[80895] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Underscores in host names
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Conrad)
Wed May 18 03:34:14 2005
In-Reply-To: <200505180108.j4I1838V099518@drugs.dv.isc.org>
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
From: David Conrad <david.conrad@nominum.com>
Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 00:33:46 -0700
To: Mark Andrews <Mark_Andrews@isc.org>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
Mark,
Grump.
I used to be in the 952/1123 sect, but I have since reformed and
continue to do penance for my sins.
The "hostname is not a domain name" dodge is simply wrong. If you
like, I can get a signed affadavit from the author of the DNS
specifications (assuming he's in the office tomorrow) to the effect
that it was always his intent that domain names be composed of any 8-
bit value. That's the whole reason for length encoding the labels.
RFC 2181, for all its other warts, explicitly clarified this
particular issue.
The whole reason for check-names was because of very seriously broken
software that would allow shell meta-characters in in-addr.arpa
labels to do bad things. I have come to the opinion that if such
software still exists, then the people who run that software deserve
what they get. Check-names was a bad idea that might have been
justified at the time, but pretending it remains justified by
952/1123 has got to stop sometime.
However, that rant was mostly irrelevant. Can you point to _ANY_
application, operating system, or anything else that has any issues
whatsoever with an "_" of all characters?
Rgds,
-drc
On May 17, 2005, at 6:08 PM, Mark Andrews wrote:
> RFC 952 and RFC 1123 describe what is currently legal
> in hostnames.
>
> Underscore is NOT a legal character in a hostname.
