ietf-nntp Discussion of draft-dfncis-netnews-admin-sys-04.txt

[Robert Schuettler]

Hello everyone,

we have put together a new "working" version of our NAS draft trying to
address the points discussed here. Please have a look and tell us what
you think:

http://nas.cis.fu-berlin.de/draft/draft-dfncis-netnews-admin-sys-05.txt

---8<-------------------------------------------------------------------

Overview - Main Changes:

[6.3.3]

The definitions for "hierarchy-name" and "newsgroup-name" were
identical, so now it is simply "name".

[6.3.3.7 LSTR]

We have removed the reference to INN wildmat patterns.  The use of "*"
as a wildcard is allowed once following the (beginning of) a hierarchy
name. This means that the only commands using patterns in this protocol
level are things like: LSTR bln* , LSTR bln.* , LSTR b*

[6.3.3.8/9 HIER and DATA]

The term "range" describing the data fields that are requested was
replaced by "selection". The specification of "selection" now follows
the list if requested hierarchies instead of preceding it.

The ABNF makes it clear now that the hierarchy or newsgroup data that
is returned by the HIER or DATA commands may have either Ctrl-PGP-Key
(hierarchies) or Mod-PGP-Key (newsgroups).

[6.3.3.10/11] GETP and GETA
 
Signing and ASCII armoring is done in reference to RFC2440.
"Additional" unnecessary information (i.e. including the PGP-version,
etc. within the NAS data block) was removed. The NAS data is simply
signed and ASCII armored. Period.

Blank lines were added between returned data blocks for added
readability.

[Timestamps]

The "timestamp" of a package marks a specific revision of the data. It
is added by the server when the package is generated and transmitted
(as a "revision number") together with the other package data. The
header line "Serial:" was defined to transmit the timestamp.
Timestamps must be increasing (i.e. only one revision of a data package
per second is possible) and must not be more than 12 hours in the
future.

[6.3.3.12 Unknown commands]

Unknown commands are no longer ignored. Instead "519 unknown command"
is returned.

[Error messages]

Return code 530 (parameter hierarchy is missing) was removed; 
510 (syntax error) with an appropriate answer text is used instead.

Command lines can be of unlimited length. Real-life implementations may
want to limit command line length, so return code "513 (line too long)"
was defined for that purpose.

[GETL command]

The GETL command was removed since it was only used to get a list of
hierarchies that a server is authoritative for. This information will
need to be configured manually for all servers in the authoritative
branch (no-one will want to automatically "believe" a server that it is
authoritative for hierarchy x or y). So this command was superfluous.

[MIME Type]

IANA Considerations section was added to register application/nasdata
as a MIME type.

---8<-------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for all the input! Robert

-- 
Robert Schuettler                     | rober at cis.fu-berlin.de
Freie Universitaet Berlin             |
Center for Information Services (CIS) | http://www.cis.fu-berlin.de