Is the domain name after SOA important?

[Joseph S D Yao]

Marc Merlin mused:
> @               IN      SOA ns1.foo.com. hostmaster.foo.com. (
>                                 93071200        ; Serial (yymmddxx)
>                                 10800           ; Refresh 3 hours
>                                 3600            ; Retry   1 hour
>                                 3600000         ; Expire  1000 hours
>                                 86400 )         ; Minimum 24 hours
> 			A	IP
> 			MX	IP
> 
> localhost		IN	A	127.0.0.1
> 
> www			IN	A	IP
> 
> According  to the  BIND  documentation, the  first field  after  SOA is  the
> primary server for the zone: ns1.foo.com, so it could also be ns1.foobar.com
> or anything else...
> 
> If I have another domain bar.com, and it  has the same www host going to the
> same IP, is  there any reason why  I can't just link  the named.bar.com zone
> file to named.foo.com?

If you have more than one name server, the one where you actually
update the tables with an editor [or whatever] must be the name after
the SOA.  (This is now called the "master" server, rather than the
"primary" server.)  Plus, humans reading the SOA will expect that the
host named there is in fact one of the zone's name servers, albeit
perhaps hidden.

You could in fact set up the SOA in this manner:
@		IN SOA	ns1 hostmaster (
	...
)

Then, if your origin is "foo.com", the name server will be perceived to
be "ns1.foo.com" and the "responsible party" address will be perceived
to be "hostmaster at foo.com".  Similarly, "bar.com" => "ns1.bar.com" and
"hostmaster at bar.com".

This presupposes that everything else in the zone file should be
identical modulo the domain name; but that seems to be what you are
suggesting.

--
Joe Yao				jsdy at cospo.osis.gov - Joseph S. D. Yao
COSPO/OSIS Computer Support					EMT-B
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