[BIND] SERVFAIL

Jim Reid jim at rfc1035.com
Tue Apr 13 15:05:15 UTC 2004


>>>>> "Jeremy" == Jeremy Mauro <jeremy.mauro at wanadooportails.com> writes:

    Jeremy>  Hi everyone, I have different linux DNS server ( One
    Jeremy> master and 3 others slaves) On the slaves servers I have
    Jeremy> the following error message: "refresh: unexpected rcode
    Jeremy> (SERVFAIL) from master" Any idea what could be the
    Jeremy> problem?

The master server is very sick. It is returning SERVFAIL errors:
"something is so badly broken, I am unable to do anything else". This
could be caused by an OS problem such as being unable to get network
buffers. However the most common causes of SERVFAIL replies are DNS
administrator error and server misconfiguration. They are the typical
result of forwarding loops or lame delegations. ie Server A forwards
the query to B which forwards to....A or else an authoritative server
has recursion enabled (sigh) and finds that the domain being looked up
has been delegated to itself.

You could have found this out by searching for SERVFAIL in the list
archives. Oh, and if you'd told us the actual name of the master
server and the domain name, somebody might have been able to
troubleshoot the problem for you.


More information about the bind-users mailing list