Last update 10-May-2002
MBSE BBS - Internet Gateway.
Introduction.
Since version 0.33.14 the email gateway is build into MBSE BBS and since version 0.33.15 the newsgateway is build into MBSE BBS. Since version 0.33.16 the newsgateway to UUCP nodes is added. To route email trafic to and from the internet you need a internet MTA. I stopped using sendmail for this because it gave too much trouble setting it up together with MBSE BBS. Today I use Postfix, a well documented, secure and easy to setup MTA. For the actual gate from Postfix to the BBS you I use mbmail which you need to add to the Postfix configuration.
There may be two reasons to create a gateway, one is to gate internet news and email to the Fidonet bbs users, another reason may be that you want to make echomail as news available on your system so that users can connect to your bbs with their favourite browser an get the mail and news using pop3 and nntp protocols. The setup is the same for both reasons so I will make one description for the whole setup.
Setup a newsgate node with inn.
If you only want to gate internet news to your bbs users and not want to make echomail available as news, and you have a permament internet connection then you don't need your own news server. This will also work on dialup links, once the internet connection is up, make sure that mbfido news -quiet is started as user mbse. To do this configure MBSE BBS to use the newsserver of your ISP in screen 1.15 with mbsetup. If you don't want to use the newsserver of your ISP or want to make echomail available as news for your local users you must install your own newsserver. You could use inn news for a newsserver. To connect a small feed with your ISP you could use suck.
In each echomail area you want to gate you need to fill in the newsgroup name of that area and echomail received in that area will automatic be posted to that newsgroup. The command mbfido news will check all configured newsgroups for new newsarticles. If you set it up for the first time you need to run mbfido news -learn to fill the dupes database for news with all the already existing news articles. If you skip that, you may get a lot of old articles that will be gated. Just run that command once after you have set this up. Later when you receive fresh articles the command mbfido news will only gate new arrived articles. In each mail area you can set the number of articles to get in one run. If you set this too high, mbfido will scan all headers on the newsserver for new articles. This can cost a lot of time. The best thing to do is to set this value about four times higher then the average number of messages per day in that group. If you set it too low, warning messages will appear in the logfile.
Setup a newsgate with rnews.
This is the setup if you don't want an NNTP newsserver like inn, but a simple cnews setup for UUCP links only. In mbsetup menu 1.15 you need to set this up. You need to fill in the path to the rnews program so that mbfido can post articles to cnews. MORE INFO NEEDED.
In each echomail area you want to gate you need to fill in the newsgroup name of that area and echomail received in that area will automatic be posted to that newsgroup.
Setup a newsgate via UUCP.
With this setup you don't run a local newsserver, only your bbs users and
Fidonet links can then use news. You need to install uucp
on your system. With mbsetup menu 1.15 you need to set this
up. Suppose your ISP's nodename is xs4all the you probably need to set the
UUCP path to /var/spool/uucp/xs4all and the UUCP node to
xs4all. Your own nodename will be your system's hostname without
the domain part.
In each echomail area you want to gate you need to fill in the newsgroup name of that area and echomail received in that area will automatic be posted to that newsgroup.
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