failed zone transfers

[Bee]

I have a secondary name server for a zone that is not able to update
it's zone info for one zone only.

The primary for the zone I wish to transfer supports 3 zones in total,
including 0.0.127.in-addr.arpa, a zone for reverse lookup, say
2.2.194.in-addr.arpa, and the zone for the domain name, say
nowhere.unix.com.

I can use named-xfer to transfer the first two zones, but it always
fails on the third.   I can use nslookup to contact the name server and
use ls -d to dump everything for nowhere.unix.com, this works as
expected.

The error message I am getting is something like error in SOA.  I had
named-xfer log the transfer attempt and it seems to get all the SOA
information and then complains about the error.

The strange thing is that the serial number for the zone file that is
loaded on the primary is completely different (ie different by 800,000
or so) from the serial number that is reported using nslookup, and the
serial number on the expired copy of the same information on the
secondary.   The serial number in the copy of the zone file on the
secondary and the number reported by the primary differ only by 2 or so;
I just can't see where the primary is finding the serial number and why
it is different from what is reported by the name server.

Sorry for the lack of hard data, but I don't have access to the machines
just now and am going from memory...

I am suspecting some sort of problem with the serial number wrapping
when it the file is loaded, but does this explain why I can't do a
manual zone transfer ?

Secondly, I always thought that using ls -d in nslookup was the same as
a zone transfer ?

Thanks very much...........