Domain aliasing...CNAME and OTHER data error

[Kevin Darcy]

Joe Dietz wrote:

> I'm trying to get a "domain.com" to respond to our web server.  See the
> zone file below.  www.xyz.com aliases fine to www.abc.com.  The error is
> on the domain name  xyz.com alias to www.abc.com.  I get the bind error
> CNAME and OTHER data error using Bind 8.2.2-p5.
>
> I can get xyz.com to work if I put an "A" record with and IP address.
> I'm trying to
> make updating all the aliased domains easier.  I'd like to be able to
> change one zone
> abc.com and not have to adjust xyz.com to match.
>
> Can someone shed some light on this...?
>
> $TTL 5M
> xyz.com.    soa host.xyz.com. mailuser.def.com. (
>     2000041900
>     10H
>     1H
>     4W
>     5M
> )
>
> xyz.com.    in    cname    www.abc.com.
> www          in    cname    www.abc.com.

You simply can't have a CNAME with the same name as something else, like an
SOA or an NS record. This rule is part of the way CNAMEs are defined in the
DNS protocol. The implication therefore, is that you can't have a
CNAME with the same name as a zone, since a zone has, at the very least, an
SOA record.

Maybe DNAMEs would help here, assuming you wanted *everything* in xyz.com
to be aliased to the corresponding names in abc.com, but DNAMEs won't be
available until BIND 9, which is still in beta...

An ugly kludge would be to have a shared $INCLUDE file containing an
A record for the name "@".


- Kevin