The following the list of error messages that dnswalk will return if it sees a potential problem with the database. Duplicate messages will be suppressed automatically for each zone. X PTR Y: unknown host X is a PTR record to Y, but Y is not a valid host (no A record). These are often left over from when someone deleted a host from the DNS and forgot to delete the PTR record. These records should be removed. X PTR Y: A record not found X is a PTR record to Y, but the IP address associated with the PTR record is not listed as an address for Y. There should be an A record for every valid IP address for a host. Many Internet services will not talk to you if you have mismatched PTR records. X PTR Y: CNAME (to Z) X is a PTR record to Y, but Y is a CNAME to Z. PTR records should point to the real name of a host, not an alias. X CNAME Y: unknown host X is aliased to Y, but Y is not a valid host (no A record). This is a stale entry and should be removed. X CNAME Y: CNAME (to Z) X is aliased to Y, but Y is aliased to Z. CNAMEs should not be chained together. It has been known to cause problems with some software. X MX Y: unknown host X is an MX to Y, but Y is not a valid host (no A record). This is a stale entry and should be removed. X MX Y: CNAME (to Z) X is an MX to Y, but Y is an alias for Z. MX records must point to the canonical name, not an alias. X A Y: no PTR record X has an IP address Y, but there is no PTR record to map the IP address Y back to a hostname (usually X). Many Internet servers (such as anonymous FTP servers) will not talk to addresses that don't have PTR records. warning: X has only one authoritative nameserver Zones should have more than one authoritative name- server, in case one is down or unreachable. Preferably one should be off-site. Make sure the parent and child nameservers list all authoritative nameservers for a zone in the NS list. X: invalid character(s) in name Allowable characters in a domain name are the ASCII letters a through Z the digits 0 through 9, and the "-" character. A "." may be used only as a domain separa- tor. Using non-standard characters can cause unexpected software problems. X: domain occurred twice, forgot trailing '.'? A sanity check which looks for "dom.ain.dom.ain." in a name. This is often caused by forgetting to put a trailing '.' on the end of a name. X A Y: points to Z X has Y for an IP address, but the PTR record associ- ated with Y returns "Z" as the name associated with that host. This is not necessarily an error (for exam- ple if you have an A record for your domain name), but may be an indication of an A record which points to the wrong host, or a PTR record that points to the wrong host. You will get this error if you are trying to alias one host to another with an A record. You should use a CNAME instead. X NS Y: lame NS delegation Y is a listed nameserver for zone X, but Y is not returning authoritative data for zone X. This is usu- ally the result of a lack of communication on the part of the respective hostmasters. Lame delegations are not fatal problems except in severe cases, they just tend to create significant increases in DNS traffic. NS records for the parent and child domains should be consistent, and each server listed in the NS record MUST be able to answer with authoritative data, by being explicitly configured as a primary or secondary for the zone. X NS Y: nameserver error (lame?) These are any errors returned while contacting other nameservers (like connection refused or timeout) This could mean a lame delegation (the host is not running a nameserver or is misconfigured), or simply that the nameserver is temporarily unreachable. Cannot check X: no available nameservers! The X zone was delegated with NS records but all the nameservers for the zone are either unavailable or say that they have no data for the zone (are lame). Verify that the X zone isn't a typo, and if not make sure that all the listed nameservers are configured to answer with data for the zone. SEE ALSO RFC 1034 - "DOMAIN NAMES - CONCEPTS AND FACILITIES" RFC 1035 - "DOMAIN NAMES - IMPLEMENTATION AND SPECIFICATION" RFC 1123 - "Requirements for Internet Hosts -- Application and Support" Paul Albitz, Cricket Liu: "DNS and BIND" O'Reilly & Associates. RFC 1912 - "Common DNS Operational and Configuration Errors" http://www.dns.net/dnsrd/ - DNS Resources Directory