Re: [cobalt-users] dns and nameservers

[Jens Kristian Søgaard <jens@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jim and all,

> I currently have my DNS on 1 server (bad I know). I have just agreed a
> secondary service with someone else in a different geographic region. I
will
> be asking customers to add this secondary nameserver onto their
delegations.
> What I want to do is to simply ask them to add this new one on as an extra
> (ie 3rd nameserver).
> So I will have
> web.ozdns.net
> web2.ozdns.net
> new.nameserver.com

As web.ozdns.net and web2.ozdns.net are exactly the same -- why not simply
have web2.ozdns.net point to ip-address of this secondary nameserver you've
found?  (this will require an ip that is not currently registred as a
nameserver)

You would ofcourse have to update the glue code (i.e. send in an host form
to network solutions, or similar - depending on the registrar you use)

> Now web.ozdns.net and web2.ozdns.net are both on the same server. Is this
an
> issue in terms of performance or reliability - if say the web.ozdns.net
> facility is temporarily unavailable and this is the one that has been
tried
> first then it will go for one of the others (yes ?) - if it happens to
pick
> web2 then if that is still unavailable it will go to the
new.nameserver.com
> (yes?).

Yep, it will. But it will choose name server according to who "answers
fastest". So chances are, that it will always chose new.nameserver.com if
the two others are down.

> (problem is that I restart named every 30 minutes to pick up new domain
> names for my redirect service and sendmail every 60 minutes to pick up new

How long time does it take for your named to restart? (i.e. how long are you
"non-responsive")

I'm have made a bind dns server that serves zones directly from a mysql
database, so that I will not have to worry about these kind of things. It
also makes it easier to handle management of zones and resource records.

--
Jens Kristian Søgaard, Mermaid Consulting I/S,
jens@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
http://www.mermaidconsulting.com/