W2K DNS Master and BIND Secondaries

[Barry Finkel]

I responded to Sim Alam:

>> I do not understand this.  Assume that there are three Domain
>> Controllers, AD1, AD2, and AD3.  For the BIND slave, it must list
>> one of these three as the zone's master; let us assume that AD1 is
>> listed as the master.  The BIND slave will always retrieve the zone
>> from AD1.  The serial number of the zone on AD1 should never decrease,
>> although (according to your supposition) the serial number of the zone
>> on AD2 or AD3 might be higher than the serial number on AD1.
>>

Sim Alam responded:

>At the moment there are only two AD masters and yes I have checked that the
>SOA serial numbers are different on both of them. It does not appear that
>the AD is replicating the SOA serial numbers consistently. There is a
>considerable difference in the numbers between the AD masters.

If the serial numbers are different, then there is a good chance that
the data contained in that zone are different.  Win2k does a lot of
re-updating of the same information, so the serial number can increase
without the zone data having changed.  This serial number bug needs to be
reported to MS.  I looked at the technet documents regarding the first
Service Pack for Win2k, and there was nothing major in the DNS area that
I saw.  

I, again:

>> Are you listing all three masters in the BIND named.conf?
>>
>>      type slave;
>>      masters {AD1; AD2; AD3;}
>>

Sim, again:

>No I am only listing one of the servers as the master for the zone.

If you are listing only one master for the zone, and that master has
decreasing serial numbers, then this is a more serious bug that needs
to be reported to MS.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Barry S. Finkel
Electronics and Computing Technologies Division
Argonne National Laboratory          Phone:    +1 (630) 252-7277
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