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Re: telnet to newsgroup


"Andrew DeFaria" <Andrew@DeFaria.com> wrote in message 
jlklph$5tk$1@dough.gmane.org">news:jlklph$5tk$1@dough.gmane.org...
> On 4/5/2012 10:14 AM, John wrote:
>> Hello. I read on another list about how one (presumably) Linux user 
>> connects
>> to newsgroups using one of two different methods on the command line. If 
>> I
>> am not mistaken, both use telnet.  The two different commands he used to
>> illustrate them are these:
>>
>> You can use STARTTLS on the nntp port (119):
>>
>>    $ echo -e 'HELP\nQUIT\n' | nc news.gmane.org nntp | grep TLS
>>      STARTTLS
>>    $
>>
>> or you can connect to the nntps port (563):
>>
>>    $ gnutls-cli --insecure -p nntps news.gmane.org | grep 200
>>    200 news.gmane.org InterNetNews NNRP server INN 2.5.1 ready (posting 
>> ok)
>>    QUIT
>>    $
>>
>>
>> The second of these is using a program called "gnutls-cli", which is that 
>> is
>> available to cygwin. I have cygwin on my system and I tied using the 
>> command
>> at the Windows command prompt exactly like this:
>>
>> gnutls-cli --insecure -p nntps news.gmane.org | grep 200
>>
>> It did not work but I got an error back:
>>
>>   "Cannot resolve news.gmane.org:nntps: servname not supported
>> for the ai_socktype."
>>
>> What am I missing in order to make this work?  Thanks.
>
> Cygwin creates a symlink for /etc/services -> 
> /cygdrive/c/WINDOWS/system32/drivers/etc/services. I don't find an entry 
> for nttps in /etc/services, really WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\services. 
> I do find it on Linux:
>
>    Linux:grep nttps /etc/services
>    nntps           563/tcp                         # NNTP over SSL
>
>    Cygwin:grep nttps /etc/services
>    Cygwin:
>
> You could try adding the line to /etc/services or somehow specifying port 
> 563 to gnutls-cli.

Okay, I substituted 563 for nntps in the command like this:

gnutls-cli --insecure -p 563 news.gmane.org | grep 200

And it now works correctly. Exactly the same response from his linux system 
was returned in my cygwin environment:

200 news.gmane.org InterNetNews NNRP server INN 2.5.1 ready (posting ok)

Am I understanding that this is an encrypted Telnet connection to gmane's 
news server? Is the reason for the option "--insecure" needed because this 
is not an authenticated logon? Thanks.




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