dcox@tweety.ssd.kodak.com (Don Cox (253-7121)) (12/15/90)
Forgive me for being thick as a brick, but I can't grasp the meaning
of the second field in the nntp_access file. The third field is
easy enough to understand ... a 'post' means the machine can post
articles on that news server, a 'no' means that it can't. But
the read/xfer/both/no has me somewhat confused.
According to the man pages on nntpd, it controls the read permission.
What are they talking about when, if the entry is 'read', all commands
but IHAVE and POST can be executed? Same for 'xfer' ... "matching hosts
can only execute commands used for transferring news, such as NEWNEWS,
NEWGROUPS, IHAVE, and ARTICLE with message-id parameters." Then
'both' goes on to say that the host can execute all commands but POST.
It sounds like the second field is controlling whether a host can post
articles or not; does it over-ride the third field, or what?
Thanks.
--
Don Cox
Phone (716) 253-7121 KMX (716) 253-7998
INTERNET dcox@ssd.kodak.com
When an eel bites your leg, and the pain makes you beg, that's a moray!brian@ucsd.Edu (Brian Kantor) (12/15/90)
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