What is HTTP error code 423 "Locked"?

[David W. Deley]

What is HTTP error code 423 "Locked"? It happens when
I attempt to access the robots.txt file:

http://mysite.verizon.net/robots.txt

Once in a rare while, maybe 1 in 50 times, it
returns the usual 404 "File Not Found" code,
but just about always it returns a 423 "Locked" code.

Verizon tech support is incompetent. After an hour
on the phone getting the issue elevated the highest
person I was allowed to talk to didn't know what
ASCII was or how to pronounce it. No one there
understands why it is important for a web crawler
to either access this file or determine that the file
does not exist by receiveing a 404 "File Not Found"
code.

Verizon's answer is, "We don't understand what
you're talking about so there is no problem.
It's either not our problem, or it's not
supported, or 423 is the correct code to
return when a file doesn't exist."

So even though I'm a systems programmer with
a master's degree from UCSB, to them I'm just another
stupid customer for them to dismiss.

Where is some documentation on HTTP error code 423 "Locked"?

 

[Frogleg]

What is rfc2518?

A reference to rec.food.cooking?

 

[kayodeok]

What is rfc2518?

http://www.google.com/search?q=rfc2518

....and this one:
http://google.emperial.dk/

 

[Jacqui or (maybe) Pete]

What is rfc2518?

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2518.html

What's UCSB? University of Cheap Scrolls By-email?

 

[Ernest Cline]

RFC stands for Request For Comments and is the usual prefix given to
standards documents put out by the IETF. (Internet Engineering Task Force)
IETF put out RFC 1866 for HTML 2.0 and RFC 1945 for HTTP 1.0. While W3C
took over the task of managing the HTML standards, IETF retains
responsibility for HTTP (which makes sense as HTTP is a protocal for
exhanging data over the internet whose only real connection to HTML is that
HTML was the data type first carried by it.)

RFC 2518 deals with some extensions to HTTP of which response code 423 is
one of them. It indicates that the file has been locked so that someone can
edit it. Why error code 423 is cropping up is another question entirely and
not one I can answer.

 

[Jacqui or (maybe) Pete]

A reference to rec.food.cooking?

No, you're thinking of RFC 451F.

 

[William Tasso]

No, you're thinking of RFC 451F.

No, that's for paper. food is RFC 100C

 

[Andy Dingley]

What's UCSB? University of Cheap Scrolls By-email?

ROFL

"UCSB - Where it's September All Year Round"






Grandad, do you remember RFCs ?