Re: Proposal: DNS change irc.gnome.org becomes A record and irc.gimpnet.org starts getting phased out.

[Andrea Veri <av gnome org>]

The IRCD ran by the GIMPNET team has all the configuration files pointing to their specific subdomains, that obviously won't change by just moving the CNAME to an A record. But that's actually expected since we don't run an IRCD server "in house" on the GNOME Infrastructure. (and that could be the only way for 'Your host is $hostname' to match with irc.gnome.org)

I'm not sure if the GIMPNET team will agree to fix their MOTD et all to show the user connected to irc.gnome.org successfully for one main reason: GIMPNET is not only the GNOME IRC Network, but it currently serves many other irc channels not strictly GNOME-related.

2013/5/9 Guilherme de Siqueira Pastore <gpastore gnome org>

On Thu, May 09, 2013 at 01:43:45PM +0200, Andrea Veri wrote:
> The current DNS entry is setup as a CNAME, that means connecting to
> irc.gnome.org will redirect your client to irc.gimp.org. The idea here is
> to switch the DNS entry for irc.gnome.org to be an A record pointing to the
> irc.gimp.org's IP and listing the new entry (irc.gnome.org) as the official
> place contributors should connect to.
>
> That said, any of the irc.*.gimp.* entries will remain as it is (really
> there's no need to update / delete the relevant entry for the solely reason
> that GIMPNET doesn't host only GNOME channels, we can't define GIMPNET as
> the *Official* GNOME network as of now), what will change is how the DNS
> record for the irc.gnome.org subdomain will look like, from a CNAME (plain
> DNS redirect) to an A record.

Then, with all due respect, I am not sure the proposed solution sufficiently
addresses the initial concern (or which I was also originally not aware, not
being a native speaker of English myself).

IRC servers provide the server name in the 004 message upon connection and in
the 351 reply to the VERSION command. They also (commonly) inform the network
name in the de facto standard 005 numeric.

That is the case for GIMPNet. Please note that, in the (stripped) transcript
below, I specifically informed the server that I was trying to connect to
irc.gnome.org (third argument to the USER command):

gpastore neodymium:~$ telnet irc.gnome.org 6667
Trying 82.99.16.155...
Connected to irc.gimp.org.
Escape character is '^]'.
NICK fatalerror
USER gpastore neodymium.pastore.eng.br irc.gnome.org :Guilherme Pastore
:irc.eagle.y.se 001 fatalerror :Welcome to the Internet Relay Network fatalerror
:irc.eagle.y.se 002 fatalerror :Your host is irc.eagle.y.se[irc.eagle.y.se/6667], running version 2.8/gimpnet-0.1beta3
:irc.eagle.y.se 004 fatalerror irc.eagle.y.se 2.8/gimpnet-0.1beta3 oOiwszcrkfydnxb biklmnopstve
:irc.eagle.y.se 005 fatalerror WALLCHOPS PREFIX=(ov)@+ CHANTYPES=#& MAXCHANNELS=20 MAXBANS=50 NICKLEN=39 TOPICLEN=500 KICKLEN=90 NETWORK=GIMPNet CHANMODES=be,k,l,imnpst EXCEPTS MODES=4 :are supported by this server
VERSION
:irc.eagle.y.se 351 fatalerror 2.8/gimpnet-0.1beta3(20020217_2). irc.eagle.y.se :ACeGHiMpZ TS5ow
:irc.eagle.y.se 005 fatalerror WALLCHOPS PREFIX=(ov)@+ CHANTYPES=#& MAXCHANNELS=20 MAXBANS=50 NICKLEN=39 TOPICLEN=500 KICKLEN=90 NETWORK=GIMPNet CHANMODES=be,k,l,imnpst EXCEPTS MODES=4 :are supported by this server

This is what all IRC clients I know will show and, as a consequence, what the
user will see: GIMPNet - irc.eagle.y.se, as informed by the server, and not
irc.gnome.org, solely because it is an A instead of CNAME DNS record.

Just my two cents.

Kind regards,

Guilherme

--
Cheers,

Andrea

Debian Developer,
Fedora / EPEL packager,
GNOME Sysadmin,
GNOME Foundation Membership & Elections Committee Chairman

Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av