[ih] NIC 7104 (ARPANET Protocol Handbook)

[Craig Partridge]

In message <7.0.0.16.0.20060427190728.01d0c008 at alum.mit.edu>, Mike Padlipsky wr
ites:

>It is suggested that a modest volume of mail service should be free; 
>i.e., it may be entered before a USER command.
>
>since i know he knew the difference between i.e. and e.g., having 
>discussed it with him at some length [i won't say taught it to him, 
>honest i won't] when i did rfc 491.  he also knew the base ftp spec 
>allowed Hosts, especially multics, to require a user command before 
>mail, or any other command, was sent.  so i think that by occam's 
>razor the choice between jon had an utterly uncharacteristically bad 
>day when 'he' wrote this thing and he didn't write this thing must 
>fall to the latter.

Hi MAP:

So this comment raises a bunch of questions:

* If you read Wayne Hathaway's note of 10 February 1978 from HEADER-PEOPLE
    (appended), it is clear that most folks did not expect to log into
    (via USER) before delivering email.  Sounds like the Multicians
    expected it.  So how did mailers handle this? Did they try MLFL and
    when it bounced with a 5xx message say, "oh $%!, its a Multics
    machine?" and try a USER ANONYMOUS command.  Or did they do something
    smarter, or did Multics just not get all the mail coming to it?

* If you read the NIC document, it appears that the ARPANET was a messy
    place with people running "Old FTP" (apparently defined by RFC 454
    bizarrely enough, as 454 is actually the announcement of the 1973
    FTP meeting with a discussion draft attached) and "New FTP" (the
    product of the 1973 meeting)...  Did people just drop everything
    to do work on TCP[/IP]?

Craig


***************************
Date: 10 FEB 1978 1508-PST
To: HEADER-PEOPLE at MIT-MC
From: Hathaway at AMES-67
Subject: BRIAN'S "LET'S HEAR IT ..."

Brian, you're beautiful!
 
And I will be the first to admit that my server's response is probably
wrong (we returned a 503 for "Unknown User"), but it was a bit hard
arriving at that decision, since: 
 
    1. there is no mention of MLFL in the official FTP protocol,
 
    2. in the "Official Mail Protocol" (pages 239-240 in the ARPANET
        Protocol Handbook) it says that MLFL has the same replies as
        APPE, which can't be right because APPE (almost) always
        requires logon and MLFL usually does not, and
 
    3. RFC 640, which was supposed to become official in February of
        1974 (yep!) is not yet in universal use.
 
At any rate, it seems the correct reply would be 530, at least ac-
cording to RFC 640.  That means "permanent failure" (since "Unknown
User" is not likely to succeed if you tried it again) and "failure
in authentication and accounting."  Also I note that 530 is listed
as a reply for MLFL (page 228) although it is not in the list of
example messages (pages 225-226).  It is particularly interesting
that this "correct" code is one of the relatively few three digit
numbers which was used by NOBODY in Brian's sample!
 
And to repeat:  Let's hear it for uniform standards!!!!
 
                                       Wayne
 
PS:  An aside to UTEXAS:  "Howdy Pardner!"??????  That sounds like
      something a Teasip system would say!    W.