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2 total messages Started by John Stanley Tue, 15 Dec 1992 21:06
Re: Mixed format addresses
#3389
Author: John Stanley
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 21:06
61 lines
3420 bytes
In article <BzBBMJ.4xp.2@cs.cmu.edu> Karl_Kleinpaste@cs.cmu.edu writes:
>stanley@skyking.oce.orst.edu writes:
>   >Then my boss isn't really in charge of the machines at my site, because he
>   >has to go through one of the sysadmins to make a configuration change?

No, I certainly did not write this.

>Your attitude is insulting to the many sysadmins out there who
>voluntarily support domains requiring MX support. 

My "attitude" is that those people who voluntarily provide support by 
providing MX records do not automatically come under my control just
because they are providing an MX record for me. Period. 

Since they are not under my control, I am not "in charge" of them, in
the same sense that the "boss" referred to by the true author of the
above quote is.  If they have two things to do late Friday afternoon,
and one of them isn't making a change in my DNS information, I am in no
position to demand that the one thing they have time to do will be
mine.

>Anyone who ran such a domain and needed updates simply mailed me the
>update, and I didn't do anything more than check it quickly for
>outright errors so my nameservers wouldn't choke on it.  Installation
>of the updates was usually done within the day.

Did you consider yourself to be under the control of the sites who
connected to you? Were THEY in charge of your nameserver, or were you?
Consider what you did with changes that had errors -- did you make them
or did you refuse? And when you refused, were any of your sites able to
overturn your refusal? Then they weren't in charge, were they?

>It is singularly inappropriate for you to be accusing others of taking
>the low road of personal insult when you are quite possibly doing more
>of the same, obtusely and without direct reference, than the rest of
>the participants in this pointless argument combined.

I have accused no admin of any wrongdoing. Show me where I have. Don't
tell me about what you inferred or thought I said -- tell me where I
said it. 

>Yes, when you are the domain contact of an MX-supported domain, you
>_are_ in charge of the zone file for your domain, 

I am not the domain contact, thus not in charge. I doubt that I am the
only site like this. If I am unable to force a change to the zone file,
then I certainly am not in charge of that file.

>and the sysadmin who
>actually manages the nameservers that support your domain has a quite
>obvious and clear responsibility to be responsive to your needs for
>updates.  

In my case, yes, because I pay for him to do it. In the case of
Random.uucp who gets a free connection from Arbitrary.edu, the "obvious
and clear responsibility" is not so obvious and clear. It becomes even
less so when the feed is arbitrary.com.

>If you're going to be insulting, 

Conditional clause not fulfilled, remainder of paragraph deleted.
Re: Mixed format addresses
#3269
Author: Alan P Barrett
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 20:24
27 lines
1971 bytes
In article <1glhcpINNkgt@gaia.ucs.orst.edu>,
stanley@skyking.OCE.ORST.EDU (John Stanley) writes:
In article <BzBBMJ.4xp.2@cs.cmu.edu> Karl_Kleinpaste@cs.cmu.edu writes:
> My "attitude" is that those people who voluntarily provide support by 
> providing MX records do not automatically come under my control just
> because they are providing an MX record for me. Period. 

I missed the start of this discussion, so I hope that I am have not
completely misunderstood, but it looks as though two groups of people
are talking at cross purposes here, with both groups being right (or
nearly right).

It seems to me that you *can* be in charge of _the MX records_, even
if you are *not* in charge of _the people_ or _the equipment_ that does
some of the work that is needed to make the MX records useful.

For example, suppose that you have a site that is not IP reachable,
and that a volunteer (with the necessary equipment, connectivity, etc.)
is willing to provide nameserver service for you.  If you register a zone
for your site and edit the master file for that zone, then I would say
that you are in charge of the zone, even though you would not be able
to install the updates yourself.  On the other hand, it seems clear that
you would not be in charge of the volunteer person.

--apb
Alan Barrett, Dept. of Electronic Eng., Univ. of Natal, Durban, South Africa
RFC822: barrett@ee.und.ac.za                    Bang: m2xenix!undeed!barrett
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