Different Operating Systems call it different things. Windows calls it Alternate. Even if it was only used when the primary was down, DNS doesn’t provide any sort of guidance or standard on when to switch between primary and secondary. Is one query timeout enough to switch? How often do you reattempt to the first DNS server? When do you switch back?
Comment on The Beauty Of Having A Pi-hole · Den Delimarsky
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 week agoWhy call it secondary then, that’s so counterintuitive lol 😭 I guess “the second hardest problem in computer science” applies because I can’t think of a better name either.
chaospatterns@lemmy.world 1 week ago
SpaceCadet@feddit.nl 1 week ago
I don’t think that’s even the official naming. It probably comes from what Windows 95 called it back in the day:
Image
On Linux, it’s just an additional “nameserver x.x.x.x” line in
/etc/resolv.conf, with no indication of which is the “primary” or “secondary”.