Microsoft Active Directory and bind serial numbers

[Joe Kattner]

Steve,

BIND will manage the serial number, you don't need to edit anything in
the file if you used nsupdate to send a dynamic update. It will update
the file as it needs to, with an incremented number. RFC 2136 section
3.6 discusses the behavior of the serial number in regards to
updating, if you want to look into it more.

You can use dig for the SOA on the domain to see what BIND is using
for that zone. Depending on the amount of updates it receives,
checking both the file and the SOA served by the master at roughly the
same time, you can see the master is incrementing the serial as needed
(in response to updates), and the SOA query will return a higher
serial number than what is currently held in the file.

--Joe

> Joe Kattner <joe at zosan.com> wrote in message news:<b1mp4f$efrf$1 at isrv4.isc.org>...
>> Use nsupdate to send your updates.

> Thanks...I'd forgotten about nsupdate, since all the rest of the zone
> files on the server except the one being dynamically updated are
> generated from a database.

> Now, I've gotten the updates made, but the serial number still stays
> exactly the same. The only way I could make it change was to stop bind
> and edit it by hand. nsupdate is supposed to increment it
> automatically, isn't it?

> Thanks!