Re: [leafnode-list] fqdn validation

[Matthias Andree <matthias.andree@xxxxxx>]

Mark Brown schrieb am Montag, den 15. April 2002:

> 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.

Yes, but that's up to the application to work around. Leafnode itself
encodes the PID, so that collisions will not happen. (No two users can
post to the same leafnode process).

> 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.

Well, the point is: who is not able to understand the importance of a
proper host and domain name for world wide communication (mail & news),
is not able to operate a mail or news server. It sounds rude, but that's
what this is about.

> 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.

Cornelius, Great Master of Leafnode.ORG, would you deem it possible to
run a CGI script on www.leafnode.org that generates truly unique FQDN
for users with home systems that do not have domains like
somesite.myip.org? I can imagine the host name is associated to a mail
address, and the mail address and host name are recorded in a data base.

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