Back then, I wanted this project to be unquestionably mine. I was paranoid enough to believe that if I used any of my employer’s equipment, network access, or time that my employer might claim ownership. Why they would want to is anyone’s guess.

So I was very careful to only work on python-rwhoisd at home, on my own time, on my own equipment. The initial version took me two weeks of nights and weekends. Hm. That makes it sound like I was furiously coding into the wee hours. I was actually only spending a few hours each day on it.

Python was a joy to use. My day job was in Java (and Perl) and it felt extremely liberating to be able to write so much code with so little typing. My favorite part was discovering that as I learned more about Python, my code kept getting smaller without getting less readable. Amazing!

Even though I had basically just written python-rwhoisd to learn a new programming language, I was planning on releasing it. I didn’t think that many folks would want it. RWhois wasn’t (and still isn’t) a popular protocol. But some of my colleagues were evangelizing IRIS at the time, and urged me to not release. They thought that it would muddy the waters, so to speak. So I didn’t release it, and then I basically forgot about it.

Fast forward five years. Just two weeks ago I suddenly wanted to learn how to use Git. I played around with tutorial-like git repositories, but it wasn’t enough. I needed something real to work on. I was casting about for a project that I could use, and I ran across python-rwhoisd, mouldering in a local CVS repository.

I had things that I thought should be improved about python-rwhoisd before attempting to release it again. The main thing was to add IPv6 indexing support, which I had done for the C version several years before. While this wasn’t a perfect project for learning Git in all of its glory (for that, I would need collaborators to merge with), it was good enough. Several days later, I’d added the IPv6 indexing and search support, and it was time to release it.

While I don’t expect there to be any major outpouring of interest over python-rwhoisd, it still should be easier to run than the C version (at least, for small datasets), and it should be possible to get it working on Windows without too much effort.

Get it here.

My initial impressions:

1. It will be nice once there are distribution packages for unbound. I spent more time that I would like (which is zero) figuring out where to put the log file, pid file, etc. Of course, I was installing it on a machine running Fedora Core 5…
2. I was forwarding a zone to a nameserver running on localhost:20053. There is a gotcha to doing this, as, by default unbound won’t send any queries to localhost. You have to add a ‘do-not-query-localhost: no’ config line to fix it. Maybe this is something unbound-checkconf could detect?
3. unbound’s configuration defaults leave it locked down fairly tightly. I had it running, but on my other machines, it seemed so slow — turns out, my queries were timing out and I was hitting my ISP nameserver. Make sure you add your networks to the ‘access-control:’ config parameters.
4. I turned up the logging to debug some of my issues. Looking at the log was uncanny.

Update: Duke 67, WVU 73. Sigh.

Ben says:

It turns out that in general, to prove the nonexistence of a name using NSEC you have to show at most two records, one to prove the name itself doesn’t exist, and the other to show that you didn’t delegate some parent of it. Often the same record can do both. In NSEC3, it turns out, you have to show at most three records. And if you can understand why, then you understand DNS better than almost anyone else on the planet.

One of the fascinating things about working on NSEC3 was that it forced us to really understand how existence in DNS works. Basically, we had to develop the general form of the theory when we already had a special case (in NSEC). So, after we figured out how NSEC3 had to work, we actually knew more about how NSEC worked.

For me and our co-editor Roy, this RFC culminates the 2nd round of working on the some of the problems that NSEC3 solves. The first effort was “DNSSEC Opt-In”, now published as an experimental RFC, RFC 4956. (That effort was also tied up in DNS minutiae and political wrangling and ultimately failed to make the IETF standards track). For us, it feels more like the culmination of 7 years of work.

Idea #1: Cache Poisoning Resilience

This would be a draft that describes steps beyond RFC 2181 that a resolver must do to protect itself from cache poisoning. (RFC 2181 addresses this problem by introducing credibility rules in section 5.4.1.) Modern caching resolvers need to do more to protect themselves from name poisoning attacks like malicious CNAME chains. I would expect this draft to be able to lay out a few simple rules like:

• Discard any RRs in a response that are “irrelevant” (i.e., answer RRs that do not match qname/sname, addtional RRs that don’t match names in the RDATA of answer and authority RRs, etc.)
• Discard any RRs in a response that are not at or below the queried zone.

Idea #2: Authoritative Servers Should Not Chase CNAMEs

This is a draft discouraging authoritative servers from chasing CNAMEs out-of-zone (or, optionally, at all), based on conclusions presented in draft idea #1. This draft could either side-step or confront other possibly controversial things about CNAME processing, like whether or not the authority section should apply the head or the tail of a CNAME chain.

Idea #3: DNS Name Compression Standards

A draft mandating the DNS name compression only be done in one direction. Virtually all (or perhaps even actually all) implementations have DNS compression pointers only pointing to earlier in the message. This draft would propose that forward-pointing compression pointers should be treated as format errors. This would accomplish two things:

1. Simplify what implementers need to support when parsing messages, and
2. outlaw any possibility of having to deal with a compression pointer loop.

And, in the process, effectively codify standard practice.

I’ve come home pretty late from work, and I’m pretty uninspired when it comes to assembling some sort of dinner. After staring at the fridge fruitlessly for a while, I’m struck by an inspiration of sorts. I’ll make bachelor chow. Now, I have no idea what is in the original bachelor chow (nor do I want to know), but my bachelor chow is just the name I’ve given to the worst thing that I cook for myself on purpose.

So, here is the basic recipe:

Makes one serving: 3-4 oz. pasta, preferably penne, but anything will suffice 1/4 jar pasta sauce, any tomato-based variety shredded cheese. I use Sargento’s 4-cheese mexican.

1. Cook the pasta. You can salt the water, but I’ve been running periodic experiments with not salting the water, and so far, I can’t really tell the difference. It is even less important with this recipe, since taste is clearly not high on the agenda.
2. Prior to completely cooking the pasta through, drain the pasta. Overcooking it is OK, undercooking it sucks, though, so err to the side of too long. Deposit the pasta into a microwave-safe plate or bowl. You know, the dish you are going to serve this on.
3. Optionally stir in a little bit of olive oil and salt (preferably kosher or sea salt). You can stop right here and have a pretty good dish, even if it is nutritionally unbalanced. It is only going to get worse from here.
4. Pour the (cold) pasta sauce over the pasta. Do not stir it in, just let it sit on top.
5. Sprinkle the shredded cheese on top. Again, no stirring.
6. Microwave on high for 2-3 minutes, until the cheese has melted.
7. Enjoy. Or, at least, Tolerate.

This recipe violates almost every thing I’ve learned about cooking, but it takes me back to my just-out-of-college days when I was equally as lazy and less polluted by cookbooks, Cooks Illustrated, and Food Network.

Both the windows and mac builds of emacs 22 have this support built-in. Although, good luck trying to figure out how to change the font to what you want, at least in Carbon Emacs. Fortunately the default font of Monaco is pretty good (albeit not perfect). I don’t have a lot of experience with EmacsW32, even though I do have it installed somewhere.

At first, I was puzzled as to why emacs just didn’t come with anti-aliased fonts on Fedora 7 by default. Some web searches led me to believe that support was to be merged in before emacs 22.1, and there I was, running 22.1. Alas, I had misread the interweb. If support has been merged in, it has been merged in after 22.1. Since 22.1 is the latest stable version of emacs (as of this writing), it isn’t all that surprising that Fedora 7 doesn’t have this.

Ah, well, time to move to the bleeding edge. Concise instructions for building a CVS version of emacs with anti-aliased fonts can be found on the XftGnuEmacs page. I didn’t have a whole lot of trouble building and installing this version, but what I really want is a Fedora 7 package to replace the delivered packages. If I were running Ubuntu, this wouldn’t be much of a problem.

So far, my attempts to hack the existing source RPM for emacs haven’t met with much success. It doesn’t help that emacs take a while to compile, and I keep having to completely start over. I’ll update this entry if I ever get an rpm built.

Update: I’ve managed to work through the major issues, so here is the source RPM for Fedora 7. I’ve put some actual binaries here. This version doesn’t replace the stock emacs-22.1. Instead it installs into /usr/local, but can easily be made the default version via the alternatives command:

alternatives --set emacs /usr/local/bin/emacs-23.0.0

(if (eq window-system 'x)
    ;; if we have the Xft-enabled version of emacs...
    (if (>= emacs-major-version 23)
    (progn
      ;; note: Anonymous doesn't come with Fedora.  You can get it here:
      ;; http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymous.html
      (set-default-font "Anonymous-10")
      (setq bvsm10 "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono-10")
      ;; unfortunately, anonymous doesn't have bold or italic
      ;; so, use bitstream vera sans mono for that
      (set-face-font 'bold (concat bvsm10 ":weight=bold"))
      (set-face-font 'italic (concat bvsm10 ":slant=oblique"))
      (set-face-font 'bold-italic
             (concat bvsm10 ":weight=bold:slant=oblique"))
      ;; ...and no proportional font, for that matter
      (set-face-font 'variable-pitch "Bitstream Vera Sans-10")
      (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(font . "Anonymous-10")))
      ;; otherwise...
      (progn
    (set-default-font
     "-*-lucidatypewriter-medium-r-*-*-14-140-*-*-*-*-*-*"))
      )
  )

I’m doing it this way (instead of in X resources) so that launching emacs-22.1 will still work. If you stick with Bitstream Vera Sans Mono (or DejaVu LGC Sans Mono which is very similar), then you won’t have to bother with overriding the bold, italic, and bold-italic font settings as those will basically just work once you set the default font. You would still have to deal with overriding the proportional font, however.

Fair enough, but some of us just want bluetooth headsets so we don’t have to keep buying special, vendor specific headsets, and yet also don’t want to hold the phone up to our ear for the whole hour-long conference call.

Of course, now that I’ve had this Nokia for a few days, I keep liking it more. It fits in my pocket. I can sync it with the Mac via bluetooth. It gets decent reception. It sounds fine. I can use a custom ringtone. (I’m not at the moment, however). It ain’t perfect, but it is working for me.

I do miss the calendaring, password safe, and games from the Treo. But, I never did really use that thing to its full potential, so stepping down from the smartphone is working out fine.

So, let me describe the particular form of crazy that my Treo has become. I first noticed it last night. I was outside, and it was raining (although not directly on me). I look at the Treo, and it is, for some reason, trying to sync via cable. Cancel. It tries to sync again. It is in an endless loop of syncing. It is acting like it has the sync cable plugged in, and the sync button permanently pressed. After several resets to no avail, I give up and remove the battery for a few hours. Now it doesn’t try to sync all the time (although, it still tries sometimes), but it also doesn’t turn on when asked, either.

I’ve tried everything up to and including the data-erasing hard reset with no change. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get an iPhone soonish. I don’t want one bad enough to get it from ebay…

Update: instead of getting an iPhone, I’ve gotten a Nokia 6102i with no contract. Nothing at all like an iPhone, but it is a credible phone. I may change my mind if I’ve got to take it overseas, though. By paying for the phone and not getting a new contract, I do still reserve the right to get an iPhone in the not-too-distant future.

1. Discover Black Ink. It has a 30-day trial period
2. Try for 30 days. Like in the beginning, like at the end.
3. Buy it. I go the the online store and pay via paypal.
4. Wait for 3 days. See credit card charge go through.
5. During this time, fail to check the spam traps.
6. Wait for 4 more days. Nothing from Red Sweater Software.
7. Send email to support@red-sweater.com asking for actual registration code.
8. Wait 3 more days. Silence.
9. Discover that somehow, searching for “red-sweater” in Mail.app doesn’t find mail in the spam folders.
10. Eventually find 3 emails from Daniel Jalkut with your registration code.

Update: All fixed now. I am somewhat amazed that posting to my blog was an effective means of communication. I’m guessing this reflects more on Red Sweater Software’s customer service diligence than anything else.

Update[2]: So my friend Sean summed this whole event up as: “You posted to your blog, Daniel Jalkut read it, said ‘check your spam box, dumbass’, and now you look like an idiot.” Yep.

Mike’s idea was soundly rejected by the IETF working group that it was presented to, DNSEXT. I’ll outline some theories why in a bit. But, its rejection was not because it was a horrible idea. In fact, from some points of view, it is a pretty good idea. In a nutshell, DNSSEC SO says:

• Drop the NSEC (née NXT) or NSEC3 records, and just concentrate on being able to positively verify records, and
• because successful chains of trust through zones don’t actually involve NSEC records, this can coexist with standard DNSSEC.

However, let’s take a look at the main purposes of DNSSEC:

1. Protect legacy and security-unaware Internet applications from DNS spoofing attacks, and
2. Enable new applications to use DNS as security scaffolding.

And now we can see why DNSSEC SO was rejected: it is utterly useless for purpose #1. And, since most new applications have to live an world without universal DNSSEC deployment (SO or otherwise), DNSSEC SO isn’t as useful for purpose #2 as it might be. Let me explain.

Standard DNSSEC (including things like NSEC3) says that DNS responses, after being validated, fall into one of three states (actually four, but never mind): SECURE, INSECURE, and BOGUS. That is: it validated and was signed; it wasn’t signed, but that was proven to be OK; and it failed to validated (for any reason). When a response is BOGUS, the response is withheld from the application. Thus, an unaware application is spared from the effects of the spoofing attack.

DNSSEC SO says that responses, after validation, only fall into two states: SECURE and NOT SECURE. That is: it validated and it was signed; or it wasn’t signed or didn’t validate. So spoofing attacks just get passed on the unaware client, which can’t distinguish them from normal DNS responses.

OK, so what about purpose #2? Imagine an application that might be aware of DNSSEC and might really want to use it for security scaffolding. Let’s call it DKIM, an application that looks up cryptographic keys in DNS for the purpose of deciding to accept or reject email. It might decide that it is only going to use DKIM keys that have been signed and verified by DNSSEC. This is great, and, in fact, DNSSEC SO works here just fine.

However, at this point in time, DKIM cannot afford to restrict itself to only using keys signed with DNSSEC. Even with DNSSEC SO, it is going to take a while to get enough infrastructure in place so that any zone that wants to can be signed and trusted. And DKIM needs as many email senders and receivers to use it as possible.

…

So why was DNSSEC SO rejected by the IETF? I suppose that everyone who spoke up saying “No” has his/her own reason, but my belief was that it was because DNSSEC SO rejects the initial requirement for DNSSEC, and that the initial requirement (purpose #1, above) is still valid. Also, the working group was obviously tired of working on DNSSEC, and DNSSEC SO represented another 6 to 12 month round of effort for what seemed like little gain. In other words, “too little, too late”.