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     I'm running designate kilo with a pdns backend.  I originally set 
things up in Juno, with designate-central syncing directly to the pdns 
mysql backend.  Everything was stable until my upgrade to Kilo.  During 
the upgrade to Kilo I was advised to add the mdns service, which I did, 
and I got things mostly working.  Every once in a while my pdns service 
falls over, though, and the pdns logs are VERY strange.

     As best I can tell, I am now (accidentally) using two simultaneous 
pdns backends:  designate-central writes directly to the pdns mysql 
database, but mdns also sends sync requests which causes pdns to grab 
records via AXFR and write them to the database (even though they are 
already there, thanks to the direct writing by central).  As you can 
imagine, this allows for a host of weird race conditions.

     The docs for this are baffling -- designate design is changing 
rapidly and most docs are unversioned, so it's hard for me to know what 
I'm looking at.  Here are my questions:

1)  Is it still possible to have central write directly to mysql 
backend?  Can I, in that case, simply turn mdns off, switch my pdns 
service to master=false slave=false and live happily and simply?

2)  If, on the contrary, I'm meant to do this via AXFR, why do the docs 
still tell me to configure designate with access to the pdns mysql backend?

3)  (meta-question) Is there a designate-specific list, or new IRC 
channel I should be using?  I have in the past gotten good support in 
#openstack-designate on freenode, but that channel has been utterly 
silent for several months.

Thanks all!

-Andrew