news to mail?

news to mail?

[Bill White]

Is it possible to have my employer's news server (some standard-issue
thing, I suppose) to automatically send to me via email all new
articles it receives in certain groups?

I'm working from home and it's painfully slow to read news via
modem.  If there's some way to get those messages by email I'd, well,
I'd spend lots more time in Gnus :-)

Cheers -

bw
-- 
Bill White . billw@wolfram.com . http://members.wri.com/billw
"No ma'am, we're musicians."

Re: news to mail?

[Robin S. Socha]

* Bill White <billw@wolfram.com> writes:

> Is it possible to have my employer's news server (some standard-issue
> thing, I suppose) to automatically send to me via email all new
> articles it receives in certain groups?

Yes. http://www.google.com/search?q=news2mail&num=100

> I'm working from home and it's painfully slow to read news via modem.
> If there's some way to get those messages by email I'd, well, I'd
> spend lots more time in Gnus :-)

If you have to get those news anyway, why don't you set up a local
newsserver? Preferrably using UUCP to save bandwidth?

Re: news to mail?

[Bill White]

On Sun Nov 25 2001 at 15:51, "Robin S. Socha" <robin-dated-1006984193.d32d19@socha.net> said:

> If you have to get those news anyway, why don't you set up a local
> newsserver? Preferrably using UUCP to save bandwidth?

Well heck - I'd never thought of that.  Off to scour google...

Cheers -

bw
-- 
Bill White . billw@wolfram.com . http://members.wri.com/billw
"No ma'am, we're musicians."

Re: news to mail?

[Daniel Pittman]

On Sun, 25 Nov 2001, Bill White wrote:
> Is it possible to have my employer's news server (some standard-issue
> thing, I suppose) to automatically send to me via email all new
> articles it receives in certain groups?

SOUP is a traditional way of doing offline news that doesn't require a
local news server, but...

> I'm working from home and it's painfully slow to read news via
> modem.  If there's some way to get those messages by email I'd, well,
> I'd spend lots more time in Gnus :-)

...take a look at leafnode. It's a tiny little news server that uses
reader mode upstream to download and post messages, runs tolerably well
for small installations.

Better, though, it requires next-to-zero maintenance when it's used
normally. I have only had to touch it's configuration when I change news
servers. :)

        Daniel

-- 
We used to hate people.
Now we just make fun of them. 
It's more effective that way.
        -- KMFDF, _Dogma_

Re: news to mail?

[Dan Christensen]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1676 bytes --]

Bill White <billw@wolfram.com> writes:

> Is it possible to have my employer's news server (some standard-issue
> thing, I suppose) to automatically send to me via email all new
> articles it receives in certain groups?
>
> I'm working from home and it's painfully slow to read news via
> modem.  If there's some way to get those messages by email I'd, well,
> I'd spend lots more time in Gnus :-)

I use the program "suck" and the attached script.  Comments welcome.

Almost a year ago, I wrote the following (updated a bit).  I still
think it'd be a great feature to have.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could specify a newsgroup and a news server
as a mail-source?  The articles would be downloaded from the news
server and stored in whatever mail backend you use.  Why not just read
the group via the nntp backend?  Well, doing it with a mail backend
would let you:

- filter the articles into groups in various ways, not just based
  on the newsgroup they came from
- edit articles [annotations, deleting attachments, reparenting, etc]
- move relevant mail messages you receive into the same group
  as the news message that started a private conversation
- supplement a flakey newsfeed by reading from two news servers
  and deleting duplicates
- not worry about articles expiring on the server for groups you
  read sporadically
- have no serious problems if you change news servers
  (keeping marks, read articles, cached articles, etc)
- download articles in the early morning, for less load on the
  news server and faster reading of news.

I'm imagining using this for low volume groups.  I read several low
volume groups for which the above features would be great.


[-- Attachment #2: suckmail script --]
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#!/bin/sh
#
# Download new articles from the groups listed in $SUCKDIR/sucknewsrc
# and append them to $OUTPUTFILE in mbox format.

# My wishlist for suck:
# - generate mbox format (should be trivial to do!)
# - pipe each message to an external command (could then use formail and/or
#   procmail)
# Other similar programs:  news2mail, newsgate, pyg

PORT=119

BASEDIR=/home/jdc

OUTPUTFILE=$BASEDIR/Mail/suck
SUCKDIR=$BASEDIR/suck
DOWNLOADDIR=$SUCKDIR/download
LOG=$SUCKDIR/suck.log
# global lockfile.  Suck seems to create ./suck.lock
# while it is running.  But just to be safe, we'll put a global
# lock around this script so that we won't be running formail
# while another copy of this script has launched suck again and
# is changing DOWNLOADDIR.
LOCK=$SUCKDIR/suckmail.lock

SILENT="no"
if [ "$1" = "-q" ]
then
  shift
  SILENT="yes"
fi

# We cd to /home/jdc/suck so that the suck.lock file is always
# in the same place.
cd $SUCKDIR

if ! lockfile -r0 $LOCK
then
  echo "$NAME: unable to lock $LOCK."
  echo "Nothing downloaded."
  exit 1
fi

# -m: put output, one article per file, in the dir specified by -dm
# -c: update the sucknewsrc, located in dir specified by -dm, when done
# -q: quiet (doesn't work!)
[ -e ${LOG}.1 ] && mv -f ${LOG}.1 ${LOG}.2
[ -e ${LOG}   ] && mv -f ${LOG}   ${LOG}.1
suck news -N $PORT -m -c -dm $DOWNLOADDIR -dd $SUCKDIR > $SUCKDIR/suck.log 2>&1 
RET=$?
if [ $RET == 1 ]  # No articles downloaded
then
  rm -f $LOCK
  exit 0
elif [ $RET != 0 ]
then
  rm -f $LOCK
  echo "Error $RET returned by suck."
  exit 3
fi

if ! lockfile -r0 ${OUTPUTFILE}.lock
then
  echo "$NAME: unable to lock ${OUTPUTFILE}.lock."
  echo "Articles downloaded to ${DOWNLOADDIR}, but not moved to ${OUTPUTFILE}."
  exit 2
fi

for file in $DOWNLOADDIR/*; do
  # Add a "From " line.
  # This uses current time;  the '-a Date:' option uses the time in the
  # Date: header, but this isn't in the right format.
  formail < $file
done >> $OUTPUTFILE
rm -f ${OUTPUTFILE}.lock

rm $DOWNLOADDIR/*
rm -f $LOCK

[ "$SILENT" == "no" ] &&
[ -s $OUTPUTFILE ] && 
echo "suck: `frm $OUTPUTFILE | wc -l`m `cat $OUTPUTFILE | wc -c`b."

# If you don't get suck to put one message per file, then it produces
# one big file with articles separated by a single line containing ".".
# Sending this through "sed -e 's/^.$//'" and then adding the -ds options
# to formail works, but would also split digests.

[-- Attachment #3: Type: text/plain, Size: 37 bytes --]


-- 
Dan Christensen
jdc+news@uwo.ca

Re: news to mail?

[Harry Putnam]

Dan Christensen <jdc+news@uwo.ca> writes:

> Bill White <billw@wolfram.com> writes:
>
>> Is it possible to have my employer's news server (some standard-issue
>> thing, I suppose) to automatically send to me via email all new
>> articles it receives in certain groups?
>>
>> I'm working from home and it's painfully slow to read news via
>> modem.  If there's some way to get those messages by email I'd, well,
>> I'd spend lots more time in Gnus :-)
>
> I use the program "suck" and the attached script.  Comments welcome.
>
> Almost a year ago, I wrote the following (updated a bit).  I still
> think it'd be a great feature to have.
>
> Wouldn't it be nice if you could specify a newsgroup and a news server
> as a mail-source?  The articles would be downloaded from the news
> server and stored in whatever mail backend you use.  Why not just read
> the group via the nntp backend?  Well, doing it with a mail backend
> would let you:

I've long argued that gnus-agent should be made comparable to the mail
backends allowing all the goodies you list.

Here is an idea, I've toyed a bit with but never really got the nntp
input part set up.

A brief diagram will say it best.  Its pretty close to what you are
talking about, but doesn't deal with posting at all.  That is, making
posting from the mail groups go to the newsgroup it represents.


live nntp intput from whatever source ==> procmail 

cat .procmailrc
[...]
    :0
   * ^Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.gnus
    gnu_emacs_gnus.in
   
    :0
   * ^Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help
    gnu_emacs_help.in

[...]  

When you run a fetch or `g' from gnus group buffer it would slurp
these procmail spools and write them to nnml groups minus the suffix

Voila, a news to mail conversion is preformed with little effort.
Procmail is fully capable of this already, it employs `formail' flags
that recognize the nntp `Path: ' header.  It is possible to tell
formail to write the mbox `From ' line too if needed.

I'm getting kind of excited about this again as I write.  I never
really worked out the part of tapping into the nntp feed.  But if it
can be directed at procmail, and I believe there are perl scritps out
there that would allow that, this should be completely feasable to do.

The posting conversion is a good bit out of my league though.

Re: news to mail?

[Bill White]

On Sun Nov 25 2001 at 18:49, Dan Christensen <jdc+news@uwo.ca> said:

> Bill White <billw@wolfram.com> writes:
>
>> Is it possible to have my employer's news server (some standard-issue
>> thing, I suppose) to automatically send to me via email all new
>> articles it receives in certain groups?
>>
>> I'm working from home and it's painfully slow to read news via
>> modem.  If there's some way to get those messages by email I'd, well,
>> I'd spend lots more time in Gnus :-)
>
> I use the program "suck" and the attached script.  Comments welcome.

We have a winner!  suck is very fast.  I run the script when I want,
which puts new news into a single file.  Then I read that file as an
mbox file in gnus and split it on the Xref header into appropriate
nnml groups.

Many thanks!

bw
-- 
Bill White . billw@wolfram.com . http://members.wri.com/billw
"No ma'am, we're musicians."

Re: news to mail?

[Harry Putnam]

Bill White <billw@wolfram.com> writes:

> We have a winner!  suck is very fast.  I run the script when I want,
> which puts new news into a single file.  Then I read that file as an
> mbox file in gnus and split it on the Xref header into appropriate
> nnml groups.

What do you do about posting?

Re: news to mail?

[Bill White]

On Mon Nov 26 2001 at 20:59, Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> said:

> Bill White <billw@wolfram.com> writes:
>
>> We have a winner!  suck is very fast.  I run the script when I want,
>> which puts new news into a single file.  Then I read that file as an
>> mbox file in gnus and split it on the Xref header into appropriate
>> nnml groups.

> What do you do about posting?

I can still post new articles via the news server at work with
`a' in the Group buffer.  I suppose I could use posting styles to
set up the right Newsgroup: header for such posts, so I could post
directly from one of the news->nnml groups.

As for followups, `F' in one of these groups will go to the article
author by default.  If I also want to send the followup to the
newsgroup, I can do `C-[C F N]' to add the Newsgroup: header.

You can tell I don't post to usenet often :-)

Cheers -

bw
-- 
Bill White . billw@wolfram.com . http://members.wri.com/billw
"No ma'am, we're musicians."