Michal Čihař - Archive for June 2, 2006

I never knew there are few special zones in DNS to grab infromation about DNS servers. Today while browsing PowerDNS recursor configuration, I noticed several config options defining replies on those special queries. So if you want to know which server is on the other side, you can try querying version.bind, version.pdns or id.server (CHAOS type, TXT class):

$ dig version.bind chaos txt

; <<>> DiG 9.3.2 <<>> version.bind chaos txt
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 56291
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;version.bind.                  CH      TXT

;; ANSWER SECTION:
version.bind.           86400   CH      TXT     "PowerDNS Recursor 3.1.1 $Id: pdns_recursor.cc 838 2006-05-19 14:35:27Z ahu $"

;; Query time: 0 msec
;; SERVER: 127.0.0.1#53(127.0.0.1)
;; WHEN: Fri Jun  2 15:30:06 2006
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 119

Debian package for recent mpdscribble is ready. For now it's available only on usual location, upload into official archives will need sponsor as current one is not available. I hope to find one soon.

The idea is simple, but I haven't seen this before. Place bot on IRC channel, collect URL and generate web page which shows linked images. This is exactly what irc.tnet.no does. Big brother is becoming reality. Maybe sometimes we will have also analysis what people really talk about, but images can tell quite a lot.

Anyway if you want to know what people search for, Slovak search engine provides you this possibility under URL containing well known year 1984 :-).