blanks in owner and host names

Bob Vance bobvance at alumni.caltech.edu
Sat Jan 13 05:32:14 UTC 2001


>Actually, it's not rejecting them, it's just complaining about them.

Correct.

The update to the zone data occurs both when 'dhcpd' internally does it
(via calling 'nsupdate', I presume) or when doing the 'nsupdate'
manually from a file.
'named' complains but adds the data anyway (as the syslog message says).

When 'named' is stopped, the zone files are updated with the (encoded)
data.  Subsequently, whenever 'named' reloads the zone file, it makes
the same complaint, but adds the data to the zone info in memory.

The name being presented has been encoded with blanks being converted
to \032 by dhcpd.

So a DHCP client with a name like
    "Bob Vance PC"
gets sent to nsupdate as
    "Bob\032Vance\032PC"
who then does whatever it does to make BIND save the data in the
same encoded format as witnessed by looking at the dynamic zone files.

So why is the owner name "Bob\032Vance\032PC" (or host name in the case
of the reverse PTR record) invalid?  There are no actual blanks it!


-------------------------------------------------
Tks        | <mailto:BVance at sbm.com>
BV         | <mailto:BobVance at alumni.caltech.edu>
Sr. Technical Consultant,  SBM, A Gates/Arrow Co.
Vox 770-623-3430           11455 Lakefield Dr.
Fax 770-623-3429           Duluth, GA 30097-1511
=================================================





-----Original Message-----
From: bind-users-bounce at isc.org [mailto:bind-users-bounce at isc.org]On
Behalf Of Kevin Darcy
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2001 11:19 PM
To: bind-users at isc.org
Subject: Re: blanks in owner and host names



Actually, it's not rejecting them, it's just complaining about them.
Didn't it
do that at the time they were created via Dynamic Update? Possibly this
is in
another logging category so you may not have seen it...


- Kevin

Kevin Darcy wrote:

> Although the DNS protocol _per_se_ does not forbid spaces in names,
spaces
> are technically forbidden in "hostnames" (see RFC 952 and 1123). Your
> version of BIND has taken upon itself the task of enforcing hostname
rules,
> and that's why it's rejecting those names at load time. It seems a
little
> inconsistent, I'll agree, for it to accept those names via Dynamic
Update
> but then reject them when reloading the zone...
>
> - Kevin
>
> Bob Vance wrote:
>
> > Linux RH 6.1 with kernel update to 2.2.16
> > dhcp server 3.0b2pl11
> > BIND 8.2.3T9B
> >
> > I have dynamic DNS updates working fine (except for one tiny problem
> > with dhcpd that I'm researching, and which problem is really
irrelevant
> > to this posting).
> > I have a client that has blanks in it's name (and, even if I wanted
to,
> > I cannot change it -- it's encoded in firmware.)
> >
> > The forward dynamic update gets into the dynamic zone file fine,
with
> > the blanks encoded as \032 :
> >
> > ORiNOCO\032RG-1000\03201a393  18000  IN  A   192.168.1.28   ;CL=2
> >
> > I assumed that this was OK, since I figured that blanks might be a
> > problem :)
> >
> > In fact, lookups *are* working fine:
> >
> > herman# dig  'ORiNOCO RG-1000 01a393.dynamic.vance.'
> >    ...
> > ;; QUERY SECTION:
> > ;;      ORiNOCO\032RG-1000\03201a393.dynamic.vance, type = A, class
= IN
> >
> > ;; ANSWER SECTION:
> > ORiNOCO\032RG-1000\03201a393.dynamic.vance.  5H IN A  192.168.1.47
> >    ...
> >
> > 'nslookup' has a little problem with the blank, but it also works if
> > I do the encoding for it:
> >
> > herman# nslookup -d 'ORiNOCO\032RG-1000\03201a393.dynamic.vance.'
> >    ...
> > QUESTIONS:
> >         ORiNOCO\032RG-1000\03201a393.dynamic.vance, type = A, class
= IN
> >     ANSWERS:
> >     ->  ORiNOCO\032RG-1000\03201a393.dynamic.vance
> >         internet address = 192.168.1.47
> >    ...
> >
> > So I'm happy as a clam except for two things:
> >
> > 1) (this is really OT, but I thought I'd mention it for grins
> >    )
> >    'ping', 'telnet', etc. on Linux doesn't like the blank in the
name
> > and just return "Unknown host" .
> > This appears to be a resolver library issue (original Linux
programs),
> > since resolver code on both Win95 and HP-UX *do* accept blanks in
the
> > names and 'ping' works fine against those names.
> >
> > 2) I happened to be looking in the syslog file while researching the
> >    aforementioned dhcpd problem (which is that dhcpd does *not*
encode
> > correctly the reverse entry and it is, therefore, not entered into
the
> > zone file correctly), and I saw the following BIND messages:
> >
> >    ...
> > owner name "ha\032ri\032xx.dynamic.vance" IN (primary) is invalid -
> > proceeding anyway
> > master zone "dynamic.vance" (IN) loaded (serial 2001011121)
> > host name "ha\032ri\032xx.dynamic.vance" (owner
> > "45.1.168.192.dynamic.in-addr.arpa")
> >      IN (primary) is invalid - proceeding anyway
> > master zone "dynamic.in-addr.arpa" (IN) loaded (serial 2001011117)
> >    ...
> > owner name "ORiNOCO\032RG-1000\03201a393.dynamic.vance" IN (primary)
is
> > invalid -
> >      proceeding anyway
> >
> > The first two come from reloading the dynamic zones which include a
> > couple of test
> > updates using 'nsupdate'.
> >
> > The third one comes because of the DHCP dynamic update.
> >
> > In both cases (manual 'nsupdate' and DHCP dynamic update), the names
> > *are* added
> > to the zone, as I said above.
> >
> > So, I guess the questions are:
> >
> > Why is BIND complaining?
> >    (NOTE: both 8.2.2-p5 and 8.2.2-p7 make the same complaint.
> >    )
> > Should DHCP be encoding the name the way it does?
> >    (I'm thinking, "Yes", since 'dig' encodes it the same way for its
> > query.
> >    )
> >
> > -------------------------------------------------
> > Tks        | <mailto:BVance at sbm.com>
> > BV         | <mailto:BobVance at alumni.caltech.edu>
> > Sr. Technical Consultant,  SBM, A Gates/Arrow Co.
> > Vox 770-623-3430           11455 Lakefield Dr.
> > Fax 770-623-3429           Duluth, GA 30097-1511
> > =================================================









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