Y2K serial number question

[Gray Abbott]

I got bitten by the Y2K issue, when bumping the serial number in my named
database.  I was using the YYMMDDHHMM style and I blindly went to
YYYYMMDDHHMM, without thinking about 32-bit overflows.  The result
appears to be that other nameservers did not recognize the change
in my database and didn't update their caches.  Thus, my changes were
not seen by some of the Internet.

I made a temporary fix by replacing "99" with "100" for the year, since
this fits.

I see that other people are recommending YYYYMMDDss as the style to use,
and I may switch to that, but I have a question:

I always thought that the serial number had to actually *increase* to
be recognized as updated.  The named man page says it has to "change".
Is this right?  Does any change, up or down, work?  (If so, why didn't
my overflowed version count as a change?)

-- 

Gray Abbott (gray at sofgry.com)       http://www.sofgry.com/Sofgry/
Sofgry Systems                      ** Austin Technical Events Calendar:
Scientific & Engineering Software   http://www.realspace.com/Calendar/