zone transfers

[Mark Damrose]

"Jeff Shevlen" <jshevlen at passedpawn.com> wrote in message
news:a8o3ha$ggj at pub3.rc.vix.com...
> Hi,
>
> My domain's secondary service isn't working properly.  The domain's
> slave servers don't seem to be able to perform zone transfers.  I
> think the problem is networking related, but I've reached the end of
> my expertise.
>
> I'm running the master server (BIND 9.2).  I've created a secondary
> account with granitecanyon.com (a free service, so no customer service
> from them).  The domain is currently being resolved properly via my
> primary server, as evidenced by functioning email and webpage.
>
> I have been waiting for granitecanyon's servers to make a xfer request
> to my master, anxiously, but it's not happening.  I'm logging
> everything right now, and there is absolutely no reference to xfer's
> at all in my logs.  No errors, no warnings, no nothing: which leads me
> to believe this is a networking issue.

How long since you set up the account?  GC can take quite a while to get
around to doing the transfer.  I've seen it take 3 days after making a
change and getting a confirmation of a NOTIFY message.

Did you make it through the setup process all the way to getting a
confirmation that your zone was loaded on the nameserver?  Have you verified
that you entered the correct information for the master server?  If the
server is inside your domain, it may be best to give GC the IP rather than a
name.

>
> For the record, here is the entry for mydomain in named.conf:
> zone mydomain.com {
>         type master;
>         [  ...  ]
>         allow-transfer {
>                 205.166.226.38;    //    ns1.granitecanyon.com
>                 65.102.83.43;        //    ns2.granitecanyon.com
>         };
> };
>
> My name server is behind the firewall, and this is likely part the
> problem.  But when I look through the firewall's logs I don't see any
> evidence of granitecanyon servers being bounced.
>
> Any help is much appreciated.
>
> And also, maybe someone could fill me in on how zone transfer
> transactions occur.  I'm curious what server asks what and on which
> port, and how the other server responds.  These details aren't in the
> BIND documentation.

Slave server sends SOA query from random udp port to master server port 53.
Master server responds from udp port 53 to whatever port Slave used.
If serial number is higher than what the Slave currently has, Slave sends
AXFR or IXFR query from random tcp port to master server port 53.
Master server responds from tcp port 53 to whatever port Slave used.

>
> Thanks,
> Jeff