Postbud

Some people prefer rss-readers and some like email notifications, some even like both. This is a small rss -> email service for signing up for email notifications for new activity in a cerca forum. You might call it a small auxiliary service to cerca.

Config file

The following are the available configurations options.

name = "Percomputing forum" # name used for email-subject
forum_domain = "http://bbs.permacomputing.net" # domain of the cerca forum
description = "This is an email notifier for the permacomputing cerca forum." # description listed on the signup-webpage
footer = "This service is using postbud." # webpage footer (takes html)
path_to_db = "./dummy.db" # or an absolute path such as "/var/cerca/postbud.db"
port = 8080

[smtp]
server = "mail.examle" # domain of the smtp mail server
user = "user@mail.example" # user(name) on the server
password = "password-changeme!" # password for the user

Then call the program with the path to the config file.

postbud ./config.toml # or another path such as /var/cerca/postbud.toml

Note

The password is stored in plaintext in the config file, take this into account security-wise when setting up the service.

OCI container (docker, podman)

The included Containerfile can be used to build a container image.

podman build --tag postbud .

The image expects the config file to available at /data/postbud.toml, and exposes by default port 8080. For ease of use one can set the path to the database (path_to_db) in the config to /data/postbud.db.

podman run --rm \
  -v ./postbud.toml:/data/postbud.toml \
  -v ./postbud.db:/data/postbud.db \
  -p <port-on-host>:8080 \
  -d \
  <image-ID>

Give rss-readers a chance

While email notifications are a common feature nowadays, rss-readers are still worth giving a shot with it's ability to eliminate the middle-man, which in this case is the operator of the postbud instance you're using - with the added bonus of not having to hand out your email as well.