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On 10/24/21 9:39 AM, bje@ripco.com wrote:
> 711 Spooky Mart <711@spooky.mart> wrote:
>> Hello NNTP gurus. I want to host a binary local newsgroup. I want to
>> discourage spammers from trying to push up irrelevant big binaries,
>> vids, pr0n, etc. The purpose of the binary group is for uploading PDF
>> and ZIP/XZ/7Z files < 4MB.
>
> Give up now, you don't know what you are doing and obivously don't know INN
> and how the nntp protocol works.

Oh, really? I found a friend like Job had. I will not denounce my own
integrity in this matter.

> You don't UPLOAD to an INN server, people use an NNTP client to publish
> articles. These articles come from a newsreader.

Yes, Captain Obvious! How do you think I posted the opening to this thread?

The NNTP client formats the attachment binaries in MIME format with a
mime boundary marker, usually as base64, which comes after the ASCII or
UTF-8 headers and text body of the NNTP formatted article. Then the
client uploads the formatted message with the POST command and a final
line with a period and linefeed. The reader downloads the message, grabs
the MIME data, and converts attachments back into binary files. I do
this from the command line without a news reader using openssl s_client
requests. Here's an example.

$ openssl s_client -ign_eof -connect news.aioe.org:563

I can read articles this way, and cat text files up with header data to
post new articles, which is how this response to you is posted. You can
examine the headers to see how I formatted it and added an attachment.

This is what I meant by 'uploading' a PDF file. People 'upload' split
binaries to paid Usenet providers, and 'download' them with NZB Get or
similar clients. I've known about this for over two decades. I just
never bothered to run my own news server, since I never saw the need of
it until now, for this documentation project. I already know how to set
up INN. I just don't know how to configure it for throttling and
stripping of MIME data for a outgoing feed.

I can attach PostScript since it allows pure text output, but fonts and
MathJax cannot be embedded to ensure proper document rendering on other
machines.

I am very comfortable with manually querying NNTP servers with openssl
s_client. The knowledge I am lacking here is INN configuration knowledge
to do the things outlined in the enumerated points.

> I kind of find it hard to beleive whatever you are trying to accomplish has
> an audience. Who are these pdf's coming from? Is this something common now?

YGBSM. Every graphical newsreader I know of has a 'Attachment' button
with a paperclip in the composer.

> Are they going to just know about this service or are you providing a link
> to the server? Do they know they have to have a newsreader?

Of course they are going to know about the service. It's a workgroup
setup for a documentation project. PDF is necessary because of LATEX
maths, and math fonts must be embedded for proper document formatting. I
want the text parts of the feed available to the big world since others
might benefit from it or contribute useful information in the comment
threads, even if they are not drafting the documents.

> Binary articles are not normally part of the scene. You can't just UPLOAD a
> binary file to a server without converting it to plain text. Do a search for
> uuencode/uudecode or txt2bin/bin2txt. Some newsreaders can do this on the
> fly, small ones anyway. Larger ones need to be broken into several parts.

I already know this. Most NNTP servers appear to reject base64 / binary,
and don't even carry binary groups. I have tested a few servers before
posting this query thread, and they all rejected the test messages
because they are configured to reject binaries. The servers scan the base64
encoding for binary content, or something to that effect.

> Are your users aware of this?
>
> I think you are better off looking at setting up an ftp server with the
> anonymous stuff turned on. Bandwidth control would probably be easier using
> a Pi with some kind of firewall software on it.

No, I am better off with a threaded newsgroup since building the
documentation will be a collaborative effort and switching over to FTP
for every draft exchange is too much friction. Usenet threading is the
simplest and most productive way to proceed. I already know my own work
domain very well, and I am just trying to set up a tool chain to
eliminate friction, and make the work and the process publicly
available. Isn't this the original intent behind distributed big world
networks?

>> [1] Firstly I want to throttle all client connections to max 64kB/s.
>
> Why? Using your moms internet from your room?

I moved out of my mother's house on my 18th birthday over 3 decades ago.
I moved 2000 miles away from my mother. Today I live about 1200 miles
from mom. Her house didn't have a basement, either, so don't bother
going there.

Just because I didn't come in here with a typical nerd attitude of
superior rationale wearing my genius attitude on my shirt sleeve, it
does not follow that I am some dumb kid in his mom's basement. My
questions are cogent, well-worded questions and show the spirit of
ingenuity and of trying to solve a problem to achieve a good workflow
for a project for which I am devoting unpaid time, to benefit other
people's research, when I could be out right now making extra money.

If my objectives can't be achieved via the INN software, that is one
thing. But it is not a cause to insult and belittle me.

>> Please propose your thoughts on how to proceed with these strange
>> requirements.
>
> Like I said, give up now and do more research.

No, I am not giving up. My questions here _are_ research. Research
consists of finding answers to questions until the answers satisfy
requirements or solve a problem, or generate new, interesting problems
to research.

--
──┏━━━━┓──┏━━┓───┏━━┓── ┌────────────────────────┐ ┌────────┐
──┗━━┓─┃──┗┓─┃───┗┓─┃── │ Spooky Mart [chan] 711 │ │ always │
─────┃─┃──┏┛─┗┓──┏┛─┗┓─ │ https://bitmessage.org │ │ open │
─────┗━┛──┗━━━┛──┗━━━┛─ └────────────────────────┘ └────────┘

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| _ | |_| |\ V V / | |_| || | _ | _ |/ ___ \ |___| . \| |___| _ <
|_| |_|\___/ \_/\_/ |____/ |_| ( ) |_| |_/_/ \_\____|_|\_\_____|_| \_\
|/

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__ __ ___ _ _ __ _ ____ ___ ____ ____
| \/ |_ _| | | |/ / / \ | _ \_ _/ ___| / __ \
| |\/| || || | | ' / / _ \ | |_) | | | _ / / _` |
| | | || || |___| . \ / ___ \ | __/| | |_| | | | (_| |
|_| |_|___|_____|_|\_\ /_/ \_\ |_| |___\____| \ \__,_|
\____/
_____ _ _ ____ ____ ___ ___ _ ____ __ __ __ _ ____ _____
|___ / / | / ___|| _ \ / _ \ / _ \| |/ /\ \ / / | \/ | / \ | _ \_ _|
/ /| | | \___ \| |_) | | | | | | | ' / \ V / | |\/| | / _ \ | |_) || |
/ / | | | ___) | __/| |_| | |_| | . \ | | | | | |/ ___ \| _ < | |
/_/ |_|_| |____/|_| \___/ \___/|_|\_\ |_| |_| |_/_/ \_\_| \_\|_|

+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| [chan] 711 |
| https://bitmessage.org |
| __ |
| ____ ________ ,',.`. |
| \`''-.`-._..--...-''' ```--':_ ) ) |
| `-.._` ' -.. ' / |
| ,'`..__..'' -. _ `._ \ |
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| /,_,.;::. `. \ / ,',',_(:::. |
| `. `. ,' ;' |
| /,_,'::. `-'`':SSt:. |
| |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+

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|_ _|_ _( ) ___| / ___| / _ \ / _ \ \ / / ____| ____|_ _| |
| | | | |/\___ \ \___ \| | | | | | \ \ /\ / /| _| | _| | | | |
| | | | ___) | ___) | |_| | |_| |\ V V / | |___| |___ | | |_|
|___| |_| |____/ |____/ \___/ \___/ \_/\_/ |_____|_____| |_| (_)

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