[Apologies for all who received this message on the dns-wg list already, that was obviously a mistake ... -Marten] Dear all, We finally have some beta software running at the NCC for the database, and we would like you to test some things. We have created an empty test RIPE database on ncc.ripe.net running with the new whois daemon. You can send in updates to: testdb@ripe.net It will be processed and incorporated in a test database running on ncc.ripe.net (also a whois daemon running on that database). You should receive a ack mail back (to the Reply-To field, or From: is no Reply-To field present) and you should be able to find it in the whois server immediately. Acks should be sent to you within minutes. You can also delete objects in that test database, by simply adding a delete: line to an object. So, person: Marten Terpstra address: RIPE Network Coordination Centre (NCC) address: Kruislaan 409 address: NL-1098 SJ Amsterdam address: Netherlands phone: +31 20 592 5065 fax-no: +31 20 592 5090 e-mail: marten@ripe.net nic-hdl: MT2 changed: marten@ripe.net 930503 source: RIPE delete: just try and delete this thing should delete this object in the database, if all fields are the same as in the database. The ordering of fields does not matter, just as long as attributes with the same name are in the same order, ie in the object above you cannot change the place of two "address:" fields. Also the place of the delete field does not matter, it can be anywhere in the object. Updating should be very quick, ack mails should be sent to you within minutes. Please try some stuff and see what happens. Comments on the format of the ack mail are also appreciated. Currently verbose ack is default ie you get at least a one line ack per object you send in, and the full object if there were errors or warnings. If you send in objects with a source other than RIPE it should complain that this is an unknown source and should refuse the update. -Marten PS All requests are already properly logged so be careful with those deletes ;-) PPS The syntax checker for this test database is VERY strict, simply because there is no manual intervention from the NCC any longer. It may well be that existing objects in the real database are no longer accepted ;-)