Please help

[Jim Reid]

>>>>> "John" == John Hildreth <partsman at slutpuppy.org> writes:

    John> maybe I should have said in my original email that I had
    John> already spent two days reading logs, increasing serial
    John> numbers, verifying $ORIGIN and INCLUDE directives, checking
    John> zone file syntax, and checking the bind configuration.

Yes, you should have. How else could anyone here know what you had and
hadn't done? Perhaps you could post the log entries that were produced
when the zone was loaded? And are you sure the logging is set up
correctly? Maybe the name server's log messages are ending up in a
different file from the one you look at? Maybe they go into the bit
bucket?

    John> I now have the errors nailed down to os, hardware, or bind
    John> implementation.  as long as I can say "My zones and records
    John> are right."

I don't think either of these assumptions are valid or reasonable from
what you've said here. The most likely explanation for the problem as
you've described it will not be with resource limits or BIND
implementation. The idea that the name server would silently and
selectively discard data - that's what you're suggesting is going on -
from your zone file is absurd. And if there were resource problems -
highly unlikely - there would be plenty of supporting evidence in the
logs and system console.

You say you've "checked the zone files and logs". Maybe someone else
should check them too? Sometimes another pair of eyes can help because
they bring a different perspective and set of assumptions to the
problem. It's possible that you've overlooked something and can't see
the wood for the trees. In this sense, DNS troubleshooting is like
debugging a computer program.

What's also interesting is that you're using some home-grown tools to
generate the zone file and you don't seem to know much about them. Have
they been checked and tested? How do you know for sure that they work?
What do these tools do if there's an error in the input they're given?
If these ever worked correctly, what has changed since then?