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Article #534

Deghosted users...

#534
From: Valdis Kletnieks
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1993 22:52
21 lines
1631 bytes
As the guy who wrote the code that causes it, I guess I'll explain.. ;)

Basically, RELAY runs over bitnet, which is an "unreliable" network in that
if a message is lost between relays, the relay might not be notified of
the fact.  So what will happen is that a short link outage will cause
messages to be lost, but for the inter-relay connection to not be broken.

Now, one of the messages that got lost might be a /signon being propogated
through the network.  This causes a "ghost" user.  You can't see him on
a /names, or a /whois, but his messages show up on the channel - usually as

<<somenick>> Hello? Can anybody hear me? WHy wont anybody talk to me?

repeated over and over....

If the user does a /nick or a /chan command, RELAY can then *partially*
recover from the condition.  However, the "full name" information is not
available at that point, so the code has to substitute something instead.
I chose "*Deghosted User*" to make it clear what happened..

/Valdis
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Message-ID: <930120.175216.EST.VALDIS@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu>
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!paladin.american.edu!auvm!VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU!VALDIS

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Organization: Virginia Polytechnic Institute
Message-ID: <930120.175216.EST.VALDIS@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu>
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.relusr-l
Date:         Wed, 20 Jan 1993 17:52:16 EST
Sender:       Relay Users Forum <RELUSR-L@NCSUVM.BITNET>
From:         Valdis Kletnieks <VALDIS@VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU>
Subject:      Deghosted users...
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