From owner-freebsd-stable Tue Mar 25 3: 6:47 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 061EB37B401 for ; Tue, 25 Mar 2003 03:06:42 -0800 (PST) Received: from heron.mail.pas.earthlink.net (heron.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.189]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6C1B243FA3 for ; Tue, 25 Mar 2003 03:06:41 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from tlambert2@mindspring.com) Received: from pool0001.cvx40-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net ([216.244.42.1] helo=mindspring.com) by heron.mail.pas.earthlink.net with asmtp (SSLv3:RC4-MD5:128) (Exim 3.33 #1) id 18xmGI-0005xB-00; Tue, 25 Mar 2003 03:06:35 -0800 Message-ID: <3E803770.1DD7FD0@mindspring.com> Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 03:03:12 -0800 From: Terry Lambert X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: daved@nostrum.com, stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Resolver Issues (non valid hostname characters) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-ELNK-Trace: b1a02af9316fbb217a47c185c03b154d40683398e744b8a4fbfce7646f394e19f16bbac42a86d5bea7ce0e8f8d31aa3f350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-15.5 required=5.0 tests=AWL,EMAIL_ATTRIBUTION,QUOTED_EMAIL_TEXT, RCVD_IN_OSIRUSOFT_COM autolearn=ham version=2.50 X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.50 (1.173-2003-02-20-exp) Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG David J Duchscher wrote: > It seems that the use of invalid characters in hostnames is cropping > up more and more. Besides complaining to the offending site which > often doesn't work, I was wondering if these restrictions on FreeBSD > should be re-examined. At this time, it seems that many OSes are no > longer enforcing this requirement or never have. In my case, I am > running into a hostnames with an underscore character in the name. It > seems that Linux, MacOS X, Solaris and Windows all allow this hostname > to resolve but FreeBSD, as well as the other *BSD, reject it. Should > FreeBSD follow suit? Welcome to DNSINT. Specifically, restrictions were relaxed on the root level servers; this was generally announced about a month ago. All data is 8-bit now, but not all DNS servers can handle it (e.g. try putting a tab or space or whatever in a zone name, which is now legal). The root servers were mostly switched over to totally different software from bind. 8-(. The specific reasons were for support of Big5 due to increased political pressure coming from China. See the ICANN web site for details. Personally, I think it's to make it harder to cut-and-paste domain names from SPAM to find the responsible party (chars in Big5 don't go over very well in ISO 8859-1, and end up being shell escapes, etc.). The answer is that it will have to be supported when DNSINT is supported (but nit until then; significant resolver library changes, which are not easy, are required, etc.). It's probably not very useful to talk about doing this until local caching-only name servers on border servers are capable of handling the 8-bit, as well. For the RFC's that FreeBSD currently complies with, it's right to be strict about this. Mostly it's still about domain name speculation, and, IMO, will be for a while. I'd say it's about as widely adopted as IPv6 -- which is to say: not very. PS: I was on the DNSINT IETF working group for a while, FWIW. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message