Quick start guide for the gopher-nnrp gateway

Requirements: perl, sys/socket.ph, an NNTP server that supports XHDR If the nntp server is not INN with overview files it will be slow for large newsgroups as the overview files speed up xhdr quite a bit.

Notes: If running chroot(), be sure to have perl and sys/socket.ph in the gopher space. All the paths in the code assume you are running chroot.

gonnrp has several options: (some of these options were ported over from gonntp and have not yet been tested it gonnrp. They are marked as such.)

-g pattern retrieve all matching groups (as shipped gonnrp only matches with the beginning of the group name) Does not split up groups on '.'s like -G does.

-h group retrieve subject headers from specified group

-b group same as -h, but sets up next level to only display the body of the article (no headers) (untested in gonnrp)

-s group keyword same a -h but display only subject lines which contain keyword. Currently limited to one word, should be easily fixed for more. To use this from gopher, you will have to call a shell script to run gonnrp rather than exec'ing gonnrp directly. I am still working on the search stuff, may change it later... (untested in gonnrp)

-a group # [body] Internal option to retrieve article # from group. If body is specified then only the body of the article is displayed (no headers). The -a option should never be used in a .link file unless you never get rid of news articles.

-l group Show last article from a group. Added by Bob Peterson (peterson@choctaw.csc.ti.com) (untested in gonnrp)

-G pattern Same as -g, except prepare to thread groups and split groups on '.'s into sub-menus

-G same as -G pattern but all newsgroups

-T group Same as -h except thread articles.

-X art# art# Show authors from thread. This option has two -X 0 start end forms. The first gives a list of articles in the thread. If the list is too long the second is used. It gives the first and last articles numbers in the thread. Any articles in the range that are not part of the thread are skipped.

-t group Same as -h. I kept it to make converting from gonntp easyer. I might take it out in the future so do not use it.

-f filepath Used to add a file to the begining of the menu. We use it for the clari copyright warning.

Setting up the files:

All paths are showen relative to the gopher's chrooted root.

/bin/gonnrp /bin/build-newsgroups-db (run by maintainer only) /usr/lib/dotall (used by build-newsgroups-db) /usr/lib/newsgroups.dir (built by build-newsgroups-db) /usr/lib/newsgroups.pag (built by build-newsgroups-db)

cd to gopher's /bin and type this:

build-newsgroups-db /usr/local/news/newsgroups ../usr/lib/dotall

It will setup your newsgroups dbm database that is used to display the descriptions in the newsgroups menus. The dotall file contains descriptions of parts of the newsgroups for the menus. For example:

A dotall entry of:

news.admin.all newsgroups for news admins

The description 'newsgroups for news admins' would appear next to 'news.admin' in gopher. Note that this info can not be gotten from the newsgroups file because news.admin is not a newsgroup. [I know I picked an example that used to be a newsgroup and still is one, incorrectly, at some sites.]

Sample link files

Name=comp Type=1 Path=exec:-g comp:/bin/gonnrp Host=+ Port=+

Name=Comp.Sys groups Type=1 Path=exec:-g comp.sys:/bin/gonnrp Host=+ Port=+

Name=Gopher News Type=1 Path=exec:-h alt.gopher:/bin/gonnrp Host=+ Port=+

Name=No headers alt.gopher Type=1 Path=exec:-b alt.gopher:/bin/gonnrp Host=+ Port=+

Name=Search alt.gopher subjects for keyword Type=7 Path=7/bin/gonnrp.sh Port=+ Host=+ # Name=clari - ClariNet UPI wireservice news Numb=5 Type=1 Path=exec:-f /usr/lib/clari-copyright -G clari:/bin/gonnrp Host=+ Port=+

(gonnrp.sh is a shell script which execs gonnrp -s alt.gopher $*, the exec type will try to exec "/bin/gonnrp keyword" rather than exec "/bin/gonnrp" "keyword")

i.e.:

#!/bin/sh

/bin/gonnrp -s alt.gopher $*

Comments & Suggestions to:

c-adams@bgu.edu (Chad Adams)