nms-cgi-devel — Developers discussion for NMS CGI programs

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] The Target Audience

[iain t. <ic...@eh...>]

* Dave Cross (da...@da...) [20 Jan 2002 03:01]:

[...]
> I honestly can't tell you what problems I had other than to say I
> couldn't get ms-mail to work. I followed the instructions as I
> understood them, meaning, from a layman's point of view.

I suspect he had trouble with the Mail::Mailer part. Not a problem for
the nms stuff. Either that, or he installed it under Windows (where
taint mode can prove amusing).

Out of interest, is there a simple way to download modules that a
Makefile.PL says one should have? e.g.

  perl Makefile.PL
  make modules
  make
  make test
  make install

Or could just be subsumed into the 'make' part.



I must admit I still have a vague philosophical objection to the
project in that "why are laymen installing CGIs?" and "why don't they
just learn what the errors actually mean?". He'd have been up the creek
if none of the scripts he downloaded had worked.

Then again, I still worry about articles and so on that mention the 'CGI
programming language'.


cheers,
-- 
iain.                                          <http://eh.org/~koschei/>

[Nms-cgi-devel] The Target Audience

[Dave C. <da...@da...>]

I thought you might be interested in reading the following exchange I've 
has with someone who tried to install one of my (non-nms) CGI scripts.

It gives a really interesting insight to the kind of person that we're
aiming at pleasing.

================================================================

From: xx...@xx...
To: <da...@ma...>
Subject: RE : ms-mail v1.0
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 23:56:12 +0200

Hi,

No sarcasm or malice intended but, just a comment from someone who
downloaded ms-mail and gave up trying to get it to work !

Simple ... as a description for your mail script is definitely a misnomer -
if you really want to see what simple means, have a look at AlphaMail
provided by codebrain.com.

Their email script works first time for any non-programmer.

Sincerely,

=============================================================

I replied:

Thanks for the comments. I'd be interested in hearing exactly what
problems you had with my ms-mail script. I'm guessing that you didn't like
it because you had to install other modules from CPAN.

I've taken a look at AlphaMail and whilst I can see why it would be easy
to setup and use, I can see a number of problems with the script which mean
that I wouldn't install it on one of me servers. These problems include:

* No use of "use strict" or "-w" in the script. The vast majority of Perl
  experts agree that these are essntial for any reasonably sized Perl
  program as the stop you from creating subtle bugs in your code.

* No use of CGI.pm. This module have been a part of Perl for many years
  now. It includes many functions to make it easier to write CGI programs.
  There's no good reason not to use it.

* Hand-rolled CGI parameter parser. The ReadParse function parses the CGI
  parameters that have been passed to the script. It dies it in a way that
  doesn't handle all cases. CGI.pm has a well-tested function called
  "param" that _does_ handle all cases.

* No use of taint mode. Putting a CGI script on your web server allows
  anyone in the world to run a program on your machine. This is very
  dangerous and you should pay close attention to security. Perl has a
  command line flag (-T) which turns on taint mode. In this mode, Perl
  will distrust any data from the outside and you need to examine it
  thoroughly before using it. It's generally accepted as a good idea to
  use taint mode in all CGI programs.

These problems aren't unusual. They are shared by the vast majority of the
free CGI programs that you'll find on hte web. It seems that most of the
people who write and distribute these programs don't actually know Perl
very well.

You might be interested in the programs at nms. This is a set of CGI
scripts that are written by Perl experts. They follow all of the rules
I listed about. You can take a look at the nms programs at:

  <http:/nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/>

Let me know how it goes.

========================================================================

From: "Ron Brown" <ro...@ia...>
To: "Dave Cross" <da...@ma...>
Subject: Re : ms-mail v1.0
Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 15:48:44 +0200

Hi Dave,

Thanks for getting back to me with such detailed facts.  Unfortunately your
technical explanations were wasted on me as I didn't have the foggiest clue
what you were talking about.

I am sure all the technical aspects you mentioned are true.  But, at the
risk of sounding facetious, you might as well have replied in a foreign
language.

I honestly can't tell you what problems I had other than to say I couldn't
get ms-mail to work.  I followed the instructions as I understood them,
meaning, from a layman's point of view.

If I had your programming knowledge I could have completed the set up
procedure as you intended, but I don't so I have to rely on a layman's
"paint by numbers" method.

My original interest in ms-mail was to fulfil one purpose, namely to collect
names and email addresses from my web site inviting people to join my
private members marketing club.  Nothing more.

My requirements were simple, a) invite someone to join, b) ask them to give
me their name and email address, c) receive a notification that someone
joined, d) send them a prewritten autoresponse.

Any script that can do this for me is the one I will use, especially if it
only takes 10 - 15  minutes to insert the variables and install, and most
importantly, works the first time.

My mention of Alphamail was not to compare your product unfavourably but
only because it fulfilled my requirements 100% without wasting hours of my
time.

Yes, AlphMail is probably as rotten as you say it is for all I know, but
it's 100% "newbie" friendly.  I'm fully aware that the word free software on
the 'net usually means "freebie trash" in many cases.

But, like all folk online who are trying to make a living on the internet,
necessity forces me to spend 99% of my time promoting my business.  I can't
afford to spend time grappling with the complexities of cgi or perl.

I now attempt D I Y installations because I've had my fingers burnt by
"experts" with $50.00+ per hour fees who are adept at stretching a 30 minute
job into 4 hours of labour charges.

I'm sorry if my reply is not what you want to hear - most folk online are in
the same boat as me - PC illiterate, technically ignorant, non-programmers,
stupid, dumb or whatever label you wish to bestow on them.

However, they make up 99% of the users online, whatever software or services
meets their needs quickly and easily is what they use or purchase, the
remainder that exceeds their personal ability are destined for the scrap
heap.

Sincerely,

===============================================================

Anyone got any comments?

Dave...

-- 

  Don't dream it... be it

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] Re: [Nms-cgi-support] Re: Nms-cgi-support digest, Vol 1 #10 - 2 msgs

[Jonathan S. <gel...@ge...>]

On Wed, 16 Jan 2002, Joseph F. Ryan wrote:

> If the subs pragma existed in 5.004 (and, from the /old/ in your path, I
> have a feeling it does), this is a brilliant solution.  Nice job :)
>

Its 5.00404 alright - I even endured pain to build it ;-}

/J\
-- 
Jonathan Stowe                      |
<http://www.gellyfish.com>          |      This space for rent
                                    |

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] Re: [Nms-cgi-support] Re: Nms-cgi-support digest, Vol 1 #10 - 2 msgs

[Joseph F. R. <rya...@os...>]

If the subs pragma existed in 5.004 (and, from the /old/ in your path, I 
have a feeling it does), this is a brilliant solution.  Nice job :)

At 07:30 AM 1/16/2002 +0000, you wrote:
>On Sun, 13 Jan 2002, Nick Cleaton wrote:
>
> > On Sun, Jan 13, 2002 at 06:49:44PM +0000, Jonathan Stowe wrote:
> > > >
> > > > IMO '$^T = 0;' is a bad, bad thing.
> > >
> > > But if we already trust all of our inputs ... File::Find is getting
> > > worried because it doesnt believe it can trust the directory names ...
> >
> > I still don't like turning off taint checking, even for little
> > bits of the code.  It makes me cringe.
> >
> > > > I'd much sooner fall back to using readdir.
> > > >
> > >
> > > We will still have the same problem :)
> >
> > If we do the find ourselves using readdir, we can detaint the
> > return values from readdir and Cwd::cwd() before passing them
> > to chdir (as File::Find can be made to do in later versions)
> > or just avoid the issue by not using chdir (like post 5.6
> > File::Find with the no_chdir option).
> >
> > > OK. Then we should do our best to mollify taint as far as File::Find is
> > > concerned, then eval {} the find() and then fall back to our own version
> > > on a $@ ?  I have the code for one somewhere I think ...
> >
> > That'd work.
> >
>
>
>I knew there had to be a better solution :
>
>#!/usr/local/old/bin/perl -wT
>
>use subs 'File::Find::chdir';
>use File::Find;
>
>$ENV{PATH} = '/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin';
>@ENV{qw(BASH_ENV)} = ('');
>find(\&wanted,'.');
>
>sub wanted
>{
>    print $_;
>}
>
>sub File::Find::chdir
>{
>
>     if ( $_[0] =~ m%([^\x00-\x1F]+)% )
>     {
>        return CORE::chdir($1);
>     }
>     else
>     {
>       return undef;
>     }
>}
>
>
>This had been rattling around in my brain since it first came up but I
>never got round to trying it :)
>
>You may or may not disagree with the detainting regex but I will apply
>anyway ...
>
>/J\
>--
>Jonathan Stowe                      |
><http://www.gellyfish.com>          |      This space for rent
>                                     |
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Nms-cgi-devel mailing list
>Nms...@li...
>https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nms-cgi-devel

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] Re: Nms-cgi-support digest, Vol 1 #10 - 2 msgs

[Jonathan S. <gel...@ge...>]

On Thu, 17 Jan 2002, iain truskett wrote:
> * Jonathan Stowe (gel...@ge...) [16 Jan 2002 20:31]:
>
> [...]
> > @ENV{qw(BASH_ENV)} = ('');
>
> What's this line for? And what if the shell isn't bash?
>

Well in taint.c in the perl distribution (bleadperl but I dunno whether
it has changed recently ) you have :


    static char* misc_env[] = {
        "IFS",          /* most shells' inter-field separators */
        "CDPATH",       /* ksh dain bramage #1 */
        "ENV",          /* ksh dain bramage #2 */
        "BASH_ENV",     /* bash dain bramage -- I guess it's contagious */
        NULL
    };


So, to cut along story short, irrespective of what your OS, shell, and
everything else are if any one of those environment variables are set then
you potentially have a tainting condition, try setting BASH_ENV on windows
for instance :(

The reason I used that idiom when removing the tainted environment
variable was that I couldn't be arsed once I had started with the code to
to determine which of the pesky environment variables I had to get rid of
so I start of assigning a list of a single '' to a hash slice with a
single key - if after I had done that it had come back with complaints
about more variables I would have done :

   @ENV{qw(BASH_ENV IFS)} = ('') x 2;

and so forth.  However in most of the code you will see $ENV{PATH} being
set to a sensible value and all of the above mentioned variables being set
to the empty string or deleted - certainly with me it depends on the
phases of the moon whether I delete or assign the empty string :)

You can of course delete from a hash slice like:

  delete @ENV{qw(BASH_ENV IF ENV)};

/J\
-- 
Jonathan Stowe                      |
<http://www.gellyfish.com>          |      This space for rent
                                    |

[Nms-cgi-devel] Re: Nms-cgi-support digest, Vol 1 #10 - 2 msgs

[iain t. <ic...@eh...>]

* Jonathan Stowe (gel...@ge...) [16 Jan 2002 20:31]:

[...]
> @ENV{qw(BASH_ENV)} = ('');

What's this line for? And what if the shell isn't bash?


cheers,
-- 
iain.                                          <http://eh.org/~koschei/>

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] (forw) Re: formmail spammers

[Geoffrey Y. <ge...@mo...>]

Jonathan Stowe wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 15 Jan 2002, iain truskett wrote:
> 
> > Useful? From the mod_perl list:

hi there...

> >
> > ----- Forwarded message from Geoffrey Young <ge...@mo...> -----
> >
> > From: Geoffrey Young <ge...@mo...>
> > To: Matt Sergeant <ma...@se...>
> > CC: Perrin Harkins <pe...@el...>,
> >    "mo...@ap..." <mo...@ap...>,
> >    Mike Schienle <mg...@iv...>
> > Subject: Re: formmail spammers
> > Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 08:48:44 -0500
> > Message-ID: <3C4...@mo...>
> > X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.73 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U)
> >
> >
> >
> > I would have liked a link to send them to for the NMS replacement, but
> > I saw two problems:
> >
> > 1. http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/ has only tarballs
> 
> The source of the individual files can be downloaded from the cvs-web on
> the the sourceforge project pages but admittedly that is a bit of a pain
> in the arse - would it help if we were to make the files available
> individually from the web site or perhaps in some other format (zipped for
> instance) ?

well, since winzip can take care of tar.gz files, it's probably not an
issue.  a .ZIP file or something might make users feel all fuzzy
inside, but the current format I wouldn't think would be a problem.

what I really had in mind is discussed below...

>  We never got to any resolution about the format of the
> distributions we would provide - this is probably a good time to kick it
> back off again :)
> 
> > 2. the name of the script has a different capitalization in the
> > tarball
> >
> 
> I'm afraid this is an idiosyncracy of the original distribution of the
> script that this replaces :(  Of course on Unix it would be no problem to
> provide a symlink in the distribution but I don't think that works for
> Windows ;-}  However if we were to provide the files individually from the
> website then providing one with an alternative capitalization shouldn't be
> a problem.

ah, all the programs I saw were all lowercase.  I wasn't aware of the
legacy issues.  guess that makes sense.

> 
> > now, for us, this is a no-brainer.  trying to get non-technical people
> > (which the vast majority of our hosting customers are) to make the
> > switch, though, will result in lots of headaches and support calls
> > (which are expensive)...
> >
> 
> I work for an ISP too, I know what you mean :)

:)

> 
> > is anyone here involved in this project?  what we really need is to be
> > able to say:
> >
> 
> Well you got to us in the end :)
> 
> >
> > "hey, just plop this file http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/formmail.pl
> > in place of your old formmail.pl"
> >
> 
> In the short-term doing something like this shouldn't be a problem at all
> I guess even before we have sorted out how we are going to allow access to
> the individual files.  Someone will get back to you with the URL ...

that's what I really had in mind.  getting back to me personally isn't
necessary, I'll check back in later.  I think I may just put the files
up on a page here - bad for maintainability, but serves an immediate
need.

> 
> Maybe you ought to join one of the NMS mailling lists.

(checks pockets for tuits)  hmm, running low, but perhaphs :)

at any rate, thanks for the response and listening.  

--Geoff

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] Documentation and other stuff

[Dave C. <da...@da...>]

On Wed, Jan 16, 2002 at 08:31:23AM +0000, Jonathan Stowe (gel...@ge...) wrote:
> A couple of things to do with documentation.
> 
> A) Is there anyone with a bit of spare time to do a rough HTMLifying job
> on the README files ?  This thought came to me when I was pondering how to
> make the files available individually through the web site. We might want
> to agree on a consistent format at some point.

Yep. The README files was something I promised to look at a while ago. I'll
get back to it today.
 
> B) I am thinking perhaps to change the descriptive blocks of comment in
> the program files into '=begin nms_doc', '=end nms_doc' pod sections with
> a view to being able to autogenerate to some extent the comprehensive
> documentation that this project should have - perhaps leading to the
> 'annotated NMS' that we discussed at the beginning.
> 
> Any thoughts on that ?

Why special nms tags? Why not simply use standard pod?

Dave...

-- 

  Drugs are just bad m'kay

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] Re: [Nms-cgi-support] Re: Nms-cgi-support digest, Vol 1 #10 - 2 msgs

[Jonathan S. <gel...@ge...>]

On Sun, 13 Jan 2002, Nick Cleaton wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 13, 2002 at 06:49:44PM +0000, Jonathan Stowe wrote:
> > >
> > > IMO '$^T = 0;' is a bad, bad thing.
> >
> > But if we already trust all of our inputs ... File::Find is getting
> > worried because it doesnt believe it can trust the directory names ...
>
> I still don't like turning off taint checking, even for little
> bits of the code.  It makes me cringe.
>
> > > I'd much sooner fall back to using readdir.
> > >
> >
> > We will still have the same problem :)
>
> If we do the find ourselves using readdir, we can detaint the
> return values from readdir and Cwd::cwd() before passing them
> to chdir (as File::Find can be made to do in later versions)
> or just avoid the issue by not using chdir (like post 5.6
> File::Find with the no_chdir option).
>
> > OK. Then we should do our best to mollify taint as far as File::Find is
> > concerned, then eval {} the find() and then fall back to our own version
> > on a $@ ?  I have the code for one somewhere I think ...
>
> That'd work.
>


I knew there had to be a better solution :

#!/usr/local/old/bin/perl -wT

use subs 'File::Find::chdir';
use File::Find;

$ENV{PATH} = '/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin';
@ENV{qw(BASH_ENV)} = ('');
find(\&wanted,'.');

sub wanted
{
   print $_;
}

sub File::Find::chdir
{

    if ( $_[0] =~ m%([^\x00-\x1F]+)% )
    {
       return CORE::chdir($1);
    }
    else
    {
      return undef;
    }
}


This had been rattling around in my brain since it first came up but I
never got round to trying it :)

You may or may not disagree with the detainting regex but I will apply
anyway ...

/J\
-- 
Jonathan Stowe                      |
<http://www.gellyfish.com>          |      This space for rent
                                    |

[Nms-cgi-devel] Documentation and other stuff

[Jonathan S. <gel...@ge...>]

A couple of things to do with documentation.

A) Is there anyone with a bit of spare time to do a rough HTMLifying job
on the README files ?  This thought came to me when I was pondering how to
make the files available individually through the web site. We might want
to agree on a consistent format at some point.

B) I am thinking perhaps to change the descriptive blocks of comment in
the program files into '=begin nms_doc', '=end nms_doc' pod sections with
a view to being able to autogenerate to some extent the comprehensive
documentation that this project should have - perhaps leading to the
'annotated NMS' that we discussed at the beginning.

Any thoughts on that ?

/J\
-- 
Jonathan Stowe                      |
<http://www.gellyfish.com>          |      This space for rent
                                    |

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] (forw) Re: formmail spammers

[Jonathan S. <gel...@ge...>]

On Tue, 15 Jan 2002, iain truskett wrote:

> Useful? From the mod_perl list:
>
> ----- Forwarded message from Geoffrey Young <ge...@mo...> -----
>
> From: Geoffrey Young <ge...@mo...>
> To: Matt Sergeant <ma...@se...>
> CC: Perrin Harkins <pe...@el...>,
>    "mo...@ap..." <mo...@ap...>,
>    Mike Schienle <mg...@iv...>
> Subject: Re: formmail spammers
> Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 08:48:44 -0500
> Message-ID: <3C4...@mo...>
> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.73 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U)
>
>
>
> I would have liked a link to send them to for the NMS replacement, but
> I saw two problems:
>
> 1. http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/ has only tarballs

The source of the individual files can be downloaded from the cvs-web on
the the sourceforge project pages but admittedly that is a bit of a pain
in the arse - would it help if we were to make the files available
individually from the web site or perhaps in some other format (zipped for
instance) ?  We never got to any resolution about the format of the
distributions we would provide - this is probably a good time to kick it
back off again :)

> 2. the name of the script has a different capitalization in the
> tarball
>

I'm afraid this is an idiosyncracy of the original distribution of the
script that this replaces :(  Of course on Unix it would be no problem to
provide a symlink in the distribution but I don't think that works for
Windows ;-}  However if we were to provide the files individually from the
website then providing one with an alternative capitalization shouldn't be
a problem.

> now, for us, this is a no-brainer.  trying to get non-technical people
> (which the vast majority of our hosting customers are) to make the
> switch, though, will result in lots of headaches and support calls
> (which are expensive)...
>

I work for an ISP too, I know what you mean :)

> is anyone here involved in this project?  what we really need is to be
> able to say:
>

Well you got to us in the end :)

>
> "hey, just plop this file http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/formmail.pl
> in place of your old formmail.pl"
>

In the short-term doing something like this shouldn't be a problem at all
I guess even before we have sorted out how we are going to allow access to
the individual files.  Someone will get back to you with the URL ...

Maybe you ought to join one of the NMS mailling lists.

/J\
-- 
Jonathan Stowe                      |
<http://www.gellyfish.com>          |      This space for rent
                                    |

[Nms-cgi-devel] Prelim for Cookie.lib done

[Joseph F. R. <rya...@os...>]

Here's what I have so far; it works, but probably needs much more testing 
(I've tested it with the sample given in the MWS cookie distro).  I still 
have issues with the SetCookieDomain function; it seems to be fine, but I 
left it unaltered from MW's code.  I'd appreciate it if someone took a 
look.  Also note that its now 96 lines, down from 550 ;)

use strict;
use vars qw(%cookie_config);
use CGI;
use CGI::Cookie;

sub SetCookieExpDate
{
     $cookie_config{expires} = $_[0];
}

sub SetCookiePath
{
     $cookie_config{path} = $_[0];
}

sub SetCookieDomain
{

     if ($_[0] =~ /(.com|.edu|.net|.org|.gov|.mil|.int)$/i &&
         $_[0] =~ /\.[^.]+\.\w{3}$/) {
         $cookie_config{domain} = $_[0];
         return 1;
     }
     elsif ($_[0] !~ /(.com|.edu|.net|.org|.gov|.mil|.int)$/i &&
            $_[0] =~ /\.[^.]+\.[^.]+\./) {
         $cookie_config{domain} = $_[0];
         return 1;
     }
     else
     {
         return 0;
     }
}

sub SetSecureCookie
{
     $cookie_config{secure} = $_[0];
}

sub GetCookies
{
     my @cookies = @_;

     my $exists = 0;
     foreach my $name (@cookies)
     {
         my $value = CGI->cookie($name);
         $main::Cookies{$name} = $value;
         $exists = 1 if $value;
     }
     return $exists;
}

sub SetCookies {

     my (%input) = @_;
     while( my($name,$value) = each %input )
     {
         my $c = CGI->cookie (
                              -name    => $name,
                              -value   => $value,
                              -expires => ((exists($cookie_config{expires}) 
&& $cookie_config{expires} ==1) ? $cookie_config{expires} : undef),
                              -domain  => 
((exists($cookie_config{domain})  && $cookie_config{domain}  ==1) ? 
$cookie_config{domain}  : undef),
                              -secure  => 
((exists($cookie_config{secure})  && $cookie_config{secure}  ==1) ? 
$cookie_config{secure}  : undef),
                              -path    => 
((exists($cookie_config{path})    && $cookie_config{path}    ==1) ? 
$cookie_config{path}    : undef),
                             );
         print "Set-Cookie: ", $c, "\n";
     }
}

sub GetCompressedCookies
{
     getCookies();
}

sub SetCompressedCookies
{
     my($cookie_name,@cookies) = @_;
     my $cookie_value = "";

     my %input = (@cookies);
     while( my($name,$value) = each %input )
     {
         if ($cookie_value)
         {
             $cookie_value .= '&'.$name.'::'.$value;
         }
         else
         {
             $cookie_value = $name.'::'.$value;
         }
     }
     SetCookies($cookie_name,$cookie_value);
}

1;

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] nms article

[Dave C. <da...@da...>]

On Tue, Jan 15, 2002 at 04:04:16PM -0500, Evan A. Zacks (e...@za...) wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 13, 2002 at 07:43:43 PM, Dave Cross wrote:
> 
> > Please take a look at the article at <http://www.dave.org.uk/articles/nms.pod>
> > and send me any comments. I intend to submit it to perl.com in the next 
> > couple of days.
> 
> Nice work, Dave. Attached is a patch with some minor fixes. Some are
> stylistic in nature (e.g., 'blead' vs 'bleed'), feel free to ignore those. =)

Excellent. Thanks for that. I submitted the article to ORA this morning,
but I'll replace it with a fixed version tomorrow.

Incidently, I had to approve your posting to the mailing list as it's a 
members-only list. If you're interested in nms, please subscribe and get
involved.

Dave...

-- 

  Drugs are just bad m'kay

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] Re: [Nms-cgi-commits] CVS Commit %s

[Nick C. <ni...@cl...>]

On Tue, Jan 15, 2002 at 08:49:10PM +0000, Jonathan Stowe wrote:
> > Modified Files:
> >       wwwboard.pl
> > Log Message:
> > * Removed nasty global variables prior to refactoring
> 
> This is very much of a quick hack and there is a  considerable amount of
> refactoring required on wwwboard.pl as there is so much repeated code in
> there I reckon I could reduce the size of the file by a third

That'll make room for an HTML filter then :)

> beginning to think that a separate package and perhaps some OO stuff might
> help ;-}

Splitting it into more files bends the drop-in replacement
thing a little.

--
Nick

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] nms article

[Evan A. Z. <e...@za...>]

On Sun, Jan 13, 2002 at 07:43:43 PM, Dave Cross wrote:

> Please take a look at the article at <http://www.dave.org.uk/articles/nms.pod>
> and send me any comments. I intend to submit it to perl.com in the next 
> couple of days.

Nice work, Dave. Attached is a patch with some minor fixes. Some are
stylistic in nature (e.g., 'blead' vs 'bleed'), feel free to ignore those. =)

-E
(sacked on perlmonks)

[Nms-cgi-devel] Re: [Nms-cgi-commits] CVS Commit %s

[Jonathan S. <gel...@ge...>]

On Tue, 15 Jan 2002, Jonathan Stowe wrote:

>
> uid=68026(gellyfish) gid=100(users)
groups=100(users),7054(xmlxslt),40625(nms$> wwwboard wwwboard.pl,1.10,1.11
> Tue Jan 15 12:34:03 PST 2002
> Update of /cvsroot/nms-cgi/wwwboard
> In directory usw-pr-cvs1:/tmp/cvs-serv6940/wwwboard
>
> Modified Files:
>       wwwboard.pl
> Log Message:
> * Removed nasty global variables prior to refactoring
>


This is very much of a quick hack and there is a  considerable amount of
refactoring required on wwwboard.pl as there is so much repeated code in
there I reckon I could reduce the size of the file by a third - I am
beginning to think that a separate package and perhaps some OO stuff might
help ;-}

I haven't tested that this revision works - just that it compiles BTW so
please don't do anything silly with it before better testing :)

/J\
-- 
Jonathan Stowe                      |
<http://www.gellyfish.com>          |      This space for rent
                                    |

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] Re: nms article

[Lucy M. <le...@he...>]

On Mon, 14 Jan 2002, Jonathan Stowe wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Jan 2002, Lucy McWilliam wrote:

> > Rah.  Nice work.  I'll spread the word ;-)
>
> And I only thought there was the five of us on this list ;-}

Trying to keep up to date for when I actually find time to help.  </delurk>


L.

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] Re: nms article

[Jonathan S. <gel...@ge...>]

On Mon, 14 Jan 2002, Lucy McWilliam wrote:

>
> > On Sun, 13 Jan 2002, Dave Cross wrote:
>
> > > Please take a look at the article at <http://www.dave.org.uk/articles/nms.pod>
> > > and send me any comments. I intend to submit it to perl.com in the next
> > > couple of days.
>
> Rah.  Nice work.  I'll spread the word ;-)
>

And I only thought there was the five of us on this list ;-}

/J\
-- 
Jonathan Stowe                      |
<http://www.gellyfish.com>          |      This space for rent
                                    |

[Nms-cgi-devel] Re: nms article

[Lucy M. <le...@he...>]

> On Sun, 13 Jan 2002, Dave Cross wrote:

> > Please take a look at the article at <http://www.dave.org.uk/articles/nms.pod>
> > and send me any comments. I intend to submit it to perl.com in the next
> > couple of days.

Rah.  Nice work.  I'll spread the word ;-)

(typo in line 228, s/exmaple/example)

L.
Busy doing nothing.

[Nms-cgi-devel] Re: [Nms-cgi-commits] CVS Commit %s

[Jonathan S. <gel...@ge...>]

On Mon, 14 Jan 2002, Dave Cross wrote:
>
> uid=38988(davorg) gid=100(users)
groups=100(users),14388(insect),40625(nms-cg$> pub index.html,1.15,1.16
> Mon Jan 14 03:09:14 PST 2002
> Update of /cvsroot/nms-cgi/pub
> In directory usw-pr-cvs1:/tmp/cvs-serv1156
>
> Modified Files:
>       index.html
> Log Message:
> Added stuff about nms.gif.
>

Might I interest anyone in XML::XSLT ?

Actually has anyone attempted to install a module with a
PREFIX=/home/groups/w/wh/whatever before - I can't get the fucker to
install

;-}

/J\
-- 
Jonathan Stowe                      |
<http://www.gellyfish.com>          |      This space for rent
                                    |

[Nms-cgi-devel] (forw) Re: formmail spammers

[iain t. <ic...@eh...>]

Useful? From the mod_perl list:

----- Forwarded message from Geoffrey Young <ge...@mo...> -----

From: Geoffrey Young <ge...@mo...>
To: Matt Sergeant <ma...@se...>
CC: Perrin Harkins <pe...@el...>,
   "mo...@ap..." <mo...@ap...>,
   Mike Schienle <mg...@iv...>
Subject: Re: formmail spammers
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 08:48:44 -0500
Message-ID: <3C4...@mo...>
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.73 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U)


> Right, and point them to NMS for a replacement too.

so, we've been having a spam problem lately due to formmail.pl.  this
thread prompted me to scan all our user directories and note people
who had formmail.pl sitting around.

I would have liked a link to send them to for the NMS replacement, but
I saw two problems:

1. http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/ has only tarballs
2. the name of the script has a different capitalization in the
tarball

now, for us, this is a no-brainer.  trying to get non-technical people
(which the vast majority of our hosting customers are) to make the
switch, though, will result in lots of headaches and support calls
(which are expensive)...

is anyone here involved in this project?  what we really need is to be
able to say:

"hey, just plop this file http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/formmail.pl
in place of your old formmail.pl"

--Geoff

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
iain.                                          <http://eh.org/~koschei/>

[Nms-cgi-devel] "Powered by nms"

[Dave C. <da...@da...>]

I've put together a simple "Powered by nms" graphic that people can use on
web sites that use our scripts. You can see it towards the bottom of
<http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/>.

Feel free to incorporate it in any HTML pages generated by the scripts.

Dave...

-- 

  Drugs are just bad m'kay

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] Rounding out nms

[Jonathan S. <gel...@ge...>]

On Mon, 14 Jan 2002, Dave Cross wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 13, 2002 at 11:14:35PM -0500, Joseph F. Ryan (rya...@os...) wrote:
> > We still have 1 MWS script to go in order to round out our collection: the
> > cookie lib.  Most of the functionality should be pretty easy to mirror with
> > CGI.pm's cookie functions, so I'm going to start on it tomorrow.
>
> Heh. I was thinking along the same lines. But if you want to do it, that
> leaves more time for me to do other stuff :)
>
> > Also, a few of the scripts (including wwwboard and guestbook) have hardly
> > been modified since their initial CVS upload; anyone willing to test and
> > debug em?
>
> I'm pretty happy with guestbook, but I suspect that wwwboard is still in
> need of a _lot_ of work. Any help on that would be much appreciated.
>

I think that wwwboard is essentially secure and working but the basic way
that it works with respect to the storage of the messages is so utterly
crap that I do not relish te prospect of attempting to sort it out :)

/J\

-- 
Jonathan Stowe                      |
<http://www.gellyfish.com>          |      This space for rent
                                    |

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] nms article

[Jonathan S. <gel...@ge...>]

On Sun, 13 Jan 2002, Dave Cross wrote:

> Please take a look at the article at <http://www.dave.org.uk/articles/nms.pod>
> and send me any comments. I intend to submit it to perl.com in the next
> couple of days.
>

Looks good :)

/J\
-- 
Jonathan Stowe                      |
<http://www.gellyfish.com>          |      This space for rent
                                    |

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] Rounding out nms

[Dave C. <da...@da...>]

On Sun, Jan 13, 2002 at 11:14:35PM -0500, Joseph F. Ryan (rya...@os...) wrote:
> We still have 1 MWS script to go in order to round out our collection: the 
> cookie lib.  Most of the functionality should be pretty easy to mirror with 
> CGI.pm's cookie functions, so I'm going to start on it tomorrow.

Heh. I was thinking along the same lines. But if you want to do it, that
leaves more time for me to do other stuff :)
 
> Also, a few of the scripts (including wwwboard and guestbook) have hardly 
> been modified since their initial CVS upload; anyone willing to test and 
> debug em?

I'm pretty happy with guestbook, but I suspect that wwwboard is still in
need of a _lot_ of work. Any help on that would be much appreciated.
 
> Finally, I AGAIN want to bring up the "advanced" versions of the scripts 
> (including Advanced Search), since no one gave any feedback last time.  Are 
> we still going to go through with it?  I really think its a good idea, as a 
> good portion of our users will be people looking for new scripts, and will 
> leave looking for more at when they see that we stop at MWS 
> functionality.  Any thoughts?

Yep. I really like the idea of going beyond MSA. Things we might look at
include a) the scripts in Matt's book, b) advanced versions of Matt's 
scripts and c) other scritp archives.

I'm happy for all of this to happen but, as I've said before, I'd be
happiest if we got all of the initial MSA conversions done first.

Dave...

-- 

  Don't dream it... be it