Slave fails failover

[Winfried Magerl]

In article <eaam30$1r71$1 at sf1.isc.org>,
Jan Engelhardt  <jengelh at linux01.gwdg.de> wrote:
>Hello,
>
>
>as commonly done, I have two DNS servers for a domain, that is, the 
>toplevel zone at the hoster is
>
>  $ORIGIN xyz.com.
>  jen IN NS dns1.foo.com.  (running ISC BIND 9.3.2)
>  jen IN NS dns2.bar.com.  (also ISC BIND 9.3.2)
>
>  $ORIGIN foo.com.
>  dns1 IN A 1.2.3.4
>
>dns1's zone file is (shortened):
>
>  $ORIGIN xyz.com.
>  @ SOA ...
>    IN A 1.2.3.4
>
>dns2 is configured as a slave to dns1. Trying to resolve xyz.com from 
>anywhere in the world usually yields 1.2.3.4, which is ok.
>
>Now that dns1 is powered off, I noticed that xyz.com cannot be resolved 
>anymore, even though that should have been the purpose of having slave 
>servers, is not it?

Maybe dns2 is not in the lists of the delegated hosts. Check this
with something like this:

dig @a.gtld-servers.net. ns xyz.com.

>The dns2 logfile says
>
>Jul 27 11:44:16 dns2 named[5652]: zone jen.xyz.com/IN: refresh: retry
>limit for master 1.2.3.4#53 exceeded (source 0.0.0.0#0)
>Jul 27 11:44:16 dns2 named[5652]: zone jen.xyz.com/IN: Transfer started.
>Jul 27 11:44:19 dns2 named[5652]: transfer of 'jen.xyz.com/IN' from
>1.2.3.4#53: failed to connect: host unreachable
>Jul 27 11:44:19 dns2 named[5652]: transfer of 'jen.xyz.com/IN' from
>1.2.3.4#53: end of transfer
>
>Should not dns2 have kept the zones of the last successful transfer and use 
>them?

Are you sure the domainb is expired on dns2?
You may use something like this to check:

dig @dns2 soa xyz.com.

regards

	winfried

-- 
Winfried Magerl - Internet Administration
Siemens Business Services, 81739 Munich, Germany
Internet-Mail: Winfried.Magerl at mch.sbs.de