DON'T PANIC!!!

Please read the subject and read the four line patch.

No data that is incompatible with RIPE tools will be introduced to the
database.  The problem that is being avoided is submitting objects
through certain mail systems that truncate or otherwise munge lines
that are longer than expected.  For some mail systems this is 256
characters for others it is 80 characters or less.

This change allows a simple proprossing that allows arbitrarily long
RIPE lines to go through the mail undamaged and then quickly get
reassembled at the other end putting it back in the format of just
plain long RIPE lines with no continuation.

If your copy of perl can't handle long lines, you've got a serious
problem since perl is supposed to handle arbitrarily long lines.

There is no need for a worldwide redistribution of tools, so please
*don't panic*.

Curtis


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Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 21:38:14 -0400
From: "Dale S. Johnson" <dsj at merit.edu>
Message-Id: <199505160138.VAA17855 at home.merit.edu>
To: dsj at merit.edu, heimlich at ans.net
Subject: Re: just an FYI - don't panic
Cc: Tony.Bates at ns.mci.net, cengiz at isi.edu, curtis at ans.net, rr-impl at ripe.net,
        selina at ans.net

Steve,

> Who will act as coordinator to get this stuff distributed?  I assume
> that the RA in the U.S. can take the lead in this role if we were to
> provide source.  

The only thing close to an official answer to this question at the moment
is that RIPE is the home and custodian of the official distribution
source.

At the RA, we've been trying rather hard to minimize any modifications to
RIPE code, if only to simplify importing further revisions of their code.
(But not making modifications is getting harder, as we get user pressure
to make email address parsing case-insensitive, add PGP, [add inet-rtr
support, if we aren't just looking for it in the wrong places today],
etc).

The RA does post the radbserver (rpslserver) and RtConfig tookkit
distributions, which are separable packages from the RIPE distribution.
If we were to package and post our own "RIPE-181-modified by the RA"
distribution today, there might be some considerable confusion.

The RA is generally willing to install Curtis' changes in our
implementation, though this needs discussion with the list since
our accepting such non-181 syntax would probably break implementations
and/or tools of other registries (such as RIPE itself) which import
that data and make it available to their tools (like prtraceroute).

Clearly this all needs sorting out.  (Maybe starting in the halls at
NANOG?)  But for the moment, the answer is that RIPE is the custodian.

- --Dale


============ From: Steve Heimlich 

> From heimlich at ans.net Mon May 15 21:21:43 1995
> To: "Dale S. Johnson" <dsj at merit.edu>
> Cc: cengiz at isi.edu, curtis at ans.net, Tony.Bates at ns.mci.net, rr-impl at ripe.net,
>         selina at ans.net
> Subject: Re: just an FYI - don't panic 
> Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 21:20:44 -0400
> 
> Dale,
> 
> Who will act as coordinator to get this stuff distributed?  I assume
> that the RA in the U.S. can take the lead in this role if we were to
> provide source.  
> 
> Thanks,
> Steve
> 
> > > Is it OK if I added about 4 lines of code in enparse.pl to do Unix
> > > style backslash at the end of the line continuation?
> > 
> > This is a great idea;  I think it should be done.  But...
> > 
> > in order for this idea to be completely implemented, the change has to
> > be installed in Amsterdam, Reston, and Toronto as well as Ann Arbor;
> > and probably several places (ESNet, DSI, NASA, APNIC) that we aren't
> > sure of yet.
> > 
> > Also, is enparse.pl part of any of the tools?  Then it needs to be
> > changed in all the copies of those tools that anyone has FTP'd as 
> > well.

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-------- Logged at  Tue May 16 16:35:21 MET DST 1995  ---------