Verifying Secondary Updates

[Brad Knowles]

At 3:42 PM +0000 8/13/01, Jeff wrote:

>  We just had our ISP become our secondary DNS.  Can someone confirm how to
>  verify whether they have created our zone files and are updating.  I'm
>  guessing you just perform an NSLOOKUP on a few hosts trying to use their DNS
>  and see if the repsonse says "Non-authoratative" answer then it is resolving
>  from another DNS but if it doesn't say non-authoratative then the zone files
>  reside locally?  Correct?

	Typically, the best way to validate things like this is to use a 
DNS debugging tool that checks delegation issues (i.e., are the 
advertised nameservers answering properly, do the parent nameservers 
hand out the same list as the supposedly authoritative nameservers, 
etc...).

	Some tools check some of these things, but the one tool that I 
know of that is dedicated to checking out all possible DNS delegation 
data is called "doc", which stands for "Domain Obscenity Control". 
You can get the latest version of "doc" from 
<ftp://ftp.shub-internet.org/pub/shub/brad/dns/>.  You will want the 
doc-2.1.5 version if you're using BIND 8, and doc-2.2.3 is for use 
with BIND 9.

	The only other tool I know of that checks most delegation data 
(as well as lots of other things) is called DNS Expert Professional 
1.6, which is a commercial program from a company called "Men & 
Mice".  However, they do have a free demo version that is available 
for download, and you can get more information about this tool from 
<http://www.menandmice.com/2000/2100_dns_expert.html>.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

H4sICIFgXzsCA2RtYS1zaWcAPVHLbsMwDDvXX0H0kkvbfxiwVw8FCmzAzqqj1F4dy7CdBfn7
Kc6wmyGRFEnvvxiWQoCvqI7RSWTcfGXQNqCUAnfIU+AT8OZ/GCNjRVlH0bKpguJkxiITZqes
MxwpSucyDJzXxQEUe/ihgXqJXUXwD9ajB6NHonLmNrUSK9nacHQnH097szO74xFXqtlbT3il
wMsBz5cnfCR5cEmci0Rj9u/jqBbPeES1I4PeFBXPUIT1XDSOuutFXylzrQvGyboWstCoQZyP
dxX4dLx0eauFe1x9puhoi0Ao1omEJo+BZ6XLVNaVpWiKekxN0VK2VMpmAy+Bk7ZV4SO+p1L/
uErNRS/qH2iFU+iNOtbcmVt9N16lfF7tLv9FXNj8AiyNcOi1AQAA