[NCLUG] Are you running a local nameserver?

[Bob Proulx]

Michael Milligan wrote:
> Thanks for giving all the heads up.  But the tone needs to be
> downplayed, this is not a critical update.

I never said that it was a critical update.  Far from it!  I am sure
that I said there were 12 more out of the 13 servers that would need
to change all at once for this to be a problem.  And since the last
change was several years ago the rate of change is so slow that this
will never happen.  It is an update requested to be done by the ISC.
I don't know how I could have represented this any more accurately
than I did.

Actually if this was a critical update then there would be no need for
any manual change because then the distros would produce the update
themselves.  It is specifically because this is a low priority update
that it is unlikely this will be patched for a while.

> FWIW, this is completely unnecessary for people running BIND 9 (as long
> as you don't have an explicit root "." zone specified in your
> named.conf).

Hmm...  Apparently you are not aware that both Debian and Ubuntu
specify an explicit root hints file for the "." zone by default for
BIND 9?  This is specifically done to enable easy updating of the root
hints file.  Not that this changes anything in the debate in the
overall scheme of things.

> It will automatically be updated the next time you update
> your distro.

Agreed.  Debian stable is targeting end of year 2008, 18 months after
their last stable release, for their next stable release.  (Security
upgrades are released as needed.)  They are usually late.  Plus it
usually takes people a little bit to get around to upgrading to the
next stable release.  So this can all be over with sometime by the
middle of 2009.  I am glad that we can put this behind us quickly and
move on.  However since this is an external issue Debian will very
likely release this in their next quarterly point release at the
least.

Of course I am being very parochial talking about Debian so much.
Sorry about that but it was illustrative.  Of course Gentoo users will
already have the update.  And the LFS folks know what they need to do.
And so forth.

Bob

P.S. Even LaMont said that he tends to update his zone hints file too,
just to keep the syslog quiet.  :-)