zone files for subdomains...

[Jeff Lasman]

While I'm not a newbie, I'm stuck on this one.  I've already searched
both online and in "DNS and Bind" and "Linux DNS Server
Administration".  I may not know how to do this search, so I hope you'll
bear with me...

I've just started moving domains I'm hosting from a Sun Cobalt RaQ4
server to a DirectAdmin server.  The Sun Cobalt RaQ4 server doesn't
automate DNS setup; it requires I do it manually.

So when setting up a domain such as sub.example.com I've always put the
records for "sub" into the example.com zone file.  That's always worked,
and reading all the references I've mentioned above, I believe that's
one way it should be done.

The only other way I've found how to do it, again following all the
references I could find, is to delegating the subdomain "sub" to another
zone, and putting all the records for "sub" into the new zone.

However, the programmers who wrote DirectAdmin do it slightly
differently...

Whenever I set up a domain such as sub.example.com, they automatically
set up a new zone file for it, but they don't delegate in the master
(such as example.com).

They tell me it's not necessary to do it the way I've been doing it,
that bind will always search for the specific domain first in the conf
file and if it finds a reference for it, it will use that zone file.

Are they right?  Is the behavior documented and likely to continue in
future releases?  Is it "reasonable" for them to make the presumption?

Thanks!

Jeff
-- 
Jeff Lasman, nobaloney.net, P. O. Box 52672, Riverside, CA  92517 US
Internet & Unix/Linux/Sun/Cobalt Consulting +1 909 324-9706
Our jblists address used on lists is for list email only
To contact us offlist: "http://www.nobaloney.net/contactus.html"