Subject: Re: rsync vs. axfr-clarify (was: in support of axfr-clarify)

From: Paul Vixie <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 Dec 2002 15:26:54 +0000

this discussion puts me in mind of the following text:

> RFC 1034             Domain Concepts and Facilities        November 1987
> 
> 4.3.5. Zone maintenance and transfers
> 
> Part of the job of a zone administrator is to maintain the zones at all
> of the name servers which are authoritative for the zone.  When the
> inevitable changes are made, they must be distributed to all of the name
> servers.  While this distribution can be accomplished using FTP or some
> other ad hoc procedure, the preferred method is the zone transfer part
> of the DNS protocol.

rsync is thus accounted for.  unless this thread intends to modify 1034's
intent, which i've seen no evidence of, can you please take it to
djbdns-workers@, or to some other implementation-specific forum?

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---

From: Måns Nilsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 10:20:16 +0100

--On Tuesday, December 10, 2002 21:26:40 +0000 "D. J. Bernstein"
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> > My recommended use of rsync is to replicate complete _servers_. This
>> > has a simple meaning: the servers respond identically to every query.
>> A cool concept. And a fringe case at best.
> 
> In fact, even though BIND makes it unnecessarily difficult to set up,
> this is an extremely popular configuration. AXFR today has two main uses:
> 
>    (1) as a clumsy mechanism of replicating servers and
>    (2) as a clumsy mechanism of editing zone files remotely.

(3) Debugging of horribly b0rken setups. 

> Except at companies that sell third-party DNS service, there's very
> little demand for any type of replication other than server replication.
> Yes, we can all point to examples such as arpa-vs.-root-servers.net, but
> those examples are the fringe case.

This could just turn into another proportions debate, so I'll try not to.
But, my experience is that cloned servers are rare, but do exist. They
typically are multimasters; ie there is a parallel zone/config file
generator that simultaneously builds a config outside of the DNS protocol. 

Thus, I argue, this is not namedroppers matter, and somebody should shut me
up. 

-- 
Måns Nilsson            Systems Specialist
+46 70 681 7204         KTHNOC  MN1334-RIPE

We're sysadmins. To us, data is a protocol-overhead.

---

From: Bruce Campbell <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 13:14:52 +0100 (CET)

On 10 Dec 2002, D. J. Bernstein wrote:

> Bruce Campbell writes:
> > There is a set standard for zone (MASTER) files in RFC1035 section 5
>
> Sorry to bother you with the facts, but the BIND company keeps changing
> their zone-file format. You're kidding yourself if you think that the
> format is stable.

Lets see.  I stated that there is a set, implementation non-specific,
standard for zone files.  You replied that a specific implementation, the
'BIND company', keeps changing their zone file format.

Ergo, to use your methods of summarising, you are in support of AXFR
between different nameserver implementations, and possibly different
versions of the one implementation.

( Although to play Devils Advocate, after downloading sample BIND
  distributions and checking the example zones, the synxtax of the zone
  file that BIND will accept has not changed between BIND 4.8 and 9.2.2rc1
)

> Furthermore, zone files are only part of the BIND
> configuration; the named.conf format is even less stable.

Point being?

( as in, we're talking about zone files, not server configuration files )

--==--
Bruce.