What are the Negative Numbers??

[Barry Margolin]

In article <9ikhgj$879 at pub3.rc.vix.com>, Kevin Reed <news at tnet.com> wrote:
>
>This is a snippet of DNS obtained from a whole zone using the same
>domain.
>
>What I don't understand is what the negative numbers are?  Do they
>belong
>there?

They're the TTL.  Apparently you're using an old version of software that
thinks that TTLs are signed rather than unsigned, so any value above 2^31
is shown as a negative number.

>Domain name and IP numbers have been changed... and don't point to the
>real
>site.

It would be much easier for us to help you if you told us the real name and
IP.  That way we could compare our results with yours to determine if the
problem is with the primary or your secondary server.

>$ORIGIN trn.ref.domain.com.
>trnntd01	-267041280	IN	A	164.164.194.28
>	-267041280	IN	A	164.164.194.28
>	-267041280	IN	A	164.164.194.28
>	-267041280	IN	A	164.164.194.28
>
>I do know they are using NT to provide their DNS.  This came as part
>of a
>named-xfer request to that server for that domain.
>
>I'm wondering if it has something to do with the corruption I am
>seeing when attempting to do a   nslookup for any record...

That unknown record is Microsoft's proprietary $WINS record.  As long as it
doesn't show up in a zone transfer you can ignore it.  If you get a failure
in the zone transfer, the administrator of the primary server needs to
check the box in the zone's properties that says that WINS data applies
only to the local server.

># nslookup -query=any domain.com                                      
>Server:  phxntn01.mkt.domain.com
>Address:  164.164.188.14
>
>tosco.com       internet address = 208.123.114.67
>tosco.com       nameserver = brcntd01.brc.ref.domain.com
>tosco.com
>        origin = brcntd01.brc.ref.domain.com
>        mail addr = administrator.brc.ref.domain.com
>        serial = 184
>        refresh = 600 (10M)
>        retry   = 600 (10M)
>        expire  = 86400 (1D)
>        minimum ttl = 3600 (1H)
>tosco.com       preference = 20, mail exchanger = mailhost3.domain.com
>tosco.com       preference = 10, mail exchanger = mailhost.domain.com
>tosco.com       record type 65281, interpreted as:
>?.                      0S IN 65281     \#(             ; unknown RR
>type
>        00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 02 58 00 00 00 01 ;
>...........X....
>        a4 7b 70 e9 )                                   ; .{p.
>
>The above was obtained via nslookup on a Sun box pointing at the
>nameserver.
>
>I am looking at this because we have a bunch of newer IBM RS6000 boxes
>with Aix 4.3.3 that can't resolve the MX record and I think they have
>a broken lookup that can't handle the error that I think I am seeing
>above.  If I do a any lookup there, I get the same info, but if I do a
>lookup for MX records only, None of the MX records show just:
>
>#nslookup -query=mx domain.com                            
>Server:  phxntn01.mkt.domain.com
>Address:  164.164.188.14
>
>brcntd01.brc.ref.domain.com
>        origin = brcntd01.brc.ref.domain.com
>        mail addr = administrator.brc.ref.domain.com
>        serial = 184
>        refresh = 600 (10M)
>        retry   = 600 (10M)
>        expire  = 86400 (1D)
>        minimum ttl = 3600 (1H)
>
>


-- 
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.