dns & subdomains

[Joseph S D Yao]

On Thu, Feb 24, 2000 at 07:16:40PM +0000, Melvin Toy wrote:
> I'm experimenting with DNS in a network using subdomains. ...
...
> Each subdomain has a master and slave nameserver. I add the NS and glue
> records to comics.com master nameserver.  Everything works fine. What I
> can't do is resolve anything in comics.com from within
> avengers.comics.com and xmen.comics.com.  The book is not clear on
> this.  ...

I saw a response from Barry, but it didn't seem to address this
question.  There are two alternatives.

Review DNS & BIND 3ed, Ch. 2 [How Does DNS Work?].  Your subdomain
servers must have a "root" server listed somewhere, that they can
reach.  That "root" server must delegate to a "com" domain server, and
the "com" server delegates to the "comics.com" server.  (Of course,
properly, the servers are replicated at all levels.)

If I understand you correctly, you have a little "lab" setup without a
root.

An alternate way of doing this is to have the subdomain servers
"forward" all unresolved queries to a server that can answer all
queries - in this case, the "comics.com" server.  This is probably the
easier way for you to do this.  You should set the subdomain servers to
be "forward only", so that they don't look for a root server if the
forwarded-to server fails.

-- 
Joe Yao				jsdy at cospo.osis.gov - Joseph S. D. Yao
COSPO/OSIS Computer Support					EMT-B
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