ietf-nntp Virtual hosts in NNTP servers

[Joao Prado Maia]

On Wed, 26 Feb 2003, Ken Murchison wrote:

> Nobody is telling you that you HAVE to authenticate (ie, send AUTHINFO
> PASS).  Just use the information provided by the USER command to setup
> the server for the given domain.  You can do this with ACLs, chroot(),
> fork() a process, I don't care.  The whole point is that this command
> already exists and can provide you with the info that you need.
> 

Right, but again, AUTHINFO is used in authentication. Like it or not, I 
will have to tell my users to change their little Outlook Express settings 
and put 'anonymous at domain.com' in the username field.

They will obviously ask the reason for them needing to enter an 
'anonymous' type user and mark 'My server requires authentication' in 
something that doesn't really require authentication - that's the 
definition of anonymous access, after all.

Is it just me or does this smell too much like a hack ? IMHO AUTHINFO's 
primary purpose is to provide authentication to NNTP users, and it doesn't 
seem proper to "extend" the functionality to make something like this 
work.

I totally understand your suggestion, and I agree that it could work. 
However, I don't think it is the best technical solution for this specific 
need.

Cheers,
Joao