ietf-nntp <0> and message IDs

Russ Allbery rra at stanford.edu
Mon Apr 7 11:28:24 PDT 2003


Matthias Andree <matthias.andree at gmx.de> writes:
> "Clive D.W. Feather" <clive at demon.net> writes:

>>    moderation process). In particular, if the article contained a header
>>    with name "Message-ID", the client SHOULD ensure that the contents of
>>    this header are identical when resending it and the server SHOULD
>>    ensure that the re-sent article is recognised as a duplicate and not
>>    assigned a different message-id to the original.

>> which I think reflects the actual situation more closely.

> This is prone to duplicates. Netscape Communicator 4.7X/4.8X goof this
> up, and may return a bogus "error" condition to the user who then
> resends until success -- and the newsgroup ends up with half a dozen
> posts sent within seconds. Sure, it's an implementation defect in
> Communicator and a violation of a SHOULD; is there any reason not to
> make this a MUST?

As well as the issue mentioned in my previous message, we're documenting
existing practice, and it's not a MUST in practice.  Nor do I think it
should be.  This is a problem that Usenet has dealt with just fine up
until now; we don't need to solve it.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>



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