Pastebot is perhaps the original web-based dropbox (pastebin) for small texts. It's a gateway from your clipboard to your favorite IRC channel, and hopefully someday your favorite chat room.
On the one hand, Pastebot is a web server that accepts "pastes" from one person to share with others. On the other hand, it is an IRC bot that announces paste URLs on appropriate channels.
Most of Pastebot's files install the usual CPAN way, either by running "install Bot::Pastebot" from the CPAN shell or CPANPLUS, or by downloading the tarball and installing it manually:
perl Makefile.PL
make install
You will also need to create a configuration file. A sample configuration file is in the examples directory, and the perldoc for pastebot describes each option.
perldoc pastebot
The installer will tell you what modules are necessary. The CPAN and CPANPLUS shells may install them automatically.
Pastebot is its own web server. It often cannot bind to port 80 because some other web server is already there. The recommended port 8888 may be hostile towards people behind firewalls.
Apache users can use ProxyPass to map a directory on their port-80 servers to a running pastebot. This feature requires Apache be built with both mod_proxy and mod_proxy_add_forward.c support, and that the add forward module come before the proxy module. For example:
./configure --enable-module=proxy \
--activate-module=src/modules/extra/mod_proxy_add_forward.c \
--enable-module=proxy_add_forward \
--permute-module=proxy:END \
...
Once Apache is built, you can create a virtual location for the proxy directory.
<Location /pastebot>
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
Deny from none
</Location>
Then you must tell Apache to forward any requests in the /pastebot/ directory through to the local Pastebot server.
ProxyPass /pastebot/ http://127.0.0.1:8888/
Now people can use your pastebot on port 80. Be sure to set your pastebot's "iname" to match your proxy's address and path. For example:
web_server
...
proxy 127.0.0.1
iname http://example.org/pastebot/
The sample configuration file and Pastebot's documentation should explain how to do this.
Here are some common errors and solutions.
The most likely cause is an unknown host name, either for a local machine or a remote IRC server. If you have multiple servers specified, the bot will try the next server in approximately one minute.
Somehow you managed to install one of pastebot's required modules without installing a module it in turn needs. You'll need to install [some module] manually and try again.
This error may show up multiple times until each required module is installed. On a positive note, it should happen a lot less since Pastebot is distributed on the CPAN.
This error looks something like:
pastes section pbtest is redefined at 68 Compilation failed in require at Server/Web.pm line 18, <MPH> line 85. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at Server/Web.pm line 18, <MPH> line 85. Compilation failed in require at ./pastebot.perl line 9, <MPH> line 85. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at ./pastebot.perl line 9, <MPH> line 85.
The exact filenames and line numbers will be different, of course.
The error is caused when two or more configuration sections share the same name. To fix it, update your pastebot's configuration to use different names for each section, even if they are different types. For example:
web_server
name poenet
...
irc
name efnet
...
pastes
name neitherpoenetnorefnet
...
The project accepts feature requests and bug reports through its CPAN bug queue: https://rt.cpan.org/Dist/Display.html?Queue=Bot-Pastebot
Patches are welcome. Pastebot's repository is hosted publicly at http://github.com/~rcaputo/bot-pastebot and http://gitorious.org/bot-pastebot
The latest documentation is readable online: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Bot-Pastebot/
A fine bunch of folks occasionally chat about pastebot in irc://irc.perl.org/poe
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