a newbie question: how do i upgrade my bind 4.9.7 to latest version

[Jim Reid]

>>>>> "Cricket" == Cricket Liu <cricket at acmebw.com> writes:

    >> Scripts to aid the migration to BIND8 are all very well, but
    >> IMHO there's no substitute for a decent FAQ or README in the
    >> distribution.

    Cricket> Okay, Jim, we're waiting.

I thought you'd volunteered to compile a new FAQ? :-) ISTR a posting
from you about this a while ago.

    >>  In theory yes, in practice I suspect it'll cause more problems
    >> than it solves. First of all, the clueless won't read the
    >> README or run the zone file munging script, so the same
    >> question about the log message will continue to be asked
    >> anyway. [And probably not much less frequently than it gets
    >> asked just now.]

    Cricket> I can hardly believe that it would cause more problems
    Cricket> than it would solve.  By your reasoning, isn't providing
    Cricket> a migration script like named-bootconf itself a bad idea?

Yes and no. It's better than nothing, but I'm sure you'd agree that
hostmasters should have some understanding of the zone{} statement
instead of just blindly running a script. A little knowledge is a
dangerous thing and all that.

    Cricket> After all, if we simply required administrators to learn
    Cricket> BIND 8 named.conf syntax on their own, we wouldn't have
    Cricket> to deal with all these newbies who don't know how to add
    Cricket> a zone statement.

Yeah. And they can always buy a book to supplement the skimpy
documentation. :-)

    Cricket> But if we provide a conversion script, shouldn't it do as
    Cricket> complete a job as possible?

But where do you draw the line for "complete"? Rejecting illegal
names or bogus/missing glue records, zapping other common errors like
NS and MX records which point at CNAMEs, multiple CNAMEs, syntax
errors, etc, etc.

    Cricket> So what if we don't solve the problem for 100% of name
    Cricket> server administrators.  If we make life easier for even a
    Cricket> small number of them who do run named-bootconf, isn't
    Cricket> that worth a little development effort?

Sure but it depends on the cost/benefits.

    Cricket> And if the clueless won't read the README, why do you
    Cricket> assert that there's no substitute for a decent README in
    Cricket> the distribution?

Because we could all just tell them to read that README or FAQ instead
of giving the same answers to the same questions. In fact, maybe the
distribution could contain Something Obvious so everyone is told to
read that FAQ before they post questions to the list. Some hope....

    >> Secondly, the script will have to take account of every
    >> possible version control that might be in use. I assume/hope
    >> everybody puts their zone files into RCS or SCCS or CVS or
    >> whatever.

    Cricket> Why?  Say it stream edits the zone data files and
    Cricket> prepends $TTL control statements.  If an administrator
    Cricket> hasn't co'd the files, then he's no worse off than if the
    Cricket> script hadn't done anything at all.

True. But would does your proposed script cope with zone files that are
or aren't under version control? Writing something that would work OK
with the most common VC tools (and none!) will be awkward. Prepending
$TTL directives is all very well, but that too could be troublesome,
especially if it's done outside the check-out/in. [For instance, we
check the zone files with the versions under the RCS tree just in case
someone/something bypassed the co/ci and edited the zone file
directly. Audit trails and all that. Not that we need a script to add
$TTL directives anyway...] 

I think that a script would be OK for the simplest (most clueless)
setups, but it would need to be carefully identified as such. For
instance "this tool won't work so well on zone files that are
under version control and/or automatically produced (get your tool
to generate $TTL)". I'm not sure how well such a message would be
understood especially if the script was being run automagically for
those who can't/won't read the most fundamental documentation. And if
the script is for the clueless, the chances are the clueless won't use
it. Someone had a great signature: "the more you try to make things
idiot-proof, the world makes a bigger idiot". NB: I'm not insulting
the people who pose naive questions, just making a point.