Re: [Extra] draft-ietf-extra-imap4rev2-04 review

["Chris Newman" <[e-mail]>]

On 30 Oct 2019, at 3:58, Alexey Melnikov wrote:

> On 26/03/2019 15:42, Chris Newman wrote:
>
>> On 26 Mar 2019, at 15:13, Ned Freed wrote:
>>>> On 25 Mar 2019, at 13:04, Timo Sirainen wrote:
>>>> >> 3.4.  Logout State
>>>> >>
>>>> >
>>>> >>    A server MUST NOT unilaterally close the connection 
>>>> without
>>>> >> sending
>>>> >>    an untagged BYE response that contains the reason for 
>>>> having done
>>>> >> so.
>>>> >
>>>> > Also already in RFC 3501, but this MUST NOT has to be violated
>>>> > sometimes. For example otherwise it would allow client to FETCH a
>>>> > large message and keep reading it very very slowly over days, and
>>>> > server wouldn't be allowed to disconnect it, because it can't 
>>>> send BYE
>>>> > in the middle of the large mail literal.
>>>
>>>> Another example is if a client gets hung up (or goes silently 
>>>> offline)
>>>> during a TLS negotiation. The server has to eventually timeout the
>>>> connection but it would be semantically wrong to send a "* BYE" 
>>>> since
>>>> there's no data channel. One case where this happened was when our 
>>>> SSL
>>>> stack dropped support for an SSLv2-compatible hello (allowed by RFC
>>>> 6176), but some very old client kept sending such a hello 
>>>> (prohibited by
>>>> RFC 6176). Incidentally, SSLv2 is completely incompatible with 
>>>> SSLv3 so
>>>> the client sends something that's not sufficient to complete an 
>>>> SSLv3
>>>> packet so both ends get stuck waiting until one side hangs up.
>>>
>>> There was a suggestion (I think) during the meeting that this should 
>>> be handled
>>> by sending the TLS equivalent of "* BYE". Which sounds fine in 
>>> theory, but as
>>> said at the time, I'm skeptical that many/most TLS implementations 
>>> provide
>>> implementors with the means to conveniently do that.
>>
>> I didn't hear such a suggestion. I made the observation that a wedged 
>> TLS negotiation is a scenario where sending "* BYE" shouldn't be 
>> done. It was suggested that example be mentioned in the document. I 
>> did not mention the fact that TLS has it's own alert syntax that 
>> could be used instead of "* BYE" -- I agree discussing that would be 
>> a bad idea.
>
> To followup on this: I've changed "MUST NOT unilaterally close the 
> connection without sending BYE" to "SHOULD NOT ...". Do people think 
> this is sufficient?

Works for me.

		- Chris