Re: using Netfetch+Newshound with Motzarella server

[Posted and mailed]

John Sandford wrote on 11 Feb:

In message <4d5ea92b50.jim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Jim Nagel <jimnewsm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
all three of those applications ask for the news server's name:
Netfetch: Choices > Account > News server
Newshound: Servers, then in motzarellaGroup, "News server hostname"
MPro: Choices > Site details > Mail gateway

The mail gateway entry should not have your news provider name, it
should contain your EMAIL server address name ie pop3.ntlworld.com

you're right. it must have been very late at night with bleary eyes
when i posted that.

it seems, though, from my filling in the wrong thing, that the MPro
"Mail gateway" setting is ignored in favour of what's set in Netfetch
(Choices > Account > SMTP mail send server), which i had filled in
corectly.

that leaves just two places that ask for the news server's name:
(1) Netfetch: Choices > Account > News server
(2) Newshound: Servers, then in motzarellaGroup, "News server
hostname"

i discovered that the Netfetch setting becomes the value of the system
variable <inet$nntpserver>. if you click the Security button in the
Netfetch dialogue, you get a subdialogue where you can fill in the
username and password. inet$nntpserver then becomes
"news.motzarella.org,username,password".

i found i can put the system variable into the file
!Newshound.config.motzarellaGroup. the advantage would be that any
changes in future would have to be done only once, in Netfetch.

this worked fine for fetching news from the Motzarella server. but i
could not POST news until, at Tony's suggestion, i specified the port
as well: "news.motzarella.org:8119,username,password".
i did this in Netfetch, and *show inet$nntpserver duly showed the
system variable had taken on the new value.

but i STILL could not post news. finally i changed Newshound's
internal file (motzarellaGroup) to show the full absolute string
rather than the system variable. then i could post.

conclusions&suggestions to R-Comp:
1. the Netfetch dialogue should cover port as well as username and
password. the average user is not going to know that port 119 (which
is what Motzarella's technical note specifies) has to be entered as
":8119". i would never have got there without Tony's tip.
2. Newshound reads the system variable, but not the port part of it.
i imagine this requires a minor update.



and now that i'm able to fetch AND post news, i need to figure out how
to add an additional newsgroup to the ones i presently read. ahhh...
it's in MPro's "Group management" dialogue.

--
no need to reply my entire message back to me ;=]
Jim Nagel www.archivemag.co.uk
Abbey Press 32 Norbins Rd (01458) 83 3603
Glastonbury BA6 9JG pocket 0797 415 3861
.

Loading