parental-agents clause - IP address only ?

[Erich Eckner]

Hi,

On Mon, 5 Dec 2022, Matthijs Mekking wrote:

> 'parental-agents' work the same as 'primaries'. It only supports addresses.
>
> Listing them as domain names would technically be possible to implement, but 
> it requires an authoritative server to act as an resolver. Adding resolver 
> code to the path of an authoritative server is like crossing the streams. It 
> adds security risks that are unnecessary for an authoritative server, so I'd 
> rather not add such functionality.

This made me curious: Is there some design rule forbidding bind to use the 
system resolver to resolve names it does not know about? I.e. why does it 
not query any resolvers in /etc/resolv.conf (probably via some system 
interface - sry, I have no idea, how "normal" programs resolve names) if 
it encounters an unknown name at a place where only an ip address is 
allowed so far?

That being said: I'm not saying, it *should* do so, I'm merely curious, 
why it does not. :-)

>
> Best regards,
>
> Matthijs

regards,
Erich