123560 - empty hostinfo.dat - unable to retrieve newsgroup list if group starts with "."

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(MailNews Core :: Networking: NNTP, defect)

Description

[Bruno Grossniklaus]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.8) Gecko/20020204
BuildID:    2002020415

I use leadnode (on tuvok) as news "proxy".


$ telnet tuvok nntp
Trying 192.168.1.10...
Connected to tuvok.
Escape character is '^]'.
200 Leafnode NNTP Daemon, version 1.9.19 running at tuvok.voyager.space
MODE READER
200 Leafnode 1.9.19, pleased to meet you!
LIST
215 Newsgroups in form "group high low flags".
. 0000000001 0000000001 y
3com.totalservice.support 0000000001 0000000001 y
3com.totalservice.support.superstack1500 0000000001 0000000001 y
3com.totalservice.support.totalcontrol 0000000001 0000000001 y
3com.totalservice.support.v90 0000000001 0000000001 y
3dfx.d3d 0000000001 0000000001 y
3dfx.d3d.driver 0000000001 0000000001 y
3dfx.d3d.drivers 0000000001 0000000001 y
3dfx.d3d.drivers.orchid 0000000001 0000000001 y

....

but now using mozilla with tuvok als news-server, it builds a hostinfo.dat file
like this:
-----------------------------------------------
# News host information file.
# This is a generated file!  Do not edit.

version=1
newsrcname=tuvok
lastgroupdate=0
firstnewdate=5963873
uniqueid=0

begingroups
.,,1,0,0
-----------------------------------

Hmm, this is wrong!


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.configure leafnode as nntp proxy
2.create news-account for this proxy
3.get list of groups (subscribe) 

Actual Results:  hostinfo.dat is wrong (empty)

Expected Results:  full hostinfo.dat like
-----------------------------------------
# Netscape newshost information file.
# This is a generated file!  Do not edit.

version=1
newsrcname=tuvok.voyager.space
lastgroupdate=3c5946c0
firstnewdate=3c5946c8
uniqueid=00007ba9
pushauth=0

begingroups
3com,,0,3c5946c1,0
3com.totalservice,,0,3c5946c1,1
3com.totalservice.support,,1,3c5946c1,2
3com.totalservice.support.superstack1500,,1,3c5946c1,3
3com.totalservice.support.totalcontrol,,1,3c5946c1,4
3com.totalservice.support.v90,,1,3c5946c1,5
3dfx,,0,3c5946c1,6
3dfx.d3d,,1,3c5946c1,7
....

-----------------------------------------


maybe the leading zeros in the message numbers (from leafnode) make the problem?

This worked well with netscape 4.x! (Bug is't there)

Comment 1

[Bruno Grossniklaus]

I had a closer look at this issue:

...
LIST
215 Newsgroups in form "group high low flags".
. 0000000001 0000000001 y
3com.totalservice.support 0000000001 0000000001 y
3com.totalservice.support.superstack1500 0000000001 0000000001 y
...

The problem was the line
. 0000000001 0000000001 y

No Idea why leafnode generated it, but netscape 4.x an all other nntp readers
had no problems with it!

Now i edited the groupinfo file from leafnode (deleted this line starting with
.). And mozilla generates a correct hostinfo.dat file.

Maybe mozilla can just ignore a line starting with . ?

For me the severity is now minor.

Maybe you have a look at it?

Thanks for this great mozilla tool!
Bruno

Comment 2

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

Confirming.  Thanks for this excellent bug report.

Comment 3

[WD]

*** Bug 163061 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4

[WD]

My local news server is unusable with Mozilla because of this bug.
(Outlook Express works fine)

Comment 5

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

*** Bug 165788 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6

[Justin Turner Arthur]

Is it just me, or does it not even display the available newsgroups to you when
you do a refresh on the subscription screen?

Also, when i did a packet sniff, it looks as if mozilla sends the QUIT command
before the listing of newsgroups is even finished.

I personally suggest that we promote the severity of this bug to "major",
considering the fact that I can not think of any workaround to the situation and
there is certainly a loss of function. We really ought to get to the bottom of
this considering that so many NNTP servers now have the "." preceded entr(y/ies)
at the beginning of their newsgroups list.

Comment 7

[WD]

Justin:  yes, there is no way to display any of the newsgroups in such a case.
Bug 163061 has an NNTP log if you're interested.   Here's an excerpt:

0[234790]: (3098cd0) Next state: NNTP_RESPONSE
0[234790]: (3098cd0) Receiving: 215 NewsGroups Follow
0[234790]: (3098cd0) Next state: SEND_FIRST_NNTP_COMMAND_RESPONSE
0[234790]: (3098cd0) Next state: SETUP_NEWS_STREAM
0[234790]: (3098cd0) Next state: NNTP_READ_LIST_BEGIN
0[234790]: (3098cd0) Next state: NNTP_READ_LIST
0[234790]: (3098cd0) Next state: NNTP_READ_LIST
0[234790]: (3098cd0) Next state: NNTP_ERROR
0[234790]: (3098cd0) ClosingConnection
0[234790]: (3098cd0) Sending: QUIT

Comment 8

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

Justin, do you have a server with accounts that I can access to troubleshoot
this problem?

From RFC 977:

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0977.txt

3.6.1 LIST

"LIST

Returns a list of valid newsgroups and associated information.  Each
newsgroup is sent as a line of text in the following format:

   group last first p

where <group> is the name of the newsgroup, <last> is the number of
the last known article currently in that newsgroup, <first> is the
number of the first article currently in the newsgroup, and <p> is
either 'y' or 'n' indicating whether posting to this newsgroup is
allowed ('y') or prohibited ('n').

The <first> and <last> fields will always be numeric.  They may have
leading zeros.  If the <last> field evaluates to less than the
<first> field, there are no articles currently on file in the
newsgroup.
   
Please note that an empty list (i.e., the text body returned by this
command consists only of the terminating period) is a possible valid
response, and indicates that there are currently no valid newsgroups."

So, in our case, and as pointed out by Bruno in comment 1, we're choking when we
see:

. 0000000001 0000000001 y

We think it's a terminating period and stop updating.  According to the
paragraph above, an empty list is defined as consisting ONLY of the terminating
period.

It seems we're doing the wrong thing, and as he suggests, we should just ignore
that and move on.

Comment 9

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

working on a fix.  similar to what I did in #69231.

if I see a line that begins with ". " I'm going to skip it, like we do with
lines that begin with "... "

Comment 10

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

fixed.  this is really bug #141628m right?

Comment 11

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

Seth, yes, this is really bug 141628.  Why I commented in this bug and not that,
I'll never know.  Thanks so much for fixing this!

Comment 12

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

This is Fixed, according to Justin, as he can now actually see his ISP's newsgroups.

Thanks, Justin!

Verified FIXED (I don't have access to the test server).