[ietf-nntp] Re: AUTHINFO/SASL responses

[Ken Murchison]

Russ Allbery wrote:

> Ken Murchison <ken at oceana.com> writes:
> 
>>Russ Allbery wrote:
> 
> 
>>>481 would indicate a temporary failure with authentication, implying
>>>that the client should try the same username and password again.  Is
>>>that what you mean?  Under what circumstances would one use that?
> 
> 
>>If the user typed his/her password incorrectly.
> 
> 
> That's a permanent failure.  Any retry with that same password is just
> going to fail again.  The user will have to authenticate using different
> credentials (the correct password) to be successful.
> 
> 
>>If the server didn't have the mechanism-specific credentials for the
>>user.
> 
> 
> Wouldn't that normally be a permanent failure as well (at least for that
> session)?

Yeah, you're right.  I was stuck thinking about the whole "close the 
connection" thing rather than permanent vs. temporary failure.  FWIW, 
SMTP AUTH uses a 5xx code (permanent) for a failed authentication.

So I guess we're back to 502 or a new 581 for failed auth.

-- 
Kenneth Murchison     Oceana Matrix Ltd.
Software Engineer     21 Princeton Place
716-662-8973 x26      Orchard Park, NY 14127
--PGP Public Key--    http://www.oceana.com/~ken/ksm.pgp