Re: AMPR.ORG robot

[ron@chaos.eng.wayne.edu (Ron Atkinson)]

My mailer said D. Crompton said this:
>
> >Updating DNS records really should not be a publicly accessible function.  In
> most organizations, the DNS updates are done by a guru.  I have personally
> taught DNS administration to many people who struggled to learn it for months
> on their own, coming to regard it as closely related to witchcraft.
>
> I totally agree and I expressed that to Brian awhile back. We have had
> local individuals sending in DNS info rather than it going through the
> coordinator.
>
> If it is not to hard to do I think that mail to the ampr robot should
> be checked against the coordinator list. It would have to be automatic

SOmetimes this just isn't practical.  Some coordinators can't do it,
some dont' do it, some hose things up, some are just too slow.

I used to do it until our coordinator got Internet access, then I thought
"It's his job", but numerous times my records have been totally hosed
up by somebody. I don't know if it was him or somebody else trying
to update the state (or trying to play games with my records), so I will
only do an update on mine and about 2 or 3 other people that I work with.

I did send in an update on only my records recently since somebody decided
to delete some of my addresses for my hamgate, and I had Brians brief
docs right in front of me when I did it and made sure everything was
perfect (*including CNAME and MX records), and I will pull out that
doc file everytime if I have to do my own personal update.  There was
nothing wrong with my message as far as I can tell, but wsu.ampr.org
and wsu1.ampr.org was in that list.  Maybe somebody decided to put
an IP address on those records again like they did in the past when
the record is supposed to be a CNAME.     Also the reason I did an
update on my personal records was that I was waiting for an address
of mine to get added in to the database. I figured that 6-7 months was
long enough of a wait so I did it myself.

I know that I can update it fine, but I won't do anyone else unles
someone gave me a 'go ahead' to do so.  There should be backup
people in each area that have access to the Internet, know how to
do an update, and knows how to use  nslookup.   People that only
know how to use NOS seems to not understand how DNS works.  But
then again, anybody can make a mistake. I'm still trying to figure
out how Bdales call got on that list also  :-)

--

Ron Atkinson  N8FOW

AMPRnet  : n8fow@wsu.n8fow.ampr.org
Internet : ron@chaos.eng.wayne.edu
           aa011@detroit.freenet.org