authoritative "forward" zone - possible?

[Justin Mason]

Hi there -- I'm trying an unusual situation here, and it doesn't
seem to be working.


I have a dynamic zone, and a daemon that will act as a nameserver,
generating data in that zone based on queries coming from clients.
rbldnsd is a good example of this.

I don't want to dedicate an IP address to this zone, so I thought
a good way to do this would be to use BIND's "type forward" zone
support:

  zone "v.yerp.org" IN {
          type forward;
          forward first;
          forwarders {
                  127.0.0.1 port 55;
          };
  };

IOW, run the non-BIND ns on port 55, and let clients access it through
BIND's forwarded zone.   This means I can keep BIND running on that
machine, great!

So: this works if I point clients at the nameserver directly; but if I let
them use the normal TLD delegation lookup, it fails.

The 2LD zone delegates to the v.yerp.org subdomain correctly (afaik):

  yerp.org. IN SOA ns1.boxhost.net. jm.jmason.org. (
                                          2004000021
                                          3600 600 604800 3600 )
  yerp.org.       IN NS   ns1.boxhost.net.
  ns1.boxhost.net. IN A   195.218.96.101
  yerp.org.       IN NS   ns6.gandi.net.
  ns6.gandi.net.  IN A    217.70.177.40

  v.yerp.org.     IN NS   ns2.yerp.org.
  ns2.yerp.org.   IN A    64.142.3.174


(Note: that's on another server entirely, ns1.boxhost.net.)

A "dig +trace", however, seems to indicate that the ns2 host (where the
forward zone is running) doesn't want to be authoritative for the zone:

  : jm 1726...; dig test.com.v.yerp.org TXT +trace

  ; <<>> DiG 9.2.4rc5 <<>> test.com.v.yerp.org TXT +trace
  ;; global options:  printcmd
  .                       517766  IN      NS      H.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
  .                       517766  IN      NS      I.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
  .                       517766  IN      NS      J.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
  .                       517766  IN      NS      K.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
  .                       517766  IN      NS      L.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
  .                       517766  IN      NS      M.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
  .                       517766  IN      NS      A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
  .                       517766  IN      NS      B.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
  .                       517766  IN      NS      C.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
  .                       517766  IN      NS      D.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
  .                       517766  IN      NS      E.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
  .                       517766  IN      NS      F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
  .                       517766  IN      NS      G.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
  ;; Received 436 bytes from 127.0.0.1#53(127.0.0.1) in 1 ms

  org.                    172800  IN      NS      TLD1.ULTRADNS.NET.
  org.                    172800  IN      NS      TLD2.ULTRADNS.NET.
  ;; Received 119 bytes from 128.63.2.53#53(H.ROOT-SERVERS.NET) in 96 ms

  yerp.org.               86400   IN      NS      ns6.gandi.net.
  yerp.org.               86400   IN      NS      ns1.boxhost.net.
  ;; Received 90 bytes from 204.74.112.1#53(TLD1.ULTRADNS.NET) in 41 ms

  v.yerp.org.             3600    IN      NS      ns2.yerp.org.
  ;; Received 72 bytes from 217.70.177.40#53(ns6.gandi.net) in 186 ms

  org.                    170720  IN      NS      TLD1.ULTRADNS.NET.
  org.                    170720  IN      NS      TLD2.ULTRADNS.NET.
  ;; Received 87 bytes from 64.142.3.174#53(ns2.yerp.org) in 34 ms


So the request never gets forwarded to the forwardee nameserver daemon --
this happens within BIND.  Is there any way to make BIND think it's
authoritative for that zone?   Am I missing something?  Have I screwed up
my delegation there?

(BTW, the v.yerp.org zone is currently down, so any queries to that
will fail.)

--j.