[ietf-nntp] Re: AUTHINFO/SASL responses

[Russ Allbery]

Clive D W Feather <clive at demon.net> writes:

> If you look at our definitions of response codes, the 4xx/5xx split is
> *NOT* temporary v permanent. Rather, they are semantic v syntactic. A
> 4xx error indicates that the format of the command was correct but it
> didn't work for some reason. [Yes, we haven't always been consistent on
> this but that's what we've said.] So 481 is fine for this.

Oh, right, sorry.  I keep forgetting about this.  Yeah, good point.  If we
stuck consistently with that, 481 would mean "incorrect authentication
credentials" and 502 would mean "you're not allowed to authenticate
period".

Again, we have some problems with existing practice here, though.

>> Alternately, one could use 482 for this, considering 482 to be
>> generally the error code for an improper auth protocol exchange.  I
>> think that may make more sense.

> But this *is* a syntax error. This would appear to be the right place
> for a 5xx, and more specifically 58x, code. What is the problem with
> that?

Because I really don't want to invent a new response when we don't need
to.  If we can't use the standard response code for a syntax error, let's
use the existing error message for bad auth protocol exchange.

>> 282 is taken by XGTITLE.

> Should this bother us?

I wouldn't mind skipping it for this round; it's not like we're running
out of codes in the 28x space.

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