[CLUE-Tech] bind madness

[Randy Arabie]

> Alright, I'm going crazy here - I have 3 dns servers, all running
> bind 9.2.1-X.  I have a zone file that's master server is an ip 
> like this:
> 
> 10.0.0.11
> 
> The serial number used to be some outrageously high number, like
> 275638326327.  The old admin here gave it that high of a number, 
> and I don't know why.  So, I shrank it down to 80... and I did 
> this by stopping bind on all 3 servers, and setting it the same 
> on all of them, and then restarting bind.  I then made an update 
> to the 10.0.0.11 server with that zone file.  I updated the 
> serial number to 81, and restarted bind there first, and then next 
> on the other servers.  The problem I'm now having is that I see 
> this in my logs on the slave servers:
> 
> Jun 20 12:00:08 fimble named[23817]: zone somedomain.com/IN: sending 
> notifies (serial 80)
> Jun 20 12:00:09 fimble named[23817]: zone somedomain.com/IN:
> transfered 
> serial 275638326327
> Jun 20 12:00:09 fimble named[23817]: transfer of 'somedomain.com/IN' 
> from 10.0.0.11#53: end of transfer
> Jun 20 12:00:09 fimble named[23817]: zone somedomain.com/IN: sending 
> notifies (serial 275638326327)
> 
> What gives? Is there some kind of cache somewhere, and keeps old
> serials in a database somewhere that I'm unaware of??  I would 
> think that since I updated all 3 servers, that the serial number
> 275638326327 should not exist anymore.

I'm not familiar with the current versions 9.x of bind, but I seem to 
recall that bind 8.x required the serial numbers could only be 32-bit 
unsigned integers with a maximum value of 4,294,967,295.

That doesn't address your question of why the numbers are reverting 
back, but does clue you in on why the previous admin started with such 
a "outrageously high number."

I recommend taking a look at O'Reilly's DNS and BIND, 4th Edition 

   http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/dns4/

I found the 3rd Edition indespensible when I tackled bind.

HTH
-- 
Allons Rouler!

Randy
http://www.arabie.org/