Configuring a domain slave to look up subdomain hosts

Tue Feb 28 18:04:46 UTC 2012

Yes, you are confused :-)

I am simply trying to get the domain slave to make queries for hosts in the
subdomain which is hosted on other servers, instead of forwarding the
queries to the domain master. I thought a stub zone would facilitate this by
giving my server the lookup information it needed to do this. Apparently
this is not the case. Even though it receives a db file with the NS and SOA
information for the subdomain, it is ignoring it. Forwarding works. Being a
slave for the subdomain works. Stub zone doesn't work.

If it's supposed to "ignore" the stub zone in my configuration, what is the
value of a stub zone?

  _____  

From: Nex6 [mailto:borg at borg1911.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 9:32 AM
To: Mike Bernhardt; bind-users at lists.isc.org; 'Mark Andrews'
Subject: RE: Configuring a domain slave to look up subdomain hosts

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: Configuring a domain slave to look up subdomain hosts
From: "Mike Bernhardt" < <mailto:bernhardt at bart.gov> bernhardt at bart.gov>
Date: Tue, February 28, 2012 10:15 am
To: < <mailto:bind-users at lists.isc.org> bind-users at lists.isc.org>, "'Mark
Andrews'" < <mailto:marka at isc.org> marka at isc.org>

So it sounds like in this case, stub zones don't buy me anything? What I
wanted was for this secondary to query the subdomain name servers directly
instead of relying on the domain primary via forwarding. Is making this
server a secondary for the subdomain the only way?

/answer:

I am a little confused on what your trying to do, I think your terminology
may be making things harder. generally a stub zone is a local copy of a zone
thats not 

yours. the reason for doing this, is many fold like its an internal zone in
another entity. or, to make sure your name servers always have a copy. but
generally its not needed. and the DNS Architecture accounts for much, with
caching and TTL.

what you would do, is have your primary Name Server, thats authoritative for
the zones that it owns. and maybe some slaves to that name server to spread
things around.  with local caching, on the name servers that ensure good
lookup times for oft requested zones.

if your worried about "slow" lookups, or things always going out to the
forwarder just make sure the local name servers caches are working. and
check the TTLs 

for the zones your worried about.

hope this helps clear things up.

-Nex6  

  _____  

From: Nex6 [ <mailto:borg at borg1911.com> mailto:borg at borg1911.com] 
Sent: Monday, February 27, 2012 4:59 PM
To: Mike Bernhardt;  <mailto:bind-users at lists.isc.org>
bind-users at lists.isc.org
Subject: RE: Configuring a domain slave to look up subdomain hosts

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Configuring a domain slave to look up subdomain hosts
From: "Mike Bernhardt" < <mailto:bernhardt at bart.gov> bernhardt at bart.gov>
Date: Mon, February 27, 2012 4:50 pm
To: < <mailto:bind-users at lists.isc.org> bind-users at lists.isc.org>

I have a domain and a subdomain which is delegated by the

I am trying to figure out the correct way to have the slave of a parent
domain look up hosts in a subdomain managed by others. I'm running BIND
9.8.1-P1. The current working configuration for the subdomain is this:

options {
directory "/var/named";
allow-recursion { any; };
allow-query { any; };
allow-query-cache { any; };
forwarders { 148.165.3.10; };
forward only;
recursive-clients 2000;
zone-statistics yes;
};

zone "domain.com" {
type slave;
masters { 10.130.1.30; };
file "db.domain";
forwarders { };
};

But using "forwarders" doesn't seem like the correct way to do it. It's in
the options in order to forward internet queries to our external name server
instead of to the root servers, which aren't accessible from inside. I've
been messing with stub zones but that doesn't seem to work:

zone "domain.com" {
type slave;
masters { 10.130.1.30; };
file "db.domain";
};
zone "subdomain.domain.com" {
type stub;
masters { 10.2.241.101; 10.2.242.222; };
file "db.subdomain";
};

With this configuration, the zone file for  <http://subdomain.domain.com>
subdomain.domain.com is correctly
created but when I run tcpdump I can see that queries for
 <http://host.subdomain.domain.com> host.subdomain.domain.com are being
forwarded to 148.165.3.10, not to the
subdomain name servers. The result of course is NXDOMAIN.

With forwarders set for the zone  <http://domain.com> domain.com, the slave
queries the zone
master, which then queries the subdomain name server as it should. So the
stub zone is apparently being ignored.

What is wrong? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the purpose of stub zones? Let
me know if you need additional config details.

/answer:

This post, requires a much longer response then I have time for, but i will
take a quick stab.

a "stub" zone, is generally only used for cross corporate, or cross partner
resolving. it gives you 

a "local" copy of possibly internal zone data.

a "slave" is a type of Nameserver, not a type of zone. generally youll have
authoritative name servers,

and sometimes in bigger shops a number if "salves" or now called secondary
name servers. for example,

you could have your authoritative name servers behind your firewall, and put
a slave in the DMZ sorta thing.

or have a few authoritative name servers, a several salves, so you may have
salves in each datacenter. 

a delegation, is where you "delagate" a subzone to someone else. example,
you own say 

 <http://example.org> example.org, and a subgroup wants to manage their own
namespace of  <http://depart1.example.org> depart1.example.org, so 

you delegate  <http://depart1.example.org> depart1.example.org to there name
servers. and they will "own" the zone depart1.

hope this helps clears a few things up.

-Nex6 

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