Although my original question garnered no responses, this summary generated
a lot. My original summary:
> I won't bother to requote my entire post. Basically I was asking if it
> is worth upgrading from the bind that comes with my Suns to Bind 4.9.3.
>
> The response:
>
> dead air. No one has any opinion. So I guess the bind that ships with
> the suns is pretty much the same as 4.9.3, so there is no reason to
> upgrade. Even no answer is an answer... ;^) Thanks as always.
This time I got lots of responses. There definitely *is* a difference
and it definitely *is* worthwhile to upgrade. I guess everyone thought
someone else would respond. Oh well, these things happen...
One person just gave me a grep on the string "security" in the CHANGES
file to 4.9.3. Interesting way to make a point, but very effective.
Another said upgrading to 4.9.3 is just as important as upgrading from
the Sun Sendmail to Sendmail8. One person gave me the top of the
options.h file, which shows all of the configurable parameters that have
been added to 4.9.3 (drool drool).
Most people indicated that I should upgrade regardless of my OS version.
A couple said that its only really necessary if I'm running 4.1.x (I am)
and that the Solaris bind, while not 4.9.3, is much much better (when patched)
and is quite usable as is.
Several folks indicated that the Sun Manager's mailing list may not be
the best source, and directed me to other mailing lists. I have subscribed
to info-bind@uunet.uu.net, and I'll see what information I get down that
channel.
I won't quote everyone because I got lots of responses, but here
are a couple:
-----------------------------------
If I had your druthers, I'd say, go with 4.9.3, because it does a lot
of things right, like negative caching, shuffled responses (which helps
load balance among many different MX hosts of equal capacity etc.),
authentication mechanisms etc., all of which I don't think stock sunos
named offers.
-----------------------------------
To answer your question, it is, for my site. I am a primary for
fourty-four zones and a secondary for "ufl.edu". Thus, I take quite a
few "hits". The small bugs in the 4.8.[13] named that Sun ships
became intolerable. I upgraded to 4.9.3b9p1 and to 4.9.3b22 and never
looked back. The betas are more stable and robust than any previous
"official" release. I also replaced the resolver routines under SunOS
4.1.3, and rebuilt my main system tools (Sendmail V8, etc) to use the
new routines.
If you are only responsible for a small number of zones, then I
wouldn't bother with 4.9.3. If you are dealing with any number of
zones and/or clients, I would upgrade, but be sure to read all of the
documentation ahead of time.
-----------------------------------
Thanks to:
kannan@catarina.usc.edu (first full quote above)
Dallas N Antley <dna@clas.ufl.edu> (second full quote above)
longdon@itr.nrl.navy.mil
Christopher Davis <ckd@loiosh.kei.com>
bmanning@ISI.EDU (Bill Manning)
sweh@mpn.com
Bill Reed <reedwv@expu79.stp.xfi.bp.com>
bern@penthesilea.uni-trier.de (Jochen Bern)
Dave Mitchell <D.Mitchell@dcs.shef.ac.uk>
Gene Rackow <rackow@mcs.anl.gov>
nemnm@nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu
"David H. Brierley" <dhb@ssd.ray.com>
seeger@cis.ufl.edu (F. L. Charles Seeger III)
Gary Mills <mills@cc.UManitoba.CA>
Brad Burdick <bburdick@radio.com>
dburwell@telecom.com (David Burwell)
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Christopher L. Barnard O When I was a boy I was told that |
| cbarnard@cs.uchicago.edu / \ anybody could become president. |
| (312) 702-8850 O---O Now I'm beginning to believe it. |
| http://www.cs.uchicago.edu/~cbarnard --Clarence Darrow |
| Cyber Rights Now: Accept No Compromise. |
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