Hello,

Just by curiosity, In INN, the option "syntaxchecks" say :

"When laxmid is set, Message-IDs containing .. in the left part are
accepted, as well as Message-IDs with two @. Some non-compliant news
posters generate such syntactically invalid Message-IDs, especially in
binary newsgroups. The default is no-laxmid, that is to say INN strictly follows the standard regarding syntax checks."

OK.
But, what happens to an article with this kind of non-standard
Message-Id when it is propagated to another server with this option set
to "no-laxmid"?

Accepted?
Rejected?

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Hello,

I haven't forgotten the best reminder Julien has given me in the past
and witch seems to reply to my initial post :


RFC 5537:

3.1. General Principles

There are two important principles that news implementors and
administrators need to keep in mind. The first is the well-known
Internet Robustness Principle:

Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send.

As applied to Netnews, this primarily means that unwanted or non-
compliant articles SHOULD be rejected as early as possible, but once
they are in general circulation, relaying and serving agents may wish
to accept them where possible rather than lose information. Posting
agents and injecting agents SHOULD therefore be maximally strict in
their application of both this protocol and [RFC5536], and reading
agents SHOULD be robust in the presence of violations of the Netnews
article format where possible.


BUT behind my question is another one :

If such articles can be accepted, relayed and served, it seems "logical"
to me that they can also be "searched" by their malformed Message-ID. In
this particular case, it seems to me that the syntax checking of
commands accepting a Message-ID as an argument (ARTICLE, BODY, HEAD,
HDR, STAT and sometimes OVER) is too restrictive in INN, which
consistently returns a : "501 Syntax error in Message-ID".

Have I missed something in the configuration file of INN?

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Franck <my@mail.is.invalid> writes:

If such articles can be accepted, relayed and served, it seems "logical"
to me that they can also be "searched" by their malformed Message-ID. In
this particular case, it seems to me that the syntax checking of
commands accepting a Message-ID as an argument (ARTICLE, BODY, HEAD,
HDR, STAT and sometimes OVER) is too restrictive in INN, which
consistently returns a : "501 Syntax error in Message-ID".

Could you give a specific example of a message ID that you're having
trouble with? All of the calls to IsValidMessageID that I see in nnrpd
use the laxmid setting, so I think I need more details to understand the problem.

--
Russ Allbery (eagle@eyrie.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

Please post questions rather than mailing me directly.
<https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/faqs/questions.html> explains why.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Franck <my@mail.is.invalid> writes:

I have no trouble with a specific article in circulation but I'm surprised
by the replies of INN.

If I try to find an article with the laxmid format (double dot or double arobase) :

ARTICLE <double..dot@test.com>
or
ARTICLE <two.arobase@test@com>

INN reply with "501 Syntax error in Message-ID". (5xx = CLASS_ERR)

I thought I would get something like "430 no such article" (4xx - CLASS_FAIL), which would have indicated that the search was done and
that the article was not found (by Message-ID).

The first argument to ARTICLE is verified with:

mid = (ac > 1 && IsValidMessageID(av[1], true, laxmid));

so it should take the laxmid setting into account. Are you sure that your instance of INN is configured with lax message ID verification and is
recent enough that this is a supported option?

--
Russ Allbery (eagle@eyrie.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

Please post questions rather than mailing me directly.
<https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/faqs/questions.html> explains why.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Le 27/04/2022 à 20:21, Russ Allbery a écrit :

Hi Russ,

Could you give a specific example of a message ID that you're having
trouble with? All of the calls to IsValidMessageID that I see in nnrpd
use the laxmid setting, so I think I need more details to understand the problem.

I have no trouble with a specific article in circulation but I'm
surprised by the replies of INN.

If I try to find an article with the laxmid format (double dot or double arobase) :

ARTICLE <double..dot@test.com>
or
ARTICLE <two.arobase@test@com>

INN reply with "501 Syntax error in Message-ID". (5xx = CLASS_ERR)

I thought I would get something like "430 no such article" (4xx -
CLASS_FAIL), which would have indicated that the search was done and
that the article was not found (by Message-ID).

No?


If i try a search witch strictly follows the standard regarding syntax
checks, like :

ARTICLE <test@test.com>, I get a "430 no such article" from INN .


I hope I have been clearer!
Franck

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Franck <my@mail.is.invalid> writes:

If I POST a "lax-mid" article on trigofacile (set to accept them), it will
be propagated (?) but the same article cannot be searched on mixmin
because it is set to "no-laxmid"?
Right?

No, mixmin will reject the article. The setting controls both whether
articles with such malformed message IDs can be posted and whether they're accepted from peers.

If you're asking if there's a way to configure INN to accept such articles
from peers but not allow them to be posted, I don't believe that's
currently implemented.

--
Russ Allbery (eagle@eyrie.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

Please post questions rather than mailing me directly.
<https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/faqs/questions.html> explains why.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Hi Russ,

so it should take the laxmid setting into account. Are you sure that your instance of INN is configured with lax message ID verification and is
recent enough that this is a supported option?

I do not have an INN server configured for myself but I tried on
different servers running 2.7.0. I try to understand how it works
because I implemented it in my own server but with a different approach
(and perhalps I'm wrong!).


On trigofacile :

STAT <a..a@kk>
430 No such article

On mixmin :

STAT <a..a@kk>
501 Syntax error in Message-ID

I believe trigofacile is set to "laxmid" and mixmin to "no-laxmid".
Right?


If I POST a "lax-mid" article on trigofacile (set to accept them), it
will be propagated (?) but the same article cannot be searched on mixmin because it is set to "no-laxmid"?
Right?

This is where my implementation differ. A laxmid article can be seached
on every server (laxmid or not) but I'm not sure if it's correct to do so.


How do react syntaxcheck with POST and IHAVE commands in INN?

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Hi Russ,

No, mixmin will reject the article. The setting controls both whether articles with such malformed message IDs can be posted and whether they're accepted from peers.

Thanks! It reply perfectly to my initial question and explain the
different replies.
I will change my implementation of "laxmid" to act in the same way as INN.

Again, thanks a lot.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Bonjour Franck,

On trigofacile :

STAT <a..a@kk>
430 No such article

On mixmin :

STAT <a..a@kk>
501 Syntax error in Message-ID

I believe trigofacile is set to "laxmid" and mixmin to "no-laxmid".
Right?

Exactly. I've set "laxmid" on my news server (trigofacile). It is just
for testing purposes.
I bet mixmin has kept the default ("no-laxmid").

If I POST a "lax-mid" article on trigofacile (set to accept them), it
will be propagated (?) but the same article cannot be searched on mixmin because it is set to "no-laxmid"?
Right?

This is where my implementation differ. A laxmid article can be seached
on every server (laxmid or not) but I'm not sure if it's correct to do so.

There's no "right" behaviour. You can naturally implement whatever you
think is better. For instance, you may decide not to keep such articles locally but propagate them to other peers.

FYI, the rationale behind laxmid is the fact that some articles were
rejected by INN, though accepted by Diablo and other news servers:

https://lists.isc.org/pipermail/inn-workers/2016-February/thread.html
(message from Chris Knipe)

"""
bad_messageid <part1553of1353.kbi$KFf0LMR4$3&IW1wy@Yenc@domain.com>

Whilst I understand that, technically yes, the message-id is bad (I
receive mostly double @'s or double .'s), Diablo, and a lot of other
usenet servers accept these messages. They are freely available on
all of usenet, not running INN it seems...
"""

--
Julien ÉLIE

« You and I are into a relationship, Alan, and the fact that you don't
realize it doesn't give you license to be unfaithful. » (Melissa,
Boston Legal 2.23)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Hi Russ,

If you're asking if there's a way to configure INN to accept such articles from peers but not allow them to be posted, I don't believe that's
currently implemented.

Indeed, that's not currently implemented. Nonetheless, a specific check
in an nnrpd filter hook is easy to add by the news admin if he wants
that behaviour :-)

--
Julien ÉLIE

« Chaque fois que je vois le nombre 1, j'ai envie de l'aider à
s'échapper… Il a constamment à ses trousses, derrière, le zéro qui
veut le rattraper et devant, toute la mafia des grands nombres qui le
guettent. » (Romain Gary)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Bonsoir Franck,

I will change my implementation of "laxmid" to act in the same way as INN.

Glad to hear that behaviour is reasonable :)

Incidentally, is your news server available for download on the
Internet? I looked for it a few months ago but did not manage to find it.
I ask because I believe a few people in fr.* (and probably elsewhere
too) would be interested in running a news server on Windows.
Installing another operating system and a news server without GUI is too
much difficult for people who are not accustomed to that. They would be pleased to run their own news servers and no longer have to depend on
the ones run by other people with filter rules they do not want.

--
Julien ÉLIE

« Sentir de l'argent ? Mais ça n'a pas d'odeur ! » (Obélix)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Hi Julien,
Julien ÉLIE a écrit :

Incidentally, is your news server available for download on the
Internet? I looked for it a few months ago but did not manage to find it.
I ask because I believe a few people in fr.* (and probably elsewhere
too) would be interested in running a news server on Windows.
Installing another operating system and a news server without GUI is too
much difficult for people who are not accustomed to that. They would be pleased to run their own news servers and no longer have to depend on
the ones run by other people with filter rules they do not want.

Yes, it will be a very good thing!

Or making a documentation to run INN2 on cygwin.

--
Stéphane

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yamo' <user@tld.invalid> writes:

Yes, it will be a very good thing!

Or making a documentation to run INN2 on cygwin.

INN at one point built on cygwin, but I'm not sure it makes much sense to
try to resurrect that support (which has almost certainly bitrotted) now
that Windows Subsystem for Linux exists. cygwin is a fairly weird
environment that is hard to support for UNIX software and is still not
entirely trivial to install and manage for the person trying to run
software that uses it. If you use WSL on Windows, you can probably just apt-get install inn2 and have something that works.

--
Russ Allbery (eagle@eyrie.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

Please post questions rather than mailing me directly.
<https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/faqs/questions.html> explains why.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Hi,
Russ Allbery a écrit :

yamo' <user@tld.invalid> writes:

Or making a documentation to run INN2 on cygwin.

INN at one point built on cygwin, but I'm not sure it makes much sense to
try to resurrect that support (which has almost certainly bitrotted) now
that Windows Subsystem for Linux exists. cygwin is a fairly weird environment that is hard to support for UNIX software and is still not entirely trivial to install and manage for the person trying to run
software that uses it. If you use WSL on Windows, you can probably just apt-get install inn2 and have something that works.

Thanks I will try to install it on a Windows boot that did not start for a while and note it into a web page...

<https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install>

--
Stéphane

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Salut Julien,

As announced several years ago, I sold the sources of my old project and
I no longer have the right to use them. I have no contact with the
buyer, I don't think he did anything with it and I don't think the
software is still available on the internet.

On the other hand, during the pandemic, I found time to rewrite another
server that will be available for Windows. I don't have an official date
to announce yet.

For the moment, it has no graphical interface and the configuration is
done with a single JSON file.

The graphical part will be added later, as it is the most time consuming
part to code and I focused on the Windows service (deamon) first.

Bonsoir Franck,

I will change my implementation of "laxmid" to act in the same way as
INN.

Glad to hear that behaviour is reasonable :)

Incidentally, is your news server available for download on the
Internet?  I looked for it a few months ago but did not manage to find it.
I ask because I believe a few people in fr.* (and probably elsewhere
too) would be interested in running a news server on Windows. Installing another operating system and a news server without GUI is too much
difficult for people who are not accustomed to that.  They would be
pleased to run their own news servers and no longer have to depend on
the ones run by other people with filter rules they do not want.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Bonjour Franck,

On the other hand, during the pandemic, I found time to rewrite another server that will be available for Windows. I don't have an official date
to announce yet.

For the moment, it has no graphical interface and the configuration is
done with a single JSON file.

Yes, that is indeed the new software I was looking for. I somehow
thought it was similar to the first one and already had a graphical
interface, but I was wrong.

The graphical part will be added later, as it is the most time consuming
part to code and I focused on the Windows service (deamon) first.

Thanks for all the effort you put into it!
I hope it will be of great interest to people willing to run their own
news server on Windows.

--
Julien ÉLIE

« J'ai fait tous les calculs. Ils confirment l'opinion des
spécialistes : notre idée est irréalisable. Il ne me reste plus qu'une
chose à faire : la réaliser. » (Pierre-Georges Latécoère, p1906,
entrepreneur de l'aviation)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Bonjour Julien,

Yes, that is indeed the new software I was looking for.  I somehow
thought it was similar to the first one and already had a graphical interface, but I was wrong.

The only software with a graphical interface was Codosoft NNTPd, which I
have continued to develop for my own needs but that I cannot release.

Here, it is a completely different project that does not use any lines
of code from the old one and that, at this stage, is much more efficient.

Starting from scratch was the only way to design it, keeping in mind the incorporation of features that were impossible in the old project,
including support for a possible "BIGNUM" (or other) extension, if one
day it will be standardised.

It was also the only way to design it to allow the addition of options
without having to modify the structure of the database tables.

The graphical part will be added later, as it is the most time
consuming part to code and I focused on the Windows service (deamon)
first.

Thanks for all the effort you put into it!
I hope it will be of great interest to people willing to run their own
news server on Windows.

We'll see :-)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Thanks for the explanations.

:-)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Le 06/05/2022 à 04:38, Franck a écrit :

Thanks for all the effort you put into it!
I hope it will be of great interest to people willing to run their own
news server on Windows.

We'll see :-)

I'm willing to be a beta tester, I'm not very good so this would be a
guarantee that everyone can use it :)
Thank you.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Hello,

I'm willing to be a beta tester, I'm not very good so this would be a guarantee that everyone can use it :)
Thank you.

Keep reading this group as the announcement of the availability of the
software will be made here.

However, enjoy the summer as the first phase (Expected in one moth) will
be to check the behaviour of a feed between my server and Julien's.

Once some things have been checked, the project will enter the beta
phase and you will be welcome to try it out.

Thanks for the interest.

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