primary&secondary

[Mark E. Drummond]

Jim Reid wrote:
> 
> There is no distinction between "primary" and "secondary" - the
> current terminology is master and slave - when it comes to
> resolving. A name server just follows the NS records. It can't tell by

That's why I said primary & secondary, and not master/slave. My bad for
lack of explanation. I meant primary/secondary/tertiary WRT the
resolv.conf.

And my point still stands. If your "primary" (first IP in your
resolv.conf or equivalent) is down, the resolver will wait for ~60 secs
before "failing over" to the "secondary". The next time the resolver
wants to do a query, it does _not_ stick with the known functioning
secondary, rather it goes back to the primary again as per the
resolv.conf, ergo another ~60sec timeout. This is unlike NIS/NIS+/LDAP
where the clients fail over "permanently". (da boss tells me that maybe
Windows - eek - does handle this better but that begs confirmation).

The end result is that, unless you go in a change, by hand, your
resolv.conf, all you DNS queries will be slowed until the "primary"
comes back online.

-- 
Mark Drummond|ICQ#19153754|mailto:mark.drummond at rmc.ca
UNIX System Administrator|Royal Military College of Canada
The Kingston Linux Users Group|http://signals.rmc.ca/klug/
Saving the World ... One CPU at a Time

Please excuse me if I am terse. I answer dozens of emails every day.