Resolving CNAMEs when pointing to another domain

[Barry Margolin]

In article <4.3.1.2.20000508113236.053e95b0 at bigsky.intranetics.com>,
G. Del Merritt <dmerritt at intranets.com> wrote:
to >The fly in the ointment is/(may be) that lbnamed isn't a recursive server, 
>and it's only authoritative for "mydomain.com".  It's also the case that it 
>currently generates RRs only in the answer section, and not in the 
>authority or additional records sections.  I'm not sure if it's one of 
>these facts or a combination of both that is giving resolvers fits.
>
>Since I clear the "Recursion Available" bit when my servers respond, I 
>would have hoped that the nameserver or resolving calling my servers 
>directly would iterate.  It sort of looks like they aren't.  Something 
>about the way nslookup pokes the ISP server, though, is sufficient to get 
>information in place.

Most resolvers (including the one built into nslookup) are "stub
resolvers", which means that they never perform iteration by themselves.
They send the query to a local nameserver and expect it to recurse.  Since
lbnamed isn't a recursive server, you shouldn't point to it in your
/etc/resolv.conf.

But this shouldn't cause a problem for normal use of your domain.
Resolvers should point to caching nameservers, which will do the
appropriate iteration that your CNAME records require.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at genuity.net
Genuity, Burlington, MA
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