So your issue that the results are inconsistent is certainly real.
I'd say that the best way to avoid this is not having a search domain
at all, or at the very least not several.
Which is a totally unreasonable suggestion.
The problem here is not the search but different stoping
critera depending apon the address families supported by
the host or requested by the application.
Well, let's be fair. Search creates lots of problems other than this
one. Right now there's not really any way to unambiguously specify a
FQDN that works across all applications, has the same meaning across all
applications, and has the same meaning independent of what host the
query is being made from. That's a real problem.
Yes, users like search, but it's arguably a Bad Idea, particularly in
the absence of a universal syntax that says "don't subject this name to
search".
IMHO the stopping criterion should be that if there are _any_ RRs
matching the name in a particular zone, the search should terminate.
We wrote a API that failed to account for the usual use
senario. In fact the guidance in there is the direct
opposite of what should be done with the usual use senario.
The "usual use scenario" is broken, and it's based on a previous
poorly-designed API.
It perfectly fine for a MTA which get fully qualified names
in MX records then looks up the addresses. MTA's should
be disabling name searching in the resolver. That however
is not how most application work nor how the users of those
applications want them to work. They want to be able to
search. I've actually had requests to extend the number
if domains that can be in the search list.
I think you're grossly overgeneralizing here. Email is far from the
only application that needs for DNS names to be unambiguous. And users
would benefit from having DNS names being used consistently from one app
to another, even though they may not realize this.
People like to use unqualified *and* partially qualified hostnames.
People also like to drive without seat belts. We don't let them do
that either... Or at least, we don't listen to their complaints when
the results are inferior to those obtained while driving _with_ a
seatbelt.
We also put air bags in cars to help those that don't use
saftey belts.
Maybe the equivalent of air bags in the case of DNS lookups would be
having an API that refused to search any name containing a ".".
Keith
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