Problem with bind 8.2.3

[Kevin Darcy]

Caetano, Yves wrote:

>Hi all,
>I noticed a strange behaviour with bind 8.2.3. 
>
>When we try to make an nslookup on certain domains (at least the ones we
>found for the moment) we get no answer, means we get a message like
>non-existant host/domain. 
>But if I go to www.dnsstuff.com <www.dnsstuff.com>  and check the same
>domain, then it works..
>
>Then I tried to execute the following nslookup -type=any domain.com and then
>I got an answer but only for the NS. And when I try to execute like nslookup
>-type=mx domain.com then I get again the error that the host or domain is
>not existing.
>
>So this is quite strange behaviour and I hope that you guys can help me.
>
1. Please use real domain names, where possible, rather than 
"domain.com" or other generic/anonymized domain names.
2. nslookup is a poor DNS troubleshooting tool, and frequently gives 
misleading error/failure codes (I suspect it is doing so in this case). 
"dig" is a much better tool. If you absolutely *must* use nslookup, at 
least give it the -debug option so you can see what it's really doing 
with your lookup.
3. Type "any" queries are treated differently than ordinary queries, and 
it is not surprising or unusual to only get a subset of the 
resource-record types in response to such a query. Essentially, the 
responding server is giving you whatever happens to be in the cache for 
the name. Only if it had nothing whatsoever in its cache for the name, 
would it go out and try to fetch information from authoritative servers.

                                                                      
            - Kevin