Odd behavior on a secondary server

[Barry Margolin]

In article <mailman.142.1521728228.3031.bind-users at lists.isc.org>,
 Matus UHLAR - fantomas <uhlar at fantomas.sk> wrote:

> On 22.03.18 10:13, John Miller wrote:
> >We are setting up a secondary server and seeing something that may be
> >normal, but I wanted to check. The time stamp on each zone file on the
> >secondary is changing with each refresh cycle, even if there are no changes
> >to the file.
> >
> >Is this normal or am I missing something.
> 
> it's AFAIK a way to record when ther was last refresh attempt.
> I don't know of any better way to records that

Exactly right. Whenever it successfully refreshes a zone, it updates the 
file's modification time. This is how it implements the expiration time, 
by comparing the current time with the file timestamp.

It could keep the refresh time in memory, but that would be lost 
whenever named restarts.

-- 
Barry Margolin
Arlington, MA