[Q] secondaries, SOA checks, logging

[Markus Stumpf]

I have a script that checks bind's logfiles (I have one logfile for each
channel, works fine) for failed AXFRs/uptodate checks for zones that we are
secondary.

We're using bind-8.2.2-P5.
bind is reloaded 3 times a day (03:50, 11:50, 15:50)

We have a zone that is a hidden primary (dialup customer).
SOA says:
     (
     1998082000      ; serial
     8H              ; refresh
     30M             ; retry
     1w3d            ; expiry
     1D )            ; minimum
as expected I see
    xfer-in: info: Err/TO getting serial# for "example.com"
every 30 minutes, except for the times, when the customers DNS server
is online. In my script I'd like to add special processing, if there
had been successful AXFRs/checks for that kind of domains within the
last 12 hours or so and remove them from the error section of the
output.

Currently I cannot get any information about successful *checks*
from the logfiles. On other servers (internal "caching" bind, with only
three or five secondary zone, that are not "reloaded" frequently) I see
messages like
   default: info: qserial_answer: Zone "example.com" serial is still OK
Whilst I have a lot of other "default: info:" messages in my logfiles
I can't see the qserial_answer messages in the logfiles of our
"official" servers. The logging statements on both types of servers
are identical (except for filenames).

Any ideas why I don't get those "still OK" message or another easy solution
around the problem?

While trying to investigate this problem I also looked at the source of
named-xfer. If the connect() to the remote host fails, "error" is set
and at the end of the loop "XFER_FAIL" is returned.
In named/ns_maint.c however there is and error message logging
    "zoneref: Masters for secondary zone \"%s\" unreachable"
Wouldn't it be nice to have that error output on connect() failure, too?

And one more question: is there an easy way to trick bind into not
adding the "-q" switch to named-xfer without modifying the source?

Thanks,

	\Maex

P.S. Many thanks to all the people on the list that patiently answer all
     the questions, even those coming over and over again. You're doing
     a great job and I have learned at lot over the past months by simply
     lurking on the list and reading your answers. Thanks!
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