Re: no forced authinfo in 5.6.2?

[Hallvard B Furuseth <h.b.furuseth@usit.uio.no>]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:
>> (...) force authinfo on an NNTP server that doesn't ask for it.
> 
> Well, I didn't feel it was resolved.  Should I add a "force" tag?

If nntp-authinfo-file is .netrc-compatible just because you wanted to
reuse existing code to parse .netrc:

  I don't see any reason *not* to send authinfo to a machine mentioned
  in .authinforc.  If I have an authinfo password there, why would I
  want not to use it?

  (Our NNTP server does not ask for authinfo, but it does not give me
  the department's private group unless I send authinfo.)

If nntp-authinfo-file is .netrc-compatible so we can point it to .netrc:

  Bummer.

  * I can't have different FTP user/password and NNTP user/password
    on the same machine.

  * If I insert `machine some.server login hbf password newspassword',
    then the `ftp some.server' command will try to log in with my NNTP
    username and password.

  * If the same machine has a trusted FTP maintainer and an untrusted
    (unknown/experimental/...) NNTP maintainer, and it has my FTP
    password in .netrc, then the NNTP maintainer can ask Gnus to send
    him my FTP password.

  Maybe this format will fix it:

    machine some.server      login hbf password ftppassword
    machine nntp/some.server login hbf password newspassword

  As above, I don't see any reason to not send the NNTP password if you
  use this format.

  OTOH, maybe some FTP implementations will barf on the 2nd line, since
  they know that hostnames don't look like that.

  (BTW, I used `/' instead of `:' because I've heard IPv6 hostnames may
  contain `:'.  Or maybe they can contain `/' too?)

-- 
Hallvard