Date: Sun, 28 Sep 1997 08:01:09 +0200 From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) To: chat@FreeBSD.ORG (FreeBSD Chat) Subject: Re: Microsoft brainrot (was: r-cmds and DNS and /etc/host.conf) Message-ID: <19970928080109.EQ30412@uriah.heep.sax.de> In-Reply-To: <19970928101941.03210@lemis.com>; from Greg Lehey on Sep 28, 1997 10:19:41 %2B0930 References: <19970927143934.ZN26834@uriah.heep.sax.de> <199709272127.OAA11524@usr08.primenet.com> <19970928101941.03210@lemis.com>
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As Greg Lehey wrote: > (following up to -chat) (Well, i decided to not followup to Terry's article at all...) > >> And finally, using the shicky-micky listbox interface usually screws > >> the nameserver setup at all. > > > > But it's easy. Ease of use cannot be abused to justify a non-functional program. Functionality must come first, and a nifty user interface might follow once the functionality is there (and reasonably bug-free). While i accept that Unix often fails to continue to #2 at all, Mickeysoft normally fails step #1, and immediately proceeds to #2. I understand that ``this sells better'', but we are not here to sell something, nor are we here to justify sales droids. It's really only an incident that these nameservers work at all, and they only work if you're putting your local machine name into the SOA record -- in all other cases, any nameserver on the world refuses to accept zone transfers from these broken servers since they don't claim to be authoritative. And, they even got step #2 wrong, in that using the user interface often enough breaks the entire nameserver. Sometimes it's no longer answering after hitting some button there, another time it doesn't pick up the changes made, yet another time it changes options itself (like removing the `forwarders' functionality). One of our customers is running several offices with this cr*p (they didn't have a Unix machine in each office to run named on), and we came to the conclusion of recommending them to never use the shicky-micky interface, but only edit the zone files manually. Fortunately, they didn't re-invent the wheel regarding zone files. Still, the major bug remains that these servers don't claim to be authoritative. > Then why don't you do it and import the configuration to your UNIX > box? I'd like to see it, if only to pick holes in it. It probably would work. Anyway, i can't understand why someone would go through this kind of pretty-looking but slow to use UI when setting up a nameserver is normally a matter of ten minutes. You need to understand what the various DNS RRs are for anyway, or the hell will break loose. But, once you understood, you could write the files with the editor of your choice as well. -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)
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