From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/31787 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Russ Allbery Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: (provide 'nnmaildir) Date: 14 Jul 2000 18:24:49 -0700 Organization: The Eyrie Sender: owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu Message-ID: References: <20000715005142.7982.qmail@multivac.student.cwru.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035168157 16052 80.91.224.250 (21 Oct 2002 02:42:37 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 02:42:37 +0000 (UTC) Return-Path: Original-Received: from fisher.math.uh.edu (fisher.math.uh.edu [129.7.128.35]) by mailhost.sclp.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0BD9BD051E for ; Fri, 14 Jul 2000 21:26:39 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu (lists@Sina.HPC.UH.EDU [129.7.3.5]) by fisher.math.uh.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id UAC14675; Fri, 14 Jul 2000 20:26:27 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: by sina.hpc.uh.edu (TLB v0.09a (1.20 tibbs 1996/10/09 22:03:07)); Fri, 14 Jul 2000 20:24:27 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: from mailhost.sclp.com (postfix@sclp3.sclp.com [204.252.123.139]) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id UAA02687 for ; Fri, 14 Jul 2000 20:24:17 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by mailhost.sclp.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 1A2F0D051E for ; Fri, 14 Jul 2000 21:24:52 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: (qmail 23143 invoked by uid 50); 15 Jul 2000 01:24:49 -0000 Original-To: ding@gnus.org In-Reply-To: prj@po.cwru.edu's message of "Fri, 14 Jul 2000 20:51:42 -0400 (EDT)" Original-Lines: 44 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) XEmacs/21.1 (Biscayne) Precedence: list X-Majordomo: 1.94.jlt7 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:31787 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:31787 Paul Jarc writes: > So an article number for a particluar message must be constant for the > life of that message... after a message expires, can its article > number be reused? No. From draft-ietf-nntpext-base-09.txt: The server MUST ensure that article numbers are issued in order of arrival timestamp; that is, articles arriving later MUST have higher numbers than those that arrive earlier. The server SHOULD allocate the next sequential unused number to each new article. There is no provision in the NNTP protocol for ever reusing an article number. >> Gnus just barf at article numbers > 2^28. > Ok... but do actual NNTP servers count into infinity? No. The article number is required to fit in ten decimal digits, and in practice is limited to 2^32 - 1. > They never shift article numbers back to make room; do they ever wrap > around to 0 (or 1)? I would have thought that there must be a server > out there that's been in operation long enough to hit 2^32... or at > least that the authors of NNTP servers would take it into consideration. It wasn't taken into consideration in the standard, and there are enough protocol requirements that the NNTP server authors pretty much have their hands tied. So far, there has never been a Usenet newsgroup that's received sufficient traffic to even come close to wrapping over the entire life of Usenet. control.cancel is the leading contender, since for a while we were seeing upwards of ten cancels a second, which would have wrapped the article number in thirteen years of sustained activity at that level. Thankfully, since then spam has dropped off and so have the spam cancels. At some point, a server might have to have a flag day and reset the article number somehow, thereby confusing a lot of readers. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)