[Pdns-users] authoritative answers or not?

[John Dickinson]

Alex van den Bogaerdt wrote on 06/10/2006 14:25:52:

> Here's another difference I just found:
> 
> Bind:
> ; <<>> DiG 9.2.5 <<>> -p 53 example.org. soa
> ;; Got answer:
> ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 29529
> ;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 2
> 
> Pdns:
> ; <<>> DiG 9.2.5 <<>> -p 153 example.org. soa
> ;; Got answer:
> ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 3449
> ;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
> 
> 
> The SOA record is part of the zone.  As such, the answer should
> be an authoritative answer.
> 
> By the way: I believe this to be true for NS records as well, but
> both pdns and bind agree on this and give a non authoritative answer.
> I would appreciate any insight...

The aa bit is set in both of these digs. So the answers are authoritative. 
The AUTHORITY: 1 is just a count of the number of records in the authority 
section of a response.

A description of the Authority section from RFC 1034

Authority       Carries RRs which describe other authoritative servers.
                May optionally carry the SOA RR for the authoritative
                data in the answer section.


Hope this helps
John