Duplicate Posts - Burst Posts...

ERROR:HIDDEN-USER or ERROR:UNKNOWN-ERROR I have no beef with; they don't bother me. ERROR:NO-USER does (when it's not actually true, of course). Anyone shipping an OS with an identd so badly misconfigured as to return ERROR:NO-USER when it's not actually true is doing its users a severe disservice (unless putative new users are specifically and loudly warned of the nonconformance). Any user un-diligent enough to run such a distro (or crazy enough to run it even knowing that about it) is not _my_ problem. Presumably some people would end up running it out of ignorance; ignorance has never been an excuse - and furthermore, that's why such hosts get a "greeting" saying "come back when you've fixed your identd", so they are pointed at the problem. Bah. Idiots. Returning UNKNOWN-ERROR for all queries has absolutely no security benefit over simply not running anything on port 113 at all, and in fact is a security _hazard_ because it's one more daemon to potentially be cracked through. I don't mind rejecting mail from those stupid, careless, or crazy enough to run systems that brokenly. And as for ignorance, the other plausible explanation, that's why the error I return to them points them at the brokenness, so they can cure their ignorance. Sigh. Tony's rantings about people not understanding things applies to software too, I think, for all that he was applying it primarily to electronics and mechanical gadgetry. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse(a)rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B