Message-Id: <199609182007.VAA01654>
Subject: Re: "secure" minimal DNS
To: Margarita Suarez <marg@watsun.cc.columbia.edu>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1996 21:07:31 +0100 (BST)
In-Reply-To: <CMM.0.90.4.843075279.marg@manila.cc.columbia.edu> from
 "Margarita Suarez" at Sep 18, 96 03:34:39 pm
From: Rob Hartill <robh@imdb.com>
Organization: Internet Movie Database
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Reply-To: new-httpd@hyperreal.com

Margarita Suarez wrote:
>
>it turns out that the HostnameLookups stuff broke the semantics of
>environment variables in cgi scripts: if you have HostnameLookups off,
>the REMOTE_HOST variable is not set to a hostname, and many cgi-scripts
>fail.  the solution to this may be to have all cgi script authors check
>both REMOTE_HOST and REMOTE_ADDR and act appropriately, but this may be
>impossible.  i am sending a revised uuencoded patch file that forces a
>DNS lookup to fill in REMOTE_HOST when launching a cgi cscript.

Now this I don't think is a good idea.

If we applied this patch our mailboxes would overflow with complaints
from people who can't afford the lookups but do a lot of CGI suddenly
finding their servers grind to a halt for no apparent reason.

If scripts need the hostname they can look it up themselves 
(1 line of perl for example).

This is a CGI issue, not an Apache one.

sorry.
rob