mungeids

Programmatically munges the message IDs in the Message-ID and References headers by adding a slash-separated list of newsgroups to which the article is going to be posted, followed by a slash, to the beginning of them. We also strip off any prefix that looks like a prefix we'd generate (any number of strings that could be a newsgroup name, separated by slashes) to prevent threads with replies from readers of multiple mungeid'd groups from generating constantly-growing message IDs and to hopefully still get threading right. For the purposes of this check, we assume newsgroup names will contain at least one period; this module may not work correctly for newsgroup names that do not.

The purpose of this is for use with mailing list to newsgroup gateways. Since messages to multiple mailing lists may all have the same message ID, and since the same mailing list may be gated to Usenet in multiple places, the message IDs of incoming mailing list messages need to be munged in some fashion before being passed on to Usenet. Ideally, however, threading should be preserved, and replies to mailing list messages from other people on the mailing list won't refer to the munged message ID. This module therefore applies the same munge to all of the message IDs in the References header as well, in the hope of maintaining threading and still getting message ID uniqueness.

If the message doesn't already have a Message-ID header, this module will generate one.

Since an accurate Newsgroups header is needed to correctly munge the IDs, this module should run after any modules responsible for generating that. It also needs the final Message-ID and References header, so it should run after the mailtonews module since that module may promote message IDs from In-Reply-To into References and discard existing Message-ID headers.

This module takes one optional configuration directive:

mungeids REGEX [REGEX ...]

REGEX is a regex matching newsgroups which should be used to make up the prefix that we'll be adding to message IDs. If this configuration directive is supplied, then only newsgroups matching one of the supplied regexes will be used to construct the prefix. By default, all newsgroups in the Newsgroups header will be used in the prefix.

mungeids takes no arguments and cannot fail.