RFC 5537
Netnews Architecture and Protocols
Pages: 48
Proposed Standard
→ Errata
Obsoletes: 1036 1849
Updated by: 8315
Proposed Standard
→ Errata
Obsoletes: 1036 1849
Updated by: 8315
Part 1 of 2 – Pages 1 to 23
Network Working Group R. Allbery, Ed. Request for Comments: 5537 Stanford University Obsoletes: 1036 C. Lindsey Category: Standards Track November 2009 Netnews Architecture and ProtocolsAbstract
This document defines the architecture of Netnews systems and specifies the correct manipulation and interpretation of Netnews articles by software that originates, distributes, stores, and displays them. It also specifies the requirements that must be met by any protocol used to transport and serve Netnews articles. Status of This Memo This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2009 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the BSD License.Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................3 1.1. Basic Concepts .............................................3 1.2. Scope ......................................................3 1.3. Requirements Notation ......................................3 1.4. Syntax Notation ............................................3 1.5. Definitions ................................................4 2. Transport .......................................................5
3. Duties of Agents ................................................6 3.1. General Principles .........................................6 3.2. The Path Header Field ......................................7 3.2.1. Constructing the Path Header Field ..................8 3.2.2. Path Header Field Example ...........................9 3.3. Article History and Duplicate Suppression .................10 3.4. Duties of a Posting Agent .................................11 3.4.1. Proto-Articles .....................................12 3.4.2. Multiple Injection of Articles .....................13 3.4.3. Followups ..........................................14 3.4.4. Construction of the References Header Field ........15 3.5. Duties of an Injecting Agent ..............................15 3.5.1. Forwarding Messages to a Moderator .................18 3.6. Duties of a Relaying Agent ................................19 3.7. Duties of a Serving Agent .................................21 3.8. Duties of a Reading Agent .................................22 3.9. Duties of a Moderator .....................................22 3.10. Duties of a Gateway ......................................24 3.10.1. Duties of an Outgoing Gateway .....................25 3.10.2. Duties of an Incoming Gateway .....................25 3.10.3. Original-Sender Header Field ......................27 3.10.4. Gateway Example ...................................28 4. Media Types ....................................................29 4.1. application/news-transmission .............................30 4.2. application/news-groupinfo ................................31 4.3. application/news-checkgroups ..............................33 5. Control Messages ...............................................35 5.1. Authentication and Authorization ..........................35 5.2. Group Control Messages ....................................36 5.2.1. The newgroup Control Message .......................36 5.2.1.1. newgroup Control Message Example ..........37 5.2.2. The rmgroup Control Message ........................38 5.2.3. The checkgroups Control Message ....................38 5.3. The cancel Control Message ................................40 5.4. The Supersedes Header Field ...............................40 5.5. The ihave and sendme Control Messages .....................41 5.6. Obsolete Control Messages .................................42 6. Security Considerations ........................................42 6.1. Compromise of System Integrity ............................42 6.2. Denial of Service .........................................44 6.3. Leakage ...................................................44 7. IANA Considerations ............................................45 8. References .....................................................45 8.1. Normative References ......................................45 8.2. Informative References ....................................46 Appendix A. Changes to the Existing Protocols ....................47 Appendix B. Acknowledgements .....................................48
1. Introduction
1.1. Basic Concepts
"Netnews" is a set of protocols for generating, storing, and retrieving news "articles" whose format is defined in [RFC5536], and for exchanging them amongst a readership that is potentially widely distributed. It is organized around "newsgroups", with the expectation that each reader will be able to see all articles posted to each newsgroup in which he participates. These protocols most commonly use a flooding algorithm that propagates copies throughout a network of participating servers. Typically, only one copy is stored per server, and each server makes it available on demand to readers able to access that server. "Usenet" is a particular worldwide, publicly accessible network based on the Netnews protocols. It is only one such possible network; there are deployments of the Netnews protocols other than Usenet (such as ones internal to particular organizations). This document discusses the more general Netnews architecture and protocols.1.2. Scope
This document defines the architecture of Netnews systems and specifies the correct manipulation and interpretation of Netnews articles by software that originates, distributes, stores, and displays them. It addresses protocol issues that are independent of transport protocols such as the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) [RFC3977], and specifies the requirements Netnews places on those underlying transport protocols. It also specifies the handling of control messages. The format and syntax of Netnews articles are specified in [RFC5536], which should be read in conjunction with this document.1.3. Requirements Notation
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].1.4. Syntax Notation
Syntax defined in this document uses the Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF) notation (including the Core Rules) defined in [RFC5234] and constructs defined in [RFC5536] and [RFC5322].
The ABNF rules defined elsewhere and used in this document are:
CRLF = <see [RFC5234] Appendix B.1>
DIGIT = <see [RFC5234] Appendix B.1>
HTAB = <see [RFC5234] Appendix B.1>
SP = <see [RFC5234] Appendix B.1>
WSP = <see [RFC5234] Appendix B.1>
VCHAR = <see [RFC5234] Appendix B.1>
argument = <see [RFC5536] Section 3.2.3>
article-locator = <see [RFC5536] Section 3.2.14>
component = <see [RFC5536] Section 3.1.4>
control-command = <see [RFC5536] Section 3.2.3>
diag-keyword = <see [RFC5536] Section 3.1.5>
diag-match = <see [RFC5536] Section 3.1.5>
diag-other = <see [RFC5536] Section 3.1.5>
dist-name = <see [RFC5536] Section 3.2.4>
msg-id = <see [RFC5536] Section 3.1.3>
newsgroup-name = <see [RFC5536] Section 3.1.4>
path-diagnostic = <see [RFC5536] Section 3.1.5>
path-identity = <see [RFC5536] Section 3.1.5>
path-nodot = <see [RFC5536] Section 3.1.5>
tail-entry = <see [RFC5536] Section 3.1.5>
verb = <see [RFC5536] Section 3.2.3>
display-name = <see [RFC5322] Section 3.4>
local-part = <see [RFC5322] Section 3.4.1>
mailbox = <see [RFC5322] Section 3.4>
1.5. Definitions
Any term used in this document that is defined in Section 1.5 of
[RFC5536] is used with the definition given there. In addition, the
following terms will be used:
A "hierarchy" is the set of all newsgroups whose names share a first
<component> (as defined in Section 3.1.4 of [RFC5536]). A "sub-
hierarchy" is the set of all newsgroups whose names share several
initial components.
A "news server" is further distinguished into the roles of "injecting
agent", "relaying agent", and "serving agent". An "injecting agent"
accepts a proto-article with the goal of distributing it to relaying
and serving agents and hence to readers. A "relaying agent" accepts
articles from other relaying agents or injecting agents and
distributes them to other relaying agents or serving agents. A
"serving agent" receives an article from a relaying agent or
injecting agent and makes it available to readers.
A "user agent" is further distinguished into the roles of "posting agent" and "reading agent". A "posting agent" is software that assists in the preparation of a proto-article and then passes it to an injecting agent. A "reading agent" is software that retrieves articles from a serving agent for presentation to a reader. "Injecting" an article is the processing of a proto-article by an injecting agent. Normally, this action is done once and only once for a given article. "Multiple injection" is passing the same article to multiple injecting agents, either serially or in parallel, by one or several posting agents. A "gateway" is software that receives news articles and converts them to messages of some other kind (such as [RFC5322] mail messages), receives messages of some other kind and converts them to news articles, or conveys articles between two separate Netnews networks.2. Transport
The exact means used to transmit articles from one agent to another is not specified. NNTP [RFC3977] is the most common transport mechanism for Netnews networks. Other methods in use include the Unix-to-Unix Copy Protocol [UUCP] (extensively used in the early days of Usenet) and physically delivered magnetic and optical media. Any mechanism may be used in conjunction with this protocol provided that it can meet the requirements specified here. Transports for Netnews articles MUST treat news articles as uninterpreted sequences of octets, excluding the values %d00 (which may not occur in Netnews articles), %d13, and %d10 (which MUST only appear in Netnews articles as a pair in that order and which, together, denote a line separator). These octets are the US-ASCII [ASCII] characters NUL, CR, and LF respectively. NOTE: This corresponds to the range of octets permitted in MIME 8bit data [RFC2045]. Transports for Netnews are not required to support transmission of MIME binary data. In particular, transports MUST convey all header fields unmodified (including header fields within message/rfc822 objects in article bodies), even if they contain octets in the range of 128 to 255. Furthermore, transports for relaying and serving agents MUST, and transports for other agents SHOULD, convey lines even if they exceed 998 characters in length, especially in article bodies. (This requirement is stricter than MIME 8bit data.) These requirements include the transport paths between posting agents, injecting agents, serving agents, and reading agents.
3. Duties of Agents
The following section specifies the duties of the agents involved in the creation, relaying, and serving of Netnews articles. This protocol is described by following the life of a typical Usenet article: it is prepared by a posting agent, given to an injecting agent, transferred through one or more relaying agents, accepted by a serving agent, and finally retrieved by a reading agent. Articles submitted to moderated groups go through an additional process, which is described separately (see Section 3.5.1 and Step 7 of Section 3.5). Finally, the additional duties and requirements of a gateway are discussed. At each step, each agent has a set of checks and transformations of the article that it is required to perform. These are described as sequences of steps to be followed, but it should be understood that it is the effect of these sequences that is important, and implementations may use any method that produces the same effect. Many news servers combine the functions of injecting agent, relaying agent, and serving agent in a single software package. For the purposes of this specification, such combined agents should conceptually be treated as an injecting agent that sends articles to a serving agent and, optionally, to a relaying agent. The requirements of all three agents MUST still be met when the news server is performing the functions of those agents. On news servers that accept them, control messages may have additional effects than those described below. Those effects are described in Section 5.3.1. 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.
In the case of Netnews, there is an even more important principle,
derived from a much older code of practice, the Hippocratic Oath (we
may thus call this the Hippocratic Principle):
First, do no harm.
It is vital to realize that decisions that might be merely suboptimal
in a smaller context can become devastating mistakes when amplified
by the actions of thousands of hosts within a few minutes.
No Netnews agent is ever required to accept any article. It is
common for injecting, relaying, and serving agents to reject well-
formed articles for reasons of local policy (such as not wishing to
carry a particular newsgroup or attempting to filter out unwanted
articles). This document specifies how articles are to be treated if
they are accepted and specifies some cases where they must be
rejected, but an agent MAY always reject any article for other
reasons than those stated here.
A primary goal of the Netnews protocol is to ensure that all readers
receiving a particular article (as uniquely identified by the content
of its Message-ID header field) see the identical article, apart from
allowable divergence in trace headers and local metadata.
Accordingly, agents (other than moderators) MUST NOT modify articles
in ways other than described here. Unacceptable articles MUST be
rejected rather than corrected.
3.2. The Path Header Field
All news server components (injecting agents, relaying agents, and
serving agents) MUST identify themselves, when processing an article,
by prepending their <path-identity> (defined in Section 3.1.5 of
[RFC5536]) to the Path header field. Injecting agents MUST also use
the same identity in Injection-Info header fields that they add, and
serving and relaying agents SHOULD use the same identity in any Xref
header fields they add.
The <path-identity> used by an agent may be chosen via one of the
following methods (in decreasing order of preference):
1. The fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the system on which the
agent is running.
2. A fully qualified domain name (FQDN) within a domain affiliated
with the administrators of the agent and guaranteed to be unique
by the administrators of that domain. For example, the
uniqueness of server.example.org could be guaranteed by the
administrator of example.org even if there is no DNS record for
server.example.org itself.
3. Some other (arbitrary) name in the form of a <path-nodot>,
believed to be unique and registered at least with all the other
news servers to which that relaying agent or injecting agent
sends articles. This option SHOULD NOT be used unless the
earlier options are unavailable or unless the name is of
longstanding usage.
Some existing implementations treat <path-identity> as case-
sensitive, some as case-insensitive. The <path-identity> therefore
SHOULD be all lowercase and implementations SHOULD compare identities
case-insensitively.
3.2.1. Constructing the Path Header Field
If a relaying or serving agent receives an article from an injecting
or serving agent that is part of the same news server, it MAY leave
the Path header field of the article unchanged. Otherwise, every
injecting, relaying, or serving agent that accepts an article MUST
update the Path header field as follows. Note that the Path header
field content is constructed from right to left by prepending
elements.
1. The agent MUST prepend "!" to the Path header field content.
2. An injecting agent SHOULD prepend the <path-diagnostic>
"!.POSTED", optionally followed by "." and the FQDN or IP address
of the source, to the Path header field content.
3. A relaying or serving agent SHOULD prepend a <path-diagnostic> to
the Path header field content, where the <path-diagnostic> is
chosen as follows:
* If the expected <path-identity> of the source of the article
matches the leftmost <path-identity> of the Path header
field's content, use "!" (<diag-match>), resulting in two
consecutive "!"s.
* If the expected <path-identity> of the source of the article
does not match, use "!.MISMATCH." followed by the expected
<path-identity> of the source or its IP address.
* If the relaying or serving agent is not willing or able to
check the <path-identity>, use "!.SEEN." followed by the FQDN,
IP address, or expected <path-identity> of the source.
The "expected <path-identity> of the source of the article" is a
<path-identity> for the injecting or relaying agent that passed
the article to this relaying or serving agent, determined by
properties of the connection via which the article was received
(for example, an authentication identity or a peer IP address).
Be aware that [RFC1036] did not include <path-diagnostic>.
Implementations that predate this specification will add only
single "!" characters between <path-identity> strings.
4. The agent MAY then prepend to the Path header field content "!"
or "!!" followed by an additional <path-identity> for itself
other than its primary one. Using "!!", and thereby adding a
<diag-match> since the <path-identity> clearly is verified, is
RECOMMENDED. This step may be repeated any number of times.
This is permitted for agents that have multiple <path-identity>s
(such as during a transition from one to another). Each of these
<path-identity>s MUST meet the requirements set out in
Section 3.2.
5. Finally, the agent MUST prepend its primary <path-identity> to
the Path header field content. The primary <path-identity> is
the <path-identity> it normally advertises to its peers for their
use in generating <path-diagnostic>s as described above.
Any agent that modifies the Path header field MAY fold it by
inserting FWS (folding white space) immediately after any <path-
identity> or <diag-other> it added (see Section 3.1.5 of [RFC5536]
for allowable locations for FWS).
3.2.2. Path Header Field Example
Here is an example of a Path header field created by following the
rules for injecting and relaying agents.
Path: foo.isp.example!.SEEN.isp.example!foo-news
!.MISMATCH.2001:DB8:0:0:8:800:200C:417A!bar.isp.example
!!old.site.example!barbaz!!baz.isp.example
!.POSTED.dialup123.baz.isp.example!not-for-mail
This article was injected by baz.isp.example as indicated by the
<diag-keyword> "POSTED". The injector has recorded that it received
the article from dialup123.baz.isp.example. "not-for-mail" is a
common <tail-entry>.
The article was relayed to the relaying agent known, at least to
old.site.example, as "barbaz". That relaying agent confirmed to its
satisfaction that "baz.isp.example" was an expected <path-identity>
for the source of the article and therefore used <diag-match> ("!")
for its <path-diagnostic>.
barbaz relayed it to old.site.example, which does not support <diag-
keyword> and therefore used the old "!" delimiter. This indicates
that the identity of "barbaz" was not verified and may have been
forged.
old.site.example relayed it to a news server using the <path-
identity> of bar.isp.example and claiming (by using the "!" <path-
diagnostic>) to have verified that it came from old.site.example.
bar.isp.example relayed it to foo-news, which, not being convinced
that it truly came from bar.isp.example, inserted the <diag-keyword>
"MISMATCH" and then stated that it received the article from the IPv6
address [2001:DB8:0:0:8:800:200C:417A]. (This is not to say that
bar.isp.example was not a correct <path-identity> for that source but
simply that the identity did not match the expectations of foo-news.)
foo-news then passed the article to foo.isp.example, which declined
to validate its <path-identity> and instead appended the <diag-
keyword> "SEEN" to indicate it knows the source of the article as
isp.example. This may be either an expected <path-identity> or the
FQDN of the system from which it received the article. Presumably,
foo.isp.example is a serving agent that then delivered the article to
a reading agent.
baz.isp.example, bar.isp.example, and foo-news folded the Path header
field.
3.3. Article History and Duplicate Suppression
Netnews normally uses a flood-fill algorithm for propagation of
articles in which each news server offers the articles it accepts to
multiple peers, and each news server may be offered the same article
from multiple other news servers. Accordingly, duplicate suppression
is key; if a news server accepted every article it was offered, it
may needlessly accept (and then potentially retransmit) dozens of
copies of every article.
Relaying and serving agents therefore MUST keep a record of articles
they have already seen and use that record to reject additional
offers of the same article. This record is called the "history" file
or database.
Each article is uniquely identified by its message identifier, so a
relaying or serving agent could satisfy this requirement by storing a
record of every message identifier that agent has ever seen. Such a
history database would grow without bound, however, so it is common
and permitted to optimize based on the Injection-Date or Date header
field of an article as follows. (In the following discussion, the
"date" of an article is defined to be the date represented by its
Injection-Date header field, if present; otherwise, by its Date
header field.)
o Agents MAY select a cutoff interval and reject any article with a
date farther in the past than that cutoff interval. If this
interval is shorter than the time it takes for an article to
propagate through the network, the agent might reject an article
it had not yet seen, so it ought not to be aggressively short.
For Usenet, for example, a cutoff interval of no less than seven
days is conventional.
o Agents that enforce such a cutoff MAY then drop records of
articles that had dates older than the cutoff from their history
databases. If such an article were offered to the agent again, it
would be rejected due to the cutoff date, so the history record is
no longer required to suppress the duplicate.
o Alternatively, agents MAY drop history records according to the
date when the article was first seen by that agent rather than the
date of the article. In this case, the history retention interval
MUST be at least 24 hours longer than the cutoff interval to allow
for articles dated in the future. This interval matches the
allowable error in the date of the article (see Section 3.5).
These are just two implementation strategies for article history,
albeit the most common ones. Relaying and serving agents are not
required to use these strategies, only to meet the requirement of not
accepting an article more than once. However, these strategies are
safe and widely deployed, and implementors are encouraged to use one
of them, especially if they do not have extensive experience with
Netnews and the subtle effects of its flood-fill algorithm.
3.4. Duties of a Posting Agent
A posting agent is the component of a user agent that assists a
poster in creating a valid proto-article and forwarding it to an
injecting agent.
Posting agents SHOULD ensure that proto-articles they create are valid according to [RFC5536] and any other applicable policies. They MUST NOT create any Injection-Info header field; this header field may only be added by the injecting agent. If the proto-article already contains both Message-ID and Date header fields, posting agents MAY add an Injection-Date header field to that proto-article immediately before passing that proto-article to an injection agent. They SHOULD do so if the Date header field (representing the composition time of the proto-article) is more than a day in the past at the time of injection. They MUST do so if the proto-article is being submitted to more than one injecting agent; see Section 3.4.2. The Injection-Date header field is new in this revision of the Netnews protocol and is designed to allow the Date header field to hold the composition date (as recommended in Section 3.6.1 of [RFC5322]), even if the proto-article is not to be injected for some time after its composition. However, note that all implementations predating this specification ignore the Injection-Date header field and use the Date header field in its stead for rejecting articles older than their cutoff (see Section 3.3), and injecting agents predating this specification do not add an Injection-Date header. Articles with a Date header field substantially in the past will still be rejected by implementations predating this specification, regardless of the Injection-Date header field, and hence may suffer poorer propagation. Contrary to [RFC5322], which implies that the mailbox or mailboxes in the From header field should be that of the poster or posters, a poster who does not, for whatever reason, wish to use his own mailbox MAY use any mailbox ending in the top-level domain ".invalid" [RFC2606]. Posting agents meant for use by ordinary posters SHOULD reject any attempt to post an article that cancels or supersedes (via the Supersedes header field) another article of which the poster is not the author or sender.3.4.1. Proto-Articles
A proto-article is an article in the format used by a posting agent when offering that article to an injecting agent. It may omit certain header fields that can be better supplied by the injecting agent and will not contain header fields that are added by the injecting agent. A proto-article is only for transmission to an injecting agent and SHOULD NOT be transmitted to any other agent.
A proto-article has the same format as a normal article except that the Injection-Info and Xref header fields MUST NOT be present, the Path header field SHOULD NOT contain a "POSTED" <diag-keyword>, and any of the following mandatory header fields MAY be omitted: Message-ID, Date, and Path. In all other respects, a proto-article MUST be a valid Netnews article. In particular, the header fields that may be omitted MUST NOT be present with invalid content. If a posting agent intends to offer the same proto-article to multiple injecting agents, the header fields Message-ID, Date, and Injection-Date MUST be present and identical in all copies of the proto-article. See Section 3.4.2.3.4.2. Multiple Injection of Articles
Under some circumstances (for example, when posting to multiple, supposedly disjoint, networks, when using injecting agents with spotty connectivity, or when desiring additional redundancy), a posting agent may wish to offer the same article to multiple injecting agents. In this unusual case, the goal is not to create multiple independent articles but rather to inject the same article at multiple points and let the normal duplicate suppression facility of Netnews (see Section 3.3) ensure that any given agent accepts the article only once, even if supposedly disjoint networks have unexpected links. Whenever possible, multiple injection SHOULD be done by offering the same proto-article to multiple injecting agents. The posting agent MUST supply the Message-ID, Date, and Injection-Date header fields, and the proto-article as offered to each injecting agent MUST be identical. In some cases, offering the same proto-article to all injecting agents may not be possible (such as when gatewaying, after injection, articles found on one Netnews network to another supposedly unconnected one). In this case, the posting agent MUST remove any Xref header field and rename or remove any Injection-Info, Path, and other trace header fields before passing it to another injecting agent. (This converts the article back into a proto-article.) It MUST retain unmodified the Message-ID, Date, and Injection-Date header fields. It MUST NOT add an Injection-Date header field if it is missing from the existing article. NOTE: Multiple injection inherently risks duplicating articles. Multiple injection after injection, by converting an article back to a proto-article and injecting it again, additionally risks loops, loss of trace information, unintended repeat injection into the same network, and other problems. It should be done with care
and only when there is no alternative. The requirement to retain
Message-ID, Date, and Injection-Date header fields minimizes the
possibility of a loop and ensures that the newly injected article
is not treated as a new, separate article.
Multiple injection of an article that lists one or more moderated
newsgroups in its Newsgroups header field SHOULD only be done by a
moderator and MUST only be done after the proto-article has been
approved for all moderated groups to which it is to be posted and
after an Approved header field has been added (see Section 3.9).
Multiple injection of an unapproved article intended for moderated
newsgroups will normally only result in the moderator receiving
multiple copies, and if the newsgroup status is not consistent across
all injecting agents, may result in duplication of the article or
other problems.
3.4.3. Followups
A followup is an article that contains a response to the contents of
an earlier article, its precursor. In addition to its normal duties,
a posting agent preparing a followup is also subject to the following
requirements. Wherever in the following it is stated that, by
default, a header field is said to be inherited from one of those
header fields in the precursor, it means that its initial content is
to be a copy of the content of that precursor header field (with
changes in folding permitted). However, posters MAY then override
that default before posting.
Despite the historic practice of some posting agents, the Keywords
header field SHOULD NOT be inherited by default from the precursor
article.
1. If the Followup-To header field of the precursor article consists
of "poster", the followup MUST NOT be posted by default but, by
default, is to be emailed to the address given in the precursor's
Reply-To or From header field following the rules for an email
reply [RFC5322]. This action MAY be overridden by the poster, in
which case the posting agent should continue as if the
Followup-To header field in the precursor did not exist.
2. The Newsgroups header field SHOULD, by default, be inherited from
the precursor's Followup-To header field if present; otherwise,
it is inherited from the precursor's Newsgroups header field.
3. The Subject header field SHOULD, by default, be inherited from
that of the precursor. The case-sensitive string "Re: "
(including the space after the colon) MAY be prepended to the
content of its Subject header field unless it already begins with
that string.
NOTE: Prepending "Re: " serves no protocol function and hence
is not required, but it is widely expected and not doing so
would be surprising.
4. The Distribution header field SHOULD, by default, be inherited
from the precursor's Distribution header field, if present.
5. The followup MUST have a References header field referring to its
precursor, constructed in accordance with Section 3.4.4.
3.4.4. Construction of the References Header Field
The following procedure is to be used whenever some previous article
(the "parent") is to be referred to in the References header field of
a new article, whether because the new article is a followup and the
parent is its precursor or for some other reason.
The content of the new article's References header field MUST be
formed from the content of the parent's References header field if
present, followed by the content of the Message-ID header field of
the parent. If the parent had a References header, FWS as defined in
[RFC5536] MUST be added between its content and the Message-ID header
field content.
If the resulting References header field would, after unfolding,
exceed 998 characters in length (including its field name but not the
final CRLF), it MUST be trimmed (and otherwise MAY be trimmed).
Trimming means removing any number of message identifiers from its
content, except that the first message identifier and the last two
MUST NOT be removed.
An essential property of the References header field, guaranteed by
the above procedure and REQUIRED to be maintained by any extensions
to this protocol, is that an article MUST NOT precede one of its
parents.
3.5. Duties of an Injecting Agent
An injecting agent takes a proto-article from a posting agent and
either forwards it to a moderator or passes it to a relaying or
serving agent or agents. An injecting agent bears the primary
responsibility for ensuring that any article it injects conforms with
the rules of the Netnews standards. The administrator of an
injecting agent is also expected to bear some responsibility towards
the rest of the Netnews network to which it is connected for the
articles the injecting agent accepts.
Injecting agents, when rejecting articles, are encouraged to
communicate the reason for rejection to the posting agent by using
whatever facility is provided by the underlying transport. The
injecting agent is in a unique position to communicate the reason for
rejection; relaying agents and serving agents normally have to reject
messages silently. The injecting agent therefore bears much of the
burden of diagnosing broken posting agents or communicating policy
violations to posters.
An injecting agent MUST have available a list (possibly empty) of
moderated groups for which it accepts articles and the corresponding
submission addresses. It SHOULD have available a list of valid
newsgroups to catch articles not posted to a valid newsgroup and
therefore likely to be silently discarded by relaying and serving
agents. Usually, an injecting agent is deployed in conjunction with
a serving agent and maintains these lists based on control messages
received by the serving agent.
An injecting agent processes proto-articles as follows:
1. It SHOULD verify that the article is from a trusted source (for
example, by relying on the authorization capability of the
underlying transport used to talk to the posting agent).
2. It MUST reject any proto-article that does not have the proper
mandatory header fields for a proto-article, that has Injection-
Info or Xref header fields, that has a Path header field
containing the "POSTED" <diag-keyword>, or that is not
syntactically valid as defined by [RFC5536]. It SHOULD reject
any proto-article that contains a header field deprecated for
Netnews (see, for example, [RFC3798]). It MAY reject any proto-
article that contains trace header fields (e.g., NNTP-Posting-
Host) indicating that it was already injected by an injecting
agent that did not add Injection-Info or Injection-Date.
3. It SHOULD reject any article whose Injection-Date or Date header
field is more than 24 hours into the future (and MAY use a
margin less than 24 hours). It SHOULD reject any article whose
Injection-Date header field is too far in the past (older than
the cutoff interval of a relaying agent that the injecting agent
is using, for example). It SHOULD similarly reject any article
whose Date header field is too far in the past, since not all
news servers support Injection-Date and only the injecting agent
can provide a useful error message to the posting agent. In
either case, this interval SHOULD NOT be any shorter than 72
hours into the past.
4. It SHOULD reject any proto-article whose Newsgroups header field
does not contain at least one <newsgroup-name> for a valid
group, or that contains a <newsgroup-name> reserved for specific
purposes by Section 3.1.4 of [RFC5536] unless that specific
purpose or local agreement applies to the proto-article being
processed. Crossposting to unknown newsgroups is not precluded
provided that at least one of the newsgroups in the Newsgroups
header is valid.
5. The Message-ID and Date header fields with appropriate contents
MUST be added when not present in the proto-article.
6. The injecting agent MUST NOT alter the body of the article in
any way (including any change of Content-Transfer-Encoding). It
MAY add other header fields not already provided by the poster,
but injecting agents are encouraged to use the Injection-Info
header for such information and to minimize the addition of
other headers. It SHOULD NOT alter, delete, or reorder any
existing header field except the Path header field. It MUST NOT
alter or delete any existing Message-ID header field.
7. If the Newsgroups header contains one or more moderated groups
and the proto-article does not contain an Approved header field,
the injecting agent MUST either forward it to a moderator as
specified in Section 3.5.1 or, if that is not possible, reject
it. This forwarding MUST be done after adding the Message-ID
and Date headers if required, and before adding the Injection-
Info and Injection-Date headers.
8. Otherwise, a Path header field with a <tail-entry> MUST be added
if not already present.
9. The injecting agent MUST then update the Path header field as
described in Section 3.2.1.
10. An Injection-Info header field SHOULD be added that identifies
the source of the article and possibly other trace information
as described in Section 3.2.8 of [RFC5536].
11. If the proto-article already had an Injection-Date header field,
it MUST NOT be modified or replaced. If the proto-article had
both a Message-ID header field and a Date header field, an
Injection-Date header field MUST NOT be added, since the proto-
article may have been multiply injected by a posting agent that
predates this standard. Otherwise, the injecting agent MUST add
an Injection-Date header field containing the current date and
time.
12. Finally, the injecting agent forwards the article to one or more
relaying agents, and the injection process is complete.
3.5.1. Forwarding Messages to a Moderator
An injecting agent MUST forward the proto-article to the moderator of
the leftmost moderated group listed in the Newsgroups header field,
customarily via email. There are two standard ways in which it may
do this:
1. The complete proto-article is encapsulated, header fields and
all, within the email. This SHOULD be done by creating an email
message with a Content-Type of application/news-transmission with
the usage parameter set to "moderate". The body SHOULD NOT
contain any content other than the message. This method has the
advantage of removing any possible conflict between Netnews and
email header fields and any changes to those fields during
transport through email.
2. The proto-article is sent as an email with the addition of any
header fields required for an email as defined in [RFC5322], and
possibly with the addition of other header fields conventional in
email, such as To and Received. The existing Message-ID header
field SHOULD be retained.
Although both of these methods have been used in the past and the
first has clear technical advantages, the second is in more common
use and many moderators are not prepared to deal with messages in the
first format. Accordingly, the first method SHOULD NOT be used
unless the moderator to which it is being forwarded is known to be
able to handle this method.
NOTE: Deriving the email address of the moderator of a group is
outside the scope of this document. It is worth mentioning,
however, that a common method is to use a forwarding service that
handles submissions for many moderated groups. For maximum
compatibility with existing news servers, such forwarding services
generally form the submission address for a moderated group by
replacing each "." in the <newsgroup-name> with "-" and then using
that value as the <local-part> of a <mailbox> formed by appending
a set domain.
Forwarding proto-articles to moderators via email is the most general method and the most common in large Netnews networks such as Usenet, but any means of forwarding the article that preserves it without injecting it MAY be used. For example, if the injecting agent has access to a database used by the moderator to store proto-articles awaiting processing, it may place the proto-article directly into that database. Such methods may be more appropriate for smaller Netnews networks.3.6. Duties of a Relaying Agent
A relaying agent accepts injected articles from injecting and other relaying agents and passes them on to relaying or serving agents. To avoid bypass of injecting agent policies and forgery of Path and Injection-Info headers, relaying agents SHOULD accept articles only from trusted agents. An article SHOULD NOT be relayed unless the sending agent has been configured to supply, and the receiving agent to receive, at least one of the <newsgroup-name>s in its Newsgroups header field and at least one of the <dist-name>s in its Distribution header field (if present). Exceptionally, control messages creating or removing newsgroups (newgroup or rmgroup control messages, for example) SHOULD be relayed if the affected group appears in its Newsgroups header field and both the sending and receiving relaying agents are configured to relay a newsgroup of that name (whether or not such a newsgroup exists). In order to avoid unnecessary relaying attempts, an article SHOULD NOT be relayed if the <path-identity> of the receiving agent (or some known alias thereof) appears as a <path-identity> (excluding within the <tail-entry> or following a "POSTED" <diag-keyword>) in its Path header field. A relaying agent processes an article as follows: 1. It MUST reject any article without a Newsgroups header field or Message-ID header field, or without either an Injection-Date or Date header field. 2. It MUST examine the Injection-Date header field or, if absent, the Date header field, and reject the article if that date is more than 24 hours into the future. It MAY reject articles with dates in the future with a smaller margin than 24 hours.
3. It MUST reject any article that has already been accepted. If it
implements one of the mechanisms described in Section 3.3, this
means that it MUST reject any article whose date falls outside
the cutoff interval since it won't know whether or not such
articles had been accepted previously.
4. It SHOULD reject any article that does not include all the
mandatory header fields. It MAY reject any article that contains
header fields that do not have valid contents.
5. It SHOULD reject any article that matches an already-received
cancel control message or the contents of the Supersedes header
field of an accepted article, provided that the relaying agent
has chosen (on the basis of local site policy) to honor that
cancel control message or Supersedes header field.
6. It MAY reject any article without an Approved header field posted
to a newsgroup known to be moderated. This practice is strongly
encouraged, but the information necessary to do so is not
required to be maintained by a relaying agent.
7. It MUST update the Path header field as described in
Section 3.2.1.
8. It MAY delete any Xref header field already present. It MAY add
a new Xref header field for its own use (but recall that
[RFC5536] permits at most one such header field).
9. Finally, it passes the article on to other relaying and serving
agents to which it is configured to send articles.
Relaying agents SHOULD, where possible in the underlying transport,
inform the agent that passed the article to the relaying agent if the
article was rejected. Relaying agents MUST NOT inform any other
external entity of the rejection of an article unless that external
entity has explicitly requested that it be informed of such errors.
Relaying agents MUST NOT alter, delete, or rearrange any part of an
article except for the Path and Xref header fields. They MUST NOT
modify the body of articles in any way. If an article is not
acceptable as is, the article MUST be rejected rather than modified.
3.7. Duties of a Serving Agent
A serving agent accepts articles from a relaying agent or injecting agent, stores them, and makes them available to reading agents. Articles are normally indexed by newsgroup and <article-locator> (Section 3.2.14 of [RFC5536]), usually in the form of a decimal number. If the serving agent stores articles by newsgroup, control messages SHOULD NOT be stored in the newsgroups listed in the control message's Newsgroups header field. Instead, they SHOULD be stored in a newsgroup in the hierarchy "control", which is reserved for this purpose. Conventionally, control messages are stored in newsgroups named for the type of control message (such as "control.cancel" for cancel control messages). A serving agent MUST have available a list (possibly empty) of moderated groups for which it accepts articles so that it can reject unapproved articles posted to moderated groups. Frequently, a serving agent is deployed in combination with an injecting agent and can use the same list as the injecting agent. A serving agent processes articles as follows: 1. It MUST reject any article that does not include all the mandatory header fields or any article that contains header fields that do not have valid contents. 2. It MUST examine the Injection-Date header field or, if absent, the Date header field, and reject the article if that date is more than 24 hours into the future. It MAY reject articles with dates in the future with a smaller margin than 24 hours. 3. It MUST reject any article that has already been accepted. If it implements one of the mechanisms described in Section 3.3, this means that it MUST reject any article whose date falls outside the cutoff interval since it won't know whether or not such articles had been accepted previously. 4. It SHOULD reject any article that matches an already-received and honored cancel message or Supersedes header field, following the same rules as a relaying agent (Section 3.6). 5. It MUST reject any article without an Approved header field posted to any newsgroup listed as moderated. 6. It MUST update the Path header field as described in Section 3.2.1.
7. It MUST remove any Xref header field from each article (except
when specially configured to preserve the <article-locator>s set
by the sending site). It then MAY (and usually will) add a new
Xref header field (but recall that [RFC5536] permits at most one
such header field).
8. Finally, it stores the article and makes it available for reading
agents.
Serving agents MUST NOT create new newsgroups simply because an
unrecognized <newsgroup-name> occurs in a Newsgroups header field.
Newsgroups are normally created via control messages (Section 5.2.1).
Serving agents MUST NOT alter, delete, or rearrange any part of an
article except for the Path and Xref header fields. They MUST NOT
modify the body of the articles in any way. If an article is not
acceptable as is, the article MUST be rejected rather than modified.
3.8. Duties of a Reading Agent
Since a reading agent is only a passive participant in a Netnews
network, there are no specific protocol requirements placed on it.
See [USEAGE] for best-practice recommendations.
3.9. Duties of a Moderator
A moderator receives news articles, customarily by email, decides
whether to approve them and, if so, either passes them to an
injecting agent or forwards them to further moderators.
Articles are normally received by the moderator in email, either
encapsulated as an object of Content-Type application/
news-transmission (or possibly encapsulated but without an explicit
Content-Type header field) or else directly as an email already
containing all the header fields appropriate for a Netnews article
(see Section 3.5.1). Moderators who may receive articles via email
SHOULD be prepared to accept articles in either format.
There are no protocol restrictions on what criteria are used for
accepting or rejecting messages or on what modifications a moderator
may make to a message (both header fields and body) before injecting
it. Recommended best practice, however, is to make the minimal
required changes. Moderators need to be aware that modifications
made to articles may invalidate signatures created by the poster or
previous moderators. See [USEAGE] for further best-practice
recommendations.
Moderators process articles as follows:
1. They decide whether to approve or reject a proto-article and, if
approved, prepare the proto-article for injection. If the proto-
article was received as an unencapsulated email message, this
will require converting it back to a valid Netnews proto-article.
If the article is rejected, it is normally rejected for all
newsgroups to which it was posted and nothing further is done.
If it is approved, the moderator proceeds with the following
steps.
2. If the Newsgroups header field contains further moderated
newsgroups for which approval has not already been given, they
may either reach some agreement with the other moderators on the
disposition of the article or, more generally, add an indication
(identifying both the moderator and the name of the newsgroup)
that they approve the article and then forward it to the
moderator of the leftmost unapproved newsgroup. This forwarding
SHOULD be done following the procedure in Section 3.5.1. It MAY
be done by rotating the <newsgroup-name>s in the Newsgroups
header field so that the leftmost unapproved newsgroup is the
leftmost moderated newsgroup in that field and then posting it,
letting the injecting agent do the forwarding. However, when
using this mechanism, they MUST first ensure that the article
contains no Approved header field.
3. If the Newsgroups header field contains no further unapproved
moderated groups, they add an Approved header field (see Section
3.2.1 of [RFC5536]) identifying the moderator and, insofar as is
possible, all the other moderators who have approved the article.
The moderator who takes this step assumes responsibility for
ensuring that the article was approved by the moderators of all
moderated newsgroups to which it was posted.
4. Moderators are encouraged to retain the Message-ID header field
unless it is invalid or the article was significantly changed
from its original form. Moderators are also encouraged to retain
the Date header field unless it appears to be stale (72 hours or
more in the past) for reasons understood by the moderator (such
as delays in the moderation process), in which case they MAY
substitute the current date. Any Injection-Date, Injection-Info,
or Xref header fields already present MUST be removed.
5. Any Path header field MUST either be removed or truncated to only
those entries following its "POSTED" <diag-keyword>, if any.
6. The moderator then passes the article to an injecting agent,
having first observed all the duties of a posting agent.
(next page on part 2)