ietf-nntp Response from ARTICLE

Brian Kantor brian at karoshi.ucsd.edu
Mon Oct 5 04:41:54 PDT 1998


It is a fine distinction, but the division of responses between 4xx and
5xx in RFC977 perhaps can be clarified by this:

4xx responses indicate a failure to perform a requested action for reasons
that will resolve themselves without interaction of the client.  That is,
things such as low disk space, too heavy a system load, etc., which are
transient and do not result directly from the command attempted.  I.e.,
you are welcome to keep retrying the command, at some reasonable interval,
until it succeeds.

5xx responses, on the other paw, indicate that the command will not succeed
until something external to the running news system changes - you get a
new password, the sysadmin adds your client to the security list, the
command syntax is corrected, etc.

Authorization might deserve its own series of responses.
	- Brian




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