Maintenance Blog

Net::DNS version 0.66 has just been released

In addition to fixing a number of bugs the following main features where added:

• Support for the DHCID, KX and HIP RR
• Truncation support in Net::DNS::Packet used by Net::DNS::Nameserver
  TAKE CARE:
  this feature may cause unexpected behavior for your nameservers (packets on the wire may have different content than you intended). The feature be turned off by setting Truncate to 0 during the creation of the nameserver.
  my $ns = Net::DNS::Nameserver->new(
  Truncate => 0,
  );
• Addition of Net::DNS::Domain as a start towards a more structured handling of domain names. At this moment the Net::DNS::Domain class is only included to expose it to the various test environments that are available. The Net::DNS::Domain class and its methods are subject to name and functionality changes.

Net::DNS version 0.65 has just been released

This release fixes two bugs in Win32.pm and a bug in the IPv6 IP address parsing that is triggered when AAAA RR objects are created using new_from_hash().

See Changes for details.

 Please report problems through rt.cpan.org

Net::DNS version 0.64 and Net::DNS::SEC 0.15 have just been released

Both packages saw a number of bug fixes.

New features for Net::DNS are

• the addition of Net::DNS::RR::APL (RFC3123);

• Modification of the Win32 code that determines the local resolving nameservers. (WARNING:  If you use Perl under WIN32 (eg ActivePerl or Strawberry Perl) then your module dependency graph has changed drastically)
• For the Nameserver: addition of a new variable to the ReplyHandler function arguments so that socket details can be used for special replies or statistical purposes.
• Added some heuristics to determine external connectivity and skipping a number of tests in absence.

New features for Net::DNS::SEC are:

• Addition of a DLV RR (RFC4431).
• Addition of the NSEC3 and NSEC3PARAM RRs.(RFC5155)

See the Net::DNS Changes , and the Net::DNS::SEC Changes files for details.

Because of version dependency and minor bug fixes Net::DNS::Zone::Parser and Net::DNS::TestNS also saw a new release.

Please report problems through rt.cpan.org

Net::DNS version 0.63 has just been released

This release fixes a security issue (CVE-2007-6341).

Previously the packet parsing routine could croak on a carefully crafted DNS response. This has been fixed by putting the packet parsing routines in eval blocks so that exeptions are trapped.

 In addition this version introduces a NotifyHandler callback routine in the Nameserver class. This function will be called when the query opdoce on a query is NOTIFY (RFC1996).

Dick Franks has contributions have been most valuable.

See Changes for details.

 Please report problems through rt.cpan.org

Net::DNS version 0.62 has just been released

Highlights of the features and fixes:

• Move of some functionality out of the Packet to the Question and RR classes; parsing of elements in the packet is now performed by calling the appropriate subclasses.
  New methods were introduced:
  • Net::DNS::Packet->parse()
  • Net::DNS::RR->parse()
  • Net::DNS::Question->parse()

  The Packet class now defers parsing of authority/additional until their content is really needed. This should cause a bit of performance improvement.

• The Net::DNS::Packet's answersize() method will from now  ignore its arguments and just return the size of the packet.
• The Net::DNS::RR->new() method used to call Net::DNS::RR->new_from_data() whenever called with the appropriate combination of arguments. That (undocumented) behavior has been deprecated. Use Net::DNS::RR->new_from_data() directly if you depended on that.
• Net::DNS::Packets unique_push now ignores the TTL in comparison of uniqueness, this is closer to the intend of RFC2181, but not yet fully compliant.

 Dick Franks has contributed a lot of the fixes and features. 

See Changes for details.

 Please report problems through rt.cpan.org

Net::DNS version 0.61 corrects an error that was introduced in 0.60 and was reported by the maintainers of OTRS and various other folk.

In several places in the code we tried to modify $_, the resulting error was: Modification of a read-only value attempted 

See Changes for details.

Version 0.60 is a maintenance release.

The release contains a number of bug fixes and a few new features.  Highlights:

• IPSECKEY RR support
• Improvements to check_soa code, mainly in the way it deals with negative caching
• The dependency of Net::IP in the actual code was dropped. It is still needed for the tests. (Erratum (16 July 2007): Dependency dropped for Net::DNS::Resolver only, the dependency still exists for Net::DNS::Nameserver and a few tests)
• Cleanup of Question.pm
  • This involved a minor change to the API for reverse IP lookup.  Changing qtype to PTR is now performed for A and AAAA only.  This allows queries for NS and SOA records at interior nodes to be specified using the address prefix.  Type ANY queries now also produce the expected result.
  • Support for RFC4291 IPv6 address and IPv4 prefix notation
• At some points where the code used to 'die' it now spits out a warning.
  • Labels longer than 63 octets do not cause your code to die, but are truncated.
  • Instead of dying the SSHFP returns undef when the fingerprint algorithm is unknown.

Dick Franks has contributed a lot of the fixes and features.

Please consult the Changes for details.

Please report problems through rt.cpan.org

During an upgrade of the blog software all comments got removed in order to deal with an inconsistency in the database.

This weekend, 10 years ago, Michal Fuhr announced Net::DNS on the comp.lang.perl.modules newgroup:.

From: Michael Fuhr – view profile
Date: Mon, Jan 20 1997 12:00 am

I've been working on a general interface to the DNS resolver, allowing the programmer to look up any record type instead of just A (gethostbyname) and PTR (gethostbyaddr). I hope to have it finished by the end of Jan 1997; in the meantime, there's some info about it at:

http://www.dimensional.com/~mfuhr/perldns/

Although the module isn't available yet, there are a few manpages that show what you'll be able to do. The Net::DNS and Net::DNS::Resolver manpages have some code fragments as examples.

I originally called the module DNS but my current choice is Net::DNS, which seems more consistent with the modules for other protocols such as Net::FTP, Net::SMTP, etc. I'm open to other suggestions.

I'd appreciate any feedback on the info I've provided so far. Thanks.

—
Michael Fuhr