Bug#105364: installer allows user to insert underscores in the hostname

[Kjetil Torgrim Homme <kjetilho@help.linpro.no>]

Matt Kraai <kraai@debian.org> writes:

> You mentioned a WIP which would allow non-ASCII characters in the
> hostname.  Can you please send me a pointer to this document so that
> I can update the boot-floppies to comply with it?

This is the website of the IETF WG:
  http://www.i-d-n.net/

This is a good summary of what they have set out to do:
  http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-idn-requirements-08.txt

It's very early, yet.  But a few things are reasonably clear.  They'll
use Unicode, they just haven't decided on the encoding.  That is, all
characters which aren't US-ASCII will probably be added to the list of
allowed characters.  The limit of 63 octets per name component
probably won't change, but notice that the number of characters will
be less, depending on the encoding.

One thing: It would be good to disallow the use of ASCII Compatible
Encoding-prefixes.  They look like "xx--", where x is an arbitrary
letter.


Kjetil T.