noffle-users

[Noffle-users] on noffle's authentication capabilities

[Hipólita Y. <hip...@gm...>]

Hi there.  I've been searching the web to know whether noffle is able to
ask for passwords from the clients that connect to it directly --- its
users.  I actually use noffle as a private NNTP server and I'm interested
in closing it up with passwords and TLS.

It looks as though it cannot.  It seems designed to be run by a TCP server
and so it's the TCP server that must handle the authentication.  That's an
area I understand little as well.  So my question is alternatively --- how
can I provide authentication to my ``noffle --server'' with a TCP server?
Perhaps I can make a server that handles the authentication and then
invokes ``noffle --server'' when the user provides the correct
information.  This sounds easy enough I can try it myself.  In any case, I
kindly ask anyone to share any thoughts.  Thank you!

Re: [Noffle-users] how to filter crosspostings to gmane.spam.detected with noffle?

[Jim H. <ji...@be...>]

On Tuesday 21 February 2006 16:40, Miernik wrote:
>     closes: #166559 (filter crosspostings to gmane.spam.detected),
> [...]
> I use version 1.1.5-8 now, however I still see messages crossposted to
> gmane.spam.detected. Am I supposed to turn on the feature to kill them
> somewhere in the config file? If so, how?

I've not set this up myself, but from checking the gmane website and searching 
through my message base it appears that an article identified as spam will be 
crossposed to gmane.spam.detected. The gmane website suggests you check the 
Xref: header on downloading, but right now Noffle can't do that. However, it 
also adds gmane.spam.detected to the Newsgroups line, and that you can check. 
Adding a line like

filter group=gmane.spam.detected action=discard

to your noffle.conf should do the trick.
-- 
Jim Hague - ji...@be...          Never trust a computer you can't 
lift.

[Noffle-users] how to filter crosspostings to gmane.spam.detected with noffle?

[Miernik <mi...@ff...>]

Hello,

In the Debian changelog of noffle I see:

noffle (1.1.2-1) unstable; urgency=low

(...)
* New upstream release:
    closes: #120175 (graceful handling of sudden disconnection),
    closes: #166559 (filter crosspostings to gmane.spam.detected),
(...)

 -- Martin A. Godisch <go...@tc...>  Wed, 08 Jan 2003 13:22:10 +0100

I use version 1.1.5-8 now, however I still see messages crossposted to
gmane.spam.detected. Am I supposed to turn on the feature to kill them
somewhere in the config file? If so, how? I can't find any docs about
it.

-- 
Miernik             _________________________  xmpp:mi...@am...
___________________/_______________________/      mailto:mi...@ff...
Protect Europe from a legal disaster. Petition against software patents
http://www.noepatents.org/index_html?LANG=en

[Noffle-users] mail2news via bananasplit example

[Dan J. <ji...@ji...>]

No more begging for posting access:
$ head /etc/ppp/ip-up.d/noffle
#!/bin/sh -e
#These days it's hard to find a NNTP server to post with, so:
for i in $(find /var/spool/noffle/outgoing -type f) #or certian subdirectories
do
  sendmail -i -f %F mai...@ba... < $i #http://www.bananasplit.info/
  mv $i /tmp
done

By the way, unrelated ho hum daily occurrence here with noffle 1.1.5-8:
# perl -nwe 'if(/Please/){print $k;print}$k=$_' /var/log/syslog|cut -d\  -f3,5-
05:06:22 noffle[7438]: No new articles in tlug.tlug
05:06:22 noffle[7438]: Received SIGSEGV. Please submit a bug report
05:09:55 noffle[7945]: No new articles in gmane.org.user-groups.tlug.english
05:09:55 noffle[7945]: Received SIGSEGV. Please submit a bug report
07:30:22 noffle[9111]: No new articles in gmane.linux.debian.devel.announce
07:30:24 noffle[9111]: Received SIGSEGV. Please submit a bug report
07:35:45 noffle[10038]: [1/1] Retrieving <m1E...@fi...>
07:35:49 noffle[10038]: Received SIGSEGV. Please submit a bug report

Re: [Noffle-users] Why to switch from leafnode?

[Jim H. <jim...@ac...>]

On Monday 23 May 2005 18:27, Matej Cepl wrote:
> I am somehow happy user of leafnode, but I would love to move most of my
> email lists to the local news server. Being kind of scared of beta version
> of Leafnode 2.* (which has been beta for last couple of years :-)) and
> missing Debian packages, I began to search for alternatives to leafnode.
> Noffle looks good, but may I ask members of this list (are there any? list
> seems to be quite dead :-)) for their testimony with noffle and how does it
> compare with leafnode (ease of use, mail2news gateway, speed), please?

There are Noffle users. Noffle at the moment suffers from a maintainer (me) 
with insufficient time to look after it properly. To be honest, this is 
largely because Noffle doesn't give me problems. I've been meaning to release 
current CVS as 1.2.0 for some months now, but Real Life has kept pushing it 
down the to do list.

I've never seriously used Leafnode. I found and downloaded it before Noffle a 
few years back, when I was looking for a lightweight news server that 
supported local groups. I looked at adding them to Leafnode, but working with 
the Leafnode code was hideously painful. Indeed Markus Enzenberger, Noffle's 
original author, was also the original author of the 'delaybody' option in 
Leafnode, but wrote Noffle after dispairing of the Leafnode code.

I've never done a side-by-side comparison with Leafnode. I think Noffle may be 
a little easier to work with, and it offers options Leafnode doesn't (and 
vice-versa; for example, Noffle's local group support is pretty longstanding 
by now, but Noffle doesn't have IPv6 support yet). The chief difference 
between the two you are likely to notice is that given multiple upstream 
servers Noffle doesn't at present fetch the same group from multiple servers 
for a combined feed; groups only ever come from one server. Internally, the 
big difference is that Leafnode uses a traditional /var/spool/news filestore 
(with custom additions). Noffle stores all articles in a gdbm file. This has 
the disadvantage that the total news base size can't exceed a smidge under 
2Gb. Noffle, I think, may be a bit better in environments where multiple 
client access the server at once; the code works quite hard at minimising the 
time the newsbase is locked and handling locks efficiently. Noffle also 
supports basic authentication, which I don't think Leafnode does.

Hope that helps, somewhat. Let me know if you have questions, and I'll do my 
best to answer them, though I'm afraid I probably won't be able to attend to 
them properly until next week (stuck in hotel without sensible net access).
-- 
Jim Hague - jim...@ac...          Never trust a computer you can't lift.

[Noffle-users] Why to switch from leafnode?

[Matej C. <ce...@su...>]

Hi,

I am somehow happy user of leafnode, but I would love to move most of my
email lists to the local news server. Being kind of scared of beta version
of Leafnode 2.* (which has been beta for last couple of years :-)) and
missing Debian packages, I began to search for alternatives to leafnode.
Noffle looks good, but may I ask members of this list (are there any? list
seems to be quite dead :-)) for their testimony with noffle and how does it
compare with leafnode (ease of use, mail2news gateway, speed), please?

Thanks a lot,

Matej

-- 
Matej Cepl, http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
138 Highland Ave. #10, Somerville, Ma 02143, (617) 623-1488
 
I am a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect `history' to be
anything but a `long defeat' -- though it contains (and in
a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or
glimpses of final victory.
      -- J.R.R. Tolkien

[Noffle-users] strip date on postings

[Dan J. <ji...@ji...>]

In
http://news.aioe.org/web/article.php?id=92&group=aioe.helpdesk.english#92
    you have to configure hamster to strip the "Date" header

    Do you mean your server will not accept "old" articles?

    yes

So noffle should also have such a feature, otherwise we who store
messages for a long time before connecting must strip the date by
hand, etc.

(BTW: Only strip for specific servers, not all.)

[Noffle-users] see the filter numbers mentioned in syslog

[Dan J. <ji...@ji...>]

perl -nwe 'BEGIN{$i=0};next unless /^filter/;print ++$i." $_"' noffle.conf
is a quick way to see the filter numbers mentioned in syslog.

[Noffle-users] removing regretted requests from requested/*

[Dan J. <ji...@ji...>]

I don't think it's gnus' fault that one has to remove a regretted request at
least two times from /var/spool/noffle/requested/some_server.
In optional gnus buffer *nntp-log* all I see is one reference to the article,
20041209T140734.278 localhost ARTICLE 16820
before I
20041209T140811.189 localhost QUIT
So it's part of noffle that must keep refreshing
/var/spool/noffle/requested/some_server so the user is unable to
successfully remove regretted requests.

[Noffle-users] Re: hard not to get more articles than bargained for

[Dan J. <ji...@ji...>]

Oops, forgot
(setq gnus-use-article-prefetch nil);else wastefully asks noffle
(Much more basic gnus/noffle survival lines in
http://jidanni.org/comp/gnus.el.txt.gz .)
However, not being able to provide a mode with a guarantee
that reading an article won't request other articles still justifies a
new release.

Anyways, P.S., time for the annual trip to the dentist to clean
up the debris accumulating here:
# LC_ALL=C ls /var/spool/noffle/requested/ -q1
?
 ?
(
0
news.debian.org.tw
news.gmane.org
news.individual.net
tlug.sinica.edu.tw
????????????????P????????Y??????d??@d??@l??@l??@????????
P.S., seeing X-NOFFLE-Status info in each group's summary buffer is the only
way to read news. No way I'll be going back to the blind old days.

[Noffle-users] hard not to get more articles than bargained for

[Dan J. <ji...@ji...>]

It seems real hard not to get more articles than bargained for.  For
unknown reasons sometimes groups I subscribe to in the most
conservative "over" mode still end up sooner or later all downloaded,
bodies and all.

Anyway, time for a new release without any gratuitous assumptions
about how much we want to read other articles than the one we clicked,
when in the most conservative subscription mode.

[Noffle-users] X-NOFFLE-Status in gnus summaries: success

[Dan J. <ji...@ji...>]

J> You're right. A HEAD doesn't flag an article as interesting - you
J> have to read the body for that to be true.

OK, then an empty X-NOFFLE-Status must mean the article has already
been downloaded, I hope.

Well I wish X-NOFFLE-Status flags were real simple:
REQUESTED #for download next time or even refresh
DOWNLOADED or FULL etc. # have the full article
HEADER #just have header
etc. maybe add them as an upwardly compatible addition.

Anyways, I can now see the first letter of each X-NOFFLE-Status item
from the gnus summary buffer without peeking further, triggering
unwanted requests. It is in http://jidanni.org/comp/gnus.el.txt.gz

J> trn, a most venerable newsreader to which I am still addicted

well, I bet you can't tell the status of articles there without
"invasive testing", "did I have that spam?", "No, but now it has been
requested".

Re: [Noffle-users] X-NOFFLE-Status not filled until article read

[Jim H. <jim...@ac...>]

On 03-Nov-2004 Dan Jacobson wrote:
> Ugg, for some groups, noffle does not fill in X-NOFFLE-Status until
> the article's body has been read.
> 
> $ telnet localhost nntp
> 200 NNTP server NOFFLE 1.1.5
> GROUP gmane.comp.gis.freegis
> 211 714 1 714 gmane.comp.gis.freegis selected
> HEAD 685
> X-NOFFLE-Status:
> X-NOFFLE-LastAccess: 2004-10-24 03:35:00
> article 685
> X-NOFFLE-Status: INTERESTING
> X-NOFFLE-LastAccess: 2004-11-03 08:43:34
> HEAD 685
> X-NOFFLE-Status: INTERESTING
> X-NOFFLE-LastAccess: 2004-11-03 08:43:34

You're right. A HEAD doesn't flag an article as interesting - you have to read
the body for that to be true.

I think the reason for this is the possibility that a newsreader uses HEAD to
read the various article headers required to show the article presence. If that
were to happen, all articles in a group would be marked interesting and
subsequently downloaded. trn, a most venerable newsreader to which I am still
addicted, does a HEAD on the first unread article in a group befoe issuing a
succession of XHDR and XOVER; I suspect possibly it is verifying that Xref
headers are present.

-- 
Jim Hague - jim...@ac...          Never trust a computer you can't lift.

[Noffle-users] X-NOFFLE-Status not filled until article read

[Dan J. <ji...@ji...>]

Ugg, for some groups, noffle does not fill in X-NOFFLE-Status until
the article's body has been read.

$ telnet localhost nntp
200 NNTP server NOFFLE 1.1.5
GROUP gmane.comp.gis.freegis
211 714 1 714 gmane.comp.gis.freegis selected
HEAD 685
X-NOFFLE-Status:
X-NOFFLE-LastAccess: 2004-10-24 03:35:00
article 685
X-NOFFLE-Status: INTERESTING
X-NOFFLE-LastAccess: 2004-11-03 08:43:34
HEAD 685
X-NOFFLE-Status: INTERESTING
X-NOFFLE-LastAccess: 2004-11-03 08:43:34

The problem seems to be in groups that are subscribed to in full mode
(on articles who have passed filters, if any were used, or all
articles, if none were used.)

Re: [Noffle-users] idea: "pipe" filter / procmail

[Jim H. <jim...@ac...>]

On 20-Oct-2004 Dan Jacobson wrote:
> But never mind that. Introducing pipes.
> As we know, procmail is useful for incoming mail, but what about
> incoming news? Assuming noffle is the right place to do it. Then a new
> type of filter, "pipe <shell command>" would be useful.
> Probably mostly we would just "pipe procmail".

I rather like this idea. The pipe overhead could be carefully tailored to
articles where you think you might need it.

Things are slightly complicated internally, because filters fire at the
overview collection stage, not at article body collection. But we could add the
filter command to the request for the article text that causes the subsequent
article collection.

So article comes in and if a pipe request is active it is sent to the pipe.

> Noffle must be the right place to do the pipe, just as exim, and not
> one's mail reader, calls procmail.
> [...]
> Oh, and if our pipe filter fires, we should still also be able to say
> the message has not yet been "delivered", so we can have our pancakes
> and eat them too. I.e., still read the announcement.

To my mind there's a slight difference between piping a mail message to
procmail for end user delivery and putting it into the newsbase for reading by
potentially anybody. I'm inclined to say that articles should always be put into
the newbase.

I suppose one filter use might be a spam/virus/malware detector, in which case
cancelling the article from the newsbase would be the right thing to do. Or
maybe (so as not to break threading) removing the article body and replacing it
with a 'Article removed for your own good' type message.

-- 
Jim Hague - jim...@ac...          Never trust a computer you can't lift.

Re: [Noffle-users] New stable version?

[Jim H. <jim...@ac...>]

On 22-Oct-2004 Andre Berger wrote:
> Hi there, it's been a while 1.1.5 was released. What are the plans
> for a new stable version? 

A new version is more than overdue - sorry to all. I shall try to find time to
package the current CVS up as 1.2.0rc1 and branch it off as a 1.2 branch.



-- 
Jim Hague - jim...@ac...          Never trust a computer you can't lift.

Re: [Noffle-users] --query should allow granularity to even just one group

[Jim H. <jim...@ac...>]

On 21-Oct-2004 Dan Jacobson wrote:
> [In gmane.discuss:]
>>> # noffle -s gmane.network.wwwoffle.announce
>>> gmane.network.wwwoffle.announce is not available at remote servers.
> 
> [...]
> I guess I'll just do a
>        -q, --query groups|desc [server pattern]
>              ... It can take some time on slow connections.
> 
> No kidding, therefore I propose extra parameters should be allowed:
> just those groups one wants queried. No need for all 34000 groups for
> that server when I only want to update one.  That also lessens the fear of:
> 
>               resets all local article counters

You can do this with temporary amendments to getgroups/omitgroups in the conf
file. Though if your upstream server is old and gnarly and doesn't support LIST
ACTIVE you are still going to be hauling all the upstream group details over
the wire.

-- 
Jim Hague - jim...@ac...          Never trust a computer you can't lift.

Re: [Noffle-users] no way to read just an article without dragging its parents along

[Jim H. <jim...@ac...>]

On 21-Oct-2004 Dan Jacobson wrote:
> J> Dan, you're not seeing this while in online mode are you?
> 
> My experiment was done --offline.

OK. I've had another look and am now very puzzled as to why I thought this
happened in --online only. I think I believed a code comment, always a
dangerous thing to do.

> J> If no-one objects, I think I might take this bit of code around the back
> J> and shoot it.
> 
> Yes. Boom.

The deed is now done.

-- 
Jim Hague - jim...@ac...          Never trust a computer you can't lift.

[Noffle-users] New stable version?

[Andre B. <and...@we...>]

Hi there, it's been a while 1.1.5 was released. What are the plans
for a new stable version? 

Thanks,

-Andre

Re: [Noffle-users] no way to read just an article without dragging its parents along

[Dan J. <ji...@ji...>]

Ok, parents are marked INTERESTING NOT DOWNLOADED. I'm not sure if
they later actually get downloaded, but still, in principle in
overview mode, let's no affect other articles at all.

Re: [Noffle-users] no way to read just an article without dragging its parents along

[Dan J. <ji...@ji...>]

J> Dan, you're not seeing this while in online mode are you?

My experiment was done --offline.

J> This behaviour seems to have been around for a loooonnnngggg time (looking
J> closer, it appears that Noffle did at one time always mark articles referenced
J> from a read article as INTERESTING, regardless of online mode.

NOFFLE version 1.1.5 here on Debian. I could see what was going on in
the gnus subject buffer thanks to the gnus code I recently posted.

J> If no-one objects, I think I might take this bit of code around the back and
J> shoot it.

Yes. Boom.

[Noffle-users] --query should allow granularity to even just one group

[Dan J. <ji...@ji...>]

[In gmane.discuss:]
>> # noffle -s gmane.network.wwwoffle.announce
>> gmane.network.wwwoffle.announce is not available at remote servers.

Adam>  $ telnet news.gmane.org nntp
Adam>  mode reader
Adam>  group gmane.network.wwwoffle.announce
Adam>  211 0 0 0 gmane.network.wwwoffle.announce

Odd, noffle usually keeps up with new group additions...
I guess I'll just do a
       -q, --query groups|desc [server pattern]
             ... It can take some time on slow connections.

No kidding, therefore I propose extra parameters should be allowed:
just those groups one wants queried. No need for all 34000 groups for
that server when I only want to update one.  That also lessens the fear of:

              resets all local article counters

[Noffle-users] idea: "pipe" filter / procmail

[Dan J. <ji...@ji...>]

In the man page
       action = full|over|thread|discard|default.  Specifies the action to  be
       taken  if the filter matches. If not specified or specified as default,
       the action is as specified by the group's subscription mode.
Better add some examples to show how a filter with action of "default"
is useful.

But never mind that. Introducing pipes.
As we know, procmail is useful for incoming mail, but what about
incoming news? Assuming noffle is the right place to do it. Then a new
type of filter, "pipe <shell command>" would be useful.
Probably mostly we would just "pipe procmail".

That way when the occasional Pancake Club announcement comes along, we
can extract any recipes contained therein with some script we wrote.

Noffle must be the right place to do the pipe, just as exim, and not
one's mail reader, calls procmail.

I mean how can we not be able to process news messages just as handily
as mail messages?

Oh, and if our pipe filter fires, we should still also be able to say
the message has not yet been "delivered", so we can have our pancakes
and eat them too. I.e., still read the announcement.

So maybe we should instead just have all messages optionally sent to
procmail (with .procmailrc location customizable.) and use the return
code to see if it has been "delivered" or not...

Anyways, otherwise we must store those recipes by hand, no?

Re: [Noffle-users] no way to read just an article without dragging its parents along

[Jim H. <jim...@ac...>]

On 15-Oct-2004 Dan Jacobson wrote:
> Whenever you read an article it causes a request for all its parents.
> Indeed,
> J> They are further marked INTERESTING when read or an article that
> J> references them is read
> J>      INTERESTING
> J>      - This message should be downloaded on the next fetch, if it has
> J>        not been downloaded already.
> and this was in overview mode too. I've never used thread mode.

I don't think it's only you that has never used thread mode :-)

I've had a good look through the Noffle code, and I can't see how reading an
article can cause anything other than that article to be fetched, UNLESS Noffle
is in 'online' mode. In online mode, when you read an article that isn't
currently fetched, Noffle goes and fetches it immediately. It also, for reasons
that (a) escape and (b) baffle me, marks all articles referenced by that
article as INTERESTING. Dan, you're not seeing this while in online mode are
you?

This behaviour seems to have been around for a loooonnnngggg time (looking
closer, it appears that Noffle did at one time always mark articles referenced
from a read article as INTERESTING, regardless of online mode.

If no-one objects, I think I might take this bit of code around the back and
shoot it.

-- 
Jim Hague - jim...@ac...          Never trust a computer you can't lift.

[Noffle-users] Re: no way to read just an article without dragging its parents along

[Dan J. <ji...@ji...>]

In mere overview mode it was revealed that
> Whenever you read an article it causes a request for all its parents.
Interesting that at least they had the mercy to spare the children.
Maybe they thought rounding up the children would be an endless daily task,
whilst the parents are easily identifiable. Anyways, all this dragging
in of other articles has to go.  Or we need more mode names.