Re: [leafnode-list] fqdn validation

[Mark Brown <broonie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Apr 15, 2002 at 11:53:34AM +0200, Matthias Andree wrote:
> Mark Brown schrieb am Montag, den 15. April 2002:

> > Should be OK by the time the hostname has been pasted on the front.

> Probably not. somehostname.hotmail.com is not much different from
> hotmail.com when somehostname is "Amnesiac" or "Debian".

This is one of the reasons to use the news server name - it should make
things a bit more unique.  I don't think collisions are quite as extreme
a problem you do - the algorithm used to generate the left hand side of
the address needs to be reasonably good and there's always the
possibility of more than one user on a single host.

> Mark, I understand that the best way to have a package installed (for a
> user) is to just enter "apt-get leafnode" or "portinstall leafnode" or
> something. How much effort would it cost you to ask a domain name from a
> user in interactive mode install and write a message to the install log
> and the console in batch mode install?

It's not much effort to ask for the configuration.  The problem is that
I'm trying to support inexpert users and I want to present them with
questions that are easy to understand and answer (the existing prompts
do need some work in that regard).  I can't think of a way of asking for
a domain name that my parents would be able to understand and answer and
which actually helps anything.

If I ask them to enter a domain name there's a strong chance that the
best I can hope for is that they're going to enter either the domain
part of their e-mail address or the domain of their ISP (which might be
the same thing) at which point we're right back to the point above.  For
that matter, I'd probably do that and then have to figure out why I had
fun posting to my own news server as Leafnode slams in a Path: entry
(actually, it might figure that one out on POST but I'm not sure).  If I
ask for the FQDN of the host I would anticipate the confusion being
greater and the answers similar.

I suppose I could feed /dev/random into things, though that is more than
a little icky.

-- 
"You grabbed my hand and we fell into it, like a daydream - or a fever."

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