Subject: A mailing list, and INN co-existing.

    I've seen numerous requests for assistance concerning
    e-mail to news gateways. Here is my method of email
    to news.

    The architecture is this:

    1. the group must be moderated.
    2. the moderator address must be the name of the list.

    The login id I use is called usenet, usenet has an alias
    or aliases called some-group-name. This|These are the
    addresses that are subscribed to a list.

    The reason for aliasing, is to be able to add additional
    mailing lists or to provide additional mail2news gateway
    features without a lot of login clutter.

    The reason for moderation is to control the flow of mail-
    to-news articles such that, when posting, the post goes to
    the list, then from the list it is posted to the group.
    Moderation helps to prevent loops from occurring:

        mail to news to mail, adinfinitum.

    BUGS: You tell me.

    Usual disclaimers apply: No guarantees.
    I will fix anything that is reasonable.

    In Daily Use: perl4.036 & inews on SunOS, inn-unoff2 on NCR SVR4.

rick@pobox.com
<A HREF="http://pobox.com/~rick>My Home Page</A>

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1. I use an elm filter to provide mail filtering to INN.
This is not essential, use what you have.

if (to == "some-group-name") then
    executec '/home/usenet/bin/postit some.group.name'
if (to == "listname@listhost.com") then
    executec '/home/usenet/bin/postit some.group.name'
if (Sender = "owner-listname@listhost.com") then
    executec '/home/usenet/bin/postit some.group.name'

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

2. Postit is a perl script that just clears the queue quickly
and provides a safeguard for failed postings. If a posting fails,
the actual mail is preserved in a spool area for later
attempts or execution.

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

3. For the mail2news perl script (used on sunos, perl4.036).
Set the appropriate paths before use. The program assumes a
moderated newsgroup.

  $fixincludes, when non-zero, will replace '>' attributions with '+'.
  This is a workaround for those of you that do not have control
  of inews. When not set, a second attempt is made anyway, to post
  to the newsgroup.

  Usage: mail2news

  All options are passed via the environment variables NNTPSERVER,
  NEWSGROUP, ARTICLE. A front end is used to reduce the possibility
  of contention on the mail filter (postit).

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4. A sample of the mail to news traffic over a week.

            A Summary of Filter Activity
            ----------------------------

A total of 231 messages were filtered:

The default rule of putting mail into your mailbox
    applied 5 times (2%)

Rule #1: (left in mailbox and given to command "/home/usenet/bin/postit some.group.name")
    applied 1 time (0%)

Rule #2: (left in mailbox and given to command "/home/usenet/bin/postit some.group.name")
    applied 224 times (97%)

Rule #3: (left in mailbox and given to command "/home/usenet/bin/postit some.group.name")
    applied 1 time (0%)

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

5. Cronjobs

    When the news server is down or not accepting connections,
    deadfeed will recover any posts in dead.article.
    Your choice as to frequency.

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

6. Manual failure testing

    I use a variation of postit above, to check out any posting failures.