What is the correct behavior with A and AAAA records in different domains?

smith_roy at emc.com smith_roy at emc.com
Fri Mar 12 18:31:45 UTC 2010


I've got an "interesting" network setup I'm trying to work with.  There
are hosts with IPv4 and IPv6 interfaces.  For reasons beyond my control
and comprehension, the IT department decided to put the A and AAAA
records in different domains.  Thus, we have a machine foo, which has:

foo.d1.com   IN   A       10.1.8.200
foo.d2.com   IN   AAAA    3ffe:80c0:22c:60:203:baff:fe2c:b672

Now, let's say I've got the following in resolv.conf:

search d1.com d2.com

and I issue the query, "nslookup -type=aaaa foo".  What should the
resolver do?  My reading of RFC 1034, section 5.3.3, says it should
query foo.d1.com, get back a response of "no errors, no answers", and
iterate to foo.d2.com, where it will get back the AAAA record.  My
esteemed colleague says when it gets back the "no errors, no answers"
response, it should stop iterating at that point.

Experimentally, the solaris boxes exhibit the first behavior, and the
linux boxes the second.  Which is correct?



More information about the bind-users mailing list