Glue NS Records Are Lost When You Add Additional NS Records

ID: Q231308

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows NT Server version 4.0, Terminal Server Edition
Microsoft Windows NT Server, Enterprise Edition version 4.0

SYMPTOMS

If you add an NS record to a DNS zone, when you restart the DNS server the glue NS records are missing. For example:

You have a DNS domain called mycompany.com. You also have a delegated subdomain called sales.mycompany.com that contains an existing NS record for the primary server called srv1.sales.mycompany.com. When you look in the zone file, the following records are displayed:


   Sales        NS  srv1.sales
   srv1.sales   A   10.2.112.5

For fault tolerance and load balancing, you want to add another NS record for the sales.mycompany.com zone using the DNS Administration tool for srv2.sales.mycompany.com. After you add the record, everything appears to function normally.

After you restart the DNS server, the entries for srv1 are missing in the DNS Administration tool and in the zone file. This is evident in the zone files when you click Update Server Data Files, but srv1.sales.mycompany.com is still visible in the Administration tool.

CAUSE

This behavior occurs because the server writes records in ascending authority level.

When the DNS Administration tool causes the DNS server to add an NS record to the database, the server assigns the record the same authority level as other records in the zone. The server also inserts them at the beginning of a list of NS records for the subzone. However, the DNS server assigns a slightly lower authority level to those records when reading the NS records from the zone file at startup.

Because the new records have the highest authority level and are the first in the list, the existing records that are read from the zone file are dropped.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Windows NT 4.0. For additional information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q152734 How to Obtain the Latest Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack

File details:


   Date      Time             Size    File Name   Platform
   -------------------------------------------------------
   06/29/99  00:25            177.424 Dns.exe     Intel
   06/29/99  00:24            297.744 Dns.exe     Alpha

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, use the appropriate method:

When you need to add NS records, delete all existing records and then add them again (including the new records). This is a time-intensive method if you have many existing records.

Edit the zone file directly, instead of using the DNS Administration tool. In this case, you need to restart the service so the changes are available.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Windows NT 4.0. This problem was first corrected in Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6.

Additional query words:

Keywords :
Version : winnt:4.0
Platform : winnt
Issue type : kbprb