Forwarding Requests to an External Name Server

Merton Campbell Crockett m.c.crockett at adelphia.net
Tue Jun 6 02:52:28 UTC 2006


I have several internal name servers are that still running BIND  
8.3.7-REL running under BSD/OS 4.3.1.  Normally, this version of BIND  
behaves the same as BIND 9.3.x that is running on various Linux  
systems and appears to be a little more robust.

The BIND 8.3.7-REL systems are internal master name servers that  
function as name servers of last resort for all internal name  
servers.  If they cannot answer the DNS query locally, they are  
configured to forward all DNS queries to an external name server.   
The global section of named.conf has both forwarders {...}; and  
forward only; statements.

Over the weekend, one of the internal servers began forwarding  
queries for an internal-only zone to the external name server  
although it had a valid copy of the internal zone.  What can cause  
this to happen?

To clear the problem, I had to stop the name server and then restart  
it.  This is unusual as we, typically, only stop and restart BIND is  
when we change versions of BIND or apply a patch to the operating  
system.

Merton Campbell Crockett
m.c.crockett at adelphia.net





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