Re: Underscores..

On Mon, 31 Jul 2000, Nick wrote:

> Nobody using my squid transparent proxy can view URL's with underscores "_"
> in them..
> is there a fix for this? thanks in advance

  11.8. DNS lookups for domain names with underscores (_) always fail.

  The standards for naming hosts (RFC 952
  <http://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc952.txt>, RFC 1101
  <http://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1101.txt>) do not allow underscores in
  domain names:

       A "name" (Net, Host, Gateway, or Domain name) is a text
       string up to 24 characters drawn from the alphabet (A-Z),
       digits (0-9), minus sign (-), and period (.).

  The resolver library that ships with recent versions of BIND enforces
  this restriction, returning an error for any host with underscore in
  the hostname. The best solution is to complain to the hostmaster of
  the offending site, and ask them to rename their host.

  Some people have noticed that RFC 1033
  <http://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1033.txt> implies that underscores are
  allowed. However, this is an informational RFC with a poorly chosen
  example, and not a standard by any means.

  11.9. Why does Squid say: ``Illegal character in hostname; under-
  scores are not allowed?'

  See the above question. The underscore character is not valid for
  hostnames.

  Some DNS resolvers allow the underscore, so yes, the hostname might
  work fine when you don't use Squid.

  To make Squid allow underscores in hostnames, re-run the configure
  script with this option:

          % ./configure --enable-underscores ...

  and then recompile:

          % make clean
          % make
Received on Mon Jul 31 2000 - 11:10:05 MDT