need help figuring this MX /A record query problem out

[King, John (Greg) (OAO-HOU)]

//Note that I am not at all a fan of mixing authoritative with 
//caching services on the same nameserver (or, at least, on the same 
//instance of BIND).  I believe that you're much better off splitting 
//these jobs onto separate machines, so that each can be configured and 
//tuned to perform only that one role and do it well, as opposed to 
//doing more poorly at trying to serve two roles.


Im alittle confused now. Im not saying its not a better idea, what im
wondering is that where have I set it up to act as a cacheing server?
Looking in 3rd Edition Bind 8 from O'Reilly:

Pg 71 Bottom : 
-------------------------------------
Zone "." in {
	type hint;
	file "db.cache";
};

As mentioned earlier, this file is not for cache data. It only contains the
root name sever hints."
-------------------------------------

And that file i also downloaded from the ISC ftp site today just for kicks
(called named.root).


Then on Page 72 the basic config is pretty much the same (hosts, ips and
some option diffs but thats it).

But somehow I think it is acting as a cacheing server since on PG 314 3rd ed
Bind Section 7 : MIssing Cache Data. This shows whats going on in my case.
Even the syslog error about 'no root nameservers for class IN' shows up
sometimes in the log. Unfortunately the book doesnt say how to fix it :) 

Well time to start searching the mailling list archives and deja-news for
that error. Also if anyone wants to save me some time digging through posts
and can tell me what ive misunderstood, id appreciate it !

Thanks again for the help.




-----Original Message-----
From: Brad Knowles [mailto:brad.knowles at skynet.be]
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2001 8:50 AM
To: King, John (Greg) (OAO-HOU); 'bind-users at isc.org'
Subject: RE: need help figuring this MX /A record query problem out


At 7:55 AM -0500 5/17/01, King, John (Greg) (OAO-HOU) wrote:

>  Second test following first. Note that i get only 2 Additional Records
>  instead of 4. Why is this? I think this is where the records are going
away.
>  If i stop and start bind i can get the first lookup everytime, any
>  subsequent lookups dont return all the info though.

	This is because the first answer was provided with an 
"Authoritative" flag by the other nameserver, and did not come out of 
cache.  The entire authoritative answer was passed on to your client 
without modification.

	However, the second answer came out of cache, and there the 
nameserver added only the additional glue records to tell you where 
you can find the answer you're looking for, as opposed to including 
the IP addresses of the MXes themselves.  If you did a query of type 
"any" instead of "mx", you might have gotten all four additional 
records in both cases, but you'd need to test that out to be sure.

>  zone "." in {
>          type hint;
>          file "db.cache";
>  };
>
>  zone "0.0.127.in-addr.arpa" in {
>          type master;
>          file "db.127.0.0";
>  };
>
>  zone "some.dom.ain" in {
>          type master;
>          file "db.some.dom.ain";
>          check-names ignore;
>          allow-update { none; };
>          allow-query { any; };
>          allow-transfer { x.x.x.x; };
>          notify no;
>  };

	Note that I am not at all a fan of mixing authoritative with 
caching services on the same nameserver (or, at least, on the same 
instance of BIND).  I believe that you're much better off splitting 
these jobs onto separate machines, so that each can be configured and 
tuned to perform only that one role and do it well, as opposed to 
doing more poorly at trying to serve two roles.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

/*        efdtt.c  Author:  Charles M. Hannum <root at ihack.net>          */
/*       Represented as 1045 digit prime number by Phil Carmody         */
/*     Prime as DNS cname chain by Roy Arends and Walter Belgers        */
/*                                                                      */
/*     Usage is:  cat title-key scrambled.vob | efdtt >clear.vob        */
/*   where title-key = "153 2 8 105 225" or other similar 5-byte key    */

dig decss.friet.org|perl -ne'if(/^x/){s/[x.]//g;print pack(H124,$_)}'