Tim wrote:
I've seen a few things which merely increment the serial number. Such
as the DHCP that comes with Fedora. If you started off using dates,
it'd just add one to the number, and you're left with a nonsense number
in the serial code. Sure, it'll work, as it's a higher number, but it
won't mean what you think it did.
That can happen when you rely on GUI's and don't understand what lies
beneath. Can't recall the last time I used a GUI for system administration.
Using a date code is a simple way of putting in a new serial code
without caring what the prior number is. But that has its own problems.
It can make a serial code go backwards if it was already a higher
number, because the last editor used a different scheme.
If you're going to change the scheme of things then you need to understand
what you are doing. If you have multiple admins and you don't have a scheme
in place as well as documented procedures then your problems go much deeper.
It's quite
easy for that to happen if you'd done numerous changes to a zone file in
one day, there's not enough digits in the code to do years+months+days
+hours+minutes+extra_changes. At least, not enough digits in some DNS
servers that I've used.
Must have been old ones...
From a programatic point of view, you really need to check what the
number was, and *at* *least* increment it by one. But *only* do so when
needed.
And get at least 8 hrs of sleep a night.
