🚀 go-pugleaf

Just in case they pop out of the woodwork, I did post articles on this
earlier in the week - but feed problems seem to have eaten them :(

However Mike has made the general points I wanted to... I have quoted
extensively, because I've cross-posted this to demon.ip.developers and
set followups there...  [some of the thread is already there, of course]

In article <31502f4f.99738087@news.demon.co.uk>, Mike Mann
<mike@kempston.demon.co.uk> writes

>What we have here is one side claiming that Agent is at fault and the
>other claiming that Demon is at fault.   Neither Agent nor Demon are
>at fault in terms of RFC-compliance and the sooner this is understood
>the better.
>
>RFC977 neither requires article numbers to be allocated in a strictly
>ascending sequence nor allows them not to be so allocated.   It simply
>has nothing to say on the matter.
>
>Agent and Newshopper assume that articles always appear in sequence;
>Demon's  NNTP software doesn't always do so, especially when the news
>server is overloaded.    Every other news implementation that I've
>seen complies with Agent's assumption;  Demon's implementation is the
>odd one out.
>
>Frequent assertions by Malcolm that Demon's software is RFC-compliant
>are correct but unhelpful.      Assertions by others that Agent is not
>RFC-compliant are false.

I agree with these conclusions...  "backfill" of articles under the
"high water mark" is not really an issue of RFC compliance, but is
rather an interworking issue, and the Demon newsserver software should
not be doing it because of the bad effect this has on news clients.
(IMHO of course).

The only reservation I have is that this issue came up some months ago.
Some hard evidence (logging of NNTP commands) was posted, and it was
possible to see exactly what the problem was. It then became clear (to
me, at least) that a change (unannounced, but nevertheless welcome) had
been made to the server software and the problem went away.

This time around, I have seen a lot of anecdotal evidence and some
posting of details of highest article numbers. However, I have seen no
hard NNTP level evidence that can be independantly verified that
"backfill" of articles is occurring. I doubt that there is a bug in
Agent, but that would also be consistent with the evidence so far
presented. For completeness, I would like to see some proper evidence
posted, so that all of the heat which has been generated can be seen to
be directed properly.

If the problem is as widespread as claimed, then collecting the evidence
should be trivial. I've set this thread into d.i.developers, because I
hope it will be understood there that what's needed is logs of
interactions with the server - not derived information from programs
which are themselves potentially under suspicion.

My apologies if this is seen as unduly picky, but it is conventional to
present some evidence before having a hanging party.

-- 
richard                      Richard Clayton         T U R N P I K E  Ltd
                                                     tel: +44 1306 747747
"Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind" quoted in ZAMM