Bug in zone transfers?

[Pete Nelson]

I have several domain names that are pointed to one box (web hosting).
I'm going to be installing a new web server at a new hosting company, so
I've been going through DNS and setting all these domains up with only
CNAME records that point to a valid A record so I won't have to change
the IP address in dozens of places.

I was setting secondary zones for these domains on another server to
ease the transition when the time comes. I found that I could not
transfer the zones from the primary unless the primary had an A record.
As soon as I added an A record to the primary, I was able to transfer
them. Once it was transferred, I could remove the A record from the
primary, recreate it as a CNAME record and I could still transfer it
from the machine with the secondary zone.

So a couple questions...

1) Is this a bug or by design?
2) Is it a bad practice to use CNAMEs only and not A records? I'm not
pointing MX records to CNAMEs, just IP resolution for web sites.


--
===============================================================
Pete "DVDTracker" Nelson | When the barrel of my Glock
(e-mail address removed) | meets Hoppes #9, it's like
www.petenelson.com | a long-lost family reunion.
===============================================================

 

[Pete Nelson]

So a couple questions...

Which I think I've already answered myself.

1) Is this a bug or by design?

Most likely by design, based on some BIND transferrs I ran,

2) Is it a bad practice to use CNAMEs only and not A records? I'm not
pointing MX records to CNAMEs, just IP resolution for web sites.

Probably not the best practice, but you can get away with it.

--
===============================================================
Pete "DVDTracker" Nelson | When the barrel of my Glock
(e-mail address removed) | meets Hoppes #9, it's like
www.petenelson.com | a long-lost family reunion.
===============================================================