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Comment by riffraff | Hacker News Reader

the author got it from exactly that link, the exact text is the one reported in the article, just CTRL+F "the protocol is ASCII-only".

I presume text was edited a few times in different places withou re-checking everything.

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No. he's confusing the auth protocol with the dbus protocol.

well, yes, but he's arguing that the documentation is bad, not that the dbus protocol doesn't exist.

The phrasing "The text protocol described in this document" (sic) can not easily be interpreted as "the thing described in this section, but not in the rest of the document".

I stand by my interpretation of incoherent editing.

"Immediately after connecting to the server, the client must send a single nul byte. This byte may be accompanied by credentials information on some operating systems that use sendmsg() with SCM_CREDS or SCM_CREDENTIALS to pass credentials over UNIX domain sockets. However, the nul byte must be sent even on other kinds of socket, and even on operating systems that do not require a byte to be sent in order to transmit credentials. The text protocol described in this document begins after the single nul byte. If the first byte received from the client is not a nul byte, the server may disconnect that client."

Oh, technically the dbus auth handshake is defined as not being part of the dbus protocol. That's not convincing.

If they are defined as separate protocols, then the argument that the spec is ridiculous because it contradicts itself on this point is based on a misunderstanding, whatever the merit (or demerit) for these things being separate protocols is.

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