BIND Slave Not Working when Master is Down

Hi,

I have a Master DNS server running on Windows 2008 and a Slave DNS server running BIND on Linux.

The slave successfully collects the zone files from the master server, and can serve dns lookup requests fine.

However, recently the Master DNS server went down and I found that the slave also stopped working. When I run a test on the slave server using nslookup, it said

server can't find www.domain.com: SERVFAIL

The zone TTL is very low (2 minutes) to ensure we can switch to a backup server quite quickly. In the event that the Master server goes down, how can I ensure that the slave server keeps running, even when the zone files become old?

Here are the settings from windows

And a copy of the zone file from the slave server

$ORIGIN .
$TTL 120        ; 2 minutes
domain.com IN SOA ns5.domain.com. hostmaster.domain.com. (
                                2012012061 ; serial
                                120        ; refresh (2 minutes)
                                120        ; retry (2 minutes)
                                120        ; expire (2 minutes)
                                120        ; minimum (2 minutes)
                                )
$TTL 86400      ; 1 day
                        NS      ns5.domain.com.
                        NS      sip2.domain.com.
$TTL 120        ; 2 minutes
                        A       **.222.**.254
                        MX      10 spam3.domain.net.
                        MX      10 spam4.domain.net.
$ORIGIN domain.com.
autodiscover            A       **.46.**.17
backupmx                A       **.222.**.224
ftp                     A       **.222.**.254
mail                    A       **.222.**.254
my                      A       **.222.**.254
ns1                     A       **.222.**.254
ns2                     A       **.222.**.51
ns5                     A       **.222.**.254
ns6                     A       **.222.**.51
pop3                    A       **.222.**.254
sip1                    A       **.222.**.126
$TTL 86400      ; 1 day
sip2                    A       **.250.**.36
$TTL 120        ; 2 minutes
sipprovisioning         A       **.222.**.254
sipserver               A       **.222.**.126
smtp                    A       **.222.**.254
webmail                 A       **.222.**.254
webserver1              A       **.222.**.254
www                     A       **.222.**.254

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The goals are...
1) To keep TTL at 2 minutes to ensure we can make instant changes to our domains.
2) To ensure the slave server keeps zone files for at least 2 days when the primary server is offline.

Thanks
Dan

Linux

Last Comment

arnold

8/22/2022 - Mon

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Papertrip

3/17/2012

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arnold

3/17/2012

Usually the lower the level the more frequent the hits on your server.

Refresh should be 3600, retry 600, expiry 30 days 25920000

DanJourno

3/17/2012

ASKER

Arnold, how would those settings ensure that any changes are updated instantly?
We need a low TTL to ensure that any ip changes are relatively quick to ensure we can switch over to a backup application server when necessary.

Its Windows 2008 Web Edition. No AD.

DanJourno

3/17/2012

ASKER

Papertrip, I'll read through that link and post any questions.
Thanks
Dan

I started with Experts Exchange in 2004 and it's been a mainstay of my professional computing life since. It helped me launch a career as a programmer / Oracle data analyst

William Peck

Khandakar Ashfaqur Rahman

3/17/2012

Basically, SRVFAIL means server fail which is configurational error.
To check your named.conf file check the following command :
named-checkconf /etc/named.conf

Does it show any error?
I see your slave zone file has stopped updating (by checking serial number) which has still 2012012061 serial.

You can find out the cause and error by checking DNS log file.
However, I'm attaching /etc/named.conf file which could give you idea.
named.conf.txt

arnold

3/17/2012

Part of your configuration there should be a notify within the zone transfer tab, this will notify the slave that a change has occurred which will trigger a refresh on the slave.

You should do a per host TTL rather than for the entire zone.
i.e.

my 120 A **.222.**.254