Odd log messages from ISC BIND named

[Chip Marshall]

On February 03, 2009, Ben Scott sent me the following:
>   But none of those domain names are even close to valid, and while I
> didn't check each and every one, it didn't look like there were any
> repeats.  How would that lead to info about cached queries?

Oh, I thought you had obfuscared the query string along with the source
IP. I should have read more carefully. Yeah, gibberish qnames wouldn't
make sense for a cache probe.
 
>   Are you seeing the same site I am?  <http://www.isc.org/>?  What browser?
> 
>   I can point to "Downloads" in the bar at the top, and a sub-bar pops
> up including "BIND".  If I click that, I get a list of releases and
> details, and a box on the right offering direct links to tarballs of
> recent releases.  All done without JavaScript -- just CSS -- so even
> if you've got JavaScript disabled by default (which I do), it should
> work.  And if your browser doesn't even so CSS, the same links should
> be at the bottom of the page.  Checked with Firefox 3.0.5, MSIE 6.0,
> and Lynx 2.6.6rel.5.

My specific complaint is with the documentation pages, such as
https://www.isc.org/software/bind/documentation

I find the links to the actual docs embedded in a paragraph much harder
to read than the old site when looking for documentation in a hurry. It
used to be a link right off of http://www.isc.org/bind/ with the PDF and
HTML version clearly indicated. 

    The primary documentation for BIND is the ARM, the Administrator's
    Reference Manual. There is a separate edition of the ARM for each
    major release of BIND. You can download the PDF file of the ARM for
    BIND 9.6, BIND 9.5, BIND 9.4, BIND 9.3, or BIND 9.2. HTML versions
    are available for BIND 9.5 and BIND 9.4, BIND 9.6 is coming soon.
    From time to time we issue a small addendum to the most recent ARM,
    which documents new features that were made available since the ARM
    was published. This note about ISC's BIND Delegation-only feature is
    an addendum to the BIND 9.5 ARM.

vs

   Documentation / References
      BIND 9.5 Administrator Reference Manual [ PDF single HTML ]
      BIND 9.4 Administrator Reference Manual [ PDF single HTML ]
      BIND FAQ

The new site sure is pretty, but I think they made some poor choices in
how to display information. A block of text takes more brain cycles to
process than a short list of links, and when your nameserver is breaking
and you need to refer to the docs in a hurry, brain cycles are a
precious commodity :)

I'm also not a fan of light blue links on a white background, but that's
just me. And if I really cared, I could override it with CSS.

-- 
Chip Marshall <chip at 2bithacker.net>
http://weblog.2bithacker.net/          KB1QYW        PGP key ID 43C4819E
v4sw5PUhw4/5ln5pr5FOPck4ma4u6FLOw5Xm5l5Ui2e4t4/5ARWb7HKOen6a2Xs5IMr2g6CM
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