I have successfully added a usenet (NNTP) account to Evolution, and can subscribe to newsgroups and read the text threads, but I can’t post. The account editor description for this account says “This is a provider for reading from and posting to USENET newsgroups.”
The help page Usenet news account settings just references SMTP settings.
I’m running version 3.56.2-0+deb13u1 on Debian 13.4 “trixie”.
Is there a way to post that I can’t find, or does Evolution only function as a newsgroup reader?
Hi,
Evolution can also post to the newsgroups, if the server allows it. Did
you try to reply to an existing message or post a new thread there,
please?
Bye,
Milan
Yes, I did try before posting. How to post is unclear, so I tried via the ‘New Message’ option.
I don’t want to post with my real email address (using *.invalid should work for usenet), so I tried using the ‘From Override Field’ option - only my real email address accounts are options in the ‘From’ drop down menu, not my usenet account - and got these errors:
The NNTP accounts are not like any other accounts, they do not have a
real sending capabilities. They cannot, how would you tell it to which
group you want to post the message to, when the folder does not have a
real email address?
If I recall correctly, the way you post to an NNTP group is by opening
an existing message and there you click on the link in the Newsgroups
header, which will open the message composer in a special mode,
specific to the newsgroups (in fact, posting to a newsgroup is done by
adding the message to the newsgroup folder under the hood, like if you
copy it from one folder to another, but the message needs to have some
NNTP specific header(s) too).
Nonetheless, when I’m trying it here, it does not do anything when I
click on the news:com.example.group link… darn.
Thinking of it, it won’t work in general, because the user may not have
configured that particular newsgroup. The newsgroup, aka the folder, is
required to be able to post to it. I even saw messages with multiple
newsgroups set in the headers, not only the one I read the message in.
I think a better approach will be to have the Ctrl+N open the composer
in a Post-To/newsgroup mode when the composer is created in an NNTP
folder. There might be some tricky things to do, but it will solve
posting a new message to a configured group.
I do not have a writable NNTP server, thus I cannot check the replies,
apart of seeing they are not made as NNTP when replying to a message
with a Newsgroups header.
Would you mind to file a bug in the
Issues · GNOME / evolution · GitLab , please? I did not
find any existing. If you cannot, I can create it for you, just let me
know, please.
Thanks for checking and confirming.
I don’t have a gitlab.gnome.org account, so could you please submit the bug?
eternal-september.org is a free access newgroup server, but you might want to ask before using it for testing purposes
Hi,
okay, no problem, I filled the following bug for you:
Feel free to correct me, I can be wrong in any ways.
I’ve an idea for an unrelated thing to the NNTP posting: you mentioned
you use “From Field Override”, but maybe you can add an Alias (account
Properties->Identities tab) and fill there the address you want to use,
without worrying to remember which it was the last time. Then with Send
Account Override (in folder Properties, or in Edit->Preferences->
Composer Preferences->Send Account tab, you can set the NNTP folders to
use that address by default. Finally, with the Edit->Preferences->
Plugins->Sender Validation->Configure tab you can add some checks to
ensure you won’t send messages to the group with a wrong From address.
Bye,
Milan