Re: Injection-Date and reinjection

[Russ Allbery <rra@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Forrest J Cavalier <mibsoft@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> Normally, articles are transferred between news servers by relaying
> agents.  In the case of disjoint Netnews networks, such as a private
> server with no relaying peers, a posting agent SHOULD cause the
> identical proto-article with Message-Id header field to be transmitted
> to multiple injecting agents, one in each disjoint network.

"If one article is to be injected into disjoint Netnews networks, such as
both Usenet and a private server with no relaying peers, a posting agent
..."

Since the normal case for disjoint Netnews networks is that they'll have
disjoint sets of articles as well.  (Also, one doesn't need to limit it to
one in each network necessarily.  I was trying to avoid making that
limitation in my language.)

> When it cannot be avoided, a posting agent which converts existing
> articles back to proto-articles for reinjection to a disjoint network
> MUST NOT reinject articles already accepted on that network.  It MUST
> perform the same staleness tests of Injection-Date or Date header fields
> as would be performed by a relaying agent.  (This helps prevent
> reappearance of expired articles.)  It MUST NOT alter header fields
> permitted in proto-articles, especially Message-ID.  (This helps prevent
> loops.)  To make the article acceptable to an injecting agent, it SHOULD
> rename other header fields to preserve information, but MAY remove them.

Charles has a valid point that it's really beyond the ability of a posting
agent to determine whether two Netnews networks are truly disjoint.

Beyond that, the bit about the Message-ID is a good addition that I want
to keep, regardless of how else we word this.  The gateway stuff already
says this sort of, but we should emphasize it.

We need to say *what* other header fields it will rename.  I think we also
have to allow for drop as well as rename; for example, if I'm posting to a
disconnected INN server and then gatewaying those articles to Usenet, my
local trace information is entirely irrelevant and there's no reason to
retain it.

If this is the complete section, we're not saying that the gatewaying
rules apply anywhere, which I think we still need to do since there may be
bidirectional gatewaying at work (among other things).

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