OES DNS Secondary zone will not load

  • 7014901
  • 11-Apr-2014
  • 23-May-2014

Environment

Novell Open Enterprise Server 11 (OES 11) Linux
Novell Open Enterprise Server 11 (OES 11) Linux Support Pack 2

Situation

OES 11.0 server
OES DNS configured
Secondary zone configured to point to a Windows 2003 R2 DNS servers primary zone of the same name.
The zone is populated on the OES server and stored in eDir but it will not load.
/var/opt/novell/log/named/named.run shows the error:
Unable to write data into the masterfile, error value : zone not loaded novell


Resolution

Update the server to later DNS code.

This OES 11.0 code has been tested and does not work:
novell-bind-9.3.3-126.15

This OES 11.2 code has been tested and does work:
novell-bind-9.3.5-0.17.43

Additionally this can happen even after fixing the first DNS server which will be the Designated secondary server AND using the same named code on the next DNS server in the tree.

The solution to this situation is to:
1) Make sure you are running the novell-bind-9.3.5-0.17.43 code
2) Make this new server the Desinated secondary server
3) rcnovell-named restart
This first load after making the new DNS server the Designated secondary for the MS zone will cause the zone to load and the local <zone>.db file will be created.  After that you can move the Designated secondary designation back to the original DNS server.

Cause

The root of the problem is that the AD server is sending the DNS zone over to the OES server in a format that is not BIND 9 compliant.

OES named code cannot write the zone.db file in the /etc/opt/novell/named directory because that file needs to be in Bind 9 format.
So the zone does not load.

Updated named code converts the information into the proper format so that the file can be written, and the zone loads.