Superfluous name server listed at parent

5,393

Solution 1

There may be lingering problems with cached NS records that web tools are using, as the TTL on the NS records served up by the .UK TLD is 172800 seconds (48 hours). Below are some diagnostics against what the authoritative nameservers are currently responding with.

Here's what the UK TLD has to say:

$ dig @ns1.nic.uk +norecurse lhlc.org.uk. NS

; <<>> DiG 9.7.3 <<>> @ns1.nic.uk +norecurse lhlc.org.uk. NS
; (2 servers found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 2363
;; flags: qr; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 5, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;lhlc.org.uk.                   IN      NS

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
lhlc.org.uk.            172800  IN      NS      ns8.whealmedia.com.
lhlc.org.uk.            172800  IN      NS      ns5.whealmedia.com.
lhlc.org.uk.            172800  IN      NS      ns6.whealmedia.com.
lhlc.org.uk.            172800  IN      NS      ns9.whealmedia.com.
lhlc.org.uk.            172800  IN      NS      ns7.whealmedia.com.

;; Query time: 110 msec
;; SERVER: 195.66.240.130#53(195.66.240.130)
;; WHEN: Sat Jul 20 13:53:07 2013
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 133

What NS records are those nameservers providing?

$ for server in ns{1..9}.whealmedia.com; do dig @$server +norecurse +short lhlc.org.uk. NS; done | sort | uniq -c
      9 ns5.whealmedia.com.
      9 ns6.whealmedia.com.
      9 ns7.whealmedia.com.
      9 ns8.whealmedia.com.
      9 ns9.whealmedia.com.

What are the current SOA records for those servers?

$ dig +nssearch lhlc.org.uk
SOA whealmedia.com. infrastructure.whealmedia.com. 2008010105 43200 3600 1209600 180 from server ns6.whealmedia.com in 58 ms.
SOA whealmedia.com. infrastructure.whealmedia.com. 2008010105 43200 3600 1209600 180 from server ns7.whealmedia.com in 85 ms.
SOA whealmedia.com. infrastructure.whealmedia.com. 2008010105 43200 3600 1209600 180 from server ns8.whealmedia.com in 57 ms.
SOA whealmedia.com. infrastructure.whealmedia.com. 2008010105 43200 3600 1209600 180 from server ns9.whealmedia.com in 41 ms.
SOA whealmedia.com. infrastructure.whealmedia.com. 2008010105 43200 3600 1209600 180 from server ns5.whealmedia.com in 39 ms.

Solution 2

Your name servers list ns0.whealmedia.com through ns9.whealmedia.com as name servers for your domain but the parent servers only list ns5.whealmedia.com through ns9.whealmedia.com as name servers for your domain. you need to remove ns0.whealmedia.com through ns4.whealmedia.com as name servers in your DNS zone.

EDIT

These are the results from www.intodns.com:

Nameserver records returned by the parent servers are:

ns8.whealmedia.com. ['208.80.125.2'] (NO GLUE) [TTL=172800]

ns7.whealmedia.com. ['208.80.126.2'] (NO GLUE) [TTL=172800]

ns5.whealmedia.com. ['208.94.148.2'] (NO GLUE) [TTL=172800]

ns9.whealmedia.com. ['208.80.127.2'] (NO GLUE) [TTL=172800]

ns6.whealmedia.com. ['208.80.124.2'] (NO GLUE) [TTL=172800]

NS records got from your nameservers listed at the parent NS are:

ns4.whealmedia.com ['208.80.127.2'] [TTL=86400]

ns0.whealmedia.com ['208.94.148.2'] [TTL=86400]

ns3.whealmedia.com ['208.80.125.2'] [TTL=86400]

ns1.whealmedia.com ['208.80.124.2'] [TTL=86400]

ns2.whealmedia.com ['208.80.126.2'] [TTL=86400]

ns7.whealmedia.com ['208.80.126.2'] [TTL=86400]

ns9.whealmedia.com ['208.80.127.2'] [TTL=86400]

ns8.whealmedia.com ['208.80.125.2'] [TTL=86400]

ns6.whealmedia.com ['208.80.124.2'] [TTL=86400]

ns5.whealmedia.com ['208.94.148.2'] [TTL=86400]

5,393

John Wheal

I have a masters degree in Computer Engineering with Distinction. I have a particular interest in large scale distributed systems.

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

John Wheal almost 2 years

The domain in question is lhlc.org.uk. The name resolves correctly but when using Pingdom DNS Check it says that errors were found: http://dnscheck.pingdom.com/?domain=lhlc.org.uk&timestamp=1374325758&view=2

If it works correctly, is this even a problem?

The error given states that 'Superfluous name server listed at parent'. I've spent ages trying to work out what is causing this. My initial thoughts were that the NS records were incorrect but I've double checked them and they appear correct.

Additional Information:

The name servers for the domain are ns5.whealmedia.com -> ns9.whealmedia.com. They are setup as vanity name servers with DnsMadeEasy. whealmedia.com is setup with a similar configuration but is using name servers ns0.whealmedia.com -> ns4.whealmedia.com and backup DNS with DynECT. This domain doesn't appear to have any problem: http://dnscheck.pingdom.com/?domain=whealmedia.com&timestamp=1374326429&view=2
John Wheal almost 11 years

I'm confused. ns0.whealmedia.com through ns4.whealmedia.com are used as name servers for other domains. You might wonder why I don't just use ns0 through ns4 for the lhlc.org.uk domain but I specifically want this to be separate. Surely if I just delete the ns0.whealmedia.com through ns4.whealmedia.com, the other domains (including whealmedia.com) will stop working?
joeqwerty almost 11 years

They are listed as name servers in the zone for lhlc.org.uk. You need to remove them from that zone ONLY. This doesn't affect any other zone that they may be authoritative for. - Each zone lists it's own name servers. For the lhlc.org.uk zone they are all listed. You only need to remove them from that zone.
John Wheal almost 11 years

Unless I'm being very stupid, they aren't all listed for the lhlc.org.uk zone. That's what is confusing me. What makes you think that they are all listed?
joeqwerty almost 11 years

See my edit. The parent servers list 5,6,7,8 and 9 as name servers. 5,6,7,8 and 9 list 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9 as name servers. Somewhere in the zone copy on 5,6,7,8 or 9 0,1,2,3 and 4 are listed as name servers.
Andrew B almost 11 years

I've added some additional diagnostics to reinforce the fact that ns0 through ns4 are not being served from the TLD glue. Either there are some cached NS records with long TTLs that are confusing the web tools, or it's the braindead authority responses by the nameservers.
John Wheal almost 11 years

I have changed the SOA base domain but Pingdom is still showing an error. (It isn't using a cached result). dnscheck.pingdom.com/…
Andrew B almost 11 years

Please ignore my babble about authority. My brain apparently short circuited and I was looking at the right hand side instead of the left hand side. The MNAME field of a SOA response has absolutely nothing to do with this problem.
Andrew B almost 11 years

@joe Whoops. Sorry for deleting that comment out from under you, my remark about authority was incorrect and I was in the process of retracting it.
Andrew B almost 11 years

Did you change NS records for the base domain within the last 48 hours? The SOA queries may not be cached responses (TTL for that record is 180), but the NS records served up by the TLD are very strong candidates for caching weirdness due to that huge TTL.
John Wheal almost 11 years

I did change the NS records for the base domain within the last 48 hours but I thought Pingdom ignores the TTL values. I'll wait a couple of days and see if it is still a problem. Thanks for your help.
Andrew B almost 11 years

@joq Short version: I was right about the web interfaces creating confusion, but the "authority problems" I was observing were imagined. 48 hour TTLs served up by the GTLD are most likely cause at this point.