resolv.conf files on nameservers

[Mathias Körber]

>        Are you supposed to have the secondary nameserver point to =
itself
> first or to the primary?

Again, the named proces itself does not even look at the resolv.conf,
so this is only used by other programs (nslookup, dig, your mailer,
other applications etc) runnning on that machine.
Whether that resolv.conf shoul point to the same machine depends on
whether the nameserver on that machines is configured to be recursive
or not. It it's not recursive (and you haven't used allow-recursive
for localhost and its own IP address(es)), you cannot point to itself, =
as
it would not reply for anything but the zones it's authoritative for
(it will return referrals for any other query which resolvers can't =
handle).
In this case you will have to point resolv.conf to another nameserver
that is used for lookups.
If you nameserver is also handling all the queries for your local =
clients
(ie it is recursive, mybe only for those addresses), then you can point =
to
itself. Whether you want to do so, or concentrate all local queries on a
central cachine server (to make use of the cache) is a decision you make
for yourself.

All this goes for the primary too. resolv.conf does not care whether
a nameserver is primary or secondary, but whether the nameserver listed
in it is recursive or not.