Underscores in host names

Wed May 18 20:15:03 UTC 2005

At 3:51 PM -0400 2005-05-18, Eric A. Hall wrote:

>>  but it was wrong, and the need for it is past, and it's time for redress.
>
>  So, you found some pre-existing rules, used them as cover for your
>  problem, and now that your ~problem is fixed the pre-existing rules
>  shouldn't matter to anybody anymore?

	Who said the problem is fixed?

>                                        Come on now, isn't it slightly
>  possible that those rules were pre-existing for reasons that have nothing
>  to do with you?

	Man, did you get up on the wrong side of the world?  Everything 
I've seen from you lately seems to be very acidic and bordering on 
intentionally insulting.

	Can we try to have a decent intelligent discussion?  More 
importantly, can't we have this discussion in a more appropriate 
place?

>  Alternatively (and what we have in the pre-existing rules) is to forbid
>  those characters entirely, so that nobody is forced to kautau to a
>  specific nationalized character set.

	There is a solution for this problem.  Use 32-bit character sets 
which are defined to include the entire collection of known character 
sets in all other languages on the planet.

	But this means you have to have a flag day, unless you can come 
up with some way to also be backwards compatible.  And so long as 
you're backwards compatible, you can't get rid of the legacy 
problems.  So, you're right back where you started.

>                                        While that may feasible in protocol
>  commands and such, it's not feasible to mandate that /etc/hosts MUST
>  always use US-ASCII code-point values for characters that may not even
>  exist in the local nationalized charset.

	The problem is that /etc/hosts is a 30 year old solution, and we 
knew twenty years ago that it didn't properly solve the problem, and 
didn't solve it in the right way.  So long as you're going to call it 
/etc/hosts, I don't see how you can change the character set.

>                                            Really, spend some time with the
>  ECMA derivative sets and you'll see what I mean--there are characters in
>  some of them that aren't in the others, or they are misplaced, or they are
>  defined as alternates, and so forth.

	I live in Belgium.  Been there, seen that.  Exchanging one 
country-specific character set for another is not a solution.  You 
need a more over-arching solution that is equally applicable 
everywhere.

>  I'm glad you fixed your problem, but really, this isn't about DNS, it is
>  about universal representation of hostnames despite the media that is used
>  to convey those names.

	A standalone machine is worthless.  In fact, the definition of a 
truly secure machine is one that is completely isolated from every 
other machine on the planet.  And if that machine is going to be 
connected to others, you have to talk about representational issues, 
which means the DNS.

	Like it or not, when you talk about hostnames, you must also talk 
about DNS.

	Now, can we please take this discussion to a more appropriate place?

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.