stealth server

[Kevin Darcy]

Brad Knowles wrote:

> At 6:32 PM -0400 7/6/01, Kevin Darcy wrote:
>
> >>          Uh, yes.  Every change to the zone requires a change to the
> >>  serial number.
> >
> >  Sigh. I just went through this on namedroppers. To summarize, although it was
> >  clearly *intended* for the SOA.SERIAL to be incremented for every change to a
> >  zone, there is apparently nowhere in the RFC's where this is explicitly
> >  *mandated*, except in the context of describing optional features like
> >  AXFR/IXFR or Dynamic Update.
>
>         And I recently went through this issue with Paul Vixie.  I
> distinctly recall him saying that the serial number needed to be
> updated with every change to the zone, regardless of what the RFCs
> might say.
>
>         When you want the complete proper answer, going to the documents
> written by the experts is only the next-best thing to going directly
> to the experts themselves.

You said "Every change to the zone requires a change to the serial number". Let's
be clear, then, that "requires" in that sentence means "conforms to Vixie's vision
of DNS if and only if it generates ..." rather than "MUST, according to the RFC's,
generate...". A subtle distinction, perhaps, but an important one if you're trying
to skewer a vendor for their product's lack of standards-compliance.


- Kevin