Does "@" in CNAME record not work?

[Barry Margolin]

In article <9iksru$adi at pub3.rc.vix.com>, Jim Lum  <jlum at cox.rr.com> wrote:
>
>Kevin,
>
>I'm running Bind 8.24 from http://bind8nt.meiway.com.
>
>I think that I just figured out why the zone name SEEMED to be working
>(sheepish :)).  I had a "*" CNAME, and I think that that was catching
>the mydomain.com name.
>
>Ok, let me explain why I (think) I don't want to use the "@ A
>192.168.0.4".  I've been reading the O'Reilly BIND/DNS book, and in the
>section where it talks about CNAME records, there's a discussion about
>why A records shouldn't always be used instead of CNAME records. 
>Something about sendmail and figuring out canonical names (I'm new!).
>
>So, given the warning in the BIND/DNS book, I figured I'd better use a
>CNAME for the base zone/domain name (i.e., mydomain.com).

You *cannot* use a CNAME for the zone name.  More important than the above
sendmail issue is the rule that if a name has a CNAME record it may not
have any other records.  Since the zone name *must* have an SOA record and
NS records, this logically precludes it from having a CNAME record as well.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at genuity.net
Genuity, Burlington, MA
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