[Pdns-users] Rectify QNAME issues

[Jacob Bunk Nielsen]

Jason Tremblett via Pdns-users <pdns-users at mailman.powerdns.com> writes:

> We are having issues with the way that QNAME minimization works and would like to know if there is a way to improve our process to resolve
> the issue.
>
> Backend: postgresql DB
> Frontend: authoritative server
> DNSSEC Enabled with NSEC3 Narrow (1 0 50 -)
>
> Zone file contains 60k TXT records in the form (zone replaced with the.domain.com):
>
> a.b.c.the.domain.com TXT "a.b.c text record"
> b.b.c.the.domain.com TXT "b.b.c text record"
> c.b.c.the.domain.com TXT "c.b.c text record"
> d.e.f.the.domain.com TXT "d.e.f text record"
> ...
>
> We use pdnsutil to upload the zone file, increase serial and rectify:
>
> pdnsutil load-zone the.domain.com the.domain.com.zone

After this step you have a broken zone loaded without the required empty
non-terminals.

> pdnsutil increase-serial the.domain.com
> pdnsutil rectify-zone the.domain.com

... and here the zone becomes good again, giving you the NOERROR
reponses that you expect.

I have 2 suggestions:

1. Make sure to generate the zone file including the empty
non-terminals.

2. Don't load the zone from scratch everytime you have a change, but
instead edit the zone through the pdnsutil command.

I would expect that option 2 would work best in most cases.

There's also a middle ground where you edit the database content and
then run rectify-zone afterwards, but then you have to make sure to keep
your update SQL statements in sync with the (slowly) evolving database
schema.

Best regards,
Jacob