named error messages appearing in syslog.log

[Andrew Kaplan]

Hi there --

I was doing a check of the syslog.log file on our 10.20 system running named, and I noticed a relatively large amount of errors concerning named. Here is a sample of these errors:

Dec 10 12:34:03 mcrs1 named[729]: host name "PT_1_SIDE_1.lln.iba" (owner "206.0.30.172.in-addr.arpa") IN (secondary) is invalid - proceeding anyway
Dec 10 12:34:03 mcrs1 named[729]: host name "PT_0_SIDE_1.lln.iba" (owner "206.0.30.172.in-addr.arpa") IN (secondary) is invalid - proceeding anyway
Dec 10 12:34:03 mcrs1 named[729]: host name "lln_wifi.lln.iba" (owner "242.0.30.172.in-addr.arpa") IN (secondary) is invalid - proceeding anyway
Dec 10 12:34:03 mcrs1 named[729]: host name "iba_fw.lln.iba" (owner "253.0.30.172.in-addr.arpa") IN (secondary) is invalid - proceeding anyway
Dec 10 12:34:03 mcrs1 named[729]: host name "Ctrl_Hall3.lln.iba" (owner "205.1.30.172.in-addr.arpa") IN (secondary) is invalid - proceeding anyway

What is the error condition, and how can I correct it? Thanks.

[Patrick Wallek]

It is complaining about the '_' (underscore) character in the hostnames.

You should be able to stop these by including the 'check-named' directive in your named.conf file. You probably want something like:

check-names secondary ignore;

You probably have something like:

check-named secondary warn;

already in your file. The "warn" indicates that names will be checked and errors logged but processing will continue.

Changing the "warn" to "ignore" will cause names to NOT be checked.

More information on check-names here:
http://h30097.www3.hp.com/docs/base_doc/DOCUMENTATION/V50_HTML/SUPPDOCS/BIND_GDE/OPTIONS.HTM#NameChecking