[bind10-dev] Zone loading requirements, take 1

[Evan Hunt]

> There is "won't load" and "won't load, really I mean it". So, even if
> you can't coerce BIND 9 to load a zone file with such data, what
> happens when BIND 9 is acting as a secondary? Does it still refuse to
> accept the zone? If not, what answers do you get?
> 
> I'm kind of inclined to think that a CNAME should "hide" the other
> RRtypes at that name, in a way similar to an NS record "hiding" longer
> names.

I think your inclination is correct and is what BIND 9 does.  (I can
do some tests to confirm the latter if you like.)

> Hm... RFC 1035 pre-dates the SHOULD/MUST/MAY language of modern RFCs,
> and maybe this particular recommendation has been superseded, but it
> seems to indicate that actually the SOA should be the first record in
> section 5.2:
> 
>    2. Exactly one SOA RR should be present at the top of the zone.

As Peter suggested, I think this means "zone apex" not first line in
the master file.

(The position in the file *can* be relevant: if you don't have an explicit
TTL set, then if the SOA has already been loaded by the time you need one,
you can use the SOA MINTTL value.  But if you do have an explicit TTL set,
you can put the SOA anywhere you like.)

> > The reason that test works is that it's not a zone-loading test, it's
> > a masterfile-parsing test.
> 
> Ah, right. Are there any explicit zone loading tests that you know of?

I don't think there are unit tests for that.  It gets exercised by lots
of system tests, though.

-- 
Evan Hunt -- each at isc.org
Internet Systems Consortium, Inc.