[DNSOP] Re: Introducing Relative Label for DNS

[Mukund Sivaraman <[e-mail]>]

Hi Ben

On Mon, Jul 22, 2024 at 09:40:02AM +0000, Ben wrote:
> > > I think we should not focus to much specificly on how BIND handles
> > > things
> > > with $ORIGIN. I'm talking about the concept of zones in general. For
> > 
> > $ORIGIN is from RFC 1035, for any implementation that supports master
> > files. It is not a BIND-specific item.
> I thought it was BIND-specific, but because everybody loved that zone
> format, it got standardized by a section in RFC 1035.

A lot of things in the DNS can be thought as BIND-specific if it were
documented after implementation in BIND. :) Your initial comment was "we
should not focus too much specificly on how BIND handles things with
$ORIGIN"; it is how implementations that parse master files handle
$ORIGIN. It is not BIND-specific.

I tried to look up when $ORIGIN got introduced in BIND. :) On
ftp.isc.org, I could find versions starting from 4.8, but that was newer
than 1987 when RFC 1035 was published.  So I tried finding it in 4.3BSD
source code trees; the only one I could find predating 1987 (if the
sccsid can be believed) is here:

https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4.3BSD-UWisc/src/etc/bind/named/db_load.c

which implemented $ORIGIN.

(We on this list are fortunate to have Paul Vixie on it and he may be
able to offer more history.)

Some older docs on BIND:
https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1984/CSD-84-182.pdf
https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1984/CSD-84-177.pdf

That Berkeley tech reports archive is a treasure trove. All sorts of
cool things came from there.

		Mukund