[19554] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: COM zone and serials
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg A. Woods)
Wed Sep 16 23:25:53 1998
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 23:22:09 -0400 (EDT)
From: woods@most.weird.com (Greg A. Woods)
To: nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: John Hawkinson's message
of "Wed, September 16, 1998 20:11:28 -0400"
regarding "Re: COM zone and serials"
id <199809170011.UAA06441@all-purpose-gunk.near.net>
Reply-To: nanog@merit.edu
[ On Wed, September 16, 1998 at 20:11:28 (-0400), John Hawkinson wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: COM zone and serials
>
> For instance, traceroute that differs from the canonical version
> (ftp.ee.lbl.gov).
Although the verions of traceroute at ftp.ee.lbl.gov may be the root of
all traceroutes, I'd never consider it to be the most portable one.
That said though I must admit I've stopped using Eric's version of
traceroute in favour of the version that comes with NetBSD. However in
the days I was still using SunOS-4 on my primary server(s), Eric's
version was enormously better than the LBL version, and much easier to
get working.
> "host" that differs from any of the canonical versions (like that
> distributed with bind), etc., etc.
I think you'll find the 'host' in the "tools" sub-directory of the BIND
distribution is an extremely ancient predecessor to the version Eric
maintains and that the one in the "contrib/host" sub-directory is in
fact a slightly out-of-date version of Eric's host(1).
I.e. Eric's host(1) *is* the "canonical" version.
> I think promulgating their usage as long as they conflict in name
> with more popular versions of the same programs is A Poor Idea.
What you call a "canonical" version simply may be the "original
predecessor". Even I maintain and distribute enhanced versions of
programs that originally came from elsewhere (eg. fingerd, newsyslog,
etc.). I rarely, if ever, change their names (though usually I give the
distribution tar archive a different version name :-).
"Use what works. Use what works best."
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 218-0098 VE3TCP <gwoods@acm.org> <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>
