Phase 4 of the MAIL-FROM deprecation

Dear Colleagues,

As you may know the third phase of phasing out the MAIL-FROM
authentication scheme from the RIPE Database resulted in a very high
rate of requests to update mntner objects coming to the Database
Administration, ripe-dbm (please see my message on this subject
http://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail-archives/db-wg/20020701-20021001/msg00021.html).

The requests are coming from the owners of the mntner objects that still
use only MAIL-FROM authentication scheme and therefore are locked.

We still have about 1500 such mntner object whose owners didn't use the
opportunity to update their objects during previous phases and now have
to apply to ripe-dbm to fix this situation.

Taking into account that this puts extra load on ripe-dbm and takes
resources from serving the usual types of requests I'd like to propose a
change for the phase 4 of the process of phasing out the MAIL-FROM
authentication scheme.

According to the agreed procedure
(http://www.ripe.net/db/MD5-HOWTO.html#b._Migration_timeline) during the 
phase 4 maintainers with "auth:" attributes using "MAIL-FROM" will
have those attributes removed. This is a clean-up step.


In addition we would like to do the following:

1. mntners with MAIL-FROM authentication _only_ will be updated in the
following way:
- a password will be auto generated and all MAIL-FROM "auth:" attributes
will be replaced with one auth: MD5-PW $1$<generated_string>;
- a mnt-by: attribute will be added referencing a protected mntner
RIPE-MAIL-FROM-MNT. This will serve as a tag.

2. A clear text password can be requested by sending an e-mail to
ripe-dbm at ripe.net with the following in the subject line:
MAIL-FROM:<mntner_name> without any spaces. The reply with the
passphrase will be sent to contacts listed in "upd-to:" and admin-c's
"e-mail:" of the mntner.

3. After that the mntner should be updated to remove the mnt-by:
RIPE-MAIL-FROM-MNT attribute and to possibly change the password.

4. After a certain period of time (2 months) the service will be
discontinued and decision will be made about the mntners that still
haven't been modified (still bear the RIPE-MAIL-FROM-MNT tag).

We will extend the deadline of the phase 4 till 15 August to have time
to come to an agreement. I kindly ask you to consider this proposal and
comment before that day.


Regards,


Andrei Robachevsky
DB Group Manager
RIPE NCC