FAQ revision 92554adb458c7b336e5390c5c9fbf2fcc1276524
Frequently Asked Questions about BIND 9
Copyright � 2004-2007 Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. ("ISC")
Copyright � 2000-2003 Internet Software Consortium.
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1. Compilation and Installation Questions
Q: I'm trying to compile BIND 9, and "make" is failing due to files not
being found. Why?
A: Using a parallel or distributed "make" to build BIND 9 is not
supported, and doesn't work. If you are using one of these, use normal
make or gmake instead.
Q: Isn't "make install" supposed to generate a default named.conf?
A: Short Answer: No.
Long Answer: There really isn't a default configuration which fits any
site perfectly. There are lots of decisions that need to be made and
there is no consensus on what the defaults should be. For example
FreeBSD uses /etc/namedb as the location where the configuration files
for named are stored. Others use /var/named.
What addresses to listen on? For a laptop on the move a lot you may
only want to listen on the loop back interfaces.
Who do you offer recursive service to? Is there are firewall to
consider? If so is it stateless or stateful. Are you directly on the
Internet? Are you on a private network? Are you on a NAT'd network? The
answers to all these questions change how you configure even a caching
name server.
2. Configuration and Setup Questions
Q: Why does named log the warning message "no TTL specified - using SOA
MINTTL instead"?
A: Your zone file is illegal according to RFC1035. It must either have a
line like:
$TTL 86400
at the beginning, or the first record in it must have a TTL field, like
the "84600" in this example:
example.com. 86400 IN SOA ns hostmaster ( 1 3600 1800 1814400 3600 )
Q: Why do I get errors like "dns_zone_load: zone foo/IN: loading master
file bar: ran out of space"?
A: This is often caused by TXT records with missing close quotes. Check
that all TXT records containing quoted strings have both open and close
quotes.
Q: How do I restrict people from looking up the server version?
A: Put a "version" option containing something other than the real version
in the "options" section of named.conf. Note doing this will not
prevent attacks and may impede people trying to diagnose problems with
your server. Also it is possible to "fingerprint" nameservers to
determine their version.
Q: How do I restrict only remote users from looking up the server version?
A: The following view statement will intercept lookups as the internal
view that holds the version information will be matched last. The
caveats of the previous answer still apply, of course.
view "chaos" chaos {
match-clients { <those to be refused>; };
allow-query { none; };
zone "." {
type hint;
file "/dev/null"; // or any empty file
};
};
Q: What do "no source of entropy found" or "could not open entropy source
foo" mean?
A: The server requires a source of entropy to perform certain operations,
mostly DNSSEC related. These messages indicate that you have no source
of entropy. On systems with /dev/random or an equivalent, it is used by
default. A source of entropy can also be defined using the
random-device option in named.conf.
Q: I'm trying to use TSIG to authenticate dynamic updates or zone
transfers. I'm sure I have the keys set up correctly, but the server is
rejecting the TSIG. Why?
A: This may be a clock skew problem. Check that the the clocks on the
client and server are properly synchronised (e.g., using ntp).
Q: I see a log message like the following. Why?
couldn't open pid file '/var/run/named.pid': Permission denied
A: You are most likely running named as a non-root user, and that user
does not have permission to write in /var/run. The common ways of
fixing this are to create a /var/run/named directory owned by the named
user and set pid-file to "/var/run/named/named.pid", or set pid-file to
"named.pid", which will put the file in the directory specified by the
directory option (which, in this case, must be writable by the named
user).
Q: I can query the nameserver from the nameserver but not from other
machines. Why?
A: This is usually the result of the firewall configuration stopping the
queries and / or the replies.
Q: How can I make a server a slave for both an internal and an external
view at the same time? When I tried, both views on the slave were
transferred from the same view on the master.
A: You will need to give the master and slave multiple IP addresses and
use those to make sure you reach the correct view on the other machine.
Master: 10.0.1.1 (internal), 10.0.1.2 (external, IP alias)
internal:
match-clients { !10.0.1.2; !10.0.1.4; 10.0.1/24; };
notify-source 10.0.1.1;
transfer-source 10.0.1.1;
query-source address 10.0.1.1;
external:
match-clients { any; };
recursion no; // don't offer recursion to the world
notify-source 10.0.1.2;
transfer-source 10.0.1.2;
query-source address 10.0.1.2;
Slave: 10.0.1.3 (internal), 10.0.1.4 (external, IP alias)
internal:
match-clients { !10.0.1.2; !10.0.1.4; 10.0.1/24; };
notify-source 10.0.1.3;
transfer-source 10.0.1.3;
query-source address 10.0.1.3;
external:
match-clients { any; };
recursion no; // don't offer recursion to the world
notify-source 10.0.1.4;
transfer-source 10.0.1.4;
query-source address 10.0.1.4;
You put the external address on the alias so that all the other dns
clients on these boxes see the internal view by default.
A: BIND 9.3 and later: Use TSIG to select the appropriate view.
Master 10.0.1.1:
key "external" {
algorithm hmac-md5;
secret "xxxxxxxx";
};
view "internal" {
match-clients { !key external; 10.0.1/24; };
...
};
view "external" {
match-clients { key external; any; };
server 10.0.1.2 { keys external; };
recursion no;
...
};
Slave 10.0.1.2:
key "external" {
algorithm hmac-md5;
secret "xxxxxxxx";
};
view "internal" {
match-clients { !key external; 10.0.1/24; };
...
};
view "external" {
match-clients { key external; any; };
server 10.0.1.1 { keys external; };
recursion no;
...
};
Q: I get error messages like "multiple RRs of singleton type" and "CNAME
and other data" when transferring a zone. What does this mean?
A: These indicate a malformed master zone. You can identify the exact
records involved by transferring the zone using dig then running
named-checkzone on it.
dig axfr example.com @master-server > tmp
named-checkzone example.com tmp
A CNAME record cannot exist with the same name as another record except
for the DNSSEC records which prove its existence (NSEC).
RFC 1034, Section 3.6.2: "If a CNAME RR is present at a node, no other
data should be present; this ensures that the data for a canonical name
and its aliases cannot be different. This rule also insures that a
cached CNAME can be used without checking with an authoritative server
for other RR types."
Q: I get error messages like "named.conf:99: unexpected end of input"
where 99 is the last line of named.conf.
A: Some text editors (notepad and wordpad) fail to put a line title
fixed by "adding" a blank line to the end of the file. Named expects to
see EOF immediately after EOL and treats text files where this is not
met as truncated.
Q: How do I share a dynamic zone between multiple views?
A: You choose one view to be master and the second a slave and transfer
the zone between views.
Master 10.0.1.1:
key "external" {
algorithm hmac-md5;
secret "xxxxxxxx";
};
key "mykey" {
algorithm hmac-md5;
secret "yyyyyyyy";
};
view "internal" {
match-clients { !key external; 10.0.1/24; };
server 10.0.1.1 {
/* Deliver notify messages to external view. */
keys { external; };
};
zone "example.com" {
type master;
file "internal/example.db";
allow-update { key mykey; };
notify-also { 10.0.1.1; };
};
};
view "external" {
match-clients { key external; any; };
zone "example.com" {
type slave;
file "external/example.db";
masters { 10.0.1.1; };
transfer-source { 10.0.1.1; };
// allow-update-forwarding { any; };
// allow-notify { ... };
};
};
Q: I get a error message like "zone wireless.ietf56.ietf.org/IN: loading
master file primaries/wireless.ietf56.ietf.org: no owner".
A: This error is produced when a line in the master file contains leading
white space (tab/space) but the is no current record owner name to
inherit the name from. Usually this is the result of putting white
space before a comment, forgetting the "@" for the SOA record, or
indenting the master file.
Q: Why are my logs in GMT (UTC).
A: You are running chrooted (-t) and have not supplied local timezone
information in the chroot area.
FreeBSD: /etc/localtime
Solaris: /etc/TIMEZONE and /usr/share/lib/zoneinfo
See also tzset(3) and zic(8).
Q: I get "rndc: connect failed: connection refused" when I try to run
rndc.
A: This is usually a configuration error.
First ensure that named is running and no errors are being reported at
startup (/var/log/messages or equivalent). Running "named -g <usual
arguments>" from a title can help at this point.
Secondly ensure that named is configured to use rndc either by
"rndc-confgen -a", rndc-confgen or manually. The Administrators
Reference manual has details on how to do this.
Old versions of rndc-confgen used localhost rather than 127.0.0.1 in /
etc/rndc.conf for the default server. Update /etc/rndc.conf if
necessary so that the default server listed in /etc/rndc.conf matches
the addresses used in named.conf. "localhost" has two address
(127.0.0.1 and ::1).
If you use "rndc-confgen -a" and named is running with -t or -u ensure
that /etc/rndc.conf has the correct ownership and that a copy is in the
chroot area. You can do this by re-running "rndc-confgen -a" with
appropriate -t and -u arguments.
Q: I get "transfer of 'example.net/IN' from 192.168.4.12#53: failed while
receiving responses: permission denied" error messages.
A: These indicate a filesystem permission error preventing named creating
/ renaming the temporary file. These will usually also have other
associated error messages like
"dumping master file: sl/tmp-XXXX5il3sQ: open: permission denied"
Named needs write permission on the directory containing the file.
Named writes the new cache file to a temporary file then renames it to
the name specified in named.conf to ensure that the contents are always
complete. This is to prevent named loading a partial zone in the event
of power failure or similar interrupting the write of the master file.
Note file names are relative to the directory specified in options and
any chroot directory ([<chroot dir>/][<options dir>]).
If named is invoked as "named -t /chroot/DNS" with the following
named.conf then "/chroot/DNS/var/named/sl" needs to be writable by the
user named is running as.
options {
directory "/var/named";
};
zone "example.net" {
type slave;
file "sl/example.net";
masters { 192.168.4.12; };
};
Q: I want to forward all DNS queries from my caching nameserver to another
server. But there are some domains which have to be served locally, via
rbldnsd.
How do I achieve this ?
A: options {
forward only;
forwarders { <ip.of.primary.nameserver>; };
};
zone "sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org" {
type forward; forward only;
forwarders { <ip.of.rbldns.server> port 530; };
};
zone "list.dsbl.org" {
type forward; forward only;
forwarders { <ip.of.rbldns.server> port 530; };
};
Q: Can you help me understand how BIND 9 uses memory to store DNS zones?
Some times it seems to take several times the amount of memory it needs
to store the zone.
A: When reloading a zone named my have multiple copies of the zone in
memory at one time. The zone it is serving and the one it is loading.
If reloads are ultra fast it can have more still.
e.g. Ones that are transferring out, the one that it is serving and the
one that is loading.
BIND 8 destroyed the zone before loading and also killed off outgoing
transfers of the zone.
The new strategy allows slaves to get copies of the new zone regardless
of how often the master is loaded compared to the transfer time. The
slave might skip some intermediate versions but the transfers will
complete and it will keep reasonably in sync with the master.
The new strategy also allows the master to recover from syntax and
other errors in the master file as it still has an in-core copy of the
old contents.
3. General Questions
Q: I keep getting log messages like the following. Why?
Dec 4 23:47:59 client 10.0.0.1#1355: updating zone 'example.com/IN':
update failed: 'RRset exists (value dependent)' prerequisite not
satisfied (NXRRSET)
A: DNS updates allow the update request to test to see if certain
conditions are met prior to proceeding with the update. The message
above is saying that conditions were not met and the update is not
proceeding. See doc/rfc/rfc2136.txt for more details on prerequisites.
Q: I keep getting log messages like the following. Why?
Jun 21 12:00:00.000 client 10.0.0.1#1234: update denied
A: Someone is trying to update your DNS data using the RFC2136 Dynamic
Update protocol. Windows 2000 machines have a habit of sending dynamic
update requests to DNS servers without being specifically configured to
do so. If the update requests are coming from a Windows 2000 machine,
information about how to turn them off.
Q: When I do a "dig . ns", many of the A records for the root servers are
missing. Why?
A: This is normal and harmless. It is a somewhat confusing side effect of
the way BIND 9 does RFC2181 trust ranking and of the efforts BIND 9
makes to avoid promoting glue into answers.
When BIND 9 first starts up and primes its cache, it receives the root
server addresses as additional data in an authoritative response from a
root server, and these records are eligible for inclusion as additional
data in responses. Subsequently it receives a subset of the root server
addresses as additional data in a non-authoritative (referral) response
from a root server. This causes the addresses to now be considered
non-authoritative (glue) data, which is not eligible for inclusion in
responses.
The server does have a complete set of root server addresses cached at
all times, it just may not include all of them as additional data,
depending on whether they were last received as answers or as glue. You
can always look up the addresses with explicit queries like "dig
Q: Why don't my zones reload when I do an "rndc reload" or SIGHUP?
A: A zone can be updated either by editing zone files and reloading the
server or by dynamic update, but not both. If you have enabled dynamic
update for a zone using the "allow-update" option, you are not supposed
to edit the zone file by hand, and the server will not attempt to
reload it.
Q: Why is named listening on UDP port other than 53?
A: Named uses a system selected port to make queries of other nameservers.
This behaviour can be overridden by using query-source to lock down the
port and/or address. See also notify-source and transfer-source.
Q: I get warning messages like "zone example.com/IN: refresh: failure
trying master 1.2.3.4#53: timed out".
A: Check that you can make UDP queries from the slave to the master
dig +norec example.com soa @1.2.3.4
You could be generating queries faster than the slave can cope with.
Lower the serial query rate.
serial-query-rate 5; // default 20
Q: I don't get RRSIG's returned when I use "dig +dnssec".
A: You need to ensure DNSSEC is enabled (dnssec-enable yes;).
Q: Can a NS record refer to a CNAME.
A: No. The rules for glue (copies of the *address* records in the parent
zones) and additional section processing do not allow it to work.
You would have to add both the CNAME and address records (A/AAAA) as
glue to the parent zone and have CNAMEs be followed when doing
additional section processing to make it work. No nameserver
implementation supports either of these requirements.
Q: What does "RFC 1918 response from Internet for 0.0.0.10.IN-ADDR.ARPA"
mean?
A: If the IN-ADDR.ARPA name covered refers to a internal address space you
are using then you have failed to follow RFC 1918 usage rules and are
leaking queries to the Internet. You should establish your own zones
for these addresses to prevent you querying the Internet's name servers
for these addresses. Please see http://as112.net/ for details of the
problems you are causing and the counter measures that have had to be
deployed.
If you are not using these private addresses then a client has queried
for them. You can just ignore the messages, get the offending client to
stop sending you these messages as they are most probably leaking them
or setup your own zones empty zones to serve answers to these queries.
zone "10.IN-ADDR.ARPA" {
type master;
file "empty";
};
zone "16.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA" {
type master;
file "empty";
};
...
zone "31.172.IN-ADDR.ARPA" {
type master;
file "empty";
};
zone "168.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA" {
type master;
file "empty";
};
empty:
@ 10800 IN SOA <name-of-server>. <contact-email>. (
1 3600 1200 604800 10800 )
@ 10800 IN NS <name-of-server>.
Note
Future versions of named are likely to do this automatically.
Q: Will named be affected by the 2007 changes to daylight savings rules in
the US.
A: No, so long as the machines internal clock (as reported by "date -u")
remains at UTC. The only visible change if you fail to upgrade your OS,
if you are in a affected area, will be that log messages will be a hour
out during the period where the old rules do not match the new rules.
For most OS's this change just means that you need to update the
conversion rules from UTC to local time. Normally this involves
updating a file in /etc (which sets the default timezone for the
machine) and possibly a directory which has all the conversion rules
for the world (e.g. /usr/share/zoneinfo). When updating the OS do not
forget to update any chroot areas as well. See your OS's documentation
for more details.
The local timezone conversion rules can also be done on a individual
basis by setting the TZ environment variable appropriately. See your
OS's documentation for more details.
Q: Is there a bugzilla (or other tool) database that mere mortals can have
(read-only) access to for bind?
A: No. The BIND 9 bug database is kept closed for a number of reasons.
These include, but are not limited to, that the database contains
proprietory information from people reporting bugs. The database has in
the past and may in future contain unfixed bugs which are capable of
bringing down most of the Internet's DNS infrastructure.
The release pages for each version contain up to date lists of bugs
that have been fixed post release. That is as close as we can get to
providing a bug database.
4. Operating-System Specific Questions
4.1. HPUX
Q: I get the following error trying to configure BIND:
checking if unistd.h or sys/types.h defines fd_set... no
configure: error: need either working unistd.h or sys/select.h
A: You have attempted to configure BIND with the bundled C compiler. This
compiler does not meet the minimum compiler requirements to for
building BIND. You need to install a ANSI C compiler and / or teach
configure how to find the ANSI C compiler. The later can be done by
adjusting the PATH environment variable and / or specifying the
compiler via CC.
./configure CC=<compiler> ...
4.2. Linux
Q: Why do I get the following errors:
general: errno2result.c:109: unexpected error:
general: unable to convert errno to isc_result: 14: Bad address
client: UDP client handler shutting down due to fatal receive error: unexpected error
A: This is the result of a Linux kernel bug.
Q: Why do I see 5 (or more) copies of named on Linux?
A: Linux threads each show up as a process under ps. The approximate
number of threads running is n+4, where n is the number of CPUs. Note
that the amount of memory used is not cumulative; if each process is
using 10M of memory, only a total of 10M is used.
Newer versions of Linux's ps command hide the individual threads and
require -L to display them.
Q: Why does BIND 9 log "permission denied" errors accessing its
configuration files or zones on my Linux system even though it is
running as root?
A: On Linux, BIND 9 drops most of its root privileges on startup. This
including the privilege to open files owned by other users. Therefore,
if the server is running as root, the configuration files and zone
files should also be owned by root.
Q: I get the error message "named: capset failed: Operation not permitted"
when starting named.
A: The capability module, part of "Linux Security Modules/LSM", has not
been loaded into the kernel. See insmod(8).
Q: I'm running BIND on Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Fedora Core -
Why can't named update slave zone database files?
Why can't named create DDNS journal files or update the master zones
from journals?
Why can't named create custom log files?
A: Red Hat Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) policy security protections :
Red Hat have adopted the National Security Agency's SELinux security
policy ( see http://www.nsa.gov/selinux ) and recommendations for BIND
security , which are more secure than running named in a chroot and
make use of the bind-chroot environment unnecessary .
By default, named is not allowed by the SELinux policy to write, create
or delete any files EXCEPT in these directories:
where $ROOTDIR may be set in /etc/sysconfig/named if bind-chroot is
installed.
The SELinux policy particularly does NOT allow named to modify the
$ROOTDIR/var/named directory, the default location for master zone
database files.
SELinux policy overrules file access permissions - so even if all the
files under /var/named have ownership named:named and mode rw-rw-r--,
named will still not be able to write or create files except in the
directories above, with SELinux in Enforcing mode.
So, to allow named to update slave or DDNS zone files, it is best to
locate them in $ROOTDIR/var/named/slaves, with named.conf zone
statements such as:
zone "slave.zone." IN {
type slave;
file "slaves/slave.zone.db";
...
};
zone "ddns.zone." IN {
type master;
allow-updates {...};
file "slaves/ddns.zone.db";
};
To allow named to create its cache dump and statistics files, for
example, you could use named.conf options statements such as:
options {
...
dump-file "/var/named/data/cache_dump.db";
statistics-file "/var/named/data/named_stats.txt";
...
};
You can also tell SELinux to allow named to update any zone database
files, by setting the SELinux tunable boolean parameter
'named_write_master_zones=1', using the system-config-securitylevel
GUI, using the 'setsebool' command, or in /etc/selinux/targeted/
booleans.
You can disable SELinux protection for named entirely by setting the
'named_disable_trans=1' SELinux tunable boolean parameter.
The SELinux named policy defines these SELinux contexts for named:
named_zone_t : for zone database files - $ROOTDIR/var/named/*
named_conf_t : for named configuration files - $ROOTDIR/etc/{named,rndc}.*
named_cache_t: for files modifiable by named - $ROOTDIR/var/{tmp,named/{slaves,data}}
If you want to retain use of the SELinux policy for named, and put
named files in different locations, you can do so by changing the
context of the custom file locations .
To create a custom configuration file location, e.g. '/root/
named.conf', to use with the 'named -c' option, do:
# chcon system_u:object_r:named_conf_t /root/named.conf
named' for a log file, do:
# chcon system_u:object_r:named_cache_t /var/log/named
To create a custom zone file location, e.g. /root/zones/, do:
# chcon system_u:object_r:named_zone_t /root/zones/{.,*}
See these man-pages for more information : selinux(8), named_selinux
(8), chcon(1), setsebool(8)
4.3. Windows
Q: Zone transfers from my BIND 9 master to my Windows 2000 slave fail.
Why?
A: This may be caused by a bug in the Windows 2000 DNS server where DNS
messages larger than 16K are not handled properly. This can be worked
around by setting the option "transfer-format one-answer;". Also check
whether your zone contains domain names with embedded spaces or other
special characters, like "John\032Doe\213s\032Computer", since such
names have been known to cause Windows 2000 slaves to incorrectly
reject the zone.
Q: I get "Error 1067" when starting named under Windows.
A: This is the service manager saying that named exited. You need to
examine the Application log in the EventViewer to find out why.
Common causes are that you failed to create "named.conf" (usually "C:\
windows\dns\etc\named.conf") or failed to specify the directory in
options {
Directory "C:\windows\dns\etc";
};
4.4. FreeBSD
Q: I have FreeBSD 4.x and "rndc-confgen -a" just sits there.
A: /dev/random is not configured. Use rndcontrol(8) to tell the kernel to
use certain interrupts as a source of random events. You can make this
permanent by setting rand_irqs in /etc/rc.conf.
rand_irqs="3 14 15"
4.5. Solaris
Q: How do I integrate BIND 9 and Solaris SMF
A: Sun has a blog entry describing how to do this.
4.6. Apple Mac OS X
Q: How do I run BIND 9 on Apple Mac OS X?
A: If you run Tiger(Mac OS 10.4) or later then this is all you need to do:
% sudo rndc-confgen > /etc/rndc.conf
key "rndc-key" {
algorithm hmac-md5;
secret "uvceheVuqf17ZwIcTydddw==";
};
Then start the relevant service:
% sudo service org.isc.named start
This is persistent upon a reboot, so you will have to do it only once.
A: Alternatively you can just generate /etc/rndc.key by running:
% sudo rndc-confgen -a
Then start the relevant service:
% sudo service org.isc.named start
Named will look for /etc/rndc.key when it starts if it doesn't have a
controls section or the existing controls are missing keys sub-clauses.
This is persistent upon a reboot, so you will have to do it only once.