Subject: [NNTP] Interesting server behaviour

From: River Tarnell <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2012 02:10:00 +0000

(Re-sending because my first message didn't appear -- sorry if this 
shows up twice.)

I just noticed the following rather unfortunate behaviour from one 
widely-used NNTP server:

% telnet 69.16.177.254 nntp
Trying 69.16.177.254...
Connected to voer-me.highwinds-media.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
200 (cyclone01.ams2) -- Welcome (Cyclone v2.4.1.749-3)
CAPABILITIES
500 Syntax Error or Unknown Command
Connection closed by foreign host.

So 6 years after RFC 3799 was published, it's still impossible in 
practice to use CAPABILITIES to discover streaming.

I don't have anything in particular to say about this, but I thought I'd 
note it for the list archives if nothing else.

-- 
        -- river.                      | Free Usenet: http://news.rt.uk.eu.org/
Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations:   | PGP: 2B9CE6F2
    Negative expectations yield negative results.
    Positive expectations yield negative results.

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From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 01 Jan 2012 18:56:27 -0800

> (Re-sending because my first message didn't appear -- sorry if this 

Hm, not sure what happened there.  I didn't see it get caught in the
moderation queue.  I'll check the list settings and make sure it wasn't
silently throwing something away.

> practice to use CAPABILITIES to discover streaming.

Yeah.  This unfortunately was something that we were somewhat expecting,
given how long the standardization process took and the gentle decline of
NNTP technology in general.  Not a lot of active work is going on in this
area, so there hasn't been a lot of incentive to refit older software and
move into compliance with the standard.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email-masked])             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

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From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 01 Jan 2012 18:59:23 -0800

> silently throwing something away.

The list was set to discard mail from non-members rather than hold it for
moderation.  Sorry about that; I'm not sure what I was originally thinking
when I set it that way.  That's now fixed.

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From: River Tarnell <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2012 05:18:30 +0000

> when I set it that way.  That's now fixed.

I'm pretty sure I subscribed before I posted.  My first message had an 
S/MIME signature though (MIME type application/x-pkcs7-signature); 
perhaps that's why the list rejected it?

I didn't get any sort of rejection message.

Regards,

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From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 01 Jan 2012 21:35:46 -0800

>> The list was set to discard mail from non-members rather than hold it
>> for moderation.  Sorry about that; I'm not sure what I was originally
>> thinking when I set it that way.  That's now fixed.

> perhaps that's why the list rejected it?

Hm.  It *shouldn't* care about that.

> I didn't get any sort of rejection message.

Yeah, non-member mail at least was set to discard.  Now it will be held
for moderation, which would result in a notification.  (I'm always leery
of that, though, and rejection, because it tends to result in a ton of
bounce-back spam.)

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From: Ade Lovett <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Jan 2012 03:09:42 -0800

> move into compliance with the standard.

Not to mention that a considerable chunk of the old guard in charge of 
large server farms have moved on to pastures new.

Mine's the coat with "Yahoo!" written on the back.  At least it will be 
in a week or so.

Cheerio.

-aDe