Weird Problem

[Smith, William E. (Bill), Jr.]

I looked in the reverse zone file and sure enough it was in caps there.  I'm
using a third party DNS server as I metioned for my primary.  Is it doing
something funky here?  Bear in mind I checked another host in caps and it
was an NT 4 box using DHCP.  The problem clients are isolated to DHCP too.
Is it possible the DHCP server is doing something funky here to the reverse
zone names? 

Most of these clients are running NT4 and are using DHCP.  If they are
defined statically, no problems.  When using DHCP, the reverse is created in
caps.  Why the reverse and not forward or both kinda baffles me some too.

Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: Pete Peterson [mailto:petersonp at genrad.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2001 2:16 PM
To: bind-users at isc.org
Subject: Re: Weird Problem




> From: "Smith, William E. (Bill), Jr." <Bill.Smith at jhuapl.edu>
> To: bind-users at isc.org
> Subject: Weird Problem
> Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 13:32:31 -0400
> 
> 
> One of our desktop support personnel contacted me to state that some 
> of their users were having problems with a  particular application 
> working correctly.  When I inquired for details, I was told that the 
> application relied on host names being resolved in lowercase format.  
> i.e BILL.jhuapl.edu as opposed to bill.jhuapl.edu.  My first 
> impression was to say that an application that relies on this is a not 
> a well written one since DNS doesn't care(at least when using 
> nslookup) whether the host is in uppercase, lowercase or a mixture of 
> both.  To see what the user was referring to, I asked for an example.  
> I'm providing the output of a lookup by hostname and IP.  When doing 
> via IP it returns the hostname in caps for whatever reason.  The 
> client in question here is NT4.  This problem seems be consistent 
> across NT 4 clients. When I lookup on some W2K clients, I don't see 
> this behavior.  When I look at the zone file the host is in lowercase. 
> I'm kinda baffled by this one but I'm still of the opinion that an 
> application shouldn't be dependent on the case of a hostname.  Running 
> third party dns(bind 8.2.2P7 equivalent) on primary and 8.2.3 on 
> secondaries.  Has anyone see this behavior before? Any insight would 
> be appreciated
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Bill
> 
> Name:    brudide1.jhuapl.edu
> Address:  128.244.54.149
> 
> > 128.244.54.149
> Server:  apldns1.jhuapl.edu
> Address:  128.244.197.32
> 
> Name:    BRUDIDE1.jhuapl.edu
> Address:  128.244.54.149

I get the same results looking at that zone from here either on NT4 machines
or on our Linux DNS machines.  On other zones, including ours, I don't see
the uppercase in the PTR records from either NT or Unix.

Are you sure you don't have uppercase on the names in the REVERSE files?
    (e.g. for 149.54.244.128.in-addr.arpa)



        pete peterson
        GenRad, Inc.
        7 Technology Park Drive
        Westford, MA 01886-0033

        petersonp at genrad.com or rep at genrad.com
        +1-978-589-7478 (GenRad);
        +1-978-589-2088 (Closest FAX); +1-978-589-7007 (Main GenRad FAX)