I've been doing some searching and I can't find a resolution for this:

I have two DNS servers on my new network. The primary is running on Windows 2000 Server for legacy reasons, the secondary is on a Redhat Linux 9 box.

Usually, the servers run just fine -- except if the Windows 2000 box goes offline. Then, named on the Linux box stops responding to requests and wont' shutdown! So, my secondary is currently pretty pointless, because it doesn't keep working if the primary shuts down.

I'm pretty sure I've set the wrong option somewhere, but I can't seem to find it. Any assistance on this would be appreciated.

Hmmmmmm. You're not telling the secondary to forward unresolved requests to the primary by any chance, are you? It would be in the forwarders section.

Other than that, perhaps you have your expire time set far too low on your zone.

make sure u have a backup copy of the zone files being stored on you secondary server also.

to see if u are doing this, check your named.conf file, you should see something like this:

zone "example.com" in {
type slave;
file "backup.example.com";
masters{ip.of.master.server;};
};

if you dont see the "file backup.example.com" then you are not saving a copy of the masters zone files and therefore will not be able to do anything when a request comes in.

you will need that for forward and reverse zones.

Ok:

1. I can't find a forwarders section in named.conf, so I assume that's set to whatever the default is.

2. Each entry in named.conf does have a file parameter and they are correct (in /var/named). The expire time for each zone is set to 86400 (i.e. one day).