random problems resolving domains

[xcuuuzu]

We're experiencing some occasional lookup issues on our internal
DNS servers (ie, the ones behind the firewall).
Occasionally, the name server will fail to be able to lookup
certain domains that it is not authoritive for.  During normal
operations, if my local domain is corp.company.com, and I try to
lookup company.com, I get the correct IP address of
the co-located (ie, not in the same building) server.  The
internal IP address space is 172.20/16.  However, when things
fail, it's unable to resolve company.com at all until I 'kill -9'
named and then restart it.  I've tried to note any time issue
here, but it seems to be unrelated to any timeout - the errors
will occur anytime between 2 days to 3 weeks (or longer).  The
log files don't report any errors before (or during) the time
that lookups fail. There are no connectivity issues either.

I thought that this was a config error on my part, and I've
reread the entire O'Reilly book several times without success.
However, at the end of December, my company merged with another,
and they're seeing the same issues too, but with a
192.168.x/24 internal network.  Also, the network it can't lookup
is othercompany.net, as opposed to othercompany.com on their
internal network.  We're both using bind 8.2.2P5.

Suggestions?  Thanks,

Hans Hohenner


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