enhance checkgroups handling

[Julien ÉLIE]

En réponse à Russ Allbery :
>> Everyone can make a mess with checkgroups (2000 ar.* newsgroups created
>> in the row with a forged checkgroups... and then another checkgroups
>> which deletes them and afterwards another which...).
>
> Maybe we should put some sort of limit on how many changes can be made
> with one checkgroups without the administrator manually running
> docheckgroups with some flag?  Sort of like what actsync does.

You're right.
Do you think the limit should be hard-coded in controlchan or a variable
in inn.conf?  ("maxdocheckgroups: 5" for instance to allow 5 new/rmgroups).


> Also, make sure that the checkgroups handling in INN actually obeys the
> pattern in control.ctl.  It used to have problems in that area, but I
> haven't looked at it again since your recent modifications.

Up to now, I have only modified the handling of descriptions (in newgroup
and checkgroups).
Regarding checkgroups, I believe controlchan code should be adapted
because it can no longer use the last control.ctl matching line to achieve
that.  Thus, it will be possible to use lines like:
checkgroups:*:*binaries*:drop

But they should be processed in order.

checkgroups:*:*binaries*:drop
checkgroups:group-admin at isc.org:comp.*:verify-news.announce.newgroups

-> we do not want comp.*binaries*
-> and only comp.* groups should remain in the checkgroups


However, several checkgroups will be processed (one for each line) since
one might want for instance:

checkgroups:group-admin at isc.org:comp.*:verify-news.announce.newgroups
checkgroups:group-admin at isc.org:misc.*:mail


I believe I should also match the first pattern in order to make a
difference between a "cn.*" and a "cn.bbs.*" checkgroups for instance
(and not remove wrong groups).


By the way, I have just noticed a but in current checkgroups implementation:

checkgroups:ausadmin at aus.news-admin.org:aus.*:verify-ausadmin at aus.news-admin.org
checkgroups:ausadmin at aus.news-admin.org:canb.*:drop

As the list is reversed and canb.* will first match, checkgroups for aus.* will
also be dropped.


Well, there is a lot of work to do for checkgroups.  I shall soon have a look
at it and I hope you agree the suggestions above.



>> Wouldn't it be time to only allow PGP-signed control articles to be
>> honoured?  (inviting current hierarchies maintainers to sign their
>> control articles) Active hierarchies are mostly PGP-managed, though.
>
>> [perhaps we should discuss that in news.admin.hierarchies]
>
> True.  Maybe it's time to take that step.

All right.  I will start a thread.

-- 
Julien ÉLIE

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