From owner-freebsd-questions Fri May 4 7:37:27 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from clientmail.realtime.co.uk (simian.realtime.co.uk [194.205.134.131]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 21D4937B422 for ; Fri, 4 May 2001 07:37:23 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from waynep@zaphod.realtime.co.uk) Received: from zaphod.realtime.co.uk ([194.205.134.208]) by clientmail.realtime.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 14vghj-0005B1-01; Fri, 04 May 2001 15:37:11 +0100 Received: from waynep by zaphod.realtime.co.uk with local (Exim 3.20 #1) id 14vghh-000MIw-00; Fri, 04 May 2001 15:37:09 +0100 From: Wayne Pascoe To: Edwin Groothuis Cc: , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Purpose of serial number in zone files (BIND) References: <20010504163252.D50786@d9168.upc-d.chello.nl> Reply-To: wayne.pascoe@realtime.co.uk Date: 04 May 2001 15:37:08 +0100 In-Reply-To: <20010504163252.D50786@d9168.upc-d.chello.nl> Message-ID: Lines: 27 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) XEmacs/21.1 (Cuyahoga Valley) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Edwin Groothuis writes: > In the DNS setup, you have one master server and one or more slave > servers. The slave servers try to keep as up to date as possible > with the data on the master server. They do this by requesting the > SOA record of a zone, which hold data like the Time To Live of the > data, the expire time and the serial number. If the serial of a > zone on the slave is smaller than the serial number of a zone on > the master, it means the data on the master has been changed and > that the slaves have to download the whole zone again. I understand that, as per my original statement. > >'Is it only so that secondary name servers know that a change > > has happened' I am only wondering if it has any other uses. I am planning to do away with propogating zone changes using bind's zone transfer solution, and just want to know if the serial number has any use other than this. Thanks, -- - Wayne Pascoe E-mail: wayne.pascoe@realtime.co.uk Phone : +44 (0) 20 7544 4668 Mobile: +44 (0) 788 431 1675 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message