[NNTP] AUTHINFO SASL initial response and command length

[Ken Murchison]

Russ Allbery wrote:

> Ken Murchison <ken at oceana.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>The current AUTHINFO drafts states:
>>"Note that the AUTHINFO SASL command is still subject to the line
>>length limitations defined in [NNTP].  If use of the initial response
>>argument would cause the AUTHINFO SASL command to exceed this length,
>>the client MUST NOT use the initial response parameter (and instead
>>proceed as defined in section 5.1 of [SASL])."
> 
> 
>>However, the base draft states:
> 
> 
>>"Command lines MUST NOT exceed 512 octets, which includes the terminating
>>CRLF pair. The arguments MUST NOT exceed 497 octets. A server MAY relax
>>these limits for commands defined in an extension."
> 
> 
>>Do we want to take advantage of this for AUTHINFO SASL?  It would
>>eliminate an extra roundtrip for those mechs which can have an extremely
>>long initial response (GSSAPI).  Besides, the client and server already
>>need to handle potentially long challenge/response in the rest of the
>>exchange.
> 
> 
> I'd actually thought we were already doing that.  Yes, I think I'm in
> favor of that.

Russ can't possibly be the only person with an opinion on this.  I 
remember quite a long thread on the command line length issue.  Perhaps 
I'll go back and re-read the thread myself.

-- 
Kenneth Murchison     Oceana Matrix Ltd.
Software Engineer     21 Princeton Place
716-662-8973 x26      Orchard Park, NY 14127
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