My zone serial number is messed up!

Barry Margolin barmar at genuity.net
Tue Jan 23 15:07:10 UTC 2001


In article <94ile2$b3u at pub3.rc.vix.com>,  <Mark.Andrews at nominum.com> wrote:
>> Read the section of "DNS & BIND" titled "Starting over with a new serial
>> number" (except that I've noticed that since BIND 8.2.2, the special case
>> of 0 doesn't work -- could a BIND developer comment on this?).
>
>	zero being special was a bug.

Great, but it was a useful bug that was documented as a recommended
procedure in DNS & BIND, which is considered the Bible of DNS.  Was it
really necessary to fix it?

Our customers mess up their serial numbers all the time (most commonly,
they accidentally add an extra digit, and when they notice the error they
remove it, resulting in their serial number backing up, or they install a
new DNS server and all their serial numbers start back at 1).  It was so
much nicer when we could tell them "Set your serial number to 0, wait a few
hours, then set it back."  Now we'll have to tell these people to add a
huge number, which their calculators probably can't handle.  Would Nominum
like to send out mod-2^32 calculators to every DNS administrator to make up
for this?

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at genuity.net
Genuity, Burlington, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.



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