Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 15:23:28 +0100 (BST) From: Jan Grant <Jan.Grant@bristol.ac.uk> To: Dru <genisis@istar.ca> Cc: Evren Yurtesen <eyurtese@turkuamk.fi>, freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: DNS primary secondary question Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.31.0104041516580.14755-100000@mail.ilrt.bris.ac.uk> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0104040839450.19740-100000@istar.ca>
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On Wed, 4 Apr 2001, Dru wrote: > > Hi Evren, > > from "man 5 resolver": > > nameserver Internet address (in dot notation) of a name server that the > resolver should query. Up to MAXNS (currently 3) name > servers may be listed, one per keyword. If there are multi- > ple servers, the resolver library queries them in the order > listed. If no nameserver entries are present, the default is > to use the name server on the local machine. (The algorithm > used is to try a name server, and if the query times out, try > the next, until out of name servers, then repeat trying all > the name servers until a maximum number of retries are made). > > Dru > > > On Wed, 4 Apr 2001, Evren Yurtesen wrote: > > > actually I wondered when you set for a domain name primary server as > > x.x.x.x and secondary server as y.y.y.y then the resolver contacts with > > primary server or secondary server or both? I mean the name servers > > listed on the whois output... Nice quote, but it describes the behaviour of the resolver on entries in /etc/resolv.conf, which is not what was being asked, as far as I can tell. The DNS system as a whole cannot tell the difference between a primary and secondary nameserver for a domain. The whole notion is one of expediency of configuration. Whois and domain registration still list two nameservers (primary and secondary) because it attempts redundancy (that's why two): the primary and secondary distinction there was initially kinda intended to reflect that people would run their own nameserver for a domain (the primary) and get somebody else offsite to host the secondary. Your machine will query the nameservers listed in /etc/resolv.conf in order when it attempts to resolve a DNS query (ie, punting the question to a named somewhere). named itself will pick a NS for a remote domain out of the list of NSs for that domain, for each query: each remote NS will be hit 1/n of the time (roughly), where there are n remote NS for that domain. As clear as mud..? -- jan grant, ILRT, University of Bristol. http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/ Tel +44(0)117 9287163 Fax +44 (0)117 9287112 RFC822 jan.grant@bris.ac.uk Scrabble gematria: "BIBLE" = "DOGMA" To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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