BIND 9

BIND version 9 is a major rewrite of nearly all aspects of the

underlying BIND architecture. This re-architecting of BIND was

necessitated by the expected demands of:

- Domain name system growth, particularly in very large

zones such as .COM

- Protocol enhancements necessary to securely query and

update zones

- Protocol enhancements necessary to take advantage of

certain architectural features of IP version 6

These demands implied performance requirements that were not

necessarily easy to attain with the BIND version 8

architecture. In particular, BIND must not only be able to

run on multi-processor multi-threaded systems, but must take

full advantage of the performance enhancements these

architectures can provide. In addition, the underlying data

storage architecture of BIND version 8 does not lend itself to

implementing alternative back end databases, such as would be

desirable for the support of multi-gigabyte zones. As such

zones are easily foreseeable in the relatively near future,

the data storage architecture needed revision. The feature

requirements for BIND version 9 included:

- Scalability

Thread safety

Multi-processor scalability

Support for very large zones

- Security

Support for DNSSEC

Support for TSIG

Auditability (code and operation)

Firewall support (split DNS)

- Portability

- Maintainability

- Protocol Enhancements

IXFR, DDNS, Notify, EDNS0

Improved standards conformance

- Operational enhancements

High availability and reliability

Support for alternative back end databases

- IP version 6 support

IPv6 resource records (A6, DNAME, etc.)

Bitstring labels

APIs

BIND version 9 development has been underwritten by the following

organizations:

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Hewlett Packard

Compaq Computer Corporation

IBM

Process Software Corporation

Silicon Graphics, Inc.

Network Associates, Inc.

U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency

USENIX Association

Stichting NLnet - NLnet Foundation

BIND 9.0.0b1

BIND 9.0.0b1 is the first public release of BIND 9 code. It will

be most useful to advanced users working with IPv6 or DNSSEC.

BIND 9.0.0b1 is not functionally complete, and is not a release

candidate for BIND 9.0.0. The ISC anticipates a number of additional

beta releases between now and May, when BIND 9.0.0 is scheduled to

be released.

The ISC does not recommend using BIND 9.0.0b1 for "production"

services.

We hope users of BIND 9.0.0b1 will provide feedback, bug fixes, and

enhancements. If you are not in a position to do so, it would

probably be better to wait until subsequent releases.

Much of the core technology planned for BIND 9.0.0 is in this beta

release. Some of the highlights are:

IPv6

Support for bitstring labels, DNAME, and A6 records.

IPv6-aware resolver (follows A6 chains, can use IPv6 to

talk to other nameservers).

The nameserver listens on an IPv6 socket.

DNSSEC

All new RR types supported.

The server generates DNSSEC responses for secure zones.

EDNS0

DNS messages using UDP have been limited to 512

bytes. This is too small for DNSSEC replies, whose

signature and key records can be large. EDNS0 allows

larger UDP messages to be sent.

EDNS0 is understood by the server, and used by the

resolver.

Some of the more significant items that will be implemented or

enhanced in a future beta are

DNSSEC validation

The server does not currently validate DNSSEC

signatures.

Notify

Notify is not yet implemented.

Configuration File

Some config file items are not yet implemented.

See doc/misc/options for a summary of the current

status.

Selective Forwarding

Documentation

Future releases will contain a lot more documentation,

but a preliminary version of the Administrator's

Reference Manual is in the doc/arm subdirectory.

Building

BIND 9 currently requires a UNIX system with an ANSI C compiler,

basic POSIX support, and a good pthreads implementation.

We've had successful builds and tests on the following systems

AIX 4.3

COMPAQ Tru64 UNIX 4.0D

FreeBSD 3.4-STABLE

HP-UX 11

IRIX64 6.5

NetBSD current (with "unproven" pthreads)

Red Hat Linux 6.0, 6.1

Solaris 2.6, 7, 8 (beta)

To build, just

./configure

make

"make install" will install "named" and the various BIND 9 libraries.

By default, installation is into /usr/local, but this can be changed

with the "--prefix" option when running "configure".

Shared libraries will be built if "--with-libtool" is added to the

"configure" command.

If you're planning on making changes to the BIND 9 source, you

should also "make depend". If you're using Emacs, you might find

"make tags" helpful.

Building with gcc is not supported, unless gcc is the vendor's usual

compiler (e.g. the various BSD systems, Linux).

Parts of the library can be tested by running "make test" from the

bin/tests subdirectory.

Bug Reports and Mailing Lists

Bugs reports should be sent to

bind9-bugs@isc.org

To join the BIND 9 Users mailing list, send mail to

bind9-users-request@isc.org

If you're planning on making changes to the BIND 9 source

code, you might want to join the BIND 9 Workers mailing list.

Send mail to

bind9-workers-request@isc.org

"named" command line options

-c <config_file>

-d <debug_level>

-f Run in the foreground.

-N <number_of_cpus>

-t <directory> Chroot to <directory> before running.

-u <username> Run as user <username> after binding

to privileged ports.

Use of the "-t" option while still running as "root" doesn't

enhance security on most systems. The way chroot() is defined

allows a process with root privileges to escape the chroot jail.

The "-u" option is not currently useful on Linux. Linux threads

are actually processes sharing a common address space. An unfortunate

side effect of this is that some system calls, e.g. setuid() that

in a typical pthreads environment would affect all threads only affect

the calling thread/process on Linux. The good news is that BIND 9

uses the Linux kernel's capability mechanism to drop all root

powers except the ability to bind() to a privileged port.

On systems with more than one CPU, the "-N" option should be used

to indicate how many CPUs there are.

Note to Programmers

The APIs for the libraries in BIND 9 are not yet frozen.

We expect the existing library interfaces in the release to be

quite stable, however, and unless we've specifically indicated that

an interface is temporary, we don't anticipate major changes in

future releases.