Bad referral

[Wayne Vigeant]

> We're running Bind 8.2.1 and starting to see at least one or two
> bad referral messages a day in our log files. Here's a sample:
> Sep 29 15:19:57 ns1 named[32521]: bad referral (com !< msnbc.COM)
> Sep 29 20:57:29 ns1 named[32521]: bad referral (dec.com !< bb.DEC.COM)
> Sep 29 21:11:44 ns1 named[32521]: bad referral (net !< GTLD-SERVERS.net)
> Is there some way to find out what causes these or figure out where they
> are coming from?

>>The server for (.com|.dec.com|.net) said that the
>>(msnbc.COM|bb.DEC.COM|GTLD-SERVERS.net) subdomain was delegated to
>>some other server.  But when ns1 queried that other server for
>>something in the subdomain, it said the name doesn't exist, and
>>returned a referral NS record back to the (.com|.dec.com|.net) domain,
>>i.e. it doesn't even think that the subdomain has been delegated.=20

>>So something is misconfigured.

>I think you'll need to turn on named tracing to find out what's going on;
>something is very strange in your configuration.  I checked all the servers
>that these domains are delegated to, and none of them are lame (except that
>I didn't get any response from ns2.internic.net, one of the servers for
>gtld-servers.net).

>Can you post your named.conf file?

Here's the named.conf file I'm using:
# named.conf for master server 
#
        include "/var/named/db/access.conf";

options {
        directory "/var/named/db";
        allow-query {
                "digital-fwd";
        } ;
        allow-transfer {
                "digital-ns2" ;
        };
        notify yes;
        check-names master warn;
        check-names slave warn;
        check-names response ignore;
        statistics-file "/var/named/work/named.stats";
        dump-file "/var/named/work/named_dump.db";
        memstatistics-file "/var/named/work/named.memstats";
        forwarders { 16.52.48.193 ; 16.33.16.124; };
};

#
# local zone 
#
zone "0.0.127.in-addr.arpa" {
        type master;
        file "/var/named/db/named.local";
};
zone "." in {
type hint;
file "/var/named/db/root.cache.db";
};