DNS

DNS entries for savannah.gnu.org and savannah.nongnu.org may be modified on the mgt0.savannah.gnu.org server.

Applicable zone files are found in the /etc/bind/master directory. The one generally needed to be modified to add records is:

/etc/bind/master/savannah.footer

After modifying the zonefile, update the serial in:

/etc/bind/master/savannah.header

If (standard) emacs is used to edit the file then it will automatically update the serial number upon saving.

Then run:

rndc reload

Then dig or nslookup or host or whatever can be used to verify the change, if desired.

Entry format

Always use relative domain names in savannah's savannah.footer file. Use the following syntax:

foo         10800 IN  vcs
bar.vcs     10800 IN  vcs

and not the following syntax:

; BAD Example: DO NOT USE FQDN entries
foo.savannah.gnu.org.       10800  IN  vcs.savannah.gnu.org. ; BAD!
bar.vcs.savannah.gnu.org.   10800  IN  vcs.savannah.gnu.org. ; BAD!

Bob Proulx explains:

This is specific to the savannah strategy of using include files to make names in the left hand side appear in both the sv.gnu.org and the sv.nongnu.org domains both at the same time. And also into the savannah.gnu.org and savannah.nongnu.org domains. Both of those files $INCLUDE savannah.footer in order to include the relative names on the left hand side into each of those domains. When an absolute path is used it means that strategy is defeated.

If you look through the way the files are structured you will see that they had the goal of making all of the names appear in all four of these domains:

savannah.gnu.org
savannah.nongnu.org
sv.gnu.org
sv.nongnu.org

So a name foo on the left hand side will become:

foo.savannah.gnu.org
foo.savannah.nongnu.org
foo.sv.gnu.org
foo.sv.nongnu.org

So someone came up with the include strategy to do it. I haven't ever seen that done like that before. But I can see they were trying to use one list instead of four. That seems admirable.

See also the 'internal0' section in SavannahServices for more details.