> On Tuesday, March 25, 2003, at 09:32 PM, Terry Lambert wrote:
> > David J Duchscher wrote:
> >>> If this is committed before RFC-952 is updated, FreeBSD users
> >>> can now define host names that break other machines on the net
> >>> which are strictly conformant to RFC-952.
> >>
> >> Which will just make us behave like rest of the world. I have
tested
> >> resolvers on Solaris, Windows, MacOS X, MacOS 9, IRIX, Linux, AIX.
> >> They all will resolve a name with an underscore character. Only
the
> >> *BSD boxes fail because of the check.
> >
> > Actually, anyone who took the original ISC code, or the FreeBSD code,
> > will end up having problems. Including AIX, Solaris, MacOS X.
> Unless they have modified the code which all the above OSes seem to
> have done since they do not show the behavior.
> >>> What is the first maxim of protocol design?
> >>>
> >>> "Be generous in what you accept, strict in what you
generate".
> >>
> >> Which is why I would argue that the patch should be committed,
maybe
> >> with an option to enable it. We are talking about the resolver,
not a
> >> DNS or hostname server. The resolver should resolve the name, be
> >> generous. It just depends at what level you apply the maxim. The
> >> check should be in the DNS server not in the resolver IMHO.
> >
> > You apply the maxim to each interface, seperately. For example,
> > FreeBSD should not allow the configuration of host names with
> > "_" in them, but it should, perhaps, permit them to be
looked up.
> I can agree with this statement. Unfortunately, FreeBSD doesn't
> do this in many ways. Example, you can set a hostname with a
> underscore in it. You can even use an underscore in the name in
> the host file and everything will work. You just can't look up
> the name via DNS.
One of the first times I brought up a DNS server was about 1994 for
a local community college. 'twas a mixed bag and the only Unix
system was their internet gateway - with everyting else being
Novell except the mail handlers locally being OS/2.
At that time they had machines with underscores - I believe they
were the OS/2 machines. I told them they should make plans to
change them as the underscore was being eliminated. They did
nothing until three years later - '97 or '98 - when they started
having problems.
There has been plenty of warnings so I have no sympathy for those
who had 8 years to plan for this.
Bill
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com