Subject: I-D submission tool

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2008 19:39:48 -0500

Just as a heads-up, this tool seems to have gotten at least
partially broken.   I have submitted trouble tickets to
ietf-action, but to save others from wasting time trying to get
around the problems (and in the hope that someone will have an
idea as to a workaround)...

In the last two hours, I've tried to submit two drafts.  

For the first, it claimed it couldn't find Author address
metadata.  After some fussing around and experimenting, it turns
out that having the string " (editor)" after the Author's name
-- a format that xml2rfc produces in response to a
'role="editor"' parameter and that has been in use in RFCs for
more years than I can remember-- it gets too confused to believe
that there is author information present. [rt.amsl.com #1796] if
anyone is interested.

For the second, it claims that the file isn't "plain text" and
won't post it or even provide a manual submission path.  The
file is output or xml2rfc, has proper CRLF line endings, and, if
it contains any non-ASCII characters or serious format
misbehavior, the online version of idnits can't find it, even in
very verbose mode.  
[rt.amsl.com #1799]

I can only hope these sorts of little problems can be fixed
before the posting deadlines for the next IETF get any closer.
And, if not, that there is adequate staff to do a lot of manual
posting.

     john

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---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2008 09:28:27 +0200

John C Klensin wrote:

> very verbose mode. [rt.amsl.com #1799]

I also encountered this problem (rt.amsl.com #1730), and after some
debugging, discovered what the problem was: the submission tool uses
the "file" program to check whether the file is plain text or not, and
(apparently) the "file" program on the new servers behaves slightly
differently from the old one.

In particular, if you have the string "(if approved)" on your cover
page, some versions of "file" (at least some Linux distributions)
will identify your draft as "Lisp/Scheme program text" instead of 
just ASCII :-)

Best regards,
Pasi

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2008 03:06:43 -0500

--On Thursday, 07 February, 2008 09:28 +0200
[email-masked] wrote:

>> file is output or xml2rfc, has proper CRLF line endings, and,
>> if it contains any non-ASCII characters or serious format
>> misbehavior, the online version of idnits can't find it, even
>> in very verbose mode. [rt.amsl.com #1799]
> 
> I also encountered this problem (rt.amsl.com #1730), and after
> some debugging, discovered what the problem was: the
> submission tool uses the "file" program to check whether the
> file is plain text or not, and (apparently) the "file" program
> on the new servers behaves slightly differently from the old
> one.
> 
> In particular, if you have the string "(if approved)" on your
> cover page, some versions of "file" (at least some Linux
> distributions) will identify your draft as "Lisp/Scheme
> program text" instead of  just ASCII :-)

<obscenity/>

So we get a choice of either

	* Not getting drafts posted  or
	
	* Violating the IESG's instructions about how I-Ds that
	are intended for standards track are laid out.

Gee.

Ray, while meeting site choices are ultimately judgment calls
and about tradeoffs, this is unambiguously preventing work from
getting done.   Today is Thursday and we've got a posting cutoff
a week from Monday.

Is it reasonable to assume that this has been assigned a
priority in, or close to, the "even if they have to work all
night" range?

And, by the way, is the ticket tracker database public?  If not,
why not?  And, if so, why do there not appear to be any links to
it  from either the Secretariat or Tools pages?

best,
    john

---

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2008 07:24:51 -0800

At Thu, 07 Feb 2008 03:06:43 -0500,
> getting done.   Today is Thursday and we've got a posting cutoff

It's also worth noting that manually posted drafts (which is
what I fell back to after running into this bug) do not appear
to be showing up especially fast. draft-ietf-tls-rfc4346bis-09
was submitted after COB on Mon and isn't in the repository
yet.

Obviously, it's not a disaster if drafts which are postd
through exceptional paths take 2+ days to show up, but if
that's going to be the normal path, that's a little less
attractive.

-Ekr

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 08 Feb 2008 10:39:24 +1300

...
> will identify your draft as "Lisp/Scheme program text" instead of 

(oh (dear))

However, we have to keep a sense of proportion. Having been one
of the pre-transition testers (although not of this particular tool),
I've seen enough to know that the AMS folk have been investing
tremendous effort to find and quickly fix problems. They
deserve thanks and understanding, which is not to say that
bugs shouldn't be fixed ASAP.

   Brian

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2008 15:35:09 -0800

On Feb 7, 2008, at 1:39 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:

> However, we have to keep a sense of proportion. Having been one of  
> the pre-transition testers (although not of this particular tool),  
> tremendous effort to find and quickly fix problems. They deserve  
> thanks and understanding, which is not to say that bugs shouldn't  
> be fixed ASAP.

violent agreement. They're working double shifts, and experiencing  
problems of a nature that helps justify the decision to transition.

Folks, let me discard the kimono for a moment and ask for  
forbearance. The comments in this thread so far have been to the  
mark, but the IETF list and the mumble-attendees lists are well known  
for people saying some pretty unnecessary things. In this case, the  
NSS secretariat managed to not communicate to the AMS secretariat  
basic things like "we run rsync", and configuration files that the  
NSS secretariat used that lived in someone's home directory without  
CVS-or-whatever control and were deleted as private because of what  
directory they were in. The fact that the transition has gone as  
smoothly as it has - and it has in fact gone very well for the most  
part - reflects a very high level of professionalism at AMS and a  
huge amount of hard work on the part of a small and very dedicated  
team, and a high level of cooperation between the AMS engineers and  
the tools team.

If you have issues that need to be addressed, please send email to  
[email-masked]. The trouble ticket system is working.
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