81580 - Mozilla sometimes silently decides not to authenticate itself (looses posted messages)

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 75007

(MailNews Core :: Networking: NNTP, defect)

Description

[Aleksey Nogin]

When newsserver requires authentication, Mozilla sometimes would decide to abort
the connection (even when it has the auth information cached). In NSPR log it
would look as follows:

1024[8053218]: creating a new nsNNTPProtocol(4214a348)
1024[8053218]: initializing, so unset m_currentGroup
1024[8053218]: opening connection on nsNNTPProtocol(4214a348)
1024[8053218]: to news.metaprl.org
1024[8053218]: on port 119
1024[8053218]: ParseURL
1024[8053218]: fullPath = /
1024[8053218]: m_messageID = (null)
1024[8053218]: group = (null)
1024[8053218]: commandSpecificData = (null)
1024[8053218]: m_key = -1
1024[8053218]: Next state: NNTP_RESPONSE
1024[8053218]: Receiving: 200 Hi, Posting is OK, but you need to authenticate
1024[8053218]: Next state: NNTP_LOGIN_RESPONSE
1024[8053218]: Next state: NNTP_SEND_MODE_READER
1024[8053218]: Sending: MODE READER
1024[8053218]: Next state: NNTP_RESPONSE
1024[8053218]: Receiving: 480 Authentication required - login:
1024[8053218]: Next state: NNTP_BEGIN_AUTHORIZE
1024[8053218]: ask for the news username
1024[8053218]: Next state: NNTP_ERROR
1024[8053218]: Next state: NEWS_FREE
1024[8053218]: CleanupAfterRunningUrl()

(I will attach a complete log to this bug).

It seems that Mozilla is doing the authentication when the connection is caused
by user clicking on a newsgroup server or newsgroup or article. Whenever the
connection is requested indirectly, Mozilla will always go to NNTP_ERROR when
sees an authentication request.

In particular,
1) Periodic checking newsgroups for new messages ("biff") does not work (those
connections always result in NNTP_ERROR) on password-protected server.
2) When posting, if Mozilla decides to open a new connection (instead of using
the existing one), it will result in NNTP_ERROR on authentication and the
message will be _silently discarded_. This makes posting to password-protected
server almost impossible!
3) Another side effect is that these connections are never properly closed - see
also bug 65927 (it also has additional NSPR logs illustrating this problem).

I am currently using Mozilla-0.9 RedHat 7x RPMs on RedHat Linux 7.1.

Comment 1

[Aleksey Nogin]

Attachment: NSPR log; the two NNTP_ERRORs in the middle each correspond to a posted article being lost

Comment 2

[Navin Gupta]

Do you get an error dialog "Aborted by the user" when mozilla fails in 
the authentication process ?

Comment 3

[Aleksey Nogin]

> Do you get an error dialog "Aborted by the user" when mozilla fails in 
> the authentication process ?
>
No, everything is completely silent. In biff case, the only thing I see is
slowly growing number of open connections (see bug 65927). In posting case,
everything looks like the posting went through (and FCC and e-mail copies all
actually go through), except for message never actually making it to the server.

Ah, another case I forgot to mention - if the newsgroup list for a particular
server was expoanded when you exited Mozilla, the next time you start Mozilla
and open Mail&News window, Mozilla will attempt to connect to the server and
silently fail. This is exactly the source of the first (out of 3) NNTP_ERROR in
the log I've attached.

Comment 4

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

this was fixed for 0.9.1

see #75007

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 75007 ***

Comment 5

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

verified dup.