* platform with
    newsgroups and stuff.

    The OChangelog starts in 1993 and ends in 1996. I presume
    that was the last time anyone did any significant maintenance
    work on it: almost 25 years and honestly, it kinda shows. I
    don't mean that in an unkind way, but just being honest. It
    looks an awful lot like the folks who wrote it were coming
    from Pascal and relatively new to C.

    Interestingly, it looks like it was ported to some fairly
    obscure systems: DG-UX and Mt Xinu's BSD distribution, for
    example.

    There have been efforts of getting it to run on Linux over the years but they never really panned out properly. Someone managed to get it sort-of working and ran a BBS with Sklaffkom on Linux but there was always some issue with it.

    I got it to build on modern Linux, but I really don't know
    how well it will work. If it fails, I strongly suspect bugs
    in the program itself: it plays fast and loose with things
    like strings and pointers.

    Things that were preventing it from building natively were
    lack of modern string-handling functions in Linux's libc
    (Drepper's views on strlcpy and strlcat are just wrong), and
    using really old antiquated interfaces. Everything is using
    POSIX interfaces now, so it should be fairly portable, and
    I brought in OpenBSD's strlcpy/strlcat for Linux (the license
    is permissive so that should be ok).

    The weirdest thing was using `nlist` to prime the parser; I
    replaced that with a table.

    Some of the logic was clearly wrong: I guessed a little bit
    but tried to fix it to do what I thought it was supposed to
    do. This is mostly not initializing things like pointers
    and then maybe using them before something else had written
    to them.

    If you can manage to fix whatever issues there are I will be a very very grateful man.

    Re-grab that tarball and it should at least get you started.
    I've done as much as I'm likely to do, but it should at least
    be hackable now.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/04/20 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Joacim Melin@21:2/130 to tenser on Wednesday, May 20, 2020 15:29:53
    On 17 May 2020 at 02:32p, Joacim Melin pondered and said...

    On 14 May 2020 at 10:40a, tenser pondered and said...

    Sure. I got it to compile without errors/warnings
    on FreeBSD 12.1 and OpenBSD 6.6. I haven't tested
    it, though.

    fetch http://fat-dragon.org/pub/sklaff-1.32.tar.gz

    There's as git repo in there that should show
    exactly what I changed.

    And compiling this with a more recent gcc (instead
    of just clang) with maximum warnings turned on
    reveals even more problems in the source; some quite
    severe. I'll take a stab at fixing some of those,
    but I wouldn't trust this software too much.

    Alright - solid work so far! Thanks!

    No problem. I poked at it some more and got it to
    compile without warnings or errors on OpenBSD, FreeBSD
    and Linux, all with whatever compiler runs as `cc`
    and with GCC up to 9. As before, I haven't tested
    it, but it should build and I presume run.
    This software was written in the early 90's by a bunch of swedish
    hackers over a couple of weekends. I think it ran on some sort of BSD
    back in the day (probably NetBSD) on a 90Mhz Pentium computer, first
    with five modems and later also with internet and telnet access. I was a
    user of that BBS (S÷derKOM it was called, still around but with a
    different software and vibe compared to the old days) and I've always
    wanted to get it up and running on a modern Unix* platform with
    newsgroups and stuff.

    The OChangelog starts in 1993 and ends in 1996. I presume
    that was the last time anyone did any significant maintenance
    work on it: almost 25 years and honestly, it kinda shows. I
    don't mean that in an unkind way, but just being honest. It
    looks an awful lot like the folks who wrote it were coming
    from Pascal and relatively new to C.

    Interestingly, it looks like it was ported to some fairly
    obscure systems: DG-UX and Mt Xinu's BSD distribution, for
    example.

    There have been efforts of getting it to run on Linux over the years but
    they never really panned out properly. Someone managed to get it sort-of
    working and ran a BBS with Sklaffkom on Linux but there was always some
    issue with it.

    I got it to build on modern Linux, but I really don't know
    how well it will work. If it fails, I strongly suspect bugs
    in the program itself: it plays fast and loose with things
    like strings and pointers.

    Things that were preventing it from building natively were
    lack of modern string-handling functions in Linux's libc
    (Drepper's views on strlcpy and strlcat are just wrong), and
    using really old antiquated interfaces. Everything is using
    POSIX interfaces now, so it should be fairly portable, and
    I brought in OpenBSD's strlcpy/strlcat for Linux (the license
    is permissive so that should be ok).

    The weirdest thing was using `nlist` to prime the parser; I
    replaced that with a table.

    Some of the logic was clearly wrong: I guessed a little bit
    but tried to fix it to do what I thought it was supposed to
    do. This is mostly not initializing things like pointers
    and then maybe using them before something else had written
    to them.

    If you can manage to fix whatever issues there are I will be a very very
    grateful man.

    Re-grab that tarball and it should at least get you started.
    I've done as much as I'm likely to do, but it should at least
    be hackable now.

    Thanks again. I had to check again what OS they where using back in the day and it was actually Interactive Unix back then.

    And you are absolutely right about the Pascal part - most if not all of them came from a background in Pascal with several of them having written older BBS systems in Pascal for CP/m and later MS-DOS.

    Best,

    Joacim


    --- NiKom v2.5.0
    * Origin: Delta City (deltacity.se, Vallentuna, Sweden) (21:2/130.0)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Joacim Melin on Thursday, May 21, 2020 04:30:40
    On 20 May 2020 at 03:29p, Joacim Melin pondered and said...

    Thanks again. I had to check again what OS they where using back in the day and it was actually Interactive Unix back then.

    Oh, as in System V? That makes a lot of sense.

    And you are absolutely right about the Pascal part - most if not all of them came from a background in Pascal with several of them having
    written older BBS systems in Pascal for CP/m and later MS-DOS.

    Yeah; you can tell in how they handle conditionals: a
    lot of that code becomes deeply nested. Most experienced
    C programmers make more aggressive use of early returns,
    breaks and `continue` in loops to approximate guard clauses.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/04/20 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Blue White@21:4/134 to tenser on Sunday, March 14, 2021 09:33:50
    tenser wrote to Blue White <=-

    On 08 May 2020 at 03:40p, Blue White pondered and said...

    Sorry that does not sound easy to maintain 2 BBSes but, aside from
    joining FTN networks that offer and allow NNTP feeds directly (I only
    know of one), I cannot think of an easy way to do that.

    What's the one that does?

    It has been a while, but I believe I was thinking of Scinet.


    ... Direct from the Ministry of Silly Walks
    --- MultiMail
    * Origin: Possum Lodge South * possumso.fsxnet.nz:7636/SSH:2122 (21:4/134)