zone base ORIGIN

[Bob Vance]

As long as I'm proposing extensions,>)
I'm surprised that there's not a symbol to get back to the base origin
of the zone, like, say, "%" or "^".

In my limited DNS experience, I think that it's useful, from a self-
documenting perspective, to use syntax like the following when
delegating:

$ORIGIN  foo.new.com.
    IN NS  ns1
    IN NS  ....
ns1 IN A ....
$ORIGIN  bar.new.com.
    IN NS  ns1
    IN NS  ....
ns1 IN A ....

The $ORIGIN stands out nicely.
The problem that I have with this is that you have to use absolute
$ORIGIN names, because the first origin would be in effect when you
get to the second $ORIGIN.

I prefer to keep things relative, so that it would be easy to change the
name of the parent zone, for example, and it's just a quirk that I've
developed over the years from programming and other endeavors.

Thus, I would like to be able to do something like the following:

$ORIGIN  foo.%
    IN NS  ns1
    IN NS  ....
ns1 IN A ....
$ORIGIN  bar.%
    IN NS  ns1
    IN NS  ....
ns1 IN A ....

where "%" would be the zone base from the "master" statement.

One current way would be:

foo IN NS  ns1
    IN NS  ....
ns1.foo IN A ....
bar IN NS  ns1
    IN NS  ....
ns1.bar IN A ....

But notice that it is not nearly as clear as a nice $ORIGIN poking you
in the eye (of course, you could use "; $ORIGIN" , I suppose, or any
other comment).
Also, you lose a little elegance and mobility by having to mention
"bar" and "foo" twice.


I suppose another way would be to use $INCLUDE files:

$INCLUDE ...  foo
$INCLUDE ...  bar

which has good points.

I'm wondering how other people do this.
Or do you just use FQDNs everywhere?


-------------------------------------------------
Tks        | <mailto:Bob_Vance at sbm.com>
BV         | <mailto:bobvance at alumni.caltech.edu>
Sr. Technical Consultant,  SBM, A Gates/Arrow Co.
Vox 770-623-3430           11455 Lakefield Dr.
Fax 770-623-3429           Duluth, GA 30097-1511
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