[leafnode-list] Re: Disabling The "Is Valid FQDN" Check

[Matthias Andree]

Am 07.05.2011 22:14, schrieb Adam Funk:
> On 2011-05-05, Matthias Andree wrote:
> 
>> - I do not support servers that overwrite the Message-ID or don't
>> advertise moderated groups as such.
>>
>> You can read from them but you must never post to them.  Leafnode-2
>> cannot detect that articles are successully posted there and will
>> consequently retransmit the articles in an endless loop.
> 
> I can confirm that this happens & annoys moderators.  Definitely not
> leafnode's fault: astraweb, which I used to use as an upstream server,
> misflagged (as 'y' instead of 'm') two moderated groups that I've used
> and failed to do anything to correct it, even in response to proper
> support tickets.

Very bad.

> Am I mistaken in thinking it's an easy problem for a NSP to fix?

Not at all, they need to edit two bytes in their news database - and
possibly they've not paid attention for months, else if they update
their hierarchies' description files regularly, such problems would
clear after a few weeks.

I wonder if I should make leafnode 2 default to "post only to one
server" (like leafnode 1 did), i. e. clear a message from the queue as
soon as one server has accepted it.

On the other hand, I've also had news servers just blackhole posted
messages, and posting a message somewhere else is a good workaround, as
long as all upstream news servers play by the rules and keep Message-IDs
intact. Duplicate suppression is an intrinsic feature of Usenet, so for
all compliant servers this is safe.  In fact leafnode-2 only clears
to-be-posted articles from the "out.going" queue when any one server
responds that the article is a dupe, for postings to unmoderated groups.

>> Please report all servers that overwrite or modify Message-IDs to me so
>> that I can prevent leafnode from posting to these servers.
> 
> I haven't heard about this until now --- is it a common problem?

Unfortunately, depending on software installation, yes, newsd is one
example.  Leafnode 2 blacklists several software installations for
posting by pretending that the server's response had been "201 Posting
not allowed" when it got 200 in fact.