domain ping

[Kevin Darcy]

James Raftery wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 19, 2000 at 02:49:30PM +0200, srz wrote:
> > how to assign an ip address to the domain - not only to the hosts inside of
> > the domain?
>
> Add an A record for it! (I really don't understand why this confuses so
> many people).

It's the master file syntax. It's non-intuitive. People know that they can add
an entry like

foo    in    a    1.2.3.4

to create a "foo" entry in their domain, but then they get flummoxed when they
need to create (what they perceive to be) a _null_ entry underneath their
domain. They probably try

       in a 1.2.3.4

(i.e. with leading whitespace) at some point, but somewhere in the *middle* or
at the end of their zone file (i.e. underneath other entries with a populated
owner name), so obviously it doesn't do what they want. They just don't
"get" how the whitespace rules apply, and probably think that "@" is something
you can only use on the lhs of the SOA record (since in all of the examples,
that's the only place it appears).

*OR*

These are novice/general-purpose admins working in a virtual hosting shop, where
the vast majority of the names in common use are just aliases to some
relatively-small set of A records set up eons ago by the Ancient Ones (i.e. real
DNS admins who have since gone on to bigger and better things). Since these
novice admins deal primarily with aliases, when asked to create the name, they
blithely try to create a CNAME for the zone itself, thus violating the
"CNAME and other data" rule. When that fails spectacularly, they are at a loss
(and moreover, probably a little gun-shy at that point).


- Kevin