Re: IDN hostname resolution in NetBSD

[Chris Ross <cross+netbsd%distal.com@localhost>]

On May 27, 2010, at 2:08 AM, Geert Hendrickx wrote:
> DNS strictly only allows (a subset of) 7-bit ASCII for hostnames.  It's up
> to useragents (browsers, mail clients, ...) to interpret the punnycode and
> present it as internationalized strings to users, and vice versa.

  Right.  I understand that, and that's how I have it configured in my bind 
zone.

>  In BIND
> zones, Postfix config files etc, you'll have to use the ASCII
> representation.

  It's not the hostname in the postfix configuration that's the problem, it's 
the hostname in the kernel that postfix is complaining about.  The item I was 
trying to describe, which I think I did a poor job of, was that it seems the 
NetBSD kernel, and at least large parts of userland, do not know anything about 
handling IDN and doing the ToASCII and ToUnicode translations, as far as I can 
tell.  It was interesting to me that the Mac OS X (10.5) resolver did this, and 
netbsd didn't.  The issue of setting a local hostname, aside.

  Should it?  Well, I would argue that it's a split decision, but I'm certainly 
not going to suggest it.  Would I like to be able to have non-ASCII hostnames?  
Yes.  Does it belong in the kernel?  No.  No answer then exists.  :-)

  Thanks all for your feedback.

                                      - Chris