Xref: utzoo news.software.nntp:508 news.software.b:4246
Path: utzoo!utstat!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!mintaka!ogicse!littlei!omepd!iwarp.intel.com!news
From: merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz)
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp,news.software.b
Subject: NNTP's IHAVE gets carried away
Message-ID: <1990Feb26.192046.15663@iwarp.intel.com>
Date: 26 Feb 90 19:20:46 GMT
Sender: news@iwarp.intel.com
Reply-To: merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz)
Organization: Stonehenge; netaccess via Intel, Beaverton, Oregon, USA
Lines: 27

I just ran across a bug in the internal handshaking between
gethistent() and ihave() in the NNTP server rev 1.5.7, and wonder if
anyone has a clean fix.

If the client says "IHAVE <123@foo.com>", and <123@foo.com> has
expired or been cancelled, the NNTP server gleefully replies with
CONT_XFER (go ahead, make my day...), which the client then interprets
as a request to feed it.  But, as soon as inews gets a hold of it
(well, OK, relaynews in Cnews's case), it gets dropped as a duplicate.

This is because gethistent() has only two things to say: "yes I have
it, and it is in file /usr/spool/news/gnu/emacs/123", or "nope, don't
have it", neither of which is true for an expired/cancelled article.

I suppose a quick fix would be to have gethistent() return "/dev/null"
for an expired article, but that reeeeeeeks of a kludge.  And I don't
know what that would break.

Has anyone else fixed this?  Or am I the only one that is worrying
about hundreds of dups a day from my three NNTP feeds?

Just another confused news admin,
-- 
/=Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095 ==========\
| on contract to Intel's iWarp project, Beaverton, Oregon, USA, Sol III      |
| merlyn@iwarp.intel.com ...!any-MX-mailer-like-uunet!iwarp.intel.com!merlyn |
\=Cute Quote: "Welcome to Portland, Oregon, home of the California Raisins!"=/