Re: Extra records in zone transfers

["D. J. Bernstein" <[e-mail]>]

Masataka Ohta writes:
> same name server may have different A records zone by zone.

That's the BIND 9 model, but it is _not_ consistent with RFC 1034.
Here's what the DNS specifications actually say:

   * DNS is divided into zones. Names are partitioned among zones. Each
     zone is authoritative for all records under its names. See RFC
     1034, section 4.1.

   * Zones may---and sometimes must---contain records for which they
     aren't authoritative, i.e., records from other zones. These records
     are supposed to be EXACT COPIES of the authoritative records. See
     RFC 1034, section 4.2.1, last paragraph on page 20.

I realize that people often make mistakes in copying records: look at
cs.princeton.edu, for example. Those people are violating the protocol.
They have no right to expect clients to preserve both sets of records.
Clients can and do assume the accuracy of any record set received from
any server authorized to provide that set.

> > My servers use a redesigned unified configuration-file format,
> Your server is wrongly implemented, then.

Don't be ridiculous. I'm not going to force my users to deal with that
horrendous format. If they want painful configuration, they can use the
BIND master-file format. That format is, by the way, neither stable nor
identical to the standard RFC 1034 master-file format, so you can't
justify it on interoperability grounds.

---Dan

P.S. One of my recent messages hasn't shown up on the list. Is Bush
censoring messages again, or is he simply incompetent? For previous
incidents see http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/namedroppers.html.


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