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Re: [leafnode-list] fqdn validation



On Mon, Apr 15, 2002 at 04:25:24PM +0200, Matthias Andree wrote:
> Mark Brown schrieb am Montag, den 15. April 2002:

> > 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

> 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.

I have two issues with that.  

One is that it's not just a question of ever being able to understand -
it's also a question of being able to present the required information
in an understandable fashion and get a valid configuration back in a
reasonable manner during installation.  I could abort configuration and
let people come back to it later or require people to do stuff
themselves but that's kind of defeating the point of trying to help
people out with the configuration.

The other is that for most of these users Leafnode is functioning as a
proxy providing offline cache services.  It's got one upstream, one
downstream and its only role in life is to add offline support to the
client.  It might be possible to have it act more like a full server but
that's not the point.  That's the kind of person for whom I'm trying to
automate configuration.

> 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.

That's not an entirely useful solution for Debian - I can't rely on
systems being network-connected at the point of configuration.  I could
play games with trying to generate something while connected.

Attempting to validate the hostname too strongly is a loosing game - if
you want to avoid things like big ISP domains you'll end up with a
mighty long blacklist.

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

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