gnucash.org DNS is broken

Peter C. Norton spacey-gnucash@lenin.nu
Sun, 20 Jan 2002 10:04:07 -0800


On Sat, Jan 19, 2002 at 08:53:26PM -0500, Derek Atkins wrote:
> Now, granted, if ns.linas.org is off the net, so is the gnucash.org
> website, cvs repository, and everything else.  So, maybe it doesn't
> really matter?  However, it means that users will get a dns error and
> mail bounce right away if they try to send mail, whereas if DNS exists
> but the host is down the mail system will at least queue up the mail.

No, the dns cache won't fail with an NXDOMAIN (hard failure - no such record
so bounce the email), but with a SERVFAIL (transient failure - retry). That
means that mail will be enqueued and retried based on the sending MTA's
retry scheduler.  IOW if both name servers don't respond, as long as the
gtld-servers are still handing out the NS glue for gnucash.org then email,
etc. won't be bounced and as long as the name server comes back within some
time frame then everything resumes as normal.  Usually 5-7 days is how long
smtp servers will retry.  Also, if the server is unreachable but dns caches
have the needed SOA, MX, and A records cached and try to connect but fail,
or timeout then it will be returned to the same retry queue.

> I'm willing to provide secondary DNS service if that would help
> solve this problem..

Of course, this is a good thing.  

-- 
The 5 year plan:
In five years we'll make up another plan.
Or just re-use this one.