[ietf-nntp] Re: AUTHINFO/SASL responses

Clive D.W. Feather clive at demon.net
Tue May 18 00:25:00 PDT 2004


Russ Allbery said:
>>> 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.

I don't know about "need to", but it strikes me that it would be helpful to
the client to distinguish:

1   AUTHINFO JUNK
2   AUTHINFO SASL INVALID
3   AUTHINFO SASL VALID JunkBase64
4   AUTHINFO SASL VALID Base64notNeeded=

1 and 3 are syntax errors, but of different kinds. 2 and 4 are semantic
errors of different kinds. If you're trying to debug a problem and you get
the same error code if the far end doesn't do SASL, or does it but doesn't
have the FOO-SPECIAL module, or has the module but you've mistyped the
base68 encoding, it does not make things easy.

>>> 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.

Okay.

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather  | Work:  <clive at demon.net>   | Tel:    +44 20 8495 6138
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