LIST commands

[Matija Nalis]

On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 02:19:31PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Julien ÉLIE <julien at trigofacile.com> writes:
> > Should we return only valid lines (with the right number of arguments
> > for instance), that is to say dropping lines which contain only a
> > newsgroup name or begin with a space for LIST NEWSGROUPS?
> 
> I think it's a nice quality of implementation improvement that would
> protect news administrators from themselves, although it isn't strictly
> necessary (malformatted lines are a problem with the local configuration
> and not really with the server).
> 
> Ideally, inncheck should also check those files for any invalid lines so
> that the administrator has a chance to learn about them and fix them.

I would've even prefer putting such logic ONLY in inncheck (duplicating same
logic in two places is IMHO not a good idea, as they will drift away one
from another with time)

And putting it in inncheck allow allows newsadmin to became AWARE of the
problem - especially important as that problem might actually be just a
symptom of some other problem elsewere. So I think it is much better to
notify admin of such problems, then to silently mask them (probably making
diagnosing such problems much harder).

It would also be good idea to make inncheck run periodically (at least from
news.daily?) and mail any output to news administrator.

-- 
Opinions above are GNU-copylefted.