Confused about what $ORIGIN does in relation to @

[Ryan McCain]

This is another post in my attempt to gain knowledge of BIND.  Here is the top of one of my zone files:

$ORIGIN .
$TTL 3600       ; 1 hour
dss.state.la.us         IN SOA  dssns.dss.state.la.us. rmccain.dss.state.la.us (
                                2007091103        ; serial
                                1200        ; refresh (20 minutes)
                                600        ; retry (10 minutes)
                                1209600    ; expire (2 weeks)
                                3600       ; minimum (1 hour)
                                )
                        NS      dssns.dss.state.la.us.
                        NS      dssns2.dss.state.la.us.
                        A       205.172.49.49
                        MX      10 smtp-ext1.dss.state.la.us.
                        MX      20 smtp-ext2.dss.state.la.us.
$ORIGIN dss.state.la.us.
acess                   A       205.172.49.23
acess-info              A       205.172.49.23
acspoc                  A       205.172.49.9


I have the O'Reilly BIND book but it doesn't really clarify what the $ORIGIN statement is doing.  This zone file was created when the server was acting as a slave to a master Microsoft DNS server.  

What confuses me is I have 2 $ORIGIN statements.  I am assuming this is repetitive however, I'm not 100% sure.

I changed the zone file to comment out the 2nd $ORIGIN statement:


$ORIGIN .
$TTL 3600       ; 1 hour
dss.state.la.us         IN SOA  dssns.dss.state.la.us. rmccain.dss.state.la.us (
                                2007091103        ; serial
                                1200        ; refresh (20 minutes)
                                600        ; retry (10 minutes)
                                1209600    ; expire (2 weeks)
                                3600       ; minimum (1 hour)
                                )
                        NS      dssns.dss.state.la.us.
                        NS      dssns2.dss.state.la.us.
                        A       205.172.49.49
                        MX      10 smtp-ext1.dss.state.la.us.
                        MX      20 smtp-ext2.dss.state.la.us.
;$ORIGIN dss.state.la.us.
acess                   A       205.172.49.23
acess-info              A       205.172.49.23
acspoc                  A       205.172.49.9


and also tried it by changing the first $ORIGIN statement:

$ORIGIN dss.state.la.us.
$TTL 3600       ; 1 hour
dss.state.la.us         IN SOA  dssns.dss.state.la.us. rmccain.dss.state.la.us (
                                2007091103        ; serial
                                1200        ; refresh (20 minutes)
                                600        ; retry (10 minutes)
                                1209600    ; expire (2 weeks)
                                3600       ; minimum (1 hour)
                                )
                        NS      dssns.dss.state.la.us.
                        NS      dssns2.dss.state.la.us.
                        A       205.172.49.49
                        MX      10 smtp-ext1.dss.state.la.us.
                        MX      20 smtp-ext2.dss.state.la.us.
;$ORIGIN dss.state.la.us.
acess                   A       205.172.49.23
acess-info              A       205.172.49.23
acspoc                  A       205.172.49.9


..Both produced weird errors when I queried the domain via dnsstuff.com.

Can someone clarify where my $ORIGIN statement should be and also can I change dss.state.la.us in the SOA record to just @?

Thanks again for everyones help..