DNS Dynamic Zone transfers

[Ramesh_20]

We have implemented DNS servers using BIND. Zone transfers are not happening dynamically. After making changes in the Zone file in the primary sever, the update is happening the in secondary server only after manual stop/start of the named demon. It is not happening dynamically. we have tried various refresj options Any thoughts on why this is not happening?

[James Specht]

Your zone entries should look like this.

zone "owens.edu" IN {
type master;
file "owens.edu";
allow-update { none; };
notify yes;
};

The notify yes; yes tells your master to notify the secondary servers if they are listed in your NS records.

NS ns1.owens.edu.
NS ns2.owens.edu.
NS ns3.owens.edu.

This is how I have setup our site and it works great for dynamic updates of DNS.

Two great books on DNS are O'reilly's
DNS & BIND ISBN 0-596-00158-4
DNS & BIND cookbook ISBN 0-596-00410-9

--Jim

[Artyom Voronchihin]

Hello!
Did you change serial in zone configuration file when you make changes in it ? Other DNS servers for the zone can't detect changes on primary server(or any other zone DNS servers) if serial remains the same. So try to change it in SOA record. Usually serial writes as date of changing in format yyyymmddxx, where yyyy - year, mm - month, dd - day and xx is time of edition - 01, 02, 03 ... and so on. So in this way serial could never be the same and you always can check the time of last edition.

[Geoff Wild]

Are you using dynamic updates? or is your question about static dns? If static, then as Artyom mentioned, increment the serial number in the zone file, then:
rndc reload
To push out the zone file and make it active.

If you use dynamic updates, then this will be done automagically...and you don't update the zone files directly - instead you use nsupdate.



Rgds...Geoff