This Read Me document describes late-breaking information about your MacDNS software and its documentation. You may want to print this document for future reference.
Product information
MacDNS 1.0.3 fixes some problems in MacDNS 1.0.2 and earlier versions, providing improved performance and reliability. Upgrading to version 1.0.3 is recommended for all MacDNS customers.
This version of MacDNS is available under the terms of a no-fee license. The license agreement is presented when the software is run for the first time. Click the "Agree" button to accept the terms of the agreement.
MacDNS and Open Transport
Open Transport 1.1 or later is recommended for use with MacDNS and all PowerPC-based Workgroup Servers.
For Workgroup Server models 7250 and 8550, the Workgroup Server Software CD-ROM disc that came with your server contains Open Transport software version 1.1 and system software version 7.5.3.
For Workgroup Server models 6150, 8150, and 9150, the Macintosh System 7.5 Update 2.0 (which updates your system software to version 7.5.3) includes Open Transport software version 1.1. Look for information about system software updates and about the latest version of Open Transport on Apple forums and Apple Web sites on the Internet.
Changes to MacDNS
This section provides details about the changes in the 1.0.3 release of MacDNS.
* Sometimes MacDNS would stop responding to incoming requests; no further UDP notifications were received until the application was quit and relaunched. To prevent this situation and insure long-term reliability, MacDNS now performs a periodic test of its own responsiveness (approximately once a minute), closing and reopening the UDP stream on port 53 if it has become blocked. This guarantees that if the server ever gets into an unresponsive state, it will always correct itself within a minute.
* Fixed a bug which could cause a crash on older Macintosh models with "32-bit dirty" ROMs, such as the IIcx, when displaying the license agreement dialog. The license text is now automatically displayed in the language appropriate for the currently active system; the popup menu of languages has been removed.
* MacDNS now automatically opens the Message Log window when it is launched for the first time.
* Fixed a bug where information about currently open windows, including the size and position of the Cached Hosts window, was not correctly saved to the preferences file.
* Fixed a bug where $ORIGIN statements following the SOA record in an existing BIND zone file were being ignored. This could cause MacDNS to import some entries with an incorrect domain name suffix.
* Fixed a problem where "Look Up Host" occasionally did not retrieve the IP address for a host name, depending on the parent server being asked. Previously, "Look Up Host" only generated queries of type ANY and MX. It now additionally asks for an A record, if one was not returned from the ANY request.
* Fixed a problem where the "Look Up Host" status message remained "Idle..." during a lookup.
* Corrected a problem in the way parent server responsiveness was measured when more than one parent server was specified. This problem could cause significant slowdowns in overall response time under certain conditions. If "A" and "B" were specified as parent servers, and A subsequently went offline, MacDNS could continue to send queries to A first instead of B, even though B was obviously the preferred server to use.
* Fixed a bug where MacDNS could include its own IP address when generating the default list of parent servers, if the MacTCP control panel on the server machine was configured to use its own IP address as its DNS server. (It is illegal, and normally not possible, to specify your own IP address as a parent server in MacDNS, since endless request looping will occur.)
* MacDNS now prevents an alias from being entered as a mail exchanger host name. The use of alias names as mail exchangers is illegal, since it can cause mail loops.
* Fixed a cosmetic bug where the size box of a resizeable window was not refreshed correctly, and added a gray background to the column header area of host list windows.
* Removed the "Are you sure you want to quit?" dialog in response to user feedback, since it prevented quitting and relaunching the server under automated script control.