seth@ctr.columbia.edu (Seth Robertson) (07/13/90)
Greetings:
I recently ftped the latest(??) version of bind (4.8) from UUNET and I
was revamping my DNS files when I came upon one inconsistency that
wasn't obvious how to resolve (even if was not in a crucial part of
the rfcs.
From rfc1010 (Assigned Internet Numbers) page 57
----------------------------------------------------------------------
SYSTEM NAMES
These are the Official System Names as they appear in the Domain Name
System WKS records and the NIC Host Table. Their use is described in
RFC-952 [53].
A system name may be up to 40 characters taken from the set of upper-
case letters, digits, and the two punctuation characters hyphen and
slash. It must start with a letter, and end with a letter or digit.
[...]
SUN OS 3.5
SUN OS 4.0
[...]
UNIX-V.1
UNIX-V.2
UNIX-V.3
[...]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
and from rfc1033 (Domain Administrators Operations Guide) page 7
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The HINFO record gives information about a particular host. The data
is two strings separated by whitespace. The first string is a
hardware description and the second is software. The hardware is
usually a manufacturer name followed by a dash and model designation.
The software string is usually the name of the operating system.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Now I was trying to be official and put in the correct values for the
System name, but it appears that "SUN OS 4.0" is incorrect because of
the spaces (and to a lesser extent, the periods. rfc1010 quite
clearly states that both periods and spaces are not allowed, and
rfc1033 at least implies that spaces are not allowed.
The questions is what to do: "SUNOS-4.0" comes to mind, but that does
have a period in it.
I suppose the other question might be does any program use the HINFO
field. A human would obviously not care whether the period (or space)
is there or not, while a program certainly might. Does bind itself
care/notice?
Thanks,
-Seth Robertson
seth@ctr.columbia.edupaul@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu (Paul Pomes - UofIllinois CSO) (07/13/90)
seth@ctr.columbia.edu (Seth Robertson) writes: >The questions is what to do: "SUNOS-4.0" comes to mind, but that does >have a period in it. I punt on this question as maintaining the accuracy of version data for dispersed sites is a needless nightmare. For OS I select from the pool of {UNIX,DOS,VMS,MAC-OS,STAND-ALONE}. The latter is for boxes with embedded operating systems such as routers. >I suppose the other question might be does any program use the HINFO >field. A human would obviously not care whether the period (or space) >is there or not, while a program certainly might. Does bind itself >care/notice? I know of one program that does use the HINFO record and came across it at the Pittsburg IETF meeting. The telnet program running on the VMS VAXstations (Wollongong's, I believe) would display on the title bar: Connected to uxc.cso.uiuc.edu, a VAX-3500 running UNIX. Somehow I don't believe this program would care what was inside those strings. I don't recall any problems in the past with putting periods into HINFO records insofar as BIND was concerned. /pbp -- Paul Pomes UUCP: {att,iuvax,uunet}!uiucuxc!paul Internet, BITNET: paul@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu US Mail: UofIllinois, CSO, 1304 W Springfield Ave, Urbana, IL 61801-2987
gumby@Cygnus.COM (David Vinayak Wallace) (07/13/90)
The Symbolics network code uses those fields to figure out things like what the remote system's filename syntax is. It's a shame more people don't fill them in.
loverso@Xylogics.COM (John Robert LoVerso) (07/13/90)
In an article Paul Pomes writes: > The telnet program running on the VMS VAXstations > (Wollongong's, I believe) would display on the title bar: > Connected to uxc.cso.uiuc.edu, a VAX-3500 running UNIX. Actually, the software in use was TVG's MultiNet, somewhat described as a port of the 4BSD network code to VMS. A nice product. -- John Robert LoVerso Xylogics, Inc. 617/272-8140 x284 loverso@Xylogics.COM Annex Terminal Server Development Group
postel@VENERA.ISI.EDU (07/14/90)
Seth Robertson:
Hi. Well it looks like in entering some names in the list we didn't
follow our own rules. What we will do is replace the spaces in names
with dashes ("-") or squeeze them out, and we will change the rules to
allow dots (".") [or squeeze them out].
SUN OS 3.5 --> SUN-OS3.5
SUN OS 4.0 --> SUN-OS4.0
UNIX-V.1 --> UNIX-V1
UNIX-V.2 --> UNIX-V2
UNIX-V.3 --> UNIX-V3
--jon.
----- Begin Included Message -----
Date: 13 Jul 90 04:46:51 GMT
From: zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!seth@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Seth Robertson)
Subject: HINFO && rfc1010 && rfc1033
To: namedroppers@nic.ddn.mil
Greetings:
I recently ftped the latest(??) version of bind (4.8) from UUNET and I
was revamping my DNS files when I came upon one inconsistency that
wasn't obvious how to resolve (even if was not in a crucial part of
the rfcs.
>From rfc1010 (Assigned Internet Numbers) page 57
----------------------------------------------------------------------
SYSTEM NAMES
These are the Official System Names as they appear in the Domain Name
System WKS records and the NIC Host Table. Their use is described in
RFC-952 [53].
A system name may be up to 40 characters taken from the set of upper-
case letters, digits, and the two punctuation characters hyphen and
slash. It must start with a letter, and end with a letter or digit.
[...]
SUN OS 3.5
SUN OS 4.0
[...]
UNIX-V.1
UNIX-V.2
UNIX-V.3
----------------------------------------------------------------------
and from rfc1033 (Domain Administrators Operations Guide) page 7
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The HINFO record gives information about a particular host. The data
is two strings separated by whitespace. The first string is a
hardware description and the second is software. The hardware is
usually a manufacturer name followed by a dash and model designation.
The software string is usually the name of the operating system.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Now I was trying to be official and put in the correct values for the
System name, but it appears that "SUN OS 4.0" is incorrect because of
the spaces (and to a lesser extent, the periods. rfc1010 quite
clearly states that both periods and spaces are not allowed, and
rfc1033 at least implies that spaces are not allowed.
The questions is what to do: "SUNOS-4.0" comes to mind, but that does
have a period in it.
I suppose the other question might be does any program use the HINFO
field. A human would obviously not care whether the period (or space)
is there or not, while a program certainly might. Does bind itself
care/notice?
Thanks,
-Seth Robertson
seth@ctr.columbia.edu
----- End Included Message -----seth@SIRIUS.CTR.COLUMBIA.EDU (Seth Robertson) (07/14/90)
>>>>> On Fri, 13 Jul 90 10:38:38 PDT, postel@venera.isi.edu said:
jon> Hi. Well it looks like in entering some names in the list we didn't
jon> follow our own rules. What we will do is replace the spaces in names
jon> with dashes ("-") or squeeze them out, and we will change the rules to
jon> allow dots (".") [or squeeze them out].
jon> SUN OS 3.5 --> SUN-OS3.5
jon> SUN OS 4.0 --> SUN-OS4.0
jon> UNIX-V.1 --> UNIX-V1
jon> UNIX-V.2 --> UNIX-V2
jon> UNIX-V.3 --> UNIX-V3
jon> --jon.
Just as a matter of conformity with the way Sun writes things, perhaps
SUNOS-4.0 would be more appropriate.
((The following string is the exact way that Sun specifies their OS
version in the kernel: "SunOS Release 4.0.3"))
Thanks to you and to all who have responded to my message. In
response to my second question (does anything use it) several people
have responded that "Symbolics" and "TVG's MultiNet" both use it.
Symbolics also apparently uses WKS info if it is present.
-Seth Robertson
seth@ctr.columbia.eduhubert@CAC.WASHINGTON.EDU (Steve Hubert) (07/14/90)
In <1990Jul13.132945.28115@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>, paul@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu writes: >... >I know of one program that does use the HINFO record and came across it at the >Pittsburg IETF meeting. The telnet program running on the VMS VAXstations >(Wollongong's, I believe) would display on the title bar: > > Connected to uxc.cso.uiuc.edu, a VAX-3500 running UNIX. > MultiNet does that on vms vaxes. I've stopped putting in WKS entries, too, since keeping up to date and correct versions of WKS's is also nearly impossible. I think there may be a small number of programs that try to use that information, too. Steve Hubert -------
amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker) (07/15/90)
In article <GUMBY.90Jul13093218@Cygnus.COM>, gumby@Cygnus.COM (David Vinayak Wallace) writes: > The Symbolics network code uses those fields to figure out things like > what the remote system's filename syntax is. It's a shame more people > don't fill them in. We do the same thing in our Macintosh FTP client, so that we can parse long-format directory listings from servers that don't support the SYST command. -- Amanda Walker <amanda@intercon.com> InterCon Systems Corporation