12 Mar
2021
12 Mar
'21
7:14 a.m.
3com.com was indeed illegal initially. We (the UUCP Zone) went to
register it with the NIC and were told leading zeros weren't allowed,
because some code might think a leading digit meant an IP address. I
pushed back, they relented, and it was registered without a problem.
On 3/11/21 1:08 PM, Ron Natalie wrote:
The "name" in this context the
host/network/gateway name such as
SRI-NIC.ARPA. 3COM.COM would not have been legal back then.
Nowhere does it imply that any of the other fields are so restricted.
------ Original Message ------
From: "Bakul Shah" <bakul(a)iitbombay.org
<mailto:bakul@iitbombay.org>>
To: "Ron Natalie" <ron(a)ronnatalie.com <mailto:ron@ronnatalie.com>>
Cc: "The Unix Heritage Society" <tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org
<mailto:tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>>; "Internet History"
<internet-history(a)postel.org <mailto:internet-history@postel.org>>
Sent: 3/11/2021 4:02:50 PM
Subject: Re: [TUHS] [COFF] Pondering the hosts file
> On Mar 11, 2021, at 12:32 PM, Ron Natalie <ron(a)ronnatalie.com
> <mailto:ron@ronnatalie.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Amusingly one day we got an Imagen ethernet-connected laser
>> printer. Mike Muuss decided the thing should be named BRL-ZAP and
>> since I didn't know what to put down as the machine type, and it did
>> have a 68000 in it, I had Jake put 68000 in the entry in the host table.
>>
>> The next day I got all kinds of hate mail from other BSD sites who
>> assumed I had intentionally sabotaged the host table. Apparently,
>> the BSD systems used a YACC grammar to parse the NIC table into the
>> Berkeley one. The only problem is they got the grammar wrong and
>> assumed the CPU type always began with a letter. There parse blew
>> up on my "ZAP" host and they assumed that was the desired effect.
>
> This is understandable as
> a) All the "official machine names" in various assigned numbers RFCs
> start with a letter.
> b) the BNF syntax for the "host table specification" entries in RFC
> 952 or 810 are not precise enough.
>
> <cputype> ::= PDP-11/70 | DEC-1080 | C/30 | CDC-6400...etc.
>
> NOTE: See "Assigned Numbers" for specific options and acronyms
> for machine types, operating systems, and protocol/services.
>
> for machine types, operating systems, and protocol/services.
>
> c) 68000 was not an official name!
> :-) :-) :-)
>
>> I countered back that using a YACC grammar for this was rediculous.
>> There was already a real popular file on UNIX that had a bunch of
>> fields separated by colons and commas (/etc/passwd anybody) that it
>> was never necessary to use YACC to parse.
>
> Can't argue with that! Though that doesn't mean a handwritten parser
> wouldn't have complained about 68000.
>