Week 1 Status Report

Hi!

-------- From Marten:

>  *   We are running (mostly) your ftp-able beta release, plus the
>  * individual files you've mailed us.  We may be getting close to where
>  * someone needs to evaluate that:  how up-to-date with your production
>  * system should we try to be.  (For instance, the syntax for GUARD lines
>  * in the beta conf file is wrong though it's commented out and though you
>  * gave us the correct syntax in the message this morning (blush);  it
>  * took a bit of perl diving to notice that).  We're a few years behind
> 
> Well yes. I advice in the beta stuff to stay away from guarded
> attributes. It is only now that we started to use it heavily that I
> feel like it is properly working. I'll change the beta conf.

Ok;  but this becomes a timing issue.  I'd understood Elise and Daniel
wanted to have this running here very soon.  What do we do to run without
guarded ASs?  Simply start the AS file, and use the same email security
mechanism for them that's used for nets?

(We've had a sendmail problem and haven't checked out the email-specific
code yet...)
 
> You are welcome. You owe us some bugs (and a beer perhaps ;-)

In person, in Amsterdam?   :-)


-------- From Daniel:

> Given the transatlantic bottlenecks these days we really should look into
> making context diffs, shipping these and patching them in. This has also been
> a long standing request from some db shadow sites here. Any showstoppers
> there?

Fine here.  Any mechanism you'd like would be ok.  Perhaps "patch", with
full releases the last day of every month, and a patch distribution numbered
the day of the month for the 1st, 2nd, ...  ?  

Since there is nothing sensitive about this info (and since you have
other sites who would like it), anonymous ftp might be fine.  How about
an "rsh ftp get <filename>" equivalent to cause the transfers to
happen?  (Or "ftp put", if you don't mind passwords coded into cron
jobs, but the exec gives the power to start processing of the data as
well.  We've occasionally done this with a tiny special-purpose server,
to avoid the rsh/rcp security problems).

> 
>   >  * Are there similar issues that you can think of that we need to resolve
>   >  * before announce availability of the conbined service?
>   > 
>   > Not sure. Maybe Daniel knows some things. I'd make sure you test the
>   > whole stuff thoroughly before announcing anything.
> 
> We need to establish "source:" names and exact descriptions of what they
> mean. I suggest something like MERIT-RR for your routing data.

Fine.

> We need to make the tools just a little more configurable in the sense
> of how they use different whois servers on "source:"s.

Ok;  should this be on your queue, or should we help?  

The "-h <hostname>" parameter seems to work, and Andy says it is easy to
modify the destination in your setup file.  An environmental variable *might*
be useful.  (?) If these are being changed anyway, how about a "port" flag for
use with debug whois servers.  Other ideas?
 
> I would like to make a *joint* announcement about this if this is politically
> acceptable to you. 

Wonderful!  Elise?


--Dale



-------- Logged at  Tue Feb 22 04:15:29 MET 1994  ---------