BIND 9.18 unable to successfully transfer zone from axfrdns primary

[Mark Andrews]

Set debug level 3 on the xfrin channel.  There are some debug level messages that really should be set to error level in lib/dns/xfrin.c on FORMERR.

Also make sure you are running dig from the same version as later versions are more strict in parsing responses from the wire.

> On 1 Sep 2023, at 09:23, Ian Bobbitt <ibobbitt at grnoc.iu.edu> wrote:
> 
> I have a system running BIND 9.18.17 that needs to transfer a zone from djbdns/axfrdns. I receive FORMERRs, and haven't been able to get any log messages indicating the problem.
> 
> xfer-in: info: zone example.net/IN: Transfer started.
> xfer-in: info: transfer of 'example.net/IN' from 198.51.100.1#53: connected using192.0.2.1 #53
> xfer-in: error: transfer of 'example.net/IN' from 198.51.100.1#53: failed while receiving responses: FORMERR
> xfer-in: info: transfer of 'example.net/IN' from 198.51.100.1#53: Transfer status: FORMERR
> xfer-in: info: transfer of 'example.net/IN' from 198.51.100.1#53: Transfer completed: 0 messages, 0 records, 0 bytes, 0.008 secs (0 bytes/sec) (serial 0)
> 
> This replaced a long obsolete system running 9.8.2 that was able to successfully transfer the zone. I can also successfully transfer the zone with `dig -t axfr ...` from the new system, which gives no errors. named-checkzone on the resulting data also gives no errors, and BIND is able to successfully load it as a primary.
> 
> How do I go about finding the cause of the FORMERR and resolve it?
> 
> -- Ian
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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