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Fixed problem with auth_spawn external authentication module being sent the ip address as the third parameter intermittently, it is now sent three parameters all the time.
Dnewsweb - now deals with multi part uuencoded files (this is cool IMHO :-)
Dnewsweb - Fixed followup, it was not wrapping lines, (bug introduced in 5.2 probably)
Dnewsweb - added next and last in thread buttons.
Added dmulti wide accounting module, you can disable this with the dnews.conf setting ml_disable true, when enabled you can see the internal data with the command tellnews ml_show, This makes the settings in access.conf con=n,users=n work across dmulti, in addition there is a new limit, mb=n which limits the MB of data a use can read in one day.
Also the local host name and 127.0.0.1 are ignored so if you want to test this don't
test it from the machine dnews is running on.
Added dnews.conf setting auth_spaces true which allows spaces in usernames passwords,
passed to external auth module, use this at your own risk it seems a bit weird to me :-)
Added dnews.conf setting auth_readart true, if set then dnews will call an additional
function as each item is read, a false return will cause the user to be disconnected. To
implement setup auth_lib as described on access.htm and in the same dll include a function
like this:
__declspec( dllexport ) int auth_readart(int chan, int type, char *ipname,
char *ipnumber,
char *username, char *password,char *group,int article,int size,char *reason)
If return is false the use will be logged of after being told the reason 'reason'.
We don't recommend using this mechanism.
Added to spam filter, config setting in dnews.conf spam_subject_hits nnn, default is 20, this combines subject and 'from' both trimmed in various ways, then rejects more than 'nnn' duplicates, this can help stop simple spammers. (spam_stop true must be set for this setting to take effect)
Dnews.conf setting, post_from_adduser true, if set then the from field in a locally posted message is replaced with "authenticated user" <email@doman>
Dnews.conf setting, post_force_date true, if true the date header on local posts is
replaced by dnews, this stops users from dating items into the future to get them at the
top of the page.
Enhanced full text search options for dnewsweb, See search.tpl and results.tpl for the new
features. If you wish to implement 'date' based searching then you must add to fts.conf
index_time true
NOTE when adding this setting you must delete your existing database when changing this
setting as it adds a field to the database:
stop xmit
del ...\dnews\fts\*.fts
start xmit
tellnews refeed ftsfeed (optional)
New setting
max_items 30000
This makes the expire process trim old items from any group with more than this many
items, this doesn't save disk space but does prevent 'huge' groups (like control.cancel)
from impacting performance, we recommend a setting of 20000 for a
typical system. The default is 90000. You can also increase the limit above 90,000
if you need to.
Added header_no_listgroup true setting, this sometimes helps header sucking expire items
correctly if the upstream server doesn't support listgroup correctly, frankly if your
upstream server is weird, then header sucking is going to be a bit dodgy, use at your own
risk.
Fixed problem with cross posts to non existent groups on upstream site when header sucking causing floating 'dead' items to appear.
Added spam emailing to the manager for local posts turn off with spam_noemail true.
Concurrent sucking mechanism added, this module is called the 'pull' module see pull.htm
Multicast sending and receiving udp feeds http://netwinsite.com/dnews/dudp.htm
PAM authenticatin support (requires a build with pam in the name, ask us if you can't find one and really need this)
Add to dnews.conf
pam_type dnews
And in /etc/pam.d/dnews put three lines:
#%PAM-1.0
auth required /lib/security/pam_pwdb.so shadow nullok
account required /lib/security/pam_pwdb.so
Added settings to prevent excessive quoting of local posts. post_quoted_limit
0.9, this is the ratio of quoted to unquoted, for example if you wanted to insist that
there be at least 70% unquoted
lines then you would use post_quoted_limit .7 A reasonable value is probably 0.95
personally I wouldn't use this :-), Also added, post_quoted_message You have too much
quoted text in that message
Fixed bug in dfeed spawning in dnews on NT
Fixed unique count in showcon, and stats output.
5.2b1
Changed to netwin regular expression parser to fix bug, this also improved performance.
5.2a6
Fixed the dnews zombies. (apparently not completely!)
5.2a4
Fixed memory leak in fts searching
Fixed score display on fts searching in dnewsweb
Fixed bug with dmulti generating identical id's if two posts from different slaves in same second.
(all of the above are documented in more detail below)
Fixed occasional pause in dfeed feeds.
Allowed dnewsweb auto login from url, this is not recommended as it is not terribly
secure :-)
http://your.web.server/scripts/dnewsweb.exe?cmd=r_login&user=joe&pass=joe
Decreased dnews disk fragmentation and improved performance slightly. Please be aware that for best performance with dnews it's worth formatting your 'dnews' disk drives with large blocking factors 32K or 64K this will prevent fragmentation. (Note re-formatting your drives will loose all existing data!!! :-)
Added external expires, to implement this just set in dnews.conf spawn_expire true, then all going well dnews will spawn a copy of dnews to handle the expire, index resort and xover expires. Currently this causes a degradation of xover performance particularly on dmulti systems, so we recommend it not be used except for 'feeding only' systems until 5.2c is available which will fix this problem.
Fixed bug in web manager which broke passwords when user settings modified.
Fixed bug with replicate true and header_groups which was making dnews ignore the replicate true setting for non header_groups whan using both settings together.
Added built in Radius authentication, dnews.conf settings:
auth_radius_host 1.2.3.4
auth_radius_secret fred
auth_radius_attribute 26
The secret is the shared secret that you must have defined on your radius server, the
attribute is optional it is the attribute number as defined in your /etc/raddb/dictionary
file which you want dnews to use as a list of 'usergroups' e.g.
"adults,private"
Once you have defined auth_radius_host, and auth_radius_secret then dnews will check the
radius host for $lookup$ entries in access.conf, e.g.
*:read,post:$lookup$:$lookup$:*
Changed spam_dup_hits and spam_dup_cross crc mechanism to ignore the last line of the message help avoid abuse from many common spam programs.
Fixed bug with moderated groups posting with readonly servers
Fixed bug with specific names in me feed, originally introduced in 5.2abeta1.
Added new tellnews command tellnews cancel that cancels an article from the command
line.
Syntax : tellnews cancel "group.name" article_number
tellnews cancel "<message-id>"
On NT changed operation of dmulti to make it more efficient.
Missing binaries, several people have reported missing binary parts of multiple part items, this can be cause by various things (bandwidth problems, items missing upstream, overloaded system upstream or overloaded dnews) however we have tracked down several issues with dnews related to this. See this web page for advice.
Added feed type dfeed, an external feeding module as a means of offloading feeds from the main dnews server, this is also faster than live feeds so where you are sending out full feeds you should probably consider using this system.
site x.y.z
to desitnation.name
type dfeed
groups *
log (debugging option creates workarea)
x_y_z.log
In dnews.conf
dfeed_debug true (optional)
Make sure you have dfeed binary
(nt) \winnt\system32\dfeed.exe
(unix) /usr/local/dnews/dfeed
Then start dnews or issue a tellnews reload, stats are visible in
tellnews stats_out display.
Made feed masks build faster. (With 5.1beta8 and later news feeds are constructed as masks, this slows down reloads and startup, but speeds up processing of incoming messages)
Fixed status output for diskuse > 200mb
Added setting
approve_authorized true
If set, then for moderated groups dnews will only accept posts if they are from a user who
matches the moderators email address. This is intended for use with local moderated groups
only.
Added creation of rule_n.tmp files are created when rules reject an item.
Modified behaviour of 'cachedall true' in the past if this was true dnews would try and
suck all groups, now it removes the downloading message but still only tries to suck
'cached' groups, if you really want dnews to suck all groups do this:
tellnews cached "*" 10000
Fixed security issue.
Added version of dmail extern authentication module that talks to dnews's 'users.dat' file, http://netwinsite.com/dmail/dnauth.htm
Fixed bug in xmit/fts indexing which caused this error:
07 08:35:16: point write corrupt data 245 4748 groupmax 239
Fixed bug in drobot (mail gateway) which could result in lost lines from messages.
Fixed performance problem in chan_read, Fixed performance problem in db_read
Changed 'feed' group matching to masks, this will mean that @ matching on groups that
don't exist won't work, so to restore the same behaviour you would need to create the
groups then delete them but not killgroup them or run purgegroups
Added tellnews command: tellnews getnames n , to fetch names from alternate sucking feeds.
Fixed fault in live feeds to significantly improve performance particularly when sending binaries. When sending a full feed with binaries you probably need to adjust some config settings described in recent.htm
Fixed out_size setting so it works with larger values. (up to 100K)
Fixed list newsgroups so it only shows groups the user has read access to unless
auth_showprot true is set
Rebuilt linux libc6 version without profiling linked in, this was causing it to completely
fail on some versions of linux for some reason.
Fixed pageup/down buttons in dnewsweb when gaps in group.
Support for new filter rule system, this is an efficient and flexible system intended to give the ability to make complex filtering for incoming and outgoing feeds similar to cleanfeed etc without the need for using an external filter, this system includes multi line logic operations and regular expression matching, see rules.htm for details.
Support for adding external filters like 'cleanfeed', see filters.htm, this is provided so those who want to make extensive adjustments to the filtering can do so.
Support for NoCem added (an automated system for cancelling spam but more efficient than cancel messages and with pgp control over who can cancel) see nocem.htm
Added support for sendsys control messages, as dnews doesn't have a sys file it generates one from the newsfeeds.conf information.
Fixed dadmin fault where it couldn't find users with no usergroups defined.
Added to newsfeeds.conf to qualifier to specify a destination different from the
'site' name, this allows multiple sites to send to the same destination. (Site
names must be unique in newsfeeds.conf), also added 'bind' option to allow specific
network cards to be used. e.g.
site ...
to 1.2.3.4
bind 2.3.4.5
Added to access.conf area qualifier, this allows concurrent user limits to apply to
multiple lines in access.conf, note these rules apply to IP addresses, not to
username/login rules.
...:area=fred,users=3
If the workarea contains files called "upstream.bad" or
"upstream.ok" then those files will replace the text that is sent to a user in
the confirmation message when a news item is sent upstream. e.g. for upstream.bad
Dear user, your recent usenet post was NOT sent
upstream
The status returned from the upstream site was:
Fixed fault with dmgrsvc on unix dieing when connections broken.
Added setting uucp_send_mod true, which if set allows incoming messages for moderated groups via uucp to be sent to the moderator if they are not approved. This should be used if you have a down stream site like a bbs which is sendign you stuff for moderated groups, this is unusual :-).
Added delay xxx seconds to newsfeeds.conf, this is only valid for LIVE feeds, the actual delay will often be up to twice 'xxx' seconds but will never be less than 'xxx' seconds. e.g.
site downstream.site.backup.feed
groups *
type live
delay 600
Fixed command tellnews backup_groups x.y.* so it actually works and backs up the correct groups, this command can be useful to create a backup of local newsgroups. Do not use this command prior to 5.1 or bad things will happen :-)
Added support for CIDR syntax in access.conf
5.0j,
Fixed dadmin bug, crash if smtp partially defined on menu
Fixed dadmin shutting down services reliably during installation
Fixed log rotation if daily rotate used with dmultil
Added link to dadmin gui on start menu for 95/98 installation.
5.0g, 29 Jan 1999
Fixed cpu loop with history file greater than 1.2gig
Added usergroups administration to 5.0 NT/95 gui
Added warning on access.conf converstion to NT/95 gui
Several dnewsweb bug fixes.
Fixed dnewsweb 'new' article count so it isn't reset on login.
Fixed dnewsweb 'new' article count so it isn't reset on login.
Made default behaviour to spread news over all disks evenly. Can be set to not spread by using pile_separate true in dnews.conf
5.0c, 17 Jan 1999
Fixed serious bug with Header Caching which can result in all users getting the same 'body'. We strongly recommend upgrading if you are using header caching.
Fixed bug where some files are written to pile 0 incorrectly when using new piles system.
Added tellnews pile_move n m Where 'n' is the source pile and 'm' is the distination pile, e.g. tellnews pile_move 0 1 Can be used to move the stray items that have gotten into pile 0 into pile 1 where they will eventually be expired. This could be used instead of converting the database when changing to pile based expiration but only if you didn't care when existing items expired as they would all end up in pile 0 regardless of which pile they should be in.
Made users.dat case insensitive unless auth_case is 'true' however, encrypted passwords in users.dat are still case sensitive.
Modification to dnews slaves so that they re-read diskuse.dat intermittently. (fixes minor dmulti problem)
Fixed bug that could cause crash if users.dat didn't exist.
Made some minor additions to output when db files can't be written.
Removed trailing tabs from xover data, this may stop Outlook express from crashing (so often :-) if you think this is a problem on your system, you may want to delete your existing *.xov files after upgrading but this will slow your system down for the next 24 hours.
Made nt_domain accept a list of domains, users can specify the domain they want as user=domain/username the first entry in the list is the default.
Fixed bug which allowed a local user to crash the server by typing in one particular unusual header which will remain nameless for obvious reasons.
Due to an imposter sending control messages you may find many of your groups are set incorrectly as moderated, if this has happenned then the group will not be accepting news items, the showmod and fixmod commands can detect this and partically correct it.
Showmod will show you all moderated groups that have recieved un-Approved posts since startup, fixmod n will set groups with more than 'n' unmoderted posts to 'unmoderated' this may result in some moderated groups becoming un moderated which is also not desirable.
The best way to correct your list of active groups is to download an active file from ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/CONFIG and copy it to the workarea as active.fix and then type in these command:
tellnews matchfile active.fix tellnews undelete "local.*" (to undelete any local or strange hierachies)
06 14:01:22 19:error: spam: Detected local spammer, 33 posts from (204.210.96.14) using delay of 169 seconds (increase spam_npost to disable this check)
c:> nwuath check fred fredspassword ip.address.number +OK fred (possibly other info) check jack jackspassword ip.address.number -ERR jack unknown user exit +OK exitingTwo examples are available, one is nwauth which uses a text file as a user database and comes with dmail, the other is ldapauth (for doing ldap authentication) which is a self extracting windows archive . Both come with full source.
Please note: the ip.address.number is not always sent prior to dnews 5.3 beta 11
Note: There is a problem with email to moderated news groups being bounced if the user specifies an invalid from address (like user@nospam.real.domain) if the moderators mail server is set to bounce email from undefined addresses then this email never gets to him/her, and the bounce of course also fails. In dnews.conf you can define mail_bounce news@your.host.name which partly fixes this problem except that real bounces are then lost. It's a loose loose problem :-) (this is not related to 4.7 but is a general usenet problem)
4.7d 17 - Sept 1998
This allows you to configure DNEWS to suck certain groups in 'header only' mode, in this mode dnews only sucks the header of the items and then fetches the body of the message when the item is read, a cache is used so if another user reads the same body it is not requested again.
See header.htm
Option in dnews.conf to block some log lines, log_ignore slow:,Refused,...
tellnews copy_item rec.humor 2 local.funny
Active changes made more efficient by writing to active.pat change
file
Added header stuff.
Added to dnews.conf
spam_npost 20
If a single ip address posts more than this many posts
in 30 minutes, then each following post will be delayed
by n^2 seconds, this effectively limits users to 30 posts
per half hour, This is TURNED ON BY DEFUALT, so to disable
it set spam_npost 1000000
This setting invisibly stops users sending in large amounts
of spam into the news system via your server. Unlike the
other spam rules, this only affects local posts, it has
no effect on incoming feeds.
New Tellnews commands
These are intended for moving threads between local news groups, the matching is case insensitive, and it is not possible to move an item back to the same group, or more than once to a destination group.
tellnews delete_thread group.name "<Message@id>"
tellnews copy_thread group.name.from group.name.to
"<Message@id>"
tellnews move_thread group.name.from group.name.to
"<Message@id>"
tellnews delete_subject group.name "Text from subject"
tellnews copy_subject group.name.from group.name.to "Text from
subject"
tellnews move_subject group.name.from group.name.to "Text from
subject"
tellnews copy_item group.name item.number new.group.name
tellnews showgroup group.name (lists the items in a group, subject, mid etc.)
tellnews getgroups any.news.server (now works for IHAVE feeds, usually :-)
Change to newsfeeds.conf, it is now possible to give a file name instead of a list of news groups, e.g.
... site freds.news.server groups /usr/local/dnews/freds_groups.dat ...
Addition to newsfeeds.conf, reject header "string" is now permissable, this searches the entire header for the specified string.
Fixed bug with rejected control messages not being added to history correctly
Fixed log errors "IDX corrupt" on slaves processes, also increased speed with
which new posts appear on slaves with dmulti.
Fixed core dump from causing cpu loop on unix version
Fixed dbi.idx locking problem on NT.
Increased timeout to solve problem with dnews/dmulti shutting down when a slave won't release dbi.idx
Enhanced dtail (-follow and -page)
Made dnews attempt twice to write to active.new
Made prog_args accept multiple parameters (space separated)
Corrected behaviour of ihave/takethis when faulty MID's are recieived.
history_moved true, evens out disk usage.
Fixed problem with database indexes not being flushed in time for readonly servers to find local posts consistently.
Improved behaviour when a live feed hits a full news server. (it now doesn't retry constantly)
Added support for multiple addresses in dnews.conf email settings (e.g. gup_to)
Turned on xover_write_cache by default (set to 1000), on large systems a setting of 2000 or 3000 may be worthwile.
Removed some logging junk from dmulti slaves
Added commands to clear the stats_in, stats_out statistics.
tellnews in_clear tellnews out_clear
Fixed bug with tellnews reload clearing stats_out figures.
Improved dmulti database flushing so that items cannot appear on a slave until they have been flushed to disk by the master.
Adding code to make dnews.log get renamed even if some other process has the file locked.
Fixed problem with dmulti and deleted groups re-appearing occasionally when a slave didn't know the group was deleted.
Added logging options log_onefile true With dmulti makes all logs write to dnews.log (only works on unix)
log_no_in true Disables log to dnews.in log_no_out true Disables log to dnews.out
Fixed problem with checkgroups processing for more than one top level tree.
Fixed minor security issue on unix (thats all the detail I'm giving, as ignorance is the next best thing to security)
Added tellnews commands to show internal/database info about an item
tellnews showinfo <articleid> tellnews showinfo group.name item.number
And to list a group (These commands are intended for debugging rather than normal use)
tellnews showgroup group.name lists all the items in a group (could take some time)
And to make dnews temporarily forget an item exists, so you can suck it again.
tellnews histforget "<articleid>"
Added to Dnews.conf, to turn of spam rules for certain groups:
spam_allowgroups local.*,news.spam
Added to dnews.conf timezone_post NZST This is useful if your system timezone is not being picked up correctly by dnews for some reason.
Fixed tellnews copy_group so threading is preserved, but note that the copy_group command does not fully support cross posted articles, it is intended for use with local news groups only.
Fixed bug in auth_pophost
Added new feature, with these settings dnews will send automatic GUP messages to an upstream site:
gup_site your.site.name your_gup_password gup_to upstream_robot@upstream.site gup_add comp.lang.* gup_mask *,!alt.* gup_at 1 23
That would send an email at 23:01 every night to the email address upstream_robot@upstream.site the message would add comp.lang.* to the list of groups to send, and only include cached groups that matched (*,!alt.*)
New tellnews command "test_gup" which generates and sends a gup email, to test gup set the gup_to address to your own email address before testing it.
Fixed fault with newnews command date processing.
Fixed sucking from MCI's new news server. Fixed reject_addhist true fault which could cause items to be rejected incorrectly.
Made xref_always true, the default, to match INN systems, this means an xref header is added even if the message is only posted to a single news group.
Replicate feeds: We've noticed there is a more efficent way to send them, instead of sending an xreplic feed, you can send normal streaming live feeds if you do the following
In dnews.conf on the slave add replicate true
In dnews.conf on the MASTER add xref_always true (that is the default in 4.6f and later)
Then just send a normal live feed from the master to the slave. You still need to use the postonly true setting on the slave to get posts back to the master, and often you need to use ignorepath true so that local posts get sent back to the slave.
In stats_in, moved site name to end of line.
Fixed bug in dnewsweb with html items on unix.
Added expire_quanta setting, defaults to 3 seconds on dmulti systems, this speeds up expire processing.
Fixed date shown in x-trace to be local time not gmt.
Workaround for freebsd OS bug, with freebsd if dnews writes too fast to too many channels, the operating system gives the error "Out of MBUFS, Page Fault while in Kernal Mode" and reboots, not nice :-(
This is an OS fault but to prevent it we've added a setting to dnews max_out_total 200000 This limits the speed dnews writes to all channels at once it should be set to about what your network card can sustain or slightly less, so on a typical ethernet card 200000 is a good setting. This fix doesn't appear to work on all systems, but the bug also doesn't seem to exist on all systems. Let us know if you have this problem and/or if you get around it with this setting. Also if anyone finds a patch for the kernal to fix it we'd love to know about it.
Fixed xmit -mail problem with some mail servers that give extended response codes to 'helo'
Fixed occasional sending of downloading messages to moderators
Fixed suck_percent so it works if suck_stream is true
Fixed suck_percent so it works if suck_stream is true
Fixed shutdown on unix, it didn't exit cleanly on a system shutdown. (signal 15)
Fixed cache_ongroup which was letting users cache groups that they couldn't read
Bug fixed sucking groups with cachedonly true set.
Added ! (not) to feed rules, e.g. to reject all non smutty messages, add to newsfeeds.conf
site me groups * accept default reject subject !"sex"
Improved handling of large bucket sizes (100mb)
Fixed bug in dposter, it would get stuck on nt. Added, to dnews.conf inpaths true, if this is set then dnews will write to the workarea inpaths.dat (it writes to inpaths.new, and once a day renames it to inpaths.dat, you should process and delete this file with a cron job)
Fixed bug in dposter if used by itself with names that don't change it could get stuck on a bad message.
Added to dnews.conf xref_always true, which if set will add xref lines even when the item is not cross posted.
Fixed upgrade procedure for dnews 2.7-4.* conversions.
Fixed bug in spam duplicate body detection, it was not matching some bodies which were identical.
Fixed checkgroups processing, it sometimes created bogus news groups.
Added setting 'retry_441' to dnews.conf, basically some servers respond with 441 when a posting fails and retrying is 'in order' these servers are simply faulty. This setting tells dnews to retry in this case.
Fixed bug in rebuild_index, it was loosing control messages during the rebuild process.
Added to dmulti, if slave_feed is not defined, then dmulti will read the 'ihave' lines in access.conf, it will also do forward name translations. That means you can give a name like feeds.site.name:ihave:::* But you can't give "feeds*.site.name"
To enable forward name translations for dnews so it also recognizes all the feeds.site.name ip addresses add to dnews.conf access_forward true
Added xover write caching, this can help reduce fragmentation and improve teh speed of taking a news feed if you have more than about a thousand groups 'xover cached' (this shows up in the status output). To enable this add to dnews.conf xover_write_cache 2000 This means 2000 xover records are cached before any are written to disk, so that with luck dnews will be able to write more than one xover record at a time.
Added support for virtual domains (not supported in dmulti yet), to turn this on add to dnews.conf auth_virtual_ip true and auth_virtual_user true Then in access.conf add @local.ip.address to your access rules.
E.g. lets assume you have two ethernet cards 2.2.2.2 for local use and 3.3.3.3 for public news groups, then your access.conf would look like this:
... *@2.2.2.2:read,post:::* *:read,post:fred@3.3.3.3:password:* *@3.3.3.3:read,post:::*,!private.*
This lets fred read the private groups even when he connects to 3.3.3.3, you cannot use domain names for the local addresses you must use the number. auth_virtual_ip adds the local ip address to the ip address and auth_virtual_user adds the local ip address to user names.
Removed all 'bad' lockups from expire process
Increased max number of groups from 55000, to 400000, this is controled with the setting max_groups in dnews.conf, if you change this value, don't decrease it, also if you have more than 55K groups you can't downgrade to 4.5, We strongly recommend you don't use this feature, your users don't want to see more than 10K groups, the rest are junk, non local, etc, adding all these groups slows down news reading, but the choice is yours.
Fixed dmulti updating items on readonly machine.
Moved dmulti log file to 'logdir' to avoid conflicts with readonly servers.
Added expire option "split" if this is set and if you set in dnews.conf db_split true Then dnews will shuffle items in groups matching the 'split' lines in expire.conf into different bucket files, the side effect of this should be a significantly faster expire. (note: REMOVED DUE TO BUG, this may be added again at a later time)
Fixed bug with readonly system not finding items on spool'n' where n was not 1.
Change access.conf processing, if access_forward true is set then any name which does not contain wild cards, and has 'ihave' access is 'forward' translated to a number (or list of numbers). This improves security and also allows some forms of aliases to work correctly. We recommend turning this feature on.
To apply similar forward translations to "read,post" sites set in dnews.conf access_forward_all true
If 'tellnews reload' responds very slowly this feature could be the culprit.
Fixed problem with active.dat being locked by readers.
Added to dnewsweb, any cgi environment variable can now be found using %%e_xxxxx%%, for example to use the authenticated users username in the 'from' address in post.tpl
From: <input name="from" size=20 value="%%E_REMOTE_USER%%@your.domain"> (Give EMail address, e.g. you@your.domain)<br>
Added to dnewsweb a setting tellnews_pass xxxxxxxxxxx (find 'xxxx' in the file tellnews.pass in your workarea directory) If this is set then dnews will be able to apply access.conf rules to users reading news via dnewsweb. If the user is authenticated by the web server then their username will also be matched against users in 'users.dat' and 'usergroup' access can also be applied.
Added X-Trace: header to assist with finding spammers. Fixed bug with 'checkgroups' messing up active.names
Fixed bug with web manager modifying long newsfeeds.conf entries and going into cpu loop.
Added dnews.conf entry auth_pophost your.pop.host If this is defined then users are authenticated via your pop server, usergroups can be added via the dnews user database. A cache is used so the load on the pop server should be minimal, users may occasionally get an error if their drop file is locked due to incoming mail, retrying should fix this.
Removed "Now =..." debugging message in log file.
Fixed error in log files names in 4.6, (dn2.ews.in etc...)
Fixed output of access_test (read,post were reversed)
Fixed problem with any domain being allowed access.
Fixed problem with web manager and MSIE (it would hang)
Added clearer logging of external authentication calls
Message id is now correctly recorded in post.rec
Fixed xmit so it won't email downloading messages to mail lists
Changed spam detection so that both from and lines headers can be used in combination to detect duplicate postings from an individual. This is enabled with the setting: spam_lines true
Added setting to allow posts from certain nntp-posting-hosts to bypass the spam protection spam_allowhosts 1.2.3.4,netwin.*
Added cancel_disable true
If approved_auto true is set in dnews.conf then if a local post is from a local moderator then the approved header is now added automatically (note: also see dmod, a free windows utiilty for moderating a news group, available on our web site)
Added to dnewsweb templates:
%%ifcgi%%http_referer%%*161.29.2.4,*listall*%%
....
%%endif%%
This lets you match any CGI environment variable against a list of names and wild cards. You can thusly change the appearance of your web page depending on where people have recently been etc.
To contact the dnews manager use a web address like this: http://your.host:7119 (this link may work, try it) A username and password will be stored in the file CONFIG/users.dat in encrypted format and on your first connection it will tell you the password, if you forget this you can edit users.dat by hand and add a line like this)
dnews:yourpassword:Full:*:Mr Admin:adults
The manager service can be stopped on NT with the command "net stop dmgrsvc" and can be disabled from the control panel/services window.
NOTE: If you use the new manager to modify your access.conf entries it will 'TRY' and convert your access entries to the new format, it may not succeed so you must check it. DNEWS itself is still backwards compatible so as long as you don't modify your access.conf file with the web manager you will not have any problems. We strongly encourage you to switch to the new format which is much easier to understand, basically it's the same but users are moved into a separate file "users.dat".
Added a new option to access.conf entries, :add, tells dnews to add the specified groups or subtract them, this allows much simpler configurations, e.g., lets take an example where you have users defined as adults,kids and staff. Depending on which usergroups the user belongs to they should see different selections of newsgroups. For this example your config files would be:
----users.dat---- bobby:aaa:None:*::kids,private fred:bbb:None:*::adults joe:ccc:None:*::adults,staff joeskid:ccc:None:*::staff -------------------- ----access.conf---- *:logoff:::* netwin.*:read,post:$lookup$:$lookup$:* *:read,post:,groups=staff::private.*:add *:read,post:,groups=adults::*sex*,*erotic*:add --------------------
With this example if 'bobby' connects he will get access to "*,!private.*,!*sex*,!*erotic*" if fred connects he will get access to "*,!private.*,*sex*,*erotic*" and if joe connects he will get access to "*,private.*,*sex*,*erotic*" and if joeskid connects he will get access to "*,private.*,!*sex*,!*erotic*"
Clear as mud? Trust me it's a big improvement. Access.conf does still allow usernames and passwords directly but this is strongly discouraged.
You can test your setup with this tellnews command:
tellnews test_access domain.name.or.number username password
This will show you if a user connecting from that domain with that username and password would be allowed to connect, and if so which groups they could read/post to.
The format of users.dat is currently:
username:password:manager_access:managed_groups:full_name:usergroups
The Manager_access can currently be 'full' which allows access thru the web based management utility or 'none' which doesn't. In future we will add other options, e.g. 'killitem' to allow the use of the killitem command but nothing else so you could grant moderators appropriate access to certain groups.
Passwords defined by dnews manager willl be encrypted, non encrypted passwords can also be entered into this file by hand and will also work. This file should not be set world read on unix.
Fixed dnewsweb for some attachment types
Fixed logging to u_yymmdd.log_n log files for dmulti
Fixed log file names in dmulti for dnews*.in*
Made posts show local timezone when possible.
Fixed problem with groups not matching the wild card defined for a sucking feed being created locally.
Spam rejection is now silent for local posts, this means it lies to the user as sais 'thanks that was fine' rather than informing them that the post was rejected, this change was necessary as otherwise it was too easy for spammers to change what they were posting. The rejection is logged in the log file and shown in the tellnews status output in the 'filter' line.
Added a record of recent hosts rejected to the status output to simplify initial configuration.
On dmulti caching should not work correctly.
When using dmulti the global setting 'concurrent_limit n' in dnews.conf will limit the number of concurrent connections a user is permitted to all slaves.
External authentication dll added, see access.htm
Reduced memory fragmentation
Fixed dmulti problem with connections closing too quickly when data was still bufferred.
To add user defined headers to all local posts define any of these in dnews.conf
post_addhead1 XHeaderName1: Text Goes Here post_addhead2 XHeaderName2: Text Goes Here post_addhead3 XHeaderName3: Text Goes Here
Added parameter to stats_groups, e.g. tellnews stats_groups x.y.z*
Removed hard link to /usr/local/dnews/dnews in dmulti
Fixed dmulti so posting to protected news groups works as expected
Fixed dmulti so suck_uucp doesn't kill it
Fixed authentication bug with listgroup with no groupname on protected news groups.
Fixed byte count of articles in xover data which was sometimes faulty, to correct the existing xover data delete *.xov.
Made tellnews setused happen automatically on startup.
Fixed response codes from tellnews which were removed in 4.5i
Fixed rare problem with sucking from fast server with a short list of news groups. Added speed controls in access.conf, e.g. *sprint.net:ihave:::*:speed=100000
Bug fix for rare crash caused by very unusual incoming messages.
Fixed rebuild_index so it is even more careful not to read in corrupt data.
Added tellnews command: tellnews copy_group old.name new.name This command copies the contents of the group, modifying the 'newsgroups' headers correctly and creating new message-ids. If you copy a group repeatedly to the same new name, only 'new' items will be copied. This allows you to have a group that is an 'archive' of a real group, the archive might have a longer retention period (in expire.conf)
Added a dnews.conf setting C_AUTH_SHOWPROT TRUE This gives the entire list of news groups even if the user does not 'currently' have access to the specified groups. This allows the user to then select a group and be prompted for the correct user/password. (This works well for NS4)
Modified authentication responses to attempt to trick both NS3 and NS4 into working with protected news groups, this appears to work as well as is possible (given the bugs in NS3), NS3 requires that you shut down netscape (both the news reader and the browser) before connecting to a second protected news group (because it refuses to prompt for a second user/password)
Fixed period of time during expire process during when some items would not be readable.
Fixed slow database leak.
Fixed database leak on dmulti systems
Made spam rejection silent for local posts and non descriptive for ihave feeds. Use in dnews.conf spam_debug true to make the rejections noisey again while testing spam rules.
4.5g3
Added check for approved header with moderated groups.
4.5g2
Fixed live feeds.
4.5f6
Fixed bug which could under 'rare' conditions cause the active file to shrink. (e.g. killing dnews in the middle of it's startup)
4.5f4
Removed dependence on 'df' for most versions of unix
Fixed dmulti problem with restart leaving zombies
4.5f3
Fixed problem with live feeds occasionally sending bad headers.
Added config paramter cache_ongroup true which if set will allow Agent to cache an empty group that was previously cached.
Fixed problem with active.dat getting control characters in group names, this could cause 'IE' to lock up while downloading groups.
4.5f
Fixed bug with sucking list of news groups introduced in 4.5e
4.5e
bind_in now works on unix
suck_uucp now stops if disk space runs out.
Fixed program feeds on unix so they restart correctly on failure.
Added logging for live feed debugging.
4.5d8
Fixed bug with header caching not working
Fixed bug with sort_lastmbmade newgroup control messages only email if not already done
4.5d4
Fixed bug with dmulti and local posts over 100K intermittently failing.
Changed behaviour to allow Netscape 4 to work with some news groups password protected. (removed, will be re added when fixed)
Changed main loop to decrease cpu use.
Added support for a distrib.conf file, this should be the same format as distrib.pat as used by INN.
Fixed problem with tellnews newgroup causing readers to hang when updating the list of news groups IF the moderator flag was left off the command.
4.5d3
Changed update syntax from, updaten, to update n e.g. tellnews update 6 To queue an update from nntp_suck6
Fixed bug with , reject < 3000, reject > 3000 (reversed logic and allowed non quoted strings)
4.5d2
Added cache so multiple incoming streaming live feeds will not allow articles to come in twice. Added debugging for history (hist_debug true)
If (uucp_simple true) is set in dnews.conf then the rnews counts are ignored, and the messages are read in based on the 'rnews headers' alone. Also if the rnews count is '0' then this format is assumed.
RAS support fixed, it now works correctly and phone book entries can be used.
tellnews update_clear now clears pending tellnews commands as well
Fixed bug with some missing items in groups caused by cancels.
Fixed bug with diskuse drifting if 'xover_moved' is true.
On unix added two dnews.conf settings:
log_system true # Log to system log daemon log_files false # (stop logging to dnews log file)
Added 'content_type' config parameter to dnewsweb.ini
Fixed slow database leak, use the command: tellnews remove_lost to remove the 'lost' messages from your database, this may free a significant amount of storage.
Fixed problem with IEX4 crashing when reading from dnews.
Patched output from list overview.fmt which should fix a problem with some versions of NewsWatcher
Added dnews.conf setting suck_percent 90 for sucking only old stuff, this makes dnews suck only 90% of items from a group.
Added sucking feeds 5-16. Sucking feeds 4-16 cannot overlap, e.g. you cannot suck rec.humor from sucking feed 6 and 8 but you can suck rec.humor from suck2 and suck3. (clear as mud)
Improved performance at taking a full feed
Improved performance of taking cancel messages by a large factor
Modified the index behaviour so that it is partially sorted every hour instead of only once a day. This improves reader performance.
Added standard password $lookup$ support for VMS, BSDI, FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris.
Added external authentication support for Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris. See the file libauth.c for details.
Experimental spam protection system. The following settings can be added to dnews.conf,
you can just set 'spam_stop true' or you can fiddle with all the settings and thus tune
your system differently to other peoples which may be an advantage as 'spammers' will try
and get past some of these rules.
Setting | Default | Description |
spam_stop | false | Enables spam protection |
spam_test | false | Enables spam protection but doesn't reject anything, just logs what it would do. |
spam_keepn | 5 | Number of rejected items to store in spam_n.tmp files (for reviewing) |
spam_dup_total | 5000 | Number of items to 'remember' in our history of 'duplicate' bodies. Uses about 30 bytes per entry. |
spam_dup_hits | 6 | Number of duplicate bodies (not cross posted) to allow |
spam_dup_cross | 400 | Number of duplicate bodies counting cross posts to allow |
spam_from_hits | 60 | Number of messages from any single user per hour |
spam_from_cross | 1000 | Number of messages counting cross posts from any single user per hour |
spam_from_total | 5000 | Number of users to keep tabs on in our history of duplicate users, uses about 100 bytes per user. |
spam_host | false | Use 'nntp-posting-host' instead of 'from' for the above 3 rules. |
In addition to fiddling with all the above settings, you can create a file in the WORKAREA as defined by dnews.conf and add lines to the file, any message containing text matching the lines in the file will be rejected.
The idea is to use things that common spammers place in the body of their messages, this allows you to stop anyone who manages to get past the automatic mechanisms above.
e.g. c:\dnews\spool\filter.dat
sex 1-800-3333-4343 1-800-SEXYPHONE www.sex. Make money fast |
Here is a sample filter.dat file which has kindly been donated by one of our customers, this will stop about 98% of known spammers at the cost of killing about one in a thousand real news messages.
DNEWS uses a 'super' efficient mechanism to test matches in this file so that you can have several hundred lines in the file without performance sufferring, each line must be at least 3 characters long. The matching is not case sensitive and is only in the 'body' and 'subject' of the message.
Fixed slow database leak which required a 'tellnews remove_lost' to periodically recover lost space.
Fixed crashing bug related to 'tellnews matchgroups' command
Fixed erroneous warning about access.conf giving world access to your server.
Fixed bug that could 'occasionally' show 'no such article' when the item really did exist.
Fixed fault with dnewsmanager not working if the server is run on a port other than 119
Fixed problem with dnews/cyclone/diablo, where messages containing nul characters caused the feed to stop. Also included are settings to prevent incoming feeds jaming up under any conditions.
ADded dnews.conf setting nidxbf. The default is 6000, this must be big enough to handle all new items that arrive during a resort_index. Added some timeout code to fix feeds that block due to faulty messages.
Made live_stream true the default.
Added code to fix unsynchronized live feeds.
Fixed problem with 'downloading' message not appearing if (cache_onxover true) is set.
Fixed newgroup command so it updates active.names correctly
If you use '$lookup$" and you have case sensitive passwords then you should add to dnews.conf auth_case true and you must change each line in access.conf to lower case unless you have dnews 4.3d or later.
Fixed major bug in 4.3a (which could cause DNEWS to die)
Allowed 'postonly' to work on a dmulti system.
Replaced command tellnews trimgroups [feednumber] with tellnews matchgroups [feednumber] which will add and remove groups to match the groups on the specified feed, this is intended for use with replicating servers to keep the active files synchronized.
Changed startup to automatically check for duplicate entries in active.dat (which was the cause of trimgroups occasionally deleting groups erroneously)
Fixed file handle leak introduced in version 4.2i, symtoms include tellnews status not responding.
Improved performance of live feeds
Added 'unblocking' code to live feeds to prevent problem items from blocking an outgoing feed.
Changed default live mode to non streamed for performance reasons.
Changed default live_nchan to 2.
Changed format of .feed files, the group:num field has been extended, it now includes: group:num:bucket_id:offset:len This allows direct database reads, but ONLY if the data is read before the next expire.
Added dnews.conf settings for NT/95 ras_number, ras_username, ras_password If these are set (in dnews.conf) then dnews will auto dial, fetch news and then hang up on its own.
Added tellnews command to detect when is a good time to 'hangup' a modem. tellnews isbusy, this command returns a different error status if DNEWS is fetching news still.
Fixed bugs in DMULTI relating to slaves not detecting the index switch
Fixed bugs in DMULTI related to 'recent' news not being visible
Two extra settings in dnewsweb.ini:
wrap_post 60 wrap_text 60
wrap_post: wraps new posts, wrap_text: wraps the text in existing messages when they are displayed.
Added debug option for dnews.conf, debug_mem true
If set dnews will check all malloc'ed data every 20 seconds for over-writes and under-writes. (only used for debugging purposes, not intended for normal use)
Added default for suck_maxold to prevent news groups with big gaps from confusing the sucking logic.
Increased timeout on failed posts from a slave to a master dnews process from 30 seconds to 5 minutes.
Fixed possible bug in history indexes. Minor improvement to history indexes, and speeded up startup.
Speeded up a startup between a rebuild_index and an expire (which used to be very very slow)
Fixed bug introduced in 4.2r :-)
Memory handling changed to reduce usage, changes include:
Corrected number of items shown in non cached groups
Minor changes for y2k problems with newnews/newgroups commands
Extended flexibility of acceptable dates.(Y2K issues)
Added dnews.conf setting reject_addhist true which if enabled, adds rejected items to the history database, this can reduce bandwidth wastage if you have more than one full feed coming in.
Added tellnews command: tellnews killone group.name itemnumber This is like killitem, but does not remove crossposts.
Added dnews.conf settings: post_rec true (logs pertinent information about each post)
Fixed stip_auth
Improved checkgroups so it will deal with mis formatted messages better.
Corrected posting mechanism on dmulti so that if it fails the user will be informed immediately.
Removed deletion of items that can't be accessed.
Updates file for 4.2m and older
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