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From: MAP@LCS.MIT.EDU (Michael A. Patton)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains
Subject: decimals in the serial field
Message-ID: <9106141643.AA26522@gaak.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Date: 14 Jun 91 16:43:58 GMT
References: <1991Jun13.200755.28127@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
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   Date: 13 Jun 91 20:07:55 GMT
   From: eecs.nwu.edu!phil@ucbvax.berkeley.edu  (William LeFebvre)

   In article <1991Jun13.161911.29541@ssd.kodak.com>, dcox@ssd.kodak.com (Don Cox ) writes:
   |> ssd.kodak.com.  IN      SOA     ispdgate.ssd.kodak.com. dcox.ssd.kodak.com. (
   |>                         32.1  ; Serial

   Believe it or not, in BIND "32.1" is the same as "320001".  The exact
   interpretation of "." is "000".  Quite seriously (I looked at the code).

   This means that 32.10 > 32.9 by a very significant margin:
   32.10 == 3200010 and 32.9 == 320009, a order of magnitude difference.

I was mostly ignoring this thread because it was obvious to me that
the problem was that 32.1 was against the spec and several people had
said that, but when I noticed this message it suddenly dawned on me
how this brokenness was screwing this particular poor soul and why it
was an object lesson about staying with the standards...

I now understand what got Don Cox, he probably "increased" the serial
from 31.xx (where xx was greater than 9), to 32.1 assuming the natural
interpretation.  Unfortunately, according to bind 32.1 << 31.11 so it
doesn't think the serial increased.

The right solution to this is DON'T USE THE x.y FORMAT FOR SERIAL, the
spec says a single integer.  Bind has offerred to let you have a
non-standard system, and as I would expect with a non-standard setup,
it DOES NOT WORK except under some specific circumstances that the
implementer had in mind.

            __
  /|  /|  /|  \         Michael A. Patton, Network Manager
 / | / | /_|__/         Laboratory for Computer Science
/  |/  |/  |atton       Massachusetts Institute of Technology