sendme -- fetch usenet articles by Message-ID

[Ed Vielmetti]

   >Like this?  (Your mileage may vary;  I'm intimate only with C News on 
   >my Sun OS 4.0.3 system.  I've wrapped lines for readability.)
   >
   >   % grep 1990Dec28.202628.5720 at murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU /usr/local/lib/news/history

In article <1085 at toaster.SFSU.EDU> eps at toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) writes:

   Um, history files tend to be several megabytes long, and this
   isn't a particularly efficient way to find things.  I believe
   C News is distributed with a "newshist" program for fast lookups.
   B News sites needing similar functionality can FTP the shar file
   pub/newshist from sutro.sfsu.edu [130.212.15.230].  NNTP sites
   can already access articles directly by Message-ID.

If you are on an NNTP-only site this little bit of perl might help;
given a message-id, it fetches the article from any arbitrary NNTP
site that allows such access and sends it to standard output.

--Ed

emv at ox.com

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

# sendme -- fetch usenet articles by Message-ID.

# usage --
#     	sendme 1234 at host.domain.org
#	sendme "<1234 at host.domain.org>"
#     	sendme 1234 at host.domain.org nntpserver.domain.org
#	sendme "<1234 at host.domain.org>" nntpserver.domain.org

# it should do the following:
#	cope with B and C formats in dbm or flat file format
#	cope with NNTP to the default server
#	cope with NNTP to any server specified, or a list to try.
# but it doesn't.  instead it just uses NNTP.

# suggested by eci386!clewis
# socket code mailed to me by cmf at obie.cis.pitt.edu (Carl M. Fongheiser)

# Configuration information -- change to reflect your site.

$DEFAULTSERVER='nntpserver.domain.org';	# Configure here
$NNTPSERVER=$ARGV[1] ? $ARGV[1] : $DEFAULTSERVER ;
					# should also read dbm or grep
					# history file.
$NEWS='/usr/spool/news/lib/news';	# news library
$SPOOL='/usr/spool/news';		# news spool
# $DEBUG = 1;				# uh, if it don't work

$art = $ARGV[0];
print $art if ($DEBUG);
if ($art !~ m#^<#) {
   $art = "<" . $art . ">";
}
print $art if ($DEBUG);

if ($NNTPSERVER) {
   $port = 'nntp';

   require 'sys/socket.ph';

   $sockaddr = 'S n a4 x8';

   chop($hostname = `hostname`);

   ($name,$aliases,$proto) = getprotobyname('tcp');
   ($name,$aliases,$port) = getservbyname($port, 'tcp')
	unless $port =~ /^\d+$/;
   ($name,$aliases,$type,$len,$thisaddr) = gethostbyname($hostname);
   ($name,$aliases,$type,$len,$thataddr) = gethostbyname($NNTPSERVER);

   $this = pack($sockaddr, &AF_INET, 0, $thisaddr);
   $that = pack($sockaddr, &AF_INET, $port, $thataddr);

   socket(N, &PF_INET, &SOCK_STREAM, $proto) || die "socket: $!";
   bind(N, $this) || die "bind: $!";
   connect(N, $that) || die "connect: $!";

   $response = <N>;
   
   if ($response !~ /^2/) {		# hunky dory
     print STDERR $response;
     exit 1;
   }

   send(N,"ARTICLE $art\r\n",0);
   print STDERR "ARTICLE $art\r\n" if ($DEBUG);

   $response = <N>;

   if ($response !~ /^2/) {		# hunky dory
     print STDERR $response;
     exit 1;
   }

} else {
   die "Don't know how to do history lookups yet." ;
}

while(<N>) {
    if ($NNTPSERVER && $_ eq ".\r\n") {
	last;
    }
    s/.$//; print ;
}

if ($NNTPSERVER) {
  send(N, "QUIT\r\n", 0);
}

close(N);