Bind812. Point to another domain without root servers.

[Kevin Darcy]

Barry Margolin wrote:

> In article <932pmh$70b at pub3.rc.vix.com>,
> Diego Balgera <diego.balgera at nokia.com> wrote:
> >Hi,
> >my question is simple. I have a dns (dns1) with bind 8.1.2, with authority
> >(SOA) over a zone (assume it is domain1.com). I would like to configure it
> >to ask queries to another dns (dns2) with authority over another zone
> >(domain2.com). I should configure the root dns, but at the moment I haven't
> >any root dns at all.
> >So, is it possible to fill the "." hint zone file to point directly to the
> >other domain without going up in the hierarchy?
>
> No.  The hints file is only used to get the initial list of root NS
> records.

Indeed. And even if it did work (which it _could_, in the case of an internal
root), I doubt that the administrators of dns2 would appreciate you sending all of
your "garbage" queries (typos, etc.) to their server for resolution.

You should either a) forward or b) have a zone definition for root which
references one or more *real* root server(s). This could be a hints, stub, master
or slave zone definition. In the case of master, of course, you'd have to set up
your own root zone master file. But it's not that hard.

> You need to upgrade to BIND 8.2, and then you can create a "forwarding"
> zone:
>
> zone "domain2.com" {
>   type forward;
>   forwarders { 100.101.102.103; };
> };

If the remote server is authoritative for the zone and allows zone transfers, and
especially if redundancy is a requirement, then becoming a slave for the zone
might be preferable to forwarding. Also, a stub zone might perform better than
forwarding, although with less redundancy than slaving. If the remote server is
*not* authoritative, then of course forwarding is the only reasonable option. If
the remote server is not authoritative and also refuses recursion, then that's a
showstopper.


- Kevin