
Ask HN: Anyone know what this DNS TXT record is? - elliottinvent
There are two DNS TXT records for example.com, one is an SPF record but I can&#x27;t find out anything about the other one:<p>$ dig example.com TXT +short<p>&quot;v=spf1 -all&quot;<p>&quot;$Id: example.com 4415 2015-08-24 20:12:23Z davids $&quot;<p>Does anyone know what the second TXT record relates to?<p>Thanks,<p>Elliott
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jwilk
This looks like like RCS keywords, which are used also by other version
control systems, such as CVS or Subversion:

[http://svnbook.red-
bean.com/en/1.7/svn.advanced.props.specia...](http://svnbook.red-
bean.com/en/1.7/svn.advanced.props.special.keywords.html)

I... I don't know why would anyone put one in a TXT record. It's likely a
mistake.

The other example domains (example.org, example.net) don't have such record.

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Habbie
If you are managing your zone data in RCS or similar, why not expose that
information in DNS as well? Could be useful for debugging.

Indeed, on 2015-01-01, it said "$Id: example.com 3280 2014-12-10 00:15:12Z
spowell $".

It does not look like a mistake to me.

~~~
elliottinvent
Thanks for your input, I think you're right – it's deliberate, but seems like
a pretty wasteful use of DNS TXT to me. Every SPF lookup is dragging that much
bigger record with it too and it serves no real purpose for anyone other than
the administrators of the example.com zone. It seems like a strange thing to
put in this zone particularly because it's used in so many examples.

~~~
Habbie
I bet this was in before the SPF also went in. You should feel free to take
this up with IANA, of course :)

