[geeks] a little advice about DNS and naming conventions

[Dave McGuire]

On March 14, Kurt Huhn wrote:
> Besides.  WTF difference does it make?  Secondary and slave are
> equatable in the minds of a lot of people.  If I tell you I just drank
> and a cabinet, but had to visit the bubbler to wash it down - what do
> think I'm talking about?  There are several ways to describe the same
> thing - and no one way should ever be considered "the right way" to the
> exclusion of all others as long as there are more than just clones of
> Greg Woods walking around.
> 
> FWIW, I've been doing this for a long damn time and I've called them
> primary/secondary, master/slave, parent/child and probably a couple
> others I've forgotten about.  People understand me, and I understand
> them.  Your narrow view of the universe according to Greg is getting
> annoying...

  I'm sorry, but in this case I have voice my agreement with Greg,
Kurt...I've been doing this a long damn time too, with a few of the
larger nameservers on the internet at one point...the reason I became
pedantic about the whole primary/secondary vs. master/slave
terminology thing is because I've had to explain it to many a customer
who thought it was "just ok" if their "secondary" nameserver went down
because their "primary" was still up, so the secondary shouldn't be
getting any hits. (!)

  The root of the confusion, I think, is the failover mechanism in
/etc/resolv.conf.  As you know, that *is* a failover system; if the
first one isn't up the resolver will time out and go to the next one
in the list.  Lots of people assume that the rest of DNS works in the
same way, which (also as you know) it most certainly does not.

  Calling them master & slave helps to alleviate this problem, or more
accurately, doesn't exacerbate it as much as calling them primary &
secondary.

          -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire
St. Petersburg, FL         "Less talk.  More synthohol." --Lt. Worf