Products Downloads Prices Support Company
Index FAQ Configs Feeds In Feeds Out Feeds Out  

Signctrl Manual

This manual contains information on running signctrl.exe independantly from DControl.

This is not supported by NetWin, as signctrl.exe was designed to be executed from within DControl.

If you are not completely conversant with PGP, NNTP and control messages, it is recommended that you use DControl as it is an interactive tool.


Running signctrl

This program signs a control message, intended for a news server, with the sender specified in its INI file (signctrl.ini). Useage is:

signctrl.exe inputfile outputfile

Where inputfile is the file containing a plaintext message to sign, and output is the file in which to save the signed message. The parameters passed to PGP by signctrl.exe are stored in signctrl.ini:

# pathname of pgp executable
pgp_path c:\pgp\pgp.exe

# pgp userid of sender
sender UserID

Signctrl was intended to be used as one of two programs comprising an interactive utility, DControl. If you wish to use Signctrl independantly, you need to follow the format of this sample messsage:

Path: bounce-back
From: sender@domain.com
Sender: sender@domain.com
Newsgroups: alt.config
Subject: cmsg newgroup alt.bork.bork.bork moderated
Control: newgroup alt.bork.bork.bork moderated
Approved: approver@domain.com
Message-ID: <868485430.2655@domain.com>
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 1997 21:57:10 GMT


alt.bork.bork.bork is a moderated newsgroup

Group submission address: moderator@domain.com
Moderator contact address: contact@domain.com

For your newsgroups file:
alt.bork.bork.bork     Explanatory postings for new users. (Moderated)

If you don't follow the above format exactly, bad things will happen. Ideally Signctrl will abort cleanly when it realises it doesn't have a valid message, but it could crash, or generate a corrupt message which will hopefully be rejected by the server.

Also, Signctrl does not modify the Message_ID field in any way. DControl generates a unique Message_ID. If you are using Signctrl independantly, generation of a unique Message_ID is your responsibility. A recommended method of generation is to use time in seconds since 1970, PID of the current process, and local host:

Message-ID: <868485430.2655@isc.org>
To Top