Serial number too big.

Kevin Darcy kcd at daimlerchrysler.com
Fri May 6 22:27:20 UTC 2005


Joseph S D Yao wrote:

>On Thu, May 05, 2005 at 02:27:13PM -0700, Keith Woodworth wrote:
>  
>
>>Moved some servers around and running BIND 8.4.6 and I just reloaded a
>>zone and get serial number too big.
>>
>>19990301242
>>
>>is the current serial number. I dont recall the other BIND server that was
>>authoritiative complaining, which is running: 8.3.4.
>>
>>How can I recover or fix this particular message? A google search for
>>bind serial number too big is less than helpful.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>Keith
>>    
>>
>
>A convention which you may have been following is:
>
>	YYYYMMDDnn
>	2005050600
>
>This is designed to nicely keep us under (2^31-1):
>	2147483647
>for another few years; hopefully not only my kids but any grandkids will
>be out of college by then, and I'll be retired.  ;-)
>
>For some reason, though, you've added on an extra digit.
>
>	YYYYMMDDnn
>	19990301242
>
>Earlier versions of BIND may not have complained about this, but just
>let you go on using
>	(19990301242 (mod 2^32)) == 2810432058 == -1484535238.
>This IS an illegal value, though ...
>
>See the aforementioned documents on how to correct this with least
>disruption via expiring zones.
>
Not to take this off on a tangent, but why do some people invest so much 
time and effort trying to use their SOA serial numbers as version 
control and/or history mechanisms? Dynamic Update pretty much throws 
that out the window anyway, and if you're *really* serious about that 
kind of stuff, you should be keeping history, change logs, audit logs, 
etc. in the backend of your DNS maintenance system; a serial number 
alone isn't sufficient to reconstruct who changed what, in what 
sequence, etc. anyway...

- Kevin




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