>> the query log file syntax is *dratcially* different.
>
>Do you have any concrete real-world example of something that this will
>cause a problem for?  (i.e. something that's not just a human user
>concern?)

it used to look like this:

   13-Nov-2002 09:50:52.621 XX /65.198.151.3/mailhost.groove.com/A/IN
   13-Nov-2002 09:50:53.188 XX /64.12.136.230/swrg.com/A/IN
   13-Nov-2002 09:50:53.700 XX /206.13.29.44/fnet.fr/MX/IN
   13-Nov-2002 09:50:54.990 XX /208.27.212.20/www.graffiti.com/A/IN

but now it looks like this:

   Nov 16 19:40:27.055 client 204.50.24.66#4967: query: ec.graffiti.com IN SOA
   Nov 16 19:40:27.062 client 166.84.143.27#65531: query: luddite.org IN SOA
   Nov 16 19:40:27.069 client 166.84.0.168#58983: query: atomicstore.com IN SOA

which, while still parsable, also seems like a rather gratuitous
change.

>> some configuration file "features" are "gone", meaning that config
>> files will need to be tweaked and tweaked until the name server deigns
>> to start.
>
>It's not entirely that bad -- some of the missing features are just
>warned about and named starts anyway.  The only thing I've had trouble
>with are the "logging" categories -- some no longer exist and unknown
>ones are not ignored.  Unless many people are using my templates I'm not
>sure how common this problem will really be.

that's still a cycle of "try to start", "try to fix", "try to start",
that most people would not like to deal with.

>Worse though is that some of those features are crucial for some uses.
>For example the "host-statistics" option allows the operator of a
>recursive caching nameserver to determine where any records in the cache
>were learned from (and when).

yeah.  like that.  is that gone, too?  i didn't have to remove that
one to get bind9 to start, but i'd be dismayed to learn that it didn't
do anything any more.

>I consider the full "check-names" feature set quite critical for
>production use too.

i've never used that.

>> people need to learn to configure and to use rndc instead of plain old
>> ndc (not *completely* sure about this one, but i'm pretty sure that
>> the "unix" domain control socket goo is gone).
>
>That's a bit of an issue, but it's not difficult to provide simple
>templates that will work for anyone by default.

templates that require people to fill in keys.  which most people
would rather not deal with.  considering, though, that the named
script in rc.d would have to be rewritten somewhat anyway, i suppose
an "automated build" of rndc.conf could be stuffed in at that point.

>> don't get me wrong...i think i like bind9, but i know there are a
>> couple of things i'd really like from it that it just doesn't have.
>> it seems really close though...
>
>I still don't know if I like bind9 any better.  I do know that I don't
>really like the bind8 code -- it's really quite grotty and hard to work
>with.

whereas i haven't really looked at the bind9 code (except insofar as i
noticed it was totally different; a fact that i fully expected), but i
haven't had much trouble being the bind8 source to my will.

>I'm most interested in what might be done to update the resolver library
>code....  (especially since bugs in that code that were discovered and
>documented and fixed by some folks about five years ago weren't fixed in
>NetBSD until just the other day (yes I know I should have been keeping
>my eyes open for such things too))

off the top of my head, i suppose symbol renaming would be the easiest
way to go, so that the updated bind4 api/abi could be kept in place
for backwards compat reasons, but so that newer applications would get
the bind9 routines.  but that's just me.

-- 
|-----< "CODE WARRIOR" >-----|
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twofsonet@graffiti.com (Andrew Brown)                that goes *ping*!"
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