[tin-users] HELP! Auth bug in tin 2.4 ?

[Alec Muffett]

Hi! I am experimenting with USENET again - after a 20 year gap - and have
both built tin 2.4.0 and also used the version from brew.sh / Homebrew on
OSX.

I have a INN server with the capabilities below*, and something about them
seems to trigger Tin into believing that the server needs/wants the user to
authenticate; entering a blank username and password causes Tin to
disconnect and quit.

I can guarantee that authentication is not needed - I run the server - and
that slrn, gnus, nn, seamonkey all work fine.

Presumably something about the capabilities is triggering the
authentication code.

I ran dtruss on the execution of tin to establish how far in the connection
process it gets, which I have recreated below.

Is there a way to convince Tin that auth is not required?

I skimmed auth.c and found the following comment:

         * At this point, either authentication with username/password pair
from
         * .newsauth has failed or there's no .newsauth file respectively no
         * matching username/password for the current server. If we are not
at
         * startup we ask the user to enter such a pair by hand. Don't ask
him
         * at startup except if requested by -A option because if he
doesn't need
         * to authenticate (we don't know), the "Server expects
authentication"
         * messages are annoying (and even wrong).
         * UNSURE: Maybe we want to make this decision configurable in the
         * options menu, too, so that the user doesn't need -A.
         * TODO: Put questions into do_authinfo_user() because it is
possible
         * that the server doesn't want a password; so only ask for it if
needed.

...but I can't establish the current / expected behaviour from the code.

Thanks!

    - alec



--
*for reference

200 usenet InterNetNews server INN 2.6.0 ready (transit mode)
CAPABILITIES
101 Capability list:
VERSION 2
IMPLEMENTATION INN 2.6.0
AUTHINFO USER
MODE-READER
.
MODE READER
200 usenet InterNetNews NNRP server INN 2.6.0 ready (posting ok)
CAPABILITIES
101 Capability list:
VERSION 2
IMPLEMENTATION INN 2.6.0
AUTHINFO SASL
HDR
LIST ACTIVE ACTIVE.TIMES COUNTS DISTRIB.PATS DISTRIBUTIONS HEADERS
MODERATORS MOTD NEWSGROUPS OVERVIEW.FMT SUBSCRIPTIONS
OVER
POST
READER
SASL DIGEST-MD5 NTLM CRAM-MD5
STARTTLS
.



-- 
http://dropsafe.crypticide.com/aboutalecm
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