XBBX spawning to news

[Bob Palowoda]

In article <43 at .UUCP>, root at .UUCP (Larry Snyder) writes:
> I am running Sandy's latest XBBS and am allowing my users (registered)
> access to usenet.  Is there any way in the configuration to allow all
> users access to reading usenet messages but to lock them out of posting
> to replying?

  Not directly, what I did is modified the source when it enters the
u(S)net menu it checks for a security level. From there is a spawns
two different versions of readnews or vnews, one that has all the
shell access and replies stripped out if the security level is not
high enough. Bumping up the security level allows the users to access
the orig rnews and vnews along with postnews. If you interested I can
send you the source changes.

> 
> Also - is there a way to pass the users name into postnews so the
> message originates from the user on the bbs rather than from bbs?

   This would be an excellent imporvement. I been trying to figure out
a way to do this myself. What would be nice is if the xbbs software would
create a single user profile in the /bbsfiles/usenet/Firstname/Lastname
directory. In there it would have there .sig file, term profile, editor
type, .newsrc etc. Also allowing users to edit the files in this directory.
Somehow there would have to be a translation between the bbs users full
name to a psudo unix account name the mailer can handle. I don't really
want to create a login name everytime a new users logs in. How does 
ufgate for fidonet handle this? 
 

Another option (which would have to be built into the news reader, is
the ability to send the article that your reading with xmodem or zmodem
at the time the users reading it.

---Bob

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Bob Palowoda                                *Home of Fiver BBS*  login: bbs
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