Attempted forced authentication on an NNTP server

[Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2221 bytes --]

Platform: qgnus 0.22, GNU emacs 19.34, SPARC Solaris 2.5

Attached is an attempt at forcing authinfo on an NNTP server that
doesn't demand it, but allows access to more groups if you
authenticate. 

The questions that the information in this email leads up to, are:
 1. why doesn't this work? (And why doesn't nntp-send-nosy-authinfo
    work either?)
 2. where would be a good place to put the username/password pairs?

OK.  Information follows:

I'm trying to do
	(add-hook 'nntp-server-opened-hook 'nntp-force-unsecure-authinfo)
where nntp-force-unsecure-authinfo is the function in the patch
attached below.

But I get the same kind of flaky behaviour as when I'm using
nntp-send-nosy-authinfo here, ie.: it didn't work at first, I just got
an "error: 411 No such group".

But with nntp-send-nosy-authinfo (after the first demon fetch of mail
and news?), it started asking for username and password on all foreign
NNTP servers after a while.  Maybe this one will start working after a
while, too...?

The problems with this, are:
 1. the flaky behaviour (it doesn't work at first, and then suddenly
    starts working)
 2. asking for username and passwords, makes it impossible to use
    demonical retrieval of mail and news

My "solution" also do what I expect is a no-no: I'm adding new group
parameters.

I suspect this is a no-no for two reasons:
 1. one should not add group parameters beyond the standard ones (at
    least that's what I think larsi told John Prevost a long time
    back) 
 2. one should not put username/password pairs in clear text in files 

My answer to 1 above, is that I have no idea where else to put it.  Is
there a standard file with a standard format that takes tuples of 
	server-name username password
?

My answer to 2 above, is that the NNTP servers I want to access in
this way aren't terribly secure.  They're mainly private discussion
fora that we want to keep away from the eyes of idle net surfers.

As to the question of why I've hacked nntp.el, instead of putting this
in my ~/.emacs or whereever:
 I hated the fact that the cookbook receipe for getting Gnus to work
 with this server was more complex looking than the receipes for
 Agent, Netscape et al.


- Steinar




[-- Attachment #2: force-auth-patch --]
[-- Type: text/plain, Size: 1115 bytes --]

*** nntp.el	1998/02/08 16:27:15	1.1
--- nntp.el	1998/02/08 16:28:08
***************
*** 729,734 ****
--- 729,752 ----
         "^.*\r?\n" "AUTHINFO PASS"
         (buffer-substring (point) (progn (end-of-line) (point)))))))
  
+ (defun nntp-force-unsecure-authinfo ()
+   "If the symbols `authuser' and `authpass' are defined in Group Parameters,
+ send AUTHINFO to the nntp server, whether it asks for it or not.
+ This function is supposed to be called from `nntp-server-opened-hook'.
+ Note that this is not very secure.  Its primary use, is allowing access
+ to unlisted groups on a server that doesn't normally request
+ authentication"
+   (if (and
+        (gnus-group-find-parameter gnus-newsgroup-name 'authuser)
+        (gnus-group-find-parameter gnus-newsgroup-name 'authpass))
+       (progn
+ 	(nntp-send-command
+ 	 "^.*\r?\n" "AUTHINFO USER"
+ 	 (gnus-group-find-parameter gnus-newsgroup-name 'authuser))
+ 	(nntp-send-command
+ 	 "^.*\r?\n" "AUTHINFO PASS"
+ 	 (gnus-group-find-parameter gnus-newsgroup-name 'authpass)))))
+ 
  ;;; Internal functions.
  
  (defun nntp-make-process-buffer (buffer)