Re: To the bind maintainer
On 22-Jan-00, 14:39 (CST), Marek Habersack <grendel@vip.net.pl> wrote:
> * Steve Greenland said:
> > Actually, I'm kinda confused about all this talk about running BIND on
> > personal machines (notebooks?) and by newbies. Why on earth would you
> > run BIND on a notebook[1]? Why on earth would a (relatively) new Linux
> Caching nameserver with fast forwarder. Caching locally all the lookups you
> make is sometimes quite desirable on dial-up connections.
Okay, I missed this one. It seems like overkill, but there doesn't seem
to be an alternative.
> > user have BIND installed? (Actually, now that I think about it, why is
> > there a "task-name-server" package?)
> For the newbies.
My (implied) contention was that "newbies" shouldn't be running name
servers.
> Come on, there was NO problem in this thread about NOT understanding
> the manpages, just about the DEFAULTS when the bind is installed.
My interpetation of *some* people's arguments was that the defaults
needed to be changed because the admins were incapable of reading the
man pages and config files and making approriate changes.
This is an ongoing peeve I've developed over the last couple of
years. We seem to spend a *lot* of time arguing about default
configuration, after spending a big effort making sure our system
preserved configuration changes. Despite that effort, there seem to
be a lot of people (not pointing a finger at anybody involved in
this discussion now) who won't be happy unless all their particular
configuration choices catered to in the default installation. The
reality is that sometimes there is no best choice, and therefore the
maintainer gets to make the call about what the default should be.
If you don't like the defaults, read the manpages and change the
config. Now, if the package upgrade stomps on your changes, you have a
reasonable beef with the maintainer. Otherwise, what's the big deal?
> > [1] Assuming you're using it *as* a notebook, not a notebook sitting
> > in one spot full-time, just because you had it laying around when
> > you needed a new nameserver box. But in that case it wouldn't have
> > interfaces going up and down all the time, would it?
> Why not? A friend of mine is using a notebook machine, 'coz he travells a
> lot. At home it sits in the dock and dials up every hour or so to fetch his
> mails, the machine is up all the time. There.
Sigh. Your friend *is* using it as a notebook, it's not online all the
time, therefore is not being used a "real" name server, and therefore
*not* covered in the footnote.
Steve
--
Steve Greenland <vmole@swbell.net>
(Please do not CC me on mail sent to this list; I subscribe to and read
every list I post to.)
Reply to: