Is it possible to tell when a record will expire?

[Bill Moseley]

I added a machine to my zone file about 24 hours ago.  Of the accounts I
have access to on different machines almost all resolved this new machine's
IP number.

One check didn't have that new record, though.  So I have two questions:

1) I assume the RRs are cached and not the entire zone.  So if I queried
for a new addition to my zone file (that has also been transferred to all
slaves) the local DNS will query an authoritative server for the info.
Correct?

2) I also assume if I changed the IP of an existing name that I would have
to wait for the local cached RR to expire before it would query the
authoritative server for the new info.  So, is there any way to look at the
local server with nslookup or dig to find out how much time is left until
the record expires?


Oh, BTW, I just looked some more and may have found the reason the new name
didn't resolve (although I'm still curious about the above questions).

It's probably a granitecanyon problem.  Yesterday ns1.granitecanyon.com
wasn't answering queries for my domain -- it was referring to the root
servers instead.  But now it is answering queries for my domain, yet,
according to the SOA record it has, is using an old copy of my zone file.
Humm.  Seems odd that it would drop my record and then later (after I
changed my zone on my primary and sent out a NOTIFY) that it would start
answering for my domain, yet with an old zone record.
ns2.granitecanyon.com has the correct info.  Odd.



Bill Moseley
mailto:moseley at hank.org