leonard@arizona.edu (07/11/90)
A discussion has lately arisen in news.software.anu-news regarding
whether an NNTP client must provide a message ID header line to the
NNTP server. (I am cross-posting to news.software.nntp hoping to
elicit some well-aged wisdom from that group.)
It appears that many popular U*x-based NNTP news readers, such as
xrn, rrn and nn, do not provide such a header line. In response,
ANU rejects the post with
NNTP Serious Error: 441 Invalid headers - Message_ID: header missing..
Yet U*x NNTP V1.5.? quite happily accepts postings from such machines.
It seems clear, in a reading of RFC's 977 and 850, that the Message-ID
header line is REQUIRED. Why, then, do the U*x news readers typically
omit it? Should this requirement be relaxed, and should the NNTP
servers create a Message-ID when they receive a posting that lacks one?
Aaron Leonard <leonard@arizona.edu>
Appendix:
The transaction between an xrn client attempting to post onto an ANU
server, looks like this:
xrn: POST
ANU: 340 Send an article to be posted
xrn: Path: thisnode!me
xrn: Newsgroups: ...
Distribution: ...
Followup-To: ...
From: ...
Reply-To: ...
Organization: ...
Subject: ...
Keywords: ...
<cr><lf><cr><lf>
<body of posting>
ANU: 441 Invalid headers - Message_ID: header missingkarl_kleinpaste@cis.ohio-state.edu (07/11/90)
leonard@arizona.edu writes:
It appears that many popular U*x-based NNTP news readers, such as
xrn, rrn and nn, do not provide such a header line. In response,
ANU rejects the post with
NNTP Serious Error: 441 Invalid headers - Message_ID: header missing..
Yet U*x NNTP V1.5.? quite happily accepts postings from such machines.
Yes, it's required, sort of. It's supposed to be provided, and many
posting interfaces (e.g., GNUS) adhere to the requirement and generate
something suitable (if grotesque; see the Message-ID that appears in
this article -- ick).
However, the action in a UNIX NNTP server on receipt of a POST command
is to read the article and then hand it blindly to "inews -h." Inews
is quite happy to add a Message-ID during posting if it's not already
there.
--karlbrian@ucsd.Edu (Brian Kantor) (07/11/90)
Ahem. The message-id is required for transfer of a posted message from one system to another. However, when feeding an article to the mini-inews, the message-id is NOT required since the posting isn't done yet - in this respect, the Pnews->mini-inews->nntpd->inews is acting over the network precisely as Pnews->inews would on a local system - inews is expected to provide the message-id if there isn't one in the message already. If you're using a news system whose inews doesn't behave in this manner, you have to use a poster that supplies the message-id itself. I suppose that Pnews wouldn't work with your inews in a non-network environment either; if that is the case, I don't see any reason for you to be surprised that it fails when the message is transported by an NNTP "POST" command instead of a pipe. - Brian
david@twg.com (David S. Herron) (07/16/90)
In article <1990Jul10.182236.1@arizona.edu> leonard@arizona.edu writes: ... > NNTP Serious Error: 441 Invalid headers - Message_ID: header missing.. ... >It seems clear, in a reading of RFC's 977 and 850, that the Message-ID >header line is REQUIRED. Why, then, do the U*x news readers typically >omit it? Should this requirement be relaxed, and should the NNTP >servers create a Message-ID when they receive a posting that lacks one? Well.. the news system (at least with standard off-the-shelf software) is responsible for creating the Message-ID on newly-posted messages. It would be reasonable for the news reader to create the Message-ID, but only if it can do it in a way which is GAURANTEED to not create any duplicates. In the ancient times when rn was written I suppose a scheme to do that hadn't been developed. In any case NNTP didn't exist in that eon, so it was much easier to just toss the article at `inews -h' and let the news system take care of it.. -- <- David Herron, an MMDF weenie, <david@twg.com> <- Formerly: David Herron -- NonResident E-Mail Hack <david@ms.uky.edu> <- <- Sign me up for one "I survived Jaka's Story" T-shirt!