[NNTP] Article Numbers Becoming Invalid (RFC 3977)

[Julien ÉLIE]

Hi Clive,

>> One interesting thing I have just discovered is that the NNTP
>> reference implementation returns the FIRST VALID ARTICLE when
>> ARTICLE/BODY/HEAD/STAT is sent!
>
> This is absolutely and clearly wrong.

I see in the changelog of INN 2.4.0:

    Several other, more minor protocol issues have been fixed:  connections
    rejected due to the connection rate limiting in innd receive 400 replies
    instead of 504 or 505, and ARTICLE without an argument will always either
    retrieve the current article or return a 423 error, never advance the
    current article number to the next valid article.

So it happens that NNTP was originally designed to work that way:
when the current article pointer points to an article that is no longer
available, it advances to the next valid article in the group.

It is amusing.  I do not know how many news servers (if any) still do that.

-- 
Julien ÉLIE

« Boire du café empêche de dormir. Par contre, dormir empêche
  de boire du café. » (Philippe Geluck)