Corrupted double-linked list (nnrpd, Python, innconfval)

[Russ Allbery]

Julien ÉLIE <julien at trigofacile.com> writes:

> I have just checked what happens with Perl hooks and the behaviour is
> the same:  if the Perl script is bad, nnrpd also says "Internal Error".
>
> Note that there are three kinds of such internal errors:
>
> * function not defined;
> * function which dies;
> * bad return of the function.
>
> Anyway, this return is in the code so it is normal that nnrpd is
> refusing to start:
>
>    /* Exit if access method is not defined. */
>    syslog(L_ERROR, "python access method not defined");
>    Reply("%d Internal Error (7).  Goodbye\r\n", NNTP_ERR_ACCESS);
>    ExitWithStats(1, true);
>
> Another possible behaviour would be:
>
> Connected to localhost.localdomain.
> Escape character is '^]'.
> 502 You have no permission to talk.  Goodbye.
>
> Is it better to answer that?

I think it's better to say that something abnormal happened so that the
admin investigating realizes that it isn't a simple permission
misconfiguration and there's something more fundamentally wrong.  Internal
error seems reasonable to me.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

    Please send questions to the list rather than mailing me directly.
     <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/faqs/questions.html> explains why.