[Dnsmasq-discuss] Behaviour for multiple server=/domain/ip entries?

[Andreas Schamanek]

Hi fellow dnsmasq'ers,

My dnsmasq 2.45 (on Debian) reads the system's DNS servers from 
/etc/resolv.conf. In /etc/dnsmasq.conf there are several server 
entries for a special domain, like

  server=/example.com/63.58.50.220
  server=/example.com/63.189.112.181
  server=/example.com/196.141.89.219

Looking at the dnsmasq stats (after a SIGUSR1) I found that 
apparently only the 1st server entry is used. Quoting from the stats

  server 63.58.50.220#53: queries sent 3371, retried or failed 0
  server 63.189.112.181#53: queries sent 0, retried or failed 0
  server 196.141.89.219#53: queries sent 0, retried or failed 0

Then I tried dnsmasq 2.55 on a Debian Testing machine:

  server 63.58.50.220#53: queries sent 8, retried or failed 0
  server 63.189.112.181#53: queries sent 8, retried or failed 0
  server 196.141.89.219#53: queries sent 8, retried or failed 0

Here, all 3 are used as I expected it.

Was this a feature which had been added between 2.45 and 2.55? I 
looked at the changelog but couldn't find anything about it. Or is my 
setup on the 2.45/Debian stable machine broken?

Also, I am wondering whether there is a proper way to set up some 
sort of distributed DNS for a specific domain. Say, I have the above 3 
entries for example.com but I want dnsmasq to query only 1 DNS server 
at a time in order to distribute the load.

MTIA,

-- 
-- Andreas