How to ... feed newsgroups to/from other news servers?

Required and recommended settings

To exchange news messages between newsservers, you have to make sure that the following settings are properly set:

• "FQDN for Message-IDs" has to be set
   
• "Add header: Message-ID" has to be activated"

To turn off Hamsters ability to also act like a newsreader (i. e. pulling groups from or posting articles to other news servers), the following settings are recommended:

• "Store posted articles in local groups immediately" should be set
   
• "Group is feeded, don't propagate POST" should be activated for all feeded groups
   

Feed from Hamster to other servers

Feeding groups to other servers requires script command HamNewsJobsFeed, e. g.:

HamNewsJobsFeed( "server.one.example", "^hamster\..*" )
HamNewsJobsFeed( "server.one.example", "^de\..*" )
HamNewsJobsFeed( "server.two.example", "^hamster\.en\..*" )
HamNewsJobsStart

You can start such a script either manually when needed (e. g. to update a backup Hamster), periodically with the scheduler (recommended) or when an appropriate action takes place.

Notes:

• All servers used with HamNewsJobsFeed have to be configured under "Remote Server Settings".
   
  If you configure username and password for such a server, Hamster will send an appropriate AUTHINFO before sending any other commands.
   
• Currently only IHAVE is used to send messages.
   
• When executing HamNewsJobsFeed command, Hamster first checks if new messages are available for the given server. If no new messages are available, no job is added to internal job list and no transfer task is started.
   
• Messages with a "Distribution: local" header are not feeded (e. g. Hamster's internal postings like statistics and error reports as well as any imported messages). Other reasons include missing "Path:" header or if recipient server is already listed in "Path:" header.
   
• It is recommended to have "Log: Details" enabled, at least while testing. This will also log the reason why a message was not sent, e. g. because of above mentioned "Distribution: local".
   
  If you want information for a specific message, just look for its "Message-ID:" in the log file, all feed related entries are marked with it.
   

Feed from other servers to Hamster

Feeding messages to Hamster requires an account with an activated option "User may use feed commands (IHAVE et. al.)".

If sending server supports it, it is strongly recommended to use authentication, i. e. assign a password for the account.

Otherwise you can configure the account as "auto-login" by assigning it the password "*" (a single star without the quotes). To not open your server for everyone this way, be sure to have very strict settings in file "IP Access", that is also needed to assign the peer account to an incoming connection.

Notes:

• Account setting "Groups, the user may POST to" is checked for feeded messages as well. If account has no permission for all of the groups in "Newsgroups:" header, the message is rejected.
   
• If none of the groups in "Newsgroups:" header was a known one, the message is rejected.
   
• Feeded messages can be filtered with a score file section [$FEED$].
   
• It is recommended to have "Log: Details" enabled, at least while testing. This will also log the reason why a message was not accepted.
   
  If you want information for a specific message, just look for its "Message-ID:" in the log file, all feed related entries are marked with it.

[www.elbiah.de Hamster Playground Documentation]