Some questions about bind

[Chris Cox]

Jeff Lasman wrote:
...
> 
> 
> It will stop after it receives it's first response, whether that 
> response is authoritative, non-authoritive, or NXDOMAIN.

Except on Linux where there are SERIOUS problems with
the resolver.

You'll find the resolver making needless queries to the
nameserver for names that CANNOT exist.

Try running ethereal and do a query for an unqualified
name.  Why on earth does Linux attempt to send the unqualified
name to the nameservers??  It's like it's set to ndots=0.
But it's not.  It's hard to figure out what it is doing???
You can imagine the delays caused if one of the nameservers
is down.

I filed this as bug #95 with glibc... but I cannot fathom
the algorithm being used by the Linux resolver... I just
know it is wrong.

This problem exists in every Linux I've tried, even the
enterprise level Linux (e.g. RHELAS 2.1/3.0, SLES 8).