Mara does not resolve ncs.gov

[Sam Trenholme]

>> Quoting Sam Trenholme (strenholme.usenet at gmail.com):
>>
>> > Is there any kind of estimated EOL timeline for Lenny?
>>
>> Not that I know of.
>
> However, the "Lenny" release notes include this reminder:
>
> "Typically only two stable releases are supported at any given time."

Makes sense.  OK, in light of this:

* Etch is "out of date" and it's not a surprise that its copy of
MaraDNS is out of date.

* Debian makes it easy to update from one stable release to the next;
people using Etch can (in theory) easily update to Lenny.

* Debian stable stays stable but Debian doesn't do what RedHat does:
They don't support
a given release for seven years.  They expect people to update more
frequently than that.

This is somewhat different from the way RHEL/CentOS do things.  To wit:

* When RedHat releases a release of RHEL, that release is supported,
without any major changes, for seven years.  Updates that add new
features are done for three years, and security fixes are done for
four more years.

* Usually, this means little changes for those seven years.  During
the first three years of support, RedHat adds new features, such as
drivers for new hardware for the kernel used by the operating system.
For the last four years of support, the only updates are security
updates and other minor bigfix-only changes.

* This isn't hard and fast.  For example, in RHEL 4 and RHEL 5, RedHat
has updated Firefox from Firefox 1.5.XX to Firefox 3, since Firefox
1.5 is not compatible with modern websites, RHEL's customers wanted an
up-to-date web browser, and it was getting harder and harder to
backport security fixes for current versions of Firefox to the 1.5
version of Firefox.

I might even look at the Debian 5 VMware image I downloaded yesterday;
I mainly downloaded it to fill up some space on a backup DVD I burned
yesterday, but also to more easily get Debian running in case someone
decides to pay me to more fully support Debian (I also downloaded
OpenBSD and Ubuntu server, for the same reasons)

To bring this back to topic, people reading my blog will see I'm doing
a lot of SQA testing with Deadwood, the code that will, one of these
years, become the next-generation recursive resolver for MaraDNS.  The
code is currently a non-recursive DNS cache; I have just today
discovered what looks to be some issues with some elements getting
cached, an issue I will work on this week.  People can look at the
MaraDNS blog to see the work I've been doing:

http://maradns.blogspot.com

http://www.maradns.org/blog

- Sam