TXT & SPF Record Syntax

[Mark Andrews]

Domain names without a trailing period are relative to the current origin.

Domain names with a trailing period are absolute.

If you want to add the record

	foo.bar.example.com. TXT …

and the current origin is example.com. You can enter it as

	foo.bar TXT …

or

	foo.bar.example.com. TXT …

or you could set the origin to bar.example.com. and do this

	$ORIGIN bar.example.com.
	foo TXT …

This applies to all domain names in zone files.

Mark

> On 1 Mar 2021, at 10:41, Tim Daneliuk via bind-users <bind-users at lists.isc.org> wrote:
> 
> I am trying to understand when the LHS of a TXT record needs to be terminated with '.'.
> 
> For example, I see this one of the machines I am managing.  The server in question is
> the zone authority for foo.com:
> 
> foo.com.             IN TXT "v=spf1 ...
> foo.com.             IN SPF "v=spf1 ...
> something._domainkey IN TXT "v=DKIM1 ...
> _dmark.foo.com.      IN TXT "v=DMARC1 ...
> 
> Could some kind soul explain why the DKIM key name does not require the trailing period, but
> why all the foo.com entries do?
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-- 
Mark Andrews, ISC
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742              INTERNET: marka at isc.org