Xref: utzoo news.software.b:6406 news.newusers.questions:3491 news.software.nntp:984
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!news.cs.indiana.edu!spool2.mu.edu!sdd.hp.com!usc!ucsd!brian
From: brian@ucsd.Edu (Brian Kantor)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.newusers.questions,news.software.nntp
Subject: Re: nntp_access file
Message-ID: <24896@ucsd.Edu>
Date: 15 Dec 90 04:52:14 GMT
Article-I.D.: ucsd.24896
References: <1990Dec14.175337.6145@ssd.kodak.com>
Followup-To: news.software.b
Distribution: na
Organization: The Avant-Garde of the Now, Ltd.
Lines: 23

In the first permissions field (second field in the file), 'read' means
you can grab articles from the server, and use the various commands
that support newsreading.

'xfer' means you can do 'article' and 'ihave' commands to transfer
fully-formed articles into and out of the news system.

'both' means that you can do all of the above.

In the second permissions field, 'post' means you can submit
partially-formed articles new to your site and have them added to the
news stream.  'no' means you can't.

Underlying this is a presumption that the news service underlying the
nntp server will assign a message-id (and perhaps other header info) to
the news article when doing posting;   xfers are transfers of complete
articles already including message-ids.

And if you're using the authentication options, the upper-case version
of the permissions fields tell the server to do the authentication
dance with the client before it allows 'xfer' or 'post' things to
happen.
	- Brian