HOW-TO: slrn and orbitalfox.eu

JuvenalUrbino

snews://orbitalfox.eu is a newborn NNTPS community (whose I happen to be a early subscriber), for the moment limited to of ~15 users (count keeps growing), created and hosted by Mastodon user @orbifx@mstdn.io; its primary goal is enjoying productive, civil, interesting, spam/flame/meme -free debate, with a bit o retro newsgroups nostalgia; there's around ~10 newsgroups available across a single orbitalfox* hier, modelled after the classical Usenet's hierarchy structure (*comp,*sci..). It's a small, kicking Usenet revival, true to the original positive NNTP netiquette. See https://notes.orbitalfox.eu/orbitalfox-news-server.html for more info.
For anybody slightly interested/curious, I recommend giving it a try.

Below, a how-to to setup slrn NNTP client for orbitalfox.eu. This belongs, tangentially, to NetBSD desktop tips series

####################

~/.slrnrc

####################

%----------------------------------------------
% General account Settings
%----------------------------------------------
% -- slang --

set realname "$YOUR_NAME"
set username "$USERID"
set hostname "$YOUR_MAIL_PROVIDER"
set replyto "$NICKNAME <YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS>"

%----------------------------------------------
% As server requires authentication,
% add a nnrpaccess line for it
%----------------------------------------------
nnrpaccess "snews://orbitalfox.eu" "$USERID" "$PASSWORD"

%----------------------------------------------
% server-specific newsrc file
%----------------------------------------------
server "snews://orbitalfox.eu" ".newsrc_orbitalfox"

%-----------------------------------------------
% Force server to verify your authentication data
%-----------------------------------------------
set force_authentication 1

%-----------------------------------------------
% Read messages online &
% Post Directly to the server
%-----------------------------------------------
set server_object "nntp"
set post_object "nntp"

%-----------------------------------------------
% Leave Message-ID generation to your server if
% your system does not have a porperly qualified,
% unique hostname
%-----------------------------------------------
set generate_message_id 0

%-----------------------------------------------
% Sort news by date with most recent first
%-----------------------------------------------
set new_subject_breaks_threads 8

%-----------------------------------------------
% Use msmtp instead of default sendmail as MTA
% Note: change msmtp path depending on system's
% packages install PREFIX
%-----------------------------------------------
set sendmail_command "/usr/pkg/bin/msmtp -t"

%-----------------------------------------------
% signature file
%-----------------------------------------------
set signature ".signature"

%-----------------------------------------------
% This is inserted when sending email CCs
%-----------------------------------------------
set cc_post_string "[Carbon Copy of message posted to %n.]"

%-----------------------------------------------
% Encoding
%-----------------------------------------------
charset display "utf-8"
charset outgoing "utf-8"
%-----------------------------------------------
% Editor command of choice
%-----------------------------------------------
set editor_command "vi -c 'set wp=72' +%d '%s'"

%-----------------------------------------------
% Abort posting or email operation if the file
% was not modified by the editor
%-----------------------------------------------
set abort_unmodified_edits 1

%-----------------------------------------------
% WWW browser to use. Xbrowser is used when the
% $DISPLAY environment variable is set;
% non_Xbrowser otherwise
%-----------------------------------------------
set non_Xbrowser "w3m '%s'"
set Xbrowser "seamonkey '%s' &"

%-----------------------------------------------
% make temporary files for postings, followups and
% replies go in the directory specified by $TMPDIR,
% or /tmp if the former is unset
%-----------------------------------------------
set use_tmpdir 1

%-----------------------------------------------
% Directories where sent articles / email are archived.
%-----------------------------------------------
set save_posts "News/Posts"
set save_replies "News/Replies"

%-----------------------------------------------
% Directory where postponed articles are placed
%-----------------------------------------------
set postpone_directory "News/Drafts"

%-----------------------------------------------
% Directory where all other files are saved
%-----------------------------------------------
set save_directory "News/Misc"

%-----------------------------------------------
% Score file
%-----------------------------------------------
set scorefile "News/score"

%-----------------------------------------------
% File where failed posts are appended
%-----------------------------------------------
set failed_posts_file "dead.message"

%-----------------------------------------------
% Enable mouse support on xterm/rxvt-unicode
%-----------------------------------------------
set mouse 1

%-----------------------------------------------
% Draw a cursor bar similarly to tin instead of
% default slrn "->" cursor?
%-----------------------------------------------
set display_cursor_bar 1

%-----------------------------------------------
% Highlight urls and unread articles
%-----------------------------------------------
set highlight_urls 1
set highlight_unread_subjects 1

%-----------------------------------------------
% Better Color Scheme
%-----------------------------------------------

color header_number "green" "white"
color header_name "green" "white"
color normal "black" "white"
color error "red" "white"
color status "yellow" "blue"
color group "blue" "white"
color article "blue" "white"
color cursor "brightgreen" "white"
color author "magenta" "white"
color subject "black" "white"
color headers "brightcyan" "white"
color menu "yellow" "blue"
color menu_press "blue" "yellow"
color tree "red" "white"
color quotes "red" "white"
color thread_number "blue" "white"
color high_score "red" "white"
color signature "red" "white"
color description "blue" "white"
color tilde "green" "white"
color response_char "green" "white"

##########################################

~/.msmtprc

#########################################
#Below we describe 2 setups in order to cover
#both standard SMTPS and MSA+STARTTLS,
#depending on provider

#Set default values for all following accounts.
defaults
auth on
tls on
tls_trust_file /etc/openssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
logfile ~/.msmtp.log

#Fastmail
account fastmail
host smtp.fastmail.com
port 465
from $YOUR_FASTMAIL_ADDRESS
user $YOUR_FASTMAIL_ADDRESS
password $PASSWORD
tls_starttls off

#Gmail
account gmail
host smtp.gmail.com
port 587
from $YOUR_GMAIL_ADDRESS
user $YOUR_GMAIL_ADDRESS
password $PASSWORD
tls_starttls on

account default : fastmail

#IMPORTANT NOTES

#1
#'account default : ' should match the e-mail
#address specified inside ~/.slrnrc
#'account default : ' needs to be placed at
#the end of the file

#2
#change tls_trust_file path according to your
#CA root or self-signed certificate location

################################

Connecting for the first time

################################

1) Set the NNTPSERVER variable inside your shell
configuration file and source it afterwards; e.g..:
- for sh/ksh/bash/zsh:
NNTPSERVER='snews://orbitalfox.eu' && export NNTPSERVER
- for csh/tcsh:
setenv NNTPSERVER 'snews://orbitalfox.eu'

2) Create news dirs to store local file
% mkdir -pv ~/News/{Posts,Replies,Drafts,Misc}

3) Create the server-specific newsrc file
and adjust its permissions together with .slrnrc,
otherwise slrn will report insecure connection
upon startup
% touch ~/.newsrc_orbitalfox
% chmod 0600 !$
% chmod 0600 ~/.slrnrc

3) Run:
% slrn --create
at your shell prompt to start slrn and retrieve a list
of all active newsgroups from the server
4) Run:
% slrn -d
at your shell prompt to retrieve newsgroups descriptions

5) Specify your signature by touching and editing ~/.signature

6) Once connected, press 's' to subscribe to newsgroups

#################################################

OPTIONAL

Use slrnpull to mirror orbitalfox.eu

news to a local spool dir for off line reading

##################################################

1) Install slrnpull (Disclaimer: may be included slrn package already)

2) Create a suitable spool dir
% mkdir -pv ~/News/Spool/news
% touch ~/News/spool/log
3) Enable authentication
% cat > ~/News/Spool/authinfo << EOF
> $USERID
> $PASSWORD
> EOF
% chmod 0600 !$

4) Use a script to easily fetch headers/news from orbitalfox.eu
on demand (optionally set up a cron job to invoke it)
 - Create a ~/.bin/slrnpull.sh script with the following content,
   making sure to appropriately adjust slrnpull's binary path 
 
#!/bin/sh
umask 022
DIR=${HOME}/News/Spool
SERVER=snews://orbitalfox.eu"  
SLRNPULL=/usr/pkg/bin/bin/slrnpull
LOG=log
$SLRNPULL -h $SERVER -d $DIR --logfile $LOG

- Make it executable
  chmod +x ~/.bin/slrn.sh
5) Edit a ~/News/Spool/slrnpull.conf file;
the default slrnpull.conf syntax is as easy as follows:

<NEWSGROUP_NAME> <MAX_ARTICLES_TO_RETRIEVE> <NUMBER_OF_DAYS_BEFORE_EXPIRE>

For example, the defaults are:
 orbitalfox.comp    20     14
which indicates a default value of 20 articles to be
retrieved from the server and that such an article
will expire after 14 days, and shall be expunged no
sooner will the 'slrnpull --expire' command be first
executed by the user

A third boolean (0/1) value can be added; if turned on
it will enable fetching headers only, e.g., to only
fetch comp headers
 orbitalfox.comp    20     14    1
6) Now, inside ~/.slrnrc

%-------------------------------------------------
% Local spool configuration
%-------------------------------------------------
set spool_inn_root "News/Spool"
set spool_root "News/Spool/news"
set spool_nov_root "News/Spool/news"
set read_active 1
set use_slrnpull 1
set post_object "slrnpull"
set server_object "spool"

7) Execute slrnpull.sh (will pull the specified number of news
from the specified newgroups, according to slrnpull.conf);
append '--expire' option to purge the spool dir from old newss