timeout value for no response from primary name server

[Mark Conroy]

Question for the group,

I need to apply some y2k patches to a solaris system(solaris 2.6) on a
primary name server.  I would like to perform this during the day, which
means shutting down the system into single user mode. I have a secondary
name server that resolves if the primary is not there.   I am running
bind 8.1.2.

I performed a test on a test name server, and noticed that when I reboot
the system, and  perform an nslookup on a machine that is using the test
name server to resolve, it takes about 80 seconds for the request to
timeout and go to the backup server.  In production, I cannot afford
everyone to be waiting over 80 seconds to get resolved.  I noticed that
with nslookup, I can tweek a couple of the parameters(timeout/retry) to
lower that.  They are set at a default timeout of 5 seconds, and a retry
of 4 times.  With each retry, it doubles the timeout value, so at the
end of 4 retries, it has waited almost 80 seconds. However, thousands of
people that are using dns are not using nslookup, they are just trying
to telnet or ftp.

On page 107 of DNS & BIND(version3), it says that if there are more then
one name server configured, it queries the first name server in the
list, with a timeout of 5 seconds, and if it timesout, it will fall back
to the next name server, waiting 5 seconds.  I am not seeing this
behavior.  It waits up to 80 seconds if I am using nslookup or telnet to
a machine.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks

Mark Conroy



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