Anybody else getting this?

NOT VERIFIED
We were unable to access the verification file due to a restriction in
robots.txt

There is no restriction in robots.txt !!
AND the file has been in place and working since the start of sitemaps,
now its coming up with this rubbish !!

I may be completely off on this, but have you checked the permissions
on the file?

Does your site redirect 404 errors to a custom 404 page? If so, you
might check to see if you have a robots.txt file that excludes access
to that custom page.

When we check for your verification file, we also check your server's
response to a non-existent page. (You can read more about why we do
that here:
http://sitemaps.blogspot.com/2005/09/verifying-your-site-trouble-with...).

If your server's response to a request for a non-existent page
redirects to a page that is restricted by a robots.txt file, you might
see this error message.

If you find that this is the case, you could turn off the redirect just
long enough to verify and then turn the redirect on again.

When they first started these maps, I added the file, it was verified,
and has been working until now, I changed nothing

:_ Im not following that..

First of all the file is there, so there wont be an error, and there
wont be an error page or redirect.

This is not something I have had from the start, its been working just
fine, then all of a sudden "All" of my site maps show this error.

There are no restriction in robots.txt

if you have a robots.txt file that excludes access
to that custom page.

There is, but I deleted the robots.txt and clicked verify, and it still
never worked.

Will remove restriction to error pages, so long as you promice not to
included them in your search results, like you have been doing

Ok, my cgi scripts were in error/ which was in robots.txt my custom
pages were also inside error/
before google had all my custom pages listed, thats why I added error/
to robots.txt

Now
error/ (cgi scripts only) location in robots.txt
errorpages/ my custom error pages, location not in robots.txt

Now when I click verifi I get this

"We've detected that your 404 (file not found) error page returns a
status of 200 (OK) in the header. "

Should I redo the whole of my site just to please google ??????

I THINK NOT !

Ok, Rename the folder that has custom error pages, click verify, rename
folder back

What a waste of time this is, sitemaps are for google not for webmasters

There's information about why you're seeing that error in our
documentation:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/verify.html#verific...

And in our blog:
http://sitemaps.blogspot.com/2005/09/verifying-your-site-trouble-with...

You can also do a search on the posts in this group. The members here
have posted a lot of good information.

Your error page probably returns 200 instead of 404 (as it should) -
you can test it here: http://gsitecrawler.com/tools/Server-Status.aspx
and find more information on the 404/200 issue here:
http://gsitecrawler.com/articles/error-404-200.asp

It's not just something Google made up, it's the standard. The other
search engines have problems with these kinds of things as well, Google
is just the one to put it on the "front page" :-). Also -- without this
check it is not possible to verify that you are the site owner (with
the current system, since any validation-file that Google would want
will return 200 "ok" - even if it does not exist -  if anyone else
decides to add your site to their statistics).

Cheers
John

The fact that someone has a sitemap,froogle and AdSense account should
be proof enough !!

Sitemaps are new, custom error pages are not !!!, so why should
anything old be changed to fit in with the incompetence of googles
scripts ?

NONE of this was said when people signed up for them