[STATUS] NNTP support (10/9/02)

[Ken Murchison]

<disclaimer>

I'm in the middle of trying upgrade a friggin' Micro-f*cking-shaft NT server to 
2000, and I've had a few (bunch) so I'm sure I'm not fully understanding the 
questions/issues nor are my answers coherent.

</disclaimer>


Quoting Michael Fair <michael at daclubhouse.net>:

> That's fantastic!
> 
> I'm especially looking forward to seeing the creative 
> ways in which the two technologies can be used together.
> 
> Perhaps a separate thread should be opened on the list
> that presents possible uses for the collaboration?
> 
> I expect that if Ken had some "expected uses" that any
> special enhancements that were needed to make those
> uses available could be planned for (not necessarily
> implemented by Ken, but at least an attempt could be
> made not to do anything to hinder them either).

Right now, I'm just playin' around and seeing what I can make it do.  My 
current TODO list are things that I can use myself.  Any input is welcome, but 
the ultimate goal is a fully compliant NNTP server.


> I know that most of the references I saw regarding this
> involved making Shared Folders and mailing lists more
> accessible and less bulky (lots of individual copies of
> messages lying around) but I'm still not certain about
> how certain aspects would work.
> 
> 
> For instance, assuming the news server requires 
> authorization will the groups list match the list
> of IMAP folders that authorization has?  Anynonymous
> sees the anonymous list, usera sees an "INBOX" or "usera" 
> group that is actually usera's INBOX plus their own folders, 
> and the appropriate list of Shared Folders are shown based
> on the ACLs for that authorization?

I'm not sure what you're driving at.  There is no distinction 
between "newsgroup" mailboxes and any other mailbox.  The only way to isolate 
newgroups from other shared folders is to use a 'newsprefix' so that nntpd 
doesn't present IMAP-only mailboxes as newsgroups.  Other than this, nothing 
stops nntpd from presenting public/private mailboxes as newsgroups (ACL 
permitting).


> I can only assume that those of us running with the unix
> hierarchy separator option turned on are just going to
> have to train our users on why the folder names look different.
> (Fortunately 2.2 also alleviates the only need that I had for
> the unix hierarchy separator which was to do user at domain.dom
> userids so this isn't that much an issue, at least not for me)

If you read "news" via IMAP, then the hiersep works as you set it.  If you read 
news via NNTP, then the groups names are as you'd expect.  There _shouldn't_ be 
any confusion.


> If being used to gateway external mailing lists, how will
> "posting" be handled?  What will the "reply-to-group" button
> present as the group address?  Will the NNTP server need to
> proxy the message post (assuming the end user actually has
> permission to post to the group)?  What can be done to 
> prevent this feature from being abused as an open relay
> (if there needs to be anything done)?

I'm not sure I follow.  If reading via NNTP, posting works as you'd expect.  If 
reading via IMAP, see below.


> Will the news folders be accessible via the IMAP daemon?
> Again how to handle posting?

Yes, absolutely.  nntpd adds a To: header which is the email address that 
allows posting via SMTP (actually done by lmtp2nntp).



> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Ken Murchison" <ken at oceana.com>
> To: "Cyrus Mailing List" <info-cyrus at andrew.cmu.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 09, 2002 1:12 PM
> Subject: [STATUS] NNTP support (10/9/02)
> 
> 
> > Just quick update for those who care.
> > 
> > The server side of nntpd (CVS 2.2 branch) appears to be fully functional
> > and stable.  You can feed articles directly to it using the normal IHAVE
> > or INN's STREAM mode (CHECK/TAKETHIS).
> > 
> > For those people who's rather "suck" news rather than having it fed to
> > them, I wrote a fetchnews tool which you can use as an EVENT in
> > cyrus.conf to connect to your upstream peer, and retrieve new articles
> > and feed them to nntpd.
> > 
> > I have only these with INN, so I'd be interested in any incompatibilties
> > with other news servers.  There is no specific documentation yet, but
> > read the manpages and check out the news* options in imapd.conf.
> > 
> > Ken
> > -- 
> > Kenneth Murchison     Oceana Matrix Ltd.
> > Software Engineer     21 Princeton Place
> > 716-662-8973 x26      Orchard Park, NY 14127
> > --PGP Public Key--    http://www.oceana.com/~ken/ksm.pgp
> > 
> 
> 


-- 
Kenneth Murchison     Oceana Matrix Ltd.
Software Engineer     21 Princeton Place
716-662-8973 x26      Orchard Park, NY 14127
--PGP Public Key--    http://www.oceana.com/~ken/ksm.pgp