Artemis FidoNet Gateway

David H. Brummel

For the record, Fidonet no longer has a common gateway to the Internet. Too many people were abusing it by subscribing to mail lists. It is now up to each region, net, or even individual board to provide such a gateway. (I had my gateway up and running before this happened, though, primarily for reasons of convenience and vanity.)

So, here's how my setup works.

The key ingredients, beyond those required for the BBS itself, are:

• a UUCP account,
• a UUCICO package
• a UUCP-to-Fido gateway package

UUCP = Unix-to-Unix Copy Protocol; a protocol used to copy files between Unix machines. Some Internet Providers offer such accounts, but most don't. The UUCICO package is software that will execute UUCP between a PC and a Unix host over a modem connection. The UUCP-to-Fido gateway is software that converts files from UUCP format to one recognized by the Fido BBS software.

So, at predefined times during the day, my BBS polls my UUCP provider to exchange mail and newsgroup packets as follows:

• BBS calls provider with UUCICO program.
• UUCICO handles logon protocol to establish a UUCP session.
• UUCICO uploads mail and newgroup packets from BBS users.
• UUCICO downloads mail and newsgroup packets from Internet.
• UUCICO logs off and closes connection.
• Gateway program reads through UUCP files downloaded by UUCICO and translates the headers from Internet ro Fidonet format. One of the Gateway's configuration files tells it how to map newsgroups to Fido echoes. Mail is targeted to the Fido Netmail area.
• Normal Fido BBS processing now ensues. My Fido mail tosser reads the packets converted by the Gateway and tosses them into the appropriate echoes on the BBS and reworks the message links.

Part of the "magic" involved in the Gateway's operation is my having assigned it a fake Fido address and having told the Fido tosser that mail and echoes destined for the Internet should be sent to that fake address. This serves to separate the Internet-bound items from the normal Fido items.

Whenever a user posts to one of the echoes that is gated to the Internet, the following happens:

• Normal Fido processing: the Fido tosser tosses the posts to the area that the Fido mailer has set up for traffic to the fake address.
• The Gateway is run to convert the packets for the fake Fido address into UUCP packets.
• The next time the BBS run the UUCICO, the waiting files are uploaded to the UUCP provider.

Mail lists follow the same basic scheme. One of the Gateway's configuration files defines how to map mail to echoes: Incoming mail addressed to X goes to echo Y; posts in echo Y are mailed to Z. I choose a unique X for each mail list I want to gate and subscribe to the mail list using that username. Z is the same address any "normal" subscriber would use: for a public mail list, the mail list "machine"; for a private mail list, the moderator. It also helps that I have my own domain registered and DNS for it provided by my UUCP provider (but I don't think this is absolutely necessary).

And, of course, once I have a mail list or newsgroup gated into a Fido echo, I can use the standard Fido protocols to exchange the echo with other Fido BBSs. When their users post updates to their copies of the echo, those posts would be sent to my BBS and from there gated out to the Internet.

I don't know how RIME works, but I would bet the major difference between RIME and Fido is the scheme for addressing nodes in the net. So, a similar process should work for RIME boards, provided someone has written a RIME-compatible gateway package.

A side bonus with the particular gateway package I'm using is that it includes utilities that allow me to host a mail list from the BBS. Users send subscribe messages to a listserv address on my domain and then their posts are echoed to the other subscribers and are available on the BBS for dial-up callers. I'm hosting a couple of mail lists for the local Artemis chapter.