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From: seth@ctr.columbia.edu (Seth Robertson)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains
Subject: HINFO && rfc1010 && rfc1033
Summary: Errors?
Message-ID: <1990Jul13.044651.10354@ctr.columbia.edu>
Date: 13 Jul 90 04:46:51 GMT
Organization: Columbia University Center for Telecommunications Research
Lines: 56

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