Forwarding to two servers

[CLOSE Dave (DAE)]

Joseph S D Yao wrote:

> If you have two forwarders, as you listed, your server will try to
> forward first to one and then to the other.  If it gets any answer at
> all from one - even an error answer - it will not try the other.

So forwarding works exactly the same as listing both servers in 
resolv.conf? That behavior is exactly what I'm trying to avoid.

> There are many ways to try to cascade name servers and try them one at a
> time.  By the good design of BIND, none of them work.

If BIND won't do the job, can you suggest another server that will? I 
can't be the only one wanting to do something like this.

> On your new server:
> 
> zone "." { type hint; file "root.hints"; };
> zone "private.example.com" { type forward; forward only;
 >   forwarders { private.domain.server.IP; }; };
> 
> and put the IP address for this name server and no other in your
> /etc/resolv.conf.

Ah, that might work -- in other circumstances. I understand the basic 
idea to be using separate zones to force forwarding to different servers 
for different domains. Did I understand correctly?

But an unfortunate characteristic of my PRIV server is that it doesn't 
use /any/ domain. It only resolves simple, unqualified names like HOST1. 
This was clearly a mistake in design (from before my time), but I have 
no ability to change it (in the next five years, anyway).
-- 
Dave Close