On Sun, 2004-05-30 at 16:51, Tim Meadowcroft wrote:
[snip]
distortion of its operational characteristics. But the records must also be
kept simple and readable enough that a sys admin can SEE broadly what a
record says, and can INSPECT the difference between 2 different records
without having to resort to external tools.
Consider that in order determine the MX record(s) of a particular
domain, all I need to type is 'host -t mx somedomain.com'. As a
sysadmin, I wouldn't particularly appreciate need to type 'host -t spf
somedomain.com | big-honkin-xml-editor' just to be able to grok what is
essentially a reverse-mx record. Also consider that I may be doing this
DNS query on a machine that is not my mail server, but a stripped down
box on my DMZ that (intentionally) has no XML utilities. Why should I
install XML tools on *any* system to do simple DNS queries?
Yes, I know SPF records are a bit more complex than simple MX records,
but I should be able to parse them with my eyes as easily as I can other
DNS records.
--
-Paul Iadonisi
Senior System Administrator
Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist
Ever see a penguin fly? -- Try Linux.
GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets