RFC 6303 and automatic empty zones

[Chris Thompson]

On Jul 14 2011, Evan Hunt wrote:

[I wrote]
>> Now that RFC 6303 <http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6303.txt> has been
>> published, and includes the fourteen RFC 1918 reverse zones (section 4.1),
>> can we expect future versions of BIND to have them as automatic empty
>> zones - i.e. the "#ifdef notyet" in bin/named/server.c to disappear?
>
>Yes.

Those trying out BIND 9.8.1rc1 may have noticed that the RFC 1918 reverse
zones are now included in the empty zone list in that version.

But they aren't treated exactly the same as the others (yet?). I think
the situation is

  if "empty-zones-enable yes" is explicitly set, then they are treated
    in the same way as the others. i.e. included unless otherwise defined
    or individually disabled by "disable-empty-zone"

  if "empty-zones-enable no" is set (or implied by "recursion no") then
    they are of course not set up as empty

  otherwise (i.e. if empty-zones-enable is not specified at all) they
    are not included among the empty zones, but if any RFC 1918 zone is
    not otherwise defined or individually disabled by "disable-empty-zone"
    a warning is logged:

    Warning: 'empty-zones-enable/disable-empty-zone' not set:
    disabling RFC 1918 empty zones

Apologies for going into nitty detail here, but their half-way status
isn't described in the ARM (yet?) and I had to work it out for myself ...

-- 
Chris Thompson
Email: cet1 at cam.ac.uk