[34283] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: [NANOG] Re: Reasons why BIND isn't being upgraded
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Joshua Goodall)
Fri Feb 2 03:55:47 2001
Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2001 09:52:21 +0100 (CET)
From: Joshua Goodall <joshua@roughtrade.net>
To: "Eric A. Hall" <ehall@ehsco.com>
Cc: NANOG <nanog@nanog.org>
In-Reply-To: <3A7A3C72.749EBF31@ehsco.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.32.0102020942150.2021-100000@juice.shallow.net>
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Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
On Thu, 1 Feb 2001, Eric A. Hall wrote:
> [assorted quote depths]
> > > > (1) 8.2.3 Doesn't accept the "(" in the SOA string to be on the
> > > > next line after the IN SOA. Our script-generated zonefiles, about
> > > > 45000 of them, all had this.
> > >
> > > Neither do the relevant RFC's, or any other DNS implementation.
> > > Pre-8.2.3 was simply _wrong_ to accept that syntax.
> >
> > Is there any particular harm from accepting this syntax.
>
> No and Yes. No in that an argument could be made that the old parsing
> routine fell under the "be liberal in what you accept" rules. Yes in that
> the Master File Format is intended to provide an interchangable database
> table, so while BIND may have been liberal it was doing so at the expense
> of some interoperability measures.
RFC 1122 s1.2.2 may not apply directly to configuration files, but the
spirit is good. The bracket acceptance would be classed as a
fault-tolerance feature, if BIND had a marketing department and glossy
brochures :)
I can understand the annoyance felt by a large hosting provider updating
BIND in an emergency and finding more than just a security fix. Pim is, I
guess, concerned that similar updates in future may have longer MTTR
impact. Pete Elke's point about preproduction testing could perhaps be
turned from a combative tone to the constructive without loss of
information.
joshua
