Setting up a fake "primary" DNS to feed off another, invisible DNS

[Reuben Farrelly]

Hi,

I am in the process of setting up a moderately automated and hopefully
easy-to-use DNS service for some systems at work.

This is the situation:

pridns ------------ secdns
        \                    /
         [workstation]

At the moment, adding new zones and updating them requires manual creation
and deletion of the zone files and associated primary entries in the pridns
server.  Obviously somewhat prone to errors :>

I have a perl script which I have "inherited" which will, with a basic
config file, build the entire zone file for me.  It requires no manual work
other than a very basic entry specifying what records are needed, and can
make a valid zone file from this config.  Much easier than generating the
zone file by hand and adding entries.

I would like to run this script on my own workstation, and not on the
primary dns (pridns).  Assume that my workstation is accessable by pridns
and therefore pridns can do zone transfers from me.  I want to be able to
generate the zones on my workstation, and have pridns and secdns pick up the
zones, however I do not want my workstation name to appear in the zone
files, and once the zone transfer is complete to pridns, I want it to act as
a primary and not contact my workstation to check for updates unless I
change the record on my workstation, and therefore it gets sent a NOTIFY.

(1) Is this scenario possible, or would I need to configure pridns as a
secondary?  Configuring it as a secondary may solve the problem, but may
also turn nasty in the long term if I leave the company and/or someone else
takes over this role, as the config for pridns would need to be modified a
lot to change all secondary entries to primary ones

(2) Pridns and secdns are running BIND 8.12, but I am running BIND 8.21 on
my workstation.  Will specifying $TTL in my workstation zone files affect
the behaviour of pridns?   [Am I correct in assuming that the $TTL field
won't be transferred as part of the zone transfer?]  Incidentally, what
would happen if all of the DNS's were running 8.21, does the $TTL value get
transferred then?  Remember that I really want pridns to act and be
configured as a primary :>

(3) Can I add new zones to pridns by generating them on my own workstation
and then allowing BIND to issue a NOTIFY, or will this only work on zones
which are already specified in the primary file?  Will this work or not work
for the secdns as well?

Thanks for any tips and advice,
Reuben