Why I get a SOA dig response?

Question

Some time ago I setup a site with some subdomains (example.com, test.example.com...)

Last week I added a new subdomain new.example.com and today I've realize that when I dig to the secondary server I get the SOA record as a response, not the answer itself:

root@Nigeria:~$ dig new.example.com @ns.kimsufi.com

; <<>> DiG 9.8.4-rpz2+rl005.12-P1 <<>> new.example.com @ns.kimsufi.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 11559
;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;new.example.com.       IN  A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
example.com.        86400   IN  SOA ns345678.ip-93-122-113.eu. info.test.com. 2015021005 28800 7200 604800 86400

;; Query time: 36 msec
;; SERVER: 213.186.33.199#53(213.186.33.199)
;; WHEN: Mon Feb 16 11:14:35 2015
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 108

I'm wondering why I'm getting an authority response instead of the right response. If I dig into 'ns345678.ip-93-122-113.eu' which is the right server where my website and my DNS server is hosted, I get the expected response:

;; ANSWER SECTION:
new.example.com.    86400   IN  A   93.122.113.255

Why the secondary DNS is not giving an answer to the new subdomain? It is giving an answer to old subdomains like 'test.example.com'. And how I must interpret the SOA response? What does it mean?

Answer 1

A SOA record in the Authority segment together with having the AA flag set is an indication that the reply is authoritative. So what the response you pasted means is that ns.kimsufi.com says that it knows with certainty that the name you asked for (new.example.com) does not exist.

And if you hadn't hidden the actual domain name, someone might have been able to tell you the reason you're not getting the response you expect. But as it is, this is about all you will get.