• slrn: mailing posts for certain newgroups?

    From Grant Edwards@21:1/5 to All on Sat Sep 25 22:58:54 2021
    Many, many years ago, I remember configuraing slrn so that posts to
    certain specific groups were submitted via email instead of being
    posted via NNTP.

    It looks like I'll need to do that again, but I don't remember how I
    did it and can't find any old config files. :/

    Can anybody offer any advice on the best way to set that up again?

    Create a newsgroup hook that changes post_object to "inews" and sets "inews_program" to something I hack together that e-mails the article?

    --
    Grant

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  • From Ted Heise@21:1/5 to Grant Edwards on Sun Sep 26 15:28:40 2021
    On Sat, 25 Sep 2021 22:58:54 -0000 (UTC),
    Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    Many, many years ago, I remember configuraing slrn so that
    posts to certain specific groups were submitted via email
    instead of being posted via NNTP.

    It looks like I'll need to do that again, but I don't remember
    how I did it and can't find any old config files. :/

    Can anybody offer any advice on the best way to set that up
    again?

    Create a newsgroup hook that changes post_object to "inews" and
    sets "inews_program" to something I hack together that e-mails
    the article?

    I wonder if it might be possible just to use slrn's Reply function
    and perhaps have the submission address stored somewhere handy
    that would allow you to paste it in when replying? Seems there
    mght be a way to make it default action in certain groups, perhaps
    with a macro?

    I did a brief bit of STFW on this concept, but didn't come up with
    anything.

    --
    Ted Heise <theise@panix.com> West Lafayette, IN, USA

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  • From Grant Edwards@21:1/5 to Ted Heise on Sun Sep 26 16:09:40 2021
    On 2021-09-26, Ted Heise <theise@panix.com> wrote:
    On Sat, 25 Sep 2021 22:58:54 -0000 (UTC), Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    Many, many years ago, I remember configuraing slrn so that
    posts to certain specific groups were submitted via email
    instead of being posted via NNTP.
    ...
    Create a newsgroup hook that changes post_object to "inews" and
    sets "inews_program" to something I hack together that e-mails
    the article?

    [I've given up on that, since the value of post_object is only checked
    at startup.]

    I wonder if it might be possible just to use slrn's Reply function
    and perhaps have the submission address stored somewhere handy
    that would allow you to paste it in when replying? Seems there
    mght be a way to make it default action in certain groups, perhaps
    with a macro?

    I think that may be what I did way back when, but I can't figure out
    how that would work for a post that's not a followup/reply.

    I did a brief bit of STFW on this concept, but didn't come up with
    anything.

    The other option I'm thinking about is just to cofigure slrn to use
    "inews" for all groups on that sever, and then write my own "inews"
    utility that knows which group needs to have its posts e-mailed. It
    only takes a few lines of Python to post via NNTP or to submit a
    message via SMTP (either directly or by piping it to msmtp or mutt).

    The next complication is that I'd need to enable username/password
    SMTP authentication for my GMail account (AKA the "less secure
    applications" feature). In theory I could use OAUTH2 SMTP
    authentication, but my initial attempt at setting that up on the
    Google end failed due to the requirement that I register URLS for my application's support page and privacy page -- and those URLS have to
    be pre-registered with Google.

    The "group" in question is a mailing list on gmane.io, and I'm still
    hoping the owners of that list will reverse their recent change that
    prohibits posts being submitted via gmane...

    --
    Grant

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  • From Eli the Bearded@21:1/5 to invalid@invalid.invalid on Sun Sep 26 20:36:25 2021
    In news.software.readers, Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    On 2021-09-26, Ted Heise <theise@panix.com> wrote:
    I wonder if it might be possible just to use slrn's Reply function
    and perhaps have the submission address stored somewhere handy
    that would allow you to paste it in when replying? Seems there
    mght be a way to make it default action in certain groups, perhaps
    with a macro?
    I think that may be what I did way back when, but I can't figure out
    how that would work for a post that's not a followup/reply.

    I've never read a mailing list via gmane, but shouldn't the posts come
    with the proper headers to just reply by email and go to the list? Eg,
    when I read vim-users (which I get by email), all of the posts have

    Reply-To: vim_use@googlegroups.com

    I did a brief bit of STFW on this concept, but didn't come up with
    anything.
    The other option I'm thinking about is just to cofigure slrn to use
    "inews" for all groups on that sever, and then write my own "inews"
    utility that knows which group needs to have its posts e-mailed. It
    only takes a few lines of Python to post via NNTP or to submit a
    message via SMTP (either directly or by piping it to msmtp or mutt).

    In trn, posts are composed and sent via Pnews, and I'd put all of the
    logic there. But I did write my own inews (in C) for a different problem
    in the distant past, and still keep it around for a mail to news
    gateway.

    The next complication is that I'd need to enable username/password
    SMTP authentication for my GMail account (AKA the "less secure
    applications" feature). In theory I could use OAUTH2 SMTP
    authentication, but my initial attempt at setting that up on the
    Google end failed due to the requirement that I register URLS for my application's support page and privacy page -- and those URLS have to
    be pre-registered with Google.

    Just a question, but couldn't you solve this faster using Panix for
    the email?

    But, FWIW, I've created OAUTH2 "apps" for other things (not Google)
    and just registered my own never-will-be-used-by-anyone pages for
    that sort of thing. Since they don't do a code review of apps, at least
    not ones not released, I can just use the tokens however I want with
    whatever I want. Curl, Perl, hand-composed-headers-over-tunneled-
    connections, you know, whatever.

    (From memory): Depending on the user-signup workflow you have, OAUTH2
    can either send a response to a central server or give a URL template
    with details in the response for the app to connect to the central
    server. The second method is ideal for the hobbiest. Any other URLs
    are not really used. Maybe your twitter or facebook page could be
    the support and privacy pages?

    The "group" in question is a mailing list on gmane.io, and I'm still
    hoping the owners of that list will reverse their recent change that prohibits posts being submitted via gmane...

    I'd guess that the stop is because of people using gmane to whitewash
    spam or trolls.

    Elijah
    ------
    panix will let paying customers send email "from" another account

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  • From Grant Edwards@21:1/5 to Eli the Bearded on Sun Sep 26 21:34:24 2021
    On 2021-09-26, Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> wrote:
    In news.software.readers, Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    On 2021-09-26, Ted Heise <theise@panix.com> wrote:
    I wonder if it might be possible just to use slrn's Reply function
    and perhaps have the submission address stored somewhere handy
    that would allow you to paste it in when replying? Seems there
    mght be a way to make it default action in certain groups, perhaps
    with a macro?

    I think that may be what I did way back when, but I can't figure out
    how that would work for a post that's not a followup/reply.

    I've never read a mailing list via gmane, but shouldn't the posts come
    with the proper headers to just reply by email and go to the list? Eg,
    when I read vim-users (which I get by email), all of the posts have

    That would work for replies. The problem happens for posts that are
    not replies.

    Reply-To: vim_use@googlegroups.com

    If you're not replying/following-up, there's no post where one would
    find that header, and slrn won't look for it anyway.

    In trn, posts are composed and sent via Pnews, and I'd put all of the
    logic there. But I did write my own inews (in C) for a different problem
    in the distant past, and still keep it around for a mail to news
    gateway.

    AFAICT, slrn can post using NNTP or using an external "inews" utility,
    but that setting can't be changed on-the-fly or per-group. It's set
    once at startup.

    The only obvious solution I can think of is to configure slrn to post
    via inews for the gmane server, and then write an inews application
    that looks at the group and either posts to gmane.io using NNTP or
    e-mails the post. That application would need a table/dictionary of
    the submission e-mail addresses for any groups that can't be posted to
    by NNTP.


    The next complication is that I'd need to enable username/password
    SMTP authentication for my GMail account (AKA the "less secure
    applications" feature). In theory I could use OAUTH2 SMTP
    authentication, but my initial attempt at setting that up on the
    Google end failed due to the requirement that I register URLS for my
    application's support page and privacy page -- and those URLS have to
    be pre-registered with Google.

    Just a question, but couldn't you solve this faster using Panix for
    the email?

    I don't expose my panix e-mail address or use it for any day-to-day
    activity. It's only used as a "backup".

    But, FWIW, I've created OAUTH2 "apps" for other things (not Google)
    and just registered my own never-will-be-used-by-anyone pages for
    that sort of thing. Since they don't do a code review of apps, at least
    not ones not released, I can just use the tokens however I want with
    whatever I want. Curl, Perl, hand-composed-headers-over-tunneled- connections, you know, whatever.

    When you create an OAUTH2 "app" on Google, you have to provide a
    couple URLs, and there appear to be not-well-documented rules for
    those URLs. Since my initial attempt, somebody suggested that you can
    use a nonsense URL with the hostname 'localhost' and Google will let
    it slide. I haven't tried that, since I set up 2FA at Google and now
    have app-specific passwords working for IMAP and SMTP.

    (From memory): Depending on the user-signup workflow you have,
    OAUTH2 can either send a response to a central server or give a URL
    template with details in the response for the app to connect to the
    central server. The second method is ideal for the hobbiest. Any
    other URLs are not really used. Maybe your twitter or facebook page
    could be the support and privacy pages?

    Don't have either of those. The only page I have is on panix.com, and
    Google refuses to allow support/privacy URLs using panix.com. It's
    pretty much a moot question now, since I have application-specific
    passwords working.

    The "group" in question is a mailing list on gmane.io, and I'm
    still hoping the owners of that list will reverse their recent
    change that prohibits posts being submitted via gmane...

    I'd guess that the stop is because of people using gmane to
    whitewash spam or trolls.

    I've heard from the admins of the list in question, and they don't
    seem to be aware of any change or problem that would have triggered
    such a change. I'll see if I can ping the guy that runs Gmane...

    --
    Grant

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  • From Ted Heise@21:1/5 to Grant Edwards on Mon Sep 27 01:41:41 2021
    On Sun, 26 Sep 2021 21:34:24 -0000 (UTC),
    Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    On 2021-09-26, Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> wrote:
    In news.software.readers, Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    On 2021-09-26, Ted Heise <theise@panix.com> wrote:
    I wonder if it might be possible just to use slrn's Reply
    function and perhaps have the submission address stored
    somewhere handy that would allow you to paste it in when
    replying? Seems there mght be a way to make it default
    action in certain groups, perhaps with a macro?

    I think that may be what I did way back when, but I can't
    figure out how that would work for a post that's not a
    followup/reply.

    I've never read a mailing list via gmane, but shouldn't the
    posts come with the proper headers to just reply by email and
    go to the list? Eg, when I read vim-users (which I get by
    email), all of the posts have

    That would work for replies. The problem happens for posts that
    are not replies.

    Ah, that's different. Not sure I realized that bit from the OP.
    If you're just composing a new message, why not use a mail client
    (e.g., Pine)?

    --
    Ted Heise <theise@panix.com> West Lafayette, IN, USA

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  • From Eli the Bearded@21:1/5 to invalid@invalid.invalid on Mon Sep 27 05:05:23 2021
    In news.software.readers, Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    That would work for replies. The problem happens for posts that are
    not replies.

    Start a follow-up to any old post, then edit subject / references and
    body to make it a new post?

    I don't expose my panix e-mail address or use it for any day-to-day
    activity. It's only used as a "backup".

    I didn't suggest that idly. I send email from non @panix addresses using
    panix all the time.

    /usr/sbin/sendmail -f "woof@my.dog" -t <<END_OF_MAIL
    From: "Mr. Squirrel Catcher, Esq." <woof@my.dog>
    Subject: let's be friends
    To: Tasty Squirrel <small@anim.als>

    HELLO! YOU ARE SQUIERREL! I WOULD LIKE TO BE FRIEND! I HAVE A
    VERY COMFORTABLE MOUTH! YOU SHOULD TRY IT!
    END_OF_MAIL

    And then my email arrives showing it went through panix but not exposing
    my panix email address. (My dogs' domains are willie.dog and hazel.dog
    in reality.) I set up email for them so that they could use it for
    Internet account verification, eg Instagram. I've also configured
    the SPF record to explicitly include Panix, eg:

    hazel.dog. 3550 IN TXT "v=spf1 a mx
    ip4:104.131.148.56 ip4:104.248.36.129 ip4:166.84.0.0/16 ip4:198.7.7.0/24
    -all"


    I have Rnmail configured to pull the email address out of the From: line
    in the body and use that for the "envelope", so I can easily set it
    while composing a message.

    When you create an OAUTH2 "app" on Google, you have to provide a
    couple URLs, and there appear to be not-well-documented rules for
    those URLs. Since my initial attempt, somebody suggested that you can
    use a nonsense URL with the hostname 'localhost' and Google will let
    it slide.

    That's curious. Yeah, I was afraid that Google might be odd like that.
    As I said, I have not created an Google oauth apps.

    Elijah
    ------
    needs to renew the dog hostnames soon

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  • From Grant Edwards@21:1/5 to Eli the Bearded on Mon Sep 27 05:45:52 2021
    On 2021-09-27, Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> wrote:
    In news.software.readers, Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    That would work for replies. The problem happens for posts that are
    not replies.

    Start a follow-up to any old post, then edit subject / references and
    body to make it a new post?

    I don't expose my panix e-mail address or use it for any day-to-day
    activity. It's only used as a "backup".

    I didn't suggest that idly. I send email from non @panix addresses using panix all the time.

    Yea, I used to do that all the time, and for years it was fine. But,
    in the past few years it started causing problems. The messages I sent
    were getting flagged as suspicious, labelled oddly in MUAs, or just
    plain dropped because the from address didn't match up with the
    sending host. I didn't have control over DNS entries for the from
    address domain so couldn't set up the magic to tell the world that
    panix was allowed to send mail "from" that address. In this case, I
    would have been using panix to send email from user@gmail.com, and the
    world would be rightly suspicious.

    --
    Grant

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  • From Grant Edwards@21:1/5 to Ted Heise on Mon Sep 27 05:36:41 2021
    On 2021-09-27, Ted Heise <theise@panix.com> wrote:
    On Sun, 26 Sep 2021 21:34:24 -0000 (UTC),
    Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    On 2021-09-26, Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> wrote:

    I've never read a mailing list via gmane, but shouldn't the
    posts come with the proper headers to just reply by email and
    go to the list? Eg, when I read vim-users (which I get by
    email), all of the posts have

    That would work for replies. The problem happens for posts that
    are not replies.

    Ah, that's different. Not sure I realized that bit from the OP.
    If you're just composing a new message, why not use a mail client
    (e.g., Pine)?

    I think I vaguely recall that's how I did it back in the day: when
    starting a new thread, send an e-mail with mutt. Read and follow-up
    with slrn. I must have used an article-mode hook to remapped the 'f'
    key to do a reply instead of a follow-up, and then used a some other
    hook to change the To: address so that the email went to the list
    instead of of the previous article's author. But after reading through
    the slrn docs, I still have no idea how to do that.

    Anyhow, I've got my 'inews' program written and working now, so when
    connected to gmane slrn posts using inews. My inews app looks at the
    group, and then either posts it via NNTP or emails it via SMTP.
    Writing my own 'inews' only took about a half hour, but then I spent
    another 2-3 hours tracking down a bug in Python's SMTP library; the send_message() call does "from mangling" (a la mbox) in message bodies
    when it should not. There's an easy workaround, but it took me a while
    to track down the actual bug and come up with a real fix.

    --
    Grant

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  • From Branimir Maksimovic@21:1/5 to Ted Heise on Wed Sep 29 01:36:58 2021
    On 2021-09-26, Ted Heise <theise@panix.com> wrote:

    I wonder if it might be possible just to use slrn's Reply function
    and perhaps have the submission address stored somewhere handy
    that would allow you to paste it in when replying? Seems there
    mght be a way to make it default action in certain groups, perhaps
    with a macro?

    I did a brief bit of STFW on this concept, but didn't come up with
    anything.

    I edit headers myself in slrn :P



    --

    7-77-777
    Evil Sinner!

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  • From Grant Edwards@21:1/5 to Branimir Maksimovic on Wed Sep 29 08:13:23 2021
    On 2021-09-29, Branimir Maksimovic <branimir.maksimovic@gmail.com> wrote:
    On 2021-09-26, Ted Heise <theise@panix.com> wrote:

    I wonder if it might be possible just to use slrn's Reply function
    and perhaps have the submission address stored somewhere handy
    that would allow you to paste it in when replying? Seems there
    mght be a way to make it default action in certain groups, perhaps
    with a macro?

    I did a brief bit of STFW on this concept, but didn't come up with
    anything.

    I edit headers myself in slrn :P

    The inews utility I'm now using with slrn when connected to gmane.io
    is at

    https://github.com/GrantEdwards/hybrid-inews

    The following are hard-coded in the source and will need to be set up:

    * SMTP server hostname
    * SMTP username
    * SMTP password
    * Dictionary that maps gmane groups to list submission email addresses

    Any posts that my inews utility receives to groups that aren't in the `mailgroups` dict will be submitted as-is to gmane.io via NNTP. Any
    posts to groups in that dict will be emailed to the address in that
    dict.

    I've been using it for a couple days, and it's been reliable so far.

    It would be pretty trivial to modify it to pipe messages to `sendmail`
    instead of using SMTP directly.

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  • From Branimir Maksimovic@21:1/5 to Grant Edwards on Wed Sep 29 23:01:43 2021
    On 2021-09-29, Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    It would be pretty trivial to modify it to pipe messages to `sendmail` instead of using SMTP directly.


    hm, I can send mail in slrn..



    --

    7-77-777
    Evil Sinner!

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  • From Branimir Maksimovic@21:1/5 to Grant Edwards on Thu Sep 30 01:24:10 2021
    On 2021-09-30, Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    On 2021-09-29, Branimir Maksimovic <branimir.maksimovic@gmail.com> wrote:
    On 2021-09-29, Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    It would be pretty trivial to modify it to pipe messages to `sendmail`
    instead of using SMTP directly.

    hm, I can send mail in slrn..

    Can you send a follow-up (with proper refernce header, quoting,
    attribution, etc.) via email instead of NNTP? Can you start a new
    thread via e-mail from slrn?

    well, you haven't give proper email address, I will
    now try to post new thread, sepparately.
    % In case you want to use another mailer than sendmail. Be sure that it
    % implements the same interface, though!
    %set sendmail_command "/usr/lib/sendmail -oi -t -oem -odb"
    set sendmail_command "mail -s %d '%s'"


    --
    Grant



    --

    7-77-777
    Evil Sinner!

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  • From Grant Edwards@21:1/5 to Branimir Maksimovic on Thu Sep 30 01:16:56 2021
    On 2021-09-29, Branimir Maksimovic <branimir.maksimovic@gmail.com> wrote:
    On 2021-09-29, Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

    It would be pretty trivial to modify it to pipe messages to `sendmail`
    instead of using SMTP directly.

    hm, I can send mail in slrn..

    Can you send a follow-up (with proper refernce header, quoting,
    attribution, etc.) via email instead of NNTP? Can you start a new
    thread via e-mail from slrn?

    --
    Grant

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