How do you make BIND refer to a specific server for a specific do main without being a secondary

[Kevin Darcy]

Hawkins, Michael wrote:

>Hi friends,
>
>I want my X BIND server to refer to another Y BIND server for records in a
>specific domain foo.com.
>
>But I don't see any way of doing this without making my X BIND server
>secondary foo.com out of the master BIND server for that domain which is Y.
>
>Am I missing something here or is there a way to get X to refer queries for
>foo.com to Y with a specific configuration?
>
Making your box a slave is indeed the "classic" way of doing this. You 
could also set up the relevant zone as "type forward" or "type stub". 
Stub zones rely on the NS records of the zone and all ancestor zones 
being correct, so if they're telling fibs, you may need to resort to 
forwarding. Conversely, if your "forwarder" is not authoritative for a 
relevant subzone and does not honor recursion for it, then forwarding 
won't work for names in the subzone and "stub" is a better choice. In 
general, stub zones are a more efficient way to go, especially if there 
are subzones being hosted on disparate nameservers or sets of 
nameservers. If necessary, you can mix "type forward" and "type stub" 
zones at different levels of the namespace ("forwarders { }" can be used 
in a stub-zone definition to cancel any forwarding that was configured 
at a higher level of the hierarchy).

Be aware, however, that your nameserver isn't going to be able to 
provide authoritative answers for the zone in question if the zone is 
defined as anything other than master or slave. On a related note, it 
won't be able to reliably answer non-recursive queries for the zone 
either, unless it is master or slave. Specifically, if it's a delegated 
nameserver for the zone, it *must* be master or slave, since it is 
expected to have a full copy of the zone contents at all times..

                                                                        
                                                - Kevin