root-servers

[Will Yardley]

Thomas Ruschival wrote:
> I still have some questions or need encouragement.
> Please correct me if I state anything wrong in the following:
> - every domain has ONE root server that is authorative for it  (SOA).

your terminology here is a bit confusing.  the root servers are the main
dns servers and there are lots of them.  your domain has one master
server specified in the SOA record, but any slaves listed in the NS
records are also authoritative for the zone, and will respond
authoritatively.

> - Several domains can share one Server. (One box with one DNS-Demon)

sure.  thousands of domains can share one server.

> Like every named.conf file mine has the zone "."with an hint to the
> Root-nameservers.  Everytime I request a .de-domain my local server can´t
> resolve it, so it does at it is told, it requests  a root-nameserver in the
> .domain for the name requested or at least the IP of server that is
> authorative for the .de domain. Now I am wondering does it make sense to add
> another zone eg. ".de" ( I live in Germany therefore I request lots of .de
> hosts) with a hint to the nameserver that is authorative for the .de-domain
> to my named.conf . I wanted to boost up my DNS requests by omitting
> uneccessary overhead and take of some load from the root nameservers.
> I tried to find out the Autorative nameserver for the .de domain using
> nslookup but I found 6 hosts. How can I find out which one is authorative?
> There can only be one SOA, right?

all 6 are authoritative.  your server should be able to find the
information recursively, and one hint file is all that is needed - the
one for the root zone (.)  you can of course find the SOA record for de:

aura% dig de. soa

; <<>> DiG 9.2.0rc1 <<>> de. soa
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 28042
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 7, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;de.                            IN      SOA

;; ANSWER SECTION:
de.                     86400   IN      SOA     dns.denic.de.
ops.denic.de. 2001090501 10800 7200 3600000 3600

but any servers mentioned in the ns records for de. are authoritative
for the zone.

perhaps you could have let us know which de. domains you're having
trouble reaching, and possibly the relevant sections of your named.conf
file / dig output from the machine....

-- 
Sintax error in config file! (line 378)
aborted!

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